+ Today is World Day of Prayer for the Sick (as proclaimed by Pope John Paul
II) because of the close connection of healing and the site of Our Lady’s
apparitions at Massabielle, France to Bernadette Soubrious in 1858. It was to
this poor French girl that Mary appeared proclaiming herself as the “Immaculate Conception” – and this, a
few years before the doctrine was ever made known publicly. The only way
uneducated and illiterate Bernadette could have used those two words would have
been by divine prompting. At the site, then, she began to dig, and a stream of
water began to flow forming into a pool, which is still flowing and present to
this day. It is in this pool that the sick and the lame from all over the world
come and many are granted physical healing, as well as spiritual.
The
first reading today prophesys the restoration of Jerusalem
after it is plundered by its enemies – this is very much a healing, an act
which only God could have brought about. At the wedding feast of Cana, Jesus
performs his first miracle of changing water into wine to save the bride and
groom of embarrassment of running out of wine. Because of this, the disciples
who were there with him, and many others,
began to believe in Jesus because he was beginning to give glimpses of his glory: and everyone is
attracted to “shiny objects.”
Now Mary said something very
important at that wedding feast: “Do
whatever he tells you.” These are her last recorded words – but she need
not to have spoken any more – for this says it all: Just as she lived these
words, so she asks us to – in order to see his glory – in order to have our
infirmities completely removed – in order for us to live in God forever.
Doing what he tells us is rarely easy,
rarely without great cost, rarely without great moral and spiritual effort –
but for those who hold out to the end: unimagined reward awaits. May we be
eager and willing to see our Christian lives to the end, so to be with Mary and
all the saints forever in the kingdom prepared for us!
Mary, you are the highest honor of our
race!
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