“[Jesus] then said to him, ‘Stretch out your hand.” He did so and his hand was restored.”
Both the first reading and the Gospel from today speak of healing. When a physician is presented with a patient suffering from a grave wound, he must proceed to treat it in stages. First, he must thoroughly examine and clean the wound, removing any foreign materials and anything that is beyond healing or would slow the healing process. This process can be painful to the patient, but it is necessary to ensure that the wound heals properly, and infection does not set in. Only afterwards does the physician move to bind up, soothe, and bandage what remains, doing so in a way that ensures the most complete and speediest recovery. The same process plays out in our souls when we fall in sin.
Cleaning the Wound
Christ, the Divine Physician, begins His work to heal our souls with a call. Sometimes this call is interior and hidden, seeming to us to arise from our own thoughts. Other times the call comes from an extraordinary grace in prayer. Whatever way it comes, it is Christ who is calling, just as He called the man with the withered hand forward in the Gospel. It is a call that requires a response, since by it He will have revealed to us a fault, a sin, a vice within our soul that must be healed. The response will cost us something.
Just as it took courage for the man to come up in front of the crowd during a tense dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees, it will take courage for us to recognise our fault and take the actions that are necessary to remove it. Unlike our bodies, which can be healed while we remain passive, the healing of our souls requires our cooperation. To clean this wound, we must strive with all our strength to avoid falling into the sin or vice again. Beyond that, we must be vigilant and steadfast in practising the opposite virtue.
Restoring to Health
Once the wound is clean, perhaps an even more difficult discovery awaits us: we cannot fully heal this wound on our own. Sin inflicts damage to us too deep for human power alone to reverse. Anyone can cut away a diseased limb, but only an experienced physician can restore it. Fortunately, Jesus is ready to heal all those who show Him their wounds. By seeking healing from the Lord in prayer and especially in the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist, we can be assured of finding a soothing balm to ease our wounds. Restored by His grace, we must resolve even more firmly to avoid falling back and push on with our newfound strength to even greater virtue.
