I witnessed in a television coverage of the Healing Mass of Fr Joey Faller how a woman was cured from her cancer illness. Fr Faller usual words were: “Have faith in God and forgive.”
Where there is illness there is healing. In the Church, the gift of healing co-existed with illness. That is why, in our seven sacraments there are sacraments of healing : Confession or Reconciliation and Anointing of the sick.
The sacrament of Reconciliation, contrary to the unfounded belief of our Protestant brothers and sisters that it is not biblically based, co-existed with the Church. Jesus himself gave authority to his disciples to forgive sins: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, whose sins you retain are retained.” (John 20,23) It is also present in the early Christian communities wherein James admonished them “to confess sins to one another.” (James 5,6) Confession is opening up to God through his minister. It is God who forgives. We open our negative thoughts and feelings to the minister believing that God is using him as his instrument.
In the Anointing of the sick, it is God himself who heals. The Church shares only in the healing ministry of Jesus. Jesus himself commanded his disciples to heal the sick through anointing with oil. (Mark 7,12-13) This command of Jesus was shared by James to the Christian community when he asked them “to call the priest of the Church to pray over the sick persons and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.” (James 5,14)
There used to be a pervasive negative connotation of being anointed among the elderly. It is because the anointing of the sick was called then “extreme unction” or the last sacrament. Certainly, hearing it simply as the last sacrament will make one afraid to be anointed. But the Church calls it now as anointing of the sick which can be received whenever one needs and prays for healing.
Just as the deaf in our Gospel today received his hearing and the many people healed, we too can be healed of our afflictions, maybe not in the manner we want but according to the will of God.
