3rd Sunday after Epiphany 21.1.07 My soul shall be healed.
It is a lot harder to heal a soul than a servant. Because a soul has so many moving parts.
We can be forgiven a sin, or tackle one particular fault only to find it is leaking somewhere else.
Overcome selfishness today and lust tomorrow and you are still not perfect but becoming so.
If the Lord can heal it by a word, we wish He would.
But we start to realize the complexity of the matter. We sense that by ourselves we are never going to be able to plug all the leaks.
So we ask the Lord to speak the word. He does that and He also enters our souls despite our claims of unworthiness.
He comes inside us and starts to tidy up the house. He restores order just as He dined among sinners and the castoffs and brought order to them.
Cleaning up a room means putting everything in its proper place. Jesus helped the sinners to put their desires in order. They sensed His mercy and kindness and desired those qualities more than money or pleasure or whatever else they had known so far.
They may not have known how they were going to achieve this new vision, but they knew they wanted it above all else. (This is the essence of repentance and conversion – the detail comes later, but at least we know where we are pointing.)
This is what happens for us also. The Lord heals us by offering us a new way of looking at things.
It is all a matter of desire. We desire the wrong things. We chase after false gods.
The soul does not know its own sickness, only that it is restless. So it dangerously goes in all directions looking for satisfaction and often makes things worse.
Our Lord heals the soul by giving it the right object to seek – Himself, and His kingdom.
He will draw us to Himself like a magnet makes all the little filings point the same way. He will ‘fix’ our gaze on Him so that we will not look away again.
Then all our various desires and passions will be in place and our souls will be running like new engines.
We will want what He wants. Simple as that. That is what a ‘healed soul’ looks like!
It doesn’t sound so hard when we put it like that, does it?
In practice it will take a while because we are not used to this, and it takes a lot of learning.
We have been thinking and desiring too long in worldly ways. It is not easy to change the way we think. But the lesser will give way to the greater.
And the way the Lord ‘heals’ us, changes us, is to draw us to Himself. By revealing His own beauty and goodness we are drawn irresistibly to Him.
(This is why they cannot sin in heaven. They still have free will but no one would want to use it against God’s will).
So this process goes on until we are fully healed. Like repeat visits to the doctor.
He is the Doctor after all, and He called Himself as much.
It is our very sickness (sin) that makes us unworthy to receive Him, but in removing the sickness He makes us worthy, restores us to His friendship and gives us a share in His glory.
My soul shall be healed, and also guided, led (custodiat) into eternal life.
The rest of our lives is a constant process of being healed and strengthened, finding the right order in our souls, preparing for eternal glory.
