“Does God still heal today?” – Fr. Bob’s Homily for Sunday, December 8, 2024

As you heard in our announcements at the beginning of Mass, we are about to hold our Advent parish mission, entitled “Does God still heal today?”. Appropriately, then, for such a theme, our readings today celebrate the coming “Day of the Lord”, that time in history, when God will intervene decisively in the affairs of humanity to overthrow the powers of evil and usher in his  kingdom, a kingdom  marked by peace, justice, righteousness and healing. 

So the prophet Baruch, writing when the vast majority of the inhabitants of Israel were in exile from their homeland, predicts a time to come when those who were devastated to see their capital city, Jerusalem, destroyed, its Temple burned down, and vast numbers of its citizens deported to Babylon, will be able, as he says, to “take off  their garment of sorrow and affliction and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God”. Baruch foresaw a time when God would act to throw down their enemies and bring them back home to their beloved city and homeland. I should imagine that those who are living today as refugees, having had to flee their homes because of wars, would take great comfort and consolation in hearing the words of Baruch’s message of hope and promise, which they would easily be able to apply to their own situation.

Indeed, brothers and sisters, the whole point of us listening to the word of God at Mass, is for us to understand that the message this word conveys can, and does, apply to us and our situation. It is not a dead word of history; it is the living word of God. St Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, declares that what we call the word of God, that is, the Bible, is not “a human word, but … GOD’S WORD … which is always at work amongst those who believe” (1 Thessalonians 2: 13). Whilst in his second letter to his disciple, Timothy, Paul writes: “these sacred writings are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, to that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good works” ( 2 Timothy 3: 15-16). 

The reason why we keep these words of the prophets and evangelists alive and repeat them over and over again during the Church year is because of one reason above all. They came true. After seventy years of exile, Israel was freed from slavery and returned home, a miraculous deliverance that even the pagans had to recognize was the result of a supreme act of salvation and redemption by Yahweh, Israel’s God.  Our responsorial psalm today captures the mood of joyful disbelief when the impossible happened. “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them’. The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.”

But the word of God did not come true once upon a time in the past. Because it is God’s word, it goes on being fulfilled. Each generation of believers can read these words and apply them to themselves. The word of God is “living and active” says the writer of the letter to the Hebrews (4:12), which means that it came true in the past, it will come true in the future, and it is coming true today, in our time. Because the very Word of God, Jesus Christ “is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).  How many of us, brothers and sisters, can look back at key moments of our lives, when we were going through very difficult periods, when we felt crushed by sorrow and affliction, when we could see no way out, and yet here we are today, alive and well. I know I can readily pinpoint many such occasions in my own life. Do you think that was all a huge coincidence, or do you imagine that it was down to you, that you survived? If you remember crying out to God in anguish and pain, do you think that God simply ignored your prayer, or put your crisis at the bottom of his “to do” list? No, no, no, brothers and sisters. The moment our prayer reached his ears, in fact long before, God was aware of our problems and set things in motion to deal with them. In the book of Daniel (9:23) and the book of Tobit (3: 16) both make the same assertion: God hears and answers our prayers. In Tobit, for instance, two separate people offer up cries for help to God, in situations of desperation, and we are told “at that very moment, the prayers of both of them were heard in the glorious presence of God” (Tobit 3:16).

That doesn’t mean that they received an immediate answer to their prayer. But God did immediately put his plans in place to come to their aid. This is something that can often cause us further grief and lead to disbelief in God’s love and power to save and to heal, when there seems to be delay before God answers our prayer. Throughout the centuries, as we read in the Sacred Scriptures, various authors have struggled to understand the ways of God, and why it seems to take ages for prayers to be answered fully. Various answers have been proposed. In the book of Daniel, for instance, when Daniel is fasting and praying for enlightenment about the situation of his people in exile, the angel Gabriel tells him that God sent him to Daniel straightaway, but he had to fight against powerful evil forces before he won through.  Sometimes God’s plans and purposes are thwarted and held up by evil people and evil situations, and for some reason, God allows the struggle to overcome evil to go on for a while before victory is achieved. He allows us our freedom of will, even when that will is evil. 

In the situation addressed by Baruch, the exile of Israel, we are told earlier that God allowed his people to suffer defeat and deportation, in order for them to understand that their desperate situation was caused, not by God, but by their own sinfulness. Time and again, God sent them prophets to warn them about the consequences that would come upon them if they continued to disobey God’s will, and Israel continued to rebel and disobey their God. Their time of slavery, in exile, was a time for them to fully consider the reality of their sinfulness, and to repent, and be purified and healed.

Elsewhere, in the book of Tobit, we learn that God is working in the lives of different people at the same time to produce a solution to their various situations of peril. We see only our own particular circumstances at a particular moment of time. But God sees things from an entirely different perspective. He sees the end from the beginning. He knows what will happen as we work through our problems with his help, and how it all impacts his general purposes for humanity. He is working to resolve the problems of each one of the billions of people who call out to him, and that takes time often. St Peter addresses the problem of God’s seeming “delay” in responding to our crises. He writes: “Do not ignore this fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you , not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” ( 2 Peter 3: 8-9.

Above all, God is not intending to solve all our personal problems by himself. As I have said so often in the past, we cannot do it on our own, but God will not do it on His own. He looks to us to co-0perate in bringing in his kingdom of love, truth, righteousness, healing and justice. He expects us believers to do our bit in working with him to advance his good and loving plans for our salvation, and the salvation of all the world. I spoke last week about how we can “hasten” the day of the Lord, and bring in his kingdom, by living holy lives. It is also true that, if we fail to do that, if we delay praying, and live in love and truth, if we fail to reach out to others with the good news of salvation in Christ Jesus, then we hold back the coming of his kingdom in its fullness.

So the Bible gives us clues as to why it often takes time for an answer to our prayers. Often the problem is not with God, but with us, in our failures to live out our lives in faith and holiness and patience. But the word of God is adamant that God hears our prayers for help and is always working to answer them in the best possible way, not just for us individually, but for others who are connected with us, and for the whole world in general. The prophet Habakkuk says this so aptly, when he writes: “I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. Then the Lord answered me and said, “Write down the vision…for there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end and does not lie. If it seems to delay, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2: 1, 3).

 I don’t pretend to understand all the reasons why the Lord seems to delay in responding to our petitions, brothers and sisters, but I do believe that the Lord does have his reasons, and they are fundamentally wise and just. I do believe that, for those who keep trusting in his goodness and mercy and power, that, in the words of St Paul to the Romans, “all things work together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). I know that I love God, even though I suck at it a lot of times, and I know that you do also. I believe that I, and you, are called according to his purpose, and therefore God is working out his plans for us for our good, even when that good seems hidden from us. And I believe that God, who has begun his good work in us will continue to complete it until the day of the Lord, the day of Christ, as our second reading affirms. Amen.