We Need to REPENT to be Healed!
A Reflection by Mark....We can't expect real healing w/o repentance
“Amaziah, priest of Bethel, said to Amos,
‘Off with you, visionary, flee to the land of Judah!
There earn your bread by prophesying,
but never again prophesy in Bethel;
for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple.’
Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I was no prophet,
nor have I belonged to a company of prophets;
I was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores.
The LORD took me from following the flock, and said to me,
Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’” – Amos 7:12-15
“So they went off and preached repentance.
The Twelve drove out many demons,
and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”
– Mark 6:12-13
The key words for the reflection on today’s readings are Repentance and Healing.
The leaders of the northern kingdom of Israel hated Amos, who is sometimes called “the gloomy shepherd” because of his hard, confrontational tone. {One time I was teaching Amos in Bible class, imitating him, and shouting so fiercely that Mrs. Brodeur, in total alarm, came to the door, anxiously asking, “Is everything all right in here, Mr. Lajoie?!”. I said, “Oh, yeah. I’m just teaching Amos.” (!)}
Amos came, from the kingdom of Judah in the south, to the north, to expose and confront their hypocrisy and betrayal of God. There were ‘professional’ prophets in Israel already, but they were ‘bought off’, and gave false messages to support those who bought their voice. What was Amos confronting?
These leaders gave off a surface veneer of being religious and patriotic, but their hearts were seduced by the promiscuity, power and pleasure offered by the primitive religion of the Canaanites. They were driven by selfish lust, greed and wrath. They used their power to subtly disrespect their God and heritage, and to crush those with no power to fight them. They wanted to seem like good Israelites, faithful to the unique faith that held their nation together like glue; but, in truth, their own descent into corrupt self-destruction, was a harbinger of the inevitable national disintegration that would come when that needed ‘glue’ would inevitably be lost.
They tried to shield themselves from critical view by using the false ‘prophets’, but then, Amos, with God’s power, exposed to all the truth, & with loving care warned them of the destruction to which they were leading God’s people. When they tried to pass him off as a typical paid prophet, he laughed, “I was not a prophet.” The Lord had called him from lowly pursuits. Ironically, he is a type of that Messiah who will be a Shepherd, a Dresser or Pruner of the True Vine, the Church. Even more, he is a type of that Son of Man who will be THE Prophet promised by Moses, the One who will call mankind to Repentance.
Repentance! This is what Jesus instructs the Apostles to preach in today’s Gospel from Mark! It is a ‘trial run’, a practice mission for what they will do for the world after they are ‘clothed with power’. He also tells them to cast out evil and heal the sick. (By the way, His instruction to anoint the sick with oil is the evidence that he intended the Sacrament of the Sick detailed in James 5.)
The goal is Healing, but not just physical healing, rather, the type of healing gained BY Repentance! The second reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians lists the blessings that last forever that we can gain by changing:
• Every spiritual blessing under heaven
• To be holy and without blemish
• Redemption by his Blood
• Forgiveness of transgressions
• Receiving the riches of His grace
• All wisdom and insight.
But, as Paul could tell us personally, we can’t get these blessings if we persist in the same sort of lust, greed and wrath which blinded the leaders of Israel. We are fickle; we all want a religion that lets us do what we want, with no consequences. (“The easiest sort of religion to import is the one that has no duties attached!”) But that road leads to destruction.
Like Amos, the Apostles will first confront each of us with our need to change. I must REPENT! My pride must crash and burn on the rocks of spiritual reality: the fact that sin is real, that our sins are wounding and deadly, & that the commands of God are right. My insular ego must be shipwrecked on the obvious need to change from selfish to generous. When we are thus crushed, broken, and ‘poor in spirit’, THEN we can cry out as in the Psalm today, “Lord, let us see your kindness”, and we will see that amazing, eternal healing! Then the Mighty River of God’s love can bring total health to each and to all together. “Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss.” It will all fit.
Jesus Christ is not only Priest and King. He is the perfect Prophet and Shepherd. He warns us insistently, with great clarity & care:
Enter in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who go in there.
How narrow is the gate, and straight is the way that leads to life: and few there are that find it! – Matthew 7:13-14
The Church received from the Apostles this same Prophetic mission. Sadly, many, maybe most bishops and leaders today seem to have totally forgotten this basic duty. They want to be liked. They don’t want to say there is such a thing as sin, much less give us practical warnings about salvation. We who hear and understand cannot settle for such ‘easy’ messages, like the ‘prosperity gospel’, that Jesus is merely ‘nice’, or the this-worldly utopia of political revolution. These are false solutions that spare us loving God and our neighbor with all that we are, offering our life in holiness as a sacrifice. The message from this day is clear: let us all REPENT with all we are, so we can be truly HEALED.
AMETUR COR JESU!
Loved be the Sacred Heart of Jesus, The Source of True Healing
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