Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Hospital, Burlington
February 11, 2016
I want to talk to you today about three words: crisis; sickness; professional. I chose to speak about those three words in three contexts: Healthcare; Mass; the Year of Mercy. I do this in my three roles: human being who faced a life threatening illness; person of faith; shepherd. Obviously, I like the number three.
In his Message for the 24th Annual World Day of the Sick, our Holy Father Pope Francis wrote:
“Illness, above all, grave illness, always places human existence in crisis.”
That’s my first word, crisis. It comes from a Greek expression that has three understandings: crisis is an event that leads to instability or danger; a time of testing; and a turning point. Illness embraces all three ideas. Illness destabilizes a person and places human life in danger. It tests a person and creates a turning point, either for better or worse. Sickness changes a person’s life for a while or forever. When a person faces the crisis of sickness, he or she turns to you as professionals. A professional is a person with the competence to make a difference, in this case healthcare, my next word.
We have heard a lot of conversation in recent years about healthcare and have witnessed some significant changes. I will not comment about the politics involved in those conversations and changes, that’s not my competence and it’s not my role. I will comment about the goal of healthcare as a profession: to heal, to heal the human person in body, mind and soul. The Lord Jesus has said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, sick people do (Mark 2: 17).” In that passage, Jesus was using that principal as an analogy for sin. For those in healthcare professions, it is not an analogy: it is their reason for being, their vocation … your vocation.
We come together today at Mass, the greatest and most important prayer of the Catholic Church because it is Jesus’ prayer and his principal sacrifice for us. It is a prayer and sacrifice that brings healing to the human soul, wounded by sin. It offers us God’s mercy. It inspires faith and creates the closest encounter with him through the Lord Jesus Christ.
The scripture readings for Mass today, the Book of Deuteronomy presents Moses speaking to the people of Israel:
“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you.”
The sick come to the hospital because they “choose life.” Those who care for them make the same choice and ask God to help them to fulfill that choice through the care they extend and give.
Our Gospel from St. Luke, whom tradition tells us was a physician, reminds us of the cross of suffering that all of us must bear. It is the Christian perspective:
“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
Isn’t that what the sick are called to do? Isn’t that what those who minister to their needs do through their difficult, often unpleasant and uncomfortable tasks? Jesus tells us all:
“whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
In his Message for the World Day of the Sick, Pope Francis wrote that in the crisis of illness
“… faith in God is on the one hand tested, yet at the same time can reveal all of its positive resources. Not because faith makes illness, pain, or the questions which they raise, disappear, but because it offers a key by which we can discover the deepest meaning of what we are experiencing; a key that helps us to see how illness can be the way to draw nearer to Jesus who walks at our side, weighed down by the Cross.”
The Cross, after three days, led to the Resurrection and it does so again and always. The Holy Year of Mercy is a reminder of the faith that leads us to God, especially for those who suffer illness. They seek the mercy of God in their cross of suffering. They look for it in their hospital beds and nursing homes. And you, in the profession of healthcare, are invited to show them God’s merciful face and hands and comfort in the crosses you help them carry.
I know that need personally and first hand. I depended upon it as doctors and nurses and staff saved my life by taking my leg. That experience tested my faith in God … and in them. It was not people who simply did their job in a routine way who made the difference. It was people who by their love and kindness offered me the mercy and healing of the Lord. And they do that every day for those who need them and who give them hope, often in desperate situations, in crisis. That is what you do — you give them hope by the way you do your daily work, by the way you look at them; by the way you touch them and their fragile bodies. That’s what makes the difference.
I come here today to this house of healing as a human who suffered illness for several years … I come as a person of faith … but I am not alone in either of those roles. There are many others who came before me and who will follow. I come to you today alone as the Bishop, as shepherd of the flock … those who are well and ill; those who heal and who need healing; those who serve the sick; those who love the sick; and those who are sick and need your service and love. We are one flock today on this World Day of the Sick, turning to the Lord and asking for the power of his mercy and healing and love for ourselves and for the benefit of others.