As we have started to do regularly on the 3rd Sunday of the month, we will have today another rite of healing, and I am glad that we have some readings today that help us explore what this means for us, I am thinking specifically about this passage from 1 Peter’s that we have just heard.
Now, let’s go backward a little bit before we get started with that. We spent the two last Sundays talking about the Farewell Discourse, this long passage from John’s Gospel where Jesus instructs his disciples for the last time, focusing on reassuring them, strengthening them and showing them his love. It is not addressed only to his disciples though, it’s not only for those who have known him in the flesh while he walked this earth. Jesus has ascended to heavens now (we celebrated Ascension Day last Thursday and we are reminded of the event in the Book of Acts today), and he has promised his on going presence through the Spirit to all those who believe in him. And this is why Peter can confidently say to the first generation of Christians that God, through Christ, will restore, support, strengthen and establish them. What Jesus had said to the disciples is extended to all. You may know (or not) that Peter’s letter is part of what we call the “Catholic Epistles”. It does not mean that these letters are for the Roman Catholic church, it means that these letters are meant for all(That’s what Catholic means). While Paul would write to a specific community, Peter wrote letters that were made to be read in many different churches, they were meant for all. If you want a little bit more context, Peter addressed more specifically Christians who were facing persecutions, this is what he refers to when he speaks about the “(…) fiery ordeal that is taking place among [them]” and how they are “sharing in Christ’s sufferings“. When Peter compares the devil to a “roaring lion””prowling around looking for someone to devour”, it must have been a very vivid image for the Christians of this age, knowing that Peter had very likely in mind what happened in the Roman arenas for many of those Christians.
So thankfully, we don’t live in this context anymore, at least in our part of the world, Christians aren’t persecuted anymore, the Epistle continues to be read to show us how we are called to deal with the many trials and sufferings we will encounter in this life. And to me Peter summarizes that beautifully in this passage, and especially with this sentence:
Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.
And this is to me exactly what we do when we come together to do the rite of healing. When we come to the altar to receive the laying on of hands and the anointing, we come to cast on God all our anxieties, and to me the readings teach us that we do that specifically through humility, trust and on-going prayer. This is what it takes to cast all our anxieties on him. So let’s take a closer look at that…
1 – Humility:
You know how often Christians say that we are not given more than we can handle? This is actually a very bad rendering of Paul’s words: God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it (1 Co 10:13). Actually, we are often given more than we can handle, but the promise is that God will help us. And I like it that Peter says that God will help us not that much because God is powerful but mainly because God cares. We know this is what we need when we are anxious, we need someone who cares. Now to have God care for us, we need to have the humility to acknowledge our limits, to realize that indeed, sometimes, we have more than we can handle (on our own), that there are people we are unable to save, problems we are unable to solve. It does not mean we want to give up, but we need to realize we have to give all these anxieties to God. Sometimes our way of handling difficulties is our pride, we pretend we can do it all, or we pretend that we can’t get hurt. But if we look for healing, we have to be honest with God about our sufferings. These anxieties Peter talked about referred principally to the anxiety of persecution the first Christians had, but a commentator says that it can really cover many things: “(…) discontentment, discouragement, despair, questioning, pain (…)“. Actually anxiety does not have to be specific, sometimes we are anxious and we don’t know why. Anxiety comes up in many ways because we are fragile and mortal and we know it, we are aware of our vulnerability. Even though we all have different anxieties, the root of anxiety is always the same: We are not God. But we can ask God to be with us and to walk with us.
In the rite of healing, we acknowledge this need for God by walking humbly to the altar, some may choose to kneel. It is a way of saying “Look, I can‘t do this on my own“, or “I don’t want to do this on my own anymore“, we open the door to God’s power, God’s care, to come into our lives. Peter says we need to “(…) humble [ourselves] under the mighty hand of God” maybe we can see that too in the laying on of hands. We put ourselves in the hands of God, but this has even more to do with trust.
2 – Trust
Cast all your anxieties on Him, because he cares for you: Peter reminds us that we can ask for God’s help not so much because God is powerful, but because God loves us. It does not mean that God is not powerful of course, but we don’t come to God because we hope God will do magic in our life, we don’t use God to our own ends, we don’t make friends with God like we can be tempted to make friends with someone influential so we can benefit from his power. We are invited to enter a relationship of love with God and in this relationship, we will find the help that we seek in the same way, although at a much different level, than those we love bring relief, support and joy into our lives. When we suffer, when we are sad, we know how much a little act of kindness can help us. In the same way, it is knowing that we are loved by God and important to God that can bring all sorts of healing in our life. It does not make us invulnerable, immune to all suffering and pain, but God helps us carry on, find meaning and joy until we are at last “established” as Peter puts it, in Christ’s eternal glory.
In the rite of healing, we materialize this trust in the laying on of hands. Indeed, we humble ourselves under the hand of God, but also we put everything into God’s hands, we trust Him with our lives, we let God touch us because we know God loves us and won’t hurt us. The anointing is another sign of this trust, it is the same symbol than in baptism, it means that we are marked as God’s own, we belong to God now and forever. This is why our lives are filled with on-going prayers.
3 – On-going prayer
If you remember from last week, we learned that we have an advocate with the Holy Spirit. This week, we learn that we also have an adversary as Peter describes all the spiritual forces that oppose God and how they come into play especially at times when we are sick, in pain or anxious. We can be tempted by discouragement or even by despair, we can feel let down by God and start to distrust God. Our time of physical or mental weakness can become times of spiritual weakness. Peter says that if we have an adversary then, we know we must keep vigilant and resist temptation. Now resisting temptation, it’s not about resisting the urge to eat doughnuts (although it’s not necessarily a bad idea…), it’s about resisting the forces that lead us away from God! If we keep on praying though, we can be assured that our relationship with God isn’t broken. We see in the Gospel today how important prayer was to Jesus, he finishes his life on earth with this long prayer, for the glory of God, for himself, for his disciples at the time and all the disciples he knew were to come. He humbles himself before God and puts all his trust in God, and invites us to do the same. And to renew this prayer again and again.
In our healing rite, we can choose today to light a candle as a sign of our vigilance and our on-going prayer. Although we put everything into God’s hands, we never pray once for all, we have to pray as long as we live because sufferings and temptations will always be there. But our passage of the Gospel finishes today with the promise that, through all of this, we will be protected. It does not necessarily mean to be spared all suffering, but to be kept in God’s presence no matter what. This light can also symbolizes this presence of God in our lives. Again, this is the promise Jesus makes as he leaves this earth: although they can’t see him anymore with their eyes, he is with them forever. How would our lives look like, feel like if we had the same assurance?