A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 5, n. 46)
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C – October 14, 2007
“A Journey of Healing”
BIBLE READINGS
II Kgs 5:14-17 // II Tm 2:8-13 // Lk 17:11-19
N.B. Series 5 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year C from the perspective of the First Reading. For another set of reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year C, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US and open Series 2.
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
Dr. Beth Baxter’s article, “Journey From a Dark Place” (cf. GUIDEPOSTS: Large Print Edition, October 1999, p. 28-42) tells of the anguish of her mental illness and her journey to healing and redemption. She studied medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical School and was accepted for a residency in psychiatry at the University of Rochester in New York. Toward the end of her residency she was hospitalized twice for psychotic breaks and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. One winter evening in 1994 she decided to put an end to her failures, agony and despair. She tried to commit suicide by cutting her throat, but on account of some last minute intervention, she survived. Dr. Beth Baxter narrates her beautiful story of healing.
My parents, grandparents, my whole extended family pooled their resources so I could be treated at a renowned mental hospital in Massachusetts. One morning I wandered into the greenhouse there. A power failure had caused a freeze, and most of the plants lay withered, un-revivable. Aimlessly, I was plucking away the brown leaves on a dead fern when at its base I spotted a tiny shoot of green. “There is life here after all,” I marveled, surprised at my own insight. It had been years since I felt the merest glimmer of hope. But I made little progress. One afternoon, curled up in a chair in my room, I felt that old despair settle over me like a cold winter fog. I still hadn’t found a way to make sense of my illness, of the wreck that remained of my life. What was the use? The doctors were wasting their time. My family and friends were wasting their prayers. To me God seemed on the other side of an unbreachable gulf of darkness “God, if you’re out there, “ I pleaded, “give me a reason to live.” A short time later my mother called. I blurted out what was on my mind: “Mom, I just can’t find a reason not to end it all.” There was a long pause. Then my mom said softly, “Beth, I love you. Can’t you make that one reason?” “I’ll try, Mom,” I whispered. “For you, I’ll try.” Later that week Jeff and his wife Nikki, called. “We miss you, Beth,” they said. “Everyone at our church is praying that you’ll come home soon. We love you.” Love. Did I even know what it meant anymore? Was that, ultimately, the cruelest toll my disease had taken? Tearing me from the redemptive healing power of love. Blocking me from feeling my friend’s love, my family’s. God’s love … Love. Wasn’t that, ultimately, what God was giving me? Mental illness was a part of me, but so was the inner strength that had gotten me through medical school and residency despite it. So were the doctoring skills I’d learned, the understanding I’d developed of people’s suffering, the devotion of my friends, the support and prayers of my family. Above all, it was love that held the pieces together, through which God bridged the gulf of darkness with hope. That was a beginning. Eventually, after continuing my treatment at two other hospitals, I went home to Nashville. I found a doctor who put me on a new medication that controlled my symptoms. I began going with Jeff and Nikki to their church. It became mine as well. I felt comfortable there because the people had been praying for me. Opening up about my illness and recovery, I grew closer to my friends and my family than ever before. I worked as a mental-health advocate for several years before I came to my current job as a psychiatrist at Nashville’s Mental Health Cooperative, a clinic for people with severe mental illnesses. Schizoaffective disorder, it turned out, started me on a journey, leading me to a place where I can achieve my goal of making people’s lives better, where I can do good, helping others see that they too can overcome the pain of mental illness and fulfill their true promise. That is the most powerful of all medicines – hope.
Like the story of Dr. Beth Baxter, this Sunday’s liturgy presents us with two magnificent cases of total healing. The “leprous” Syrian general Naaman and the Samaritan leper experienced the healing power of God. Both Naaman and the healed Samaritan leper embarked on a journey of healing that led them to embrace the love of God – a miraculous moment that filled them with hope, faith and thanksgiving. The gift of healing received by them involved returning to the living God and acknowledging the divine benevolent action in their lives. Indeed, their conversion and transformation resulted from being “touched” by the healing grace of God.
The biblical scholars Mark O’Brien and Anthony Campbell remark on how the miraculous cure of Naaman, who traveled from his native Aram to seek the healer-prophet in Samaria, led him to confess his faith in the God of Israel and to a new form of worship (cf. II Kgs 5:14-17): “A profound transformation follows the healing of Naaman’s leprous flesh. He returns to Elisha professing that Israel’s God is the only God and, in a surprising reversal, refers to himself as the prophet’s servant (v. 15). When Elisha refuses a gift Naaman requests a gift from him – a load of earth. Before his cure Naaman despised the waters of Israel, now he seeks the soil of Israel, presumably on which to offer sacrifice to the God of Israel (v. 17). The barriers between Syrian potentate and Israelite prophet, between master and servant, have been broken down. The nationalism that expresses contempt for other countries has changed. One barrier remains: religion. Naaman is now a YHWH-worshiper in a society that worships Rimmon. Elisha’s Go in peace implies that this is no barrier to the peace that the Lord brings.”
The prophet Elisha’s word of command to Naaman to immerse himself seven times into the River Jordan carried the healing power of God. In obedience to the prophetic word, Naaman was healed of leprosy. His physical cure became the basis of his faith in the God of Israel and his inmost healing. He became a believer in Yahweh and avowed: “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel … I will no longer offer holocausts or sacrifice to any other god except to the Lord.” Indeed, the power of God’s dabar or word can bring about cleansing, healing, rejuvenation, conversion and transformation.
The Gospel account of the healing of the ten lepers (cf. Lk 17:11-19) and the “Eucharistic” attitude of the healed Samaritan who returned to Jesus “glorifying God” underline more deeply the power of God to heal and to transform. Harold Buetow comments: “St. Luke’s Gospel story clearly echoes the Naaman story. Jesus was on his resolute journey to die in his city of destiny, Jerusalem (v. 11). He displayed extraordinary concern toward ten lepers, one of whom was doubly an outcast: not only a leper, but a Samaritan, considered by Jews a second-class heretical dog, a step below the rest of Gentiles … But to only one was a complete cure of his whole person announced by Jesus’ telling observation that the man’s faith had saved him. This was the despised foreigner whom the Jews would have thought least likely to give thanks; the one who had no claim to the cure, especially from the hands of a Jew; the one whose cure involved and expansion of vision. This one, the Samaritan, returned to thank God the Father and to praise Jesus … The man underwent the process of conversion necessary for all of us: realizing that we are nothing, acknowledging God and his gifts, being aware that we need God, and desiring to turn to him and serve him with all our heart. The Samaritan’s being healed, like Naaman’s, was more than skin deep. There are other similarities between the Samaritan and Naaman: both were foreigners from their home base; both were asked to do something that was against their grain; both knew enough to be full of praise and gratitude for the cure; and for both the cure involved an expansion of understanding.”
The figures of Naaman and the healed Samaritan leper, as beneficiaries of God’s grace of healing, remind us to trust God who can heal all our infirmities. The power of God’s healing does not have any limits. We are therefore challenged to embark on an inner journey towards the transformation and the wholeness of our person – a mysterious movement towards the comforting bosom of our loving God and his gift of eternal life. The healing stories of this Sunday inspire us to hope and faith - to an obedient and total response to the Word of God who has the power to bring about our cleansing, healing, restoration, redemption and glorification. Moreover, the liturgy of this Sunday invites us to praise and thanksgiving. Naaman and the Samaritan have shown us what it means to be thankful. Their journey of healing involved a return to the living God to acknowledge the marvels and benefits he had bestowed on them and to submit totally to his gracious will.
Finally, Harold Buetow underlines what praise and thanksgiving entail: “Somehow we often find it difficult to praise either God or other people. Praise presupposes two elements: the recognition of good in whatever form it comes, and the due acknowledgement of that good through some gesture or action. And we should realize that gratitude is not only the greatest of attributes, but the parent of them all, and that if we are not grateful to God we can not taste the joy of finding him in his creation.”
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
What was the malady that afflicted the Syrian general Naaman? Why did he journey to Israel? What happened when he finally plunged into the Jordan seven times at the word of Elisha, the man of God? What was the response of Naaman to the miraculous healing he had experienced? Why was Naaman’s healing a journey of faith? How does his healing experience inspire our own life?
2 What was the prayer uttered by the ten lepers upon meeting Jesus who was on his way to Jerusalem? How did Jesus respond to their invocation? How did the lepers receive and act upon Jesus’ command to show themselves to the priests? Why did the healed Samaritan go to Jesus? How did the Samaritan avow that God, in the person of Jesus, is the source of healing? Does the response of thanksgiving and recognition inspire us?
3 What are the afflictions and maladies that affect us? Do we turn to Jesus for healing? Do we acknowledge him as the channel of God’s mercy and healing? Are we willing to experience a journey from darkness and illness towards healing and love, towards praise and thanksgiving? Do we strive to be an instrument of God’s healing to a broken, fragmented and ailing world? Are we able to render praise and thanksgiving to God who heals us of all our brokenness and illnesses?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: Loving God,
you are the font of healing.
Heal us of our sins and infirmities.
We believe that your love can restore us to good health.
Free us from the sickness that threatens us
and from the evils that endanger our life.
Drive away the leprosy of sin and all physical and moral ills.
Let the healing word of Jesus Christ, your beloved Son,
cleanse us and vivify us.
May his compassionate hand comfort us
and his touch alleviate our sorrows.
We bless you, we praise you, and we thank you.
Like the healed lepers, Naaman and the Samaritan,
who both experienced the journey of healing,
fill us with the joy of hope, faith and thanksgiving.
We glorify you, now and forever.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” (Lk 17:19)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: Meditate on the journey of healing and faith of Naaman and the Samaritan and its personal implication for you. Pray to God for physical, moral and spiritual healing. Endeavor to bring the healing power of God to the sick in your family and community, and to a wounded society in deep need of God’s healing.
ACTION PLAN: To help us develop a stronger faith in Jesus who can heal us of all our infirmities and fill us with the restoring love of God, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR (Vol. 3, n. 46): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US