Wholeness is a state of completeness which one needs to be fully human. Many things destroy our state of completeness and leave us in a broken condition. It is a reality that many today live with broken hearts, broken spirits, broken families, and broken societies. But living constantly in the presence of God is the surest way of feeling whole and complete. In the traditional society, the type of which we meet also in the Bible, the brokenness is caused by a number of factors, three of which can be identified as moral recklessness, family problems and debilitating health conditions that render one physically incomplete. In each of these conditions, one’s sense of being fully human is greatly hampered. God intervenes to restore wholeness in each situation in the readings today. Jesus comes to repair our brokenness and make us fully human. The sense of wholeness is felt on diverse levels.
Personal Wholeness
People often feel inwardly broken due to a number of factors within their personal lives and in their existential environment. Top among these is a state of moral disorder or recklessness in moral conduct, which is often linked to religious disorientation. In the first reading of today from Genesis 17, God invites Abraham to a life of wholeness. This is to be achieved through walking with God, which involves a total moral and religious reorientation.
In 17:1, God promises the blessings of an everlasting covenant to Abraham while challenging Abraham with the proposal: “Walk before Me and be blameless (tamim)!” Walking with God expresses a type of moral standing before God. It means simply living in God’s presence and following God’s will and expressed commands in all circumstances. The positive effect of such moral standing before God is the acquisition of the quality of being blameless. The word “blameless” translates the Hebrew adjective tamim (singular tam), expressing the idea of wholeness, perfection, entirety. It expresses a soundness of character, a state of moral impeccability. The point here is that living in the presence of God brings about wholeness in personal conduct, and this affects other areas of one’s existence.
Family Wholeness
Another aspect of brokenness is that which emanates from family problems. This is caused by a number of factors, some of which are childlessness, unhappy marital union, hardship and disunity within the family. Lack of cohesion in the family usually leaves one disoriented. In today’s first reading, God blesses Abraham with posterity and a blessed future. He will have a son through his hitherto childless wife Sarah, and this son will be the channel of further covenantal blessings. This will bring cohesion and wholeness to the unhappy and largely hopeless couple.
One finds a similar situation in the Responsorial Psalm of today. The Psalmist of Psalm 128 anchors family cohesiveness on one’s piety: “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord and walks in His ways.” With such fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, many family blessings begin to flow: prosperity through his own labor, fruitfulness of his wife in a happy union, multiplication of progeny and long life in a happy and peaceful land. All these are blessings of wholeness which flow from the fact of living in the presence of God.
Physical Wholeness
Living in the presence of God is expressed in life encounter with Jesus. An example of such encounter is found in the Gospel reading today, as the man whose physical condition is debilitated by leprosy meets Jesus and gets wholeness. He becomes fully human. Jesus has the abiding mission of going about and restoring those whose lives are broken and torn to pieces. He keeps inviting us as he does in Matt 11:28: “Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
In our different broken conditions, God constantly invites us to live in His presence, to walk with Him like Abraham. This leads to blessings. It is being whole and being fully human. The more we walk away from God, the more disoriented we find ourselves, the more broken we are, and the less human we become. This is what we face in many forms in the contemporary society. The sense of being human is being progressively diminished. But God never tires in calling us to experience wholeness and fuller humanity through daily living in His presence.
