We celebrate today the Feast of St. Luke whom we recognize as the co-worker of St. Paul and who was the writer of the third Gospel. Luke is believed to be a physician and in his writings we sense that the human love of Jesus is of great importance for him, as well as is Jesus’ compassion for those who suffer and are outcast or pushed to the edge of society because they are sick or behaviour is seen to be sinful.
In the Gospel today we hear Luke tell us of the time Jesus sent his seventy disciples with a mission to get people ready for Jesus’ upcoming visit to them. He gives some practical rules they are to follow and he ends his instructions by saying:“Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”
I find these verses of St. Luke’s Gospel very comforting and encouraging. Jesus came to bring peace to our lives, our homes, to the communities where we live. We all know how important it is to have real peace in our lives and in our relations with one another. How many hearts ache in sadness because peace has been destroyed with a family member or a friend? How often we see family members who no longer speak to each other. We easily sense the pain and isolation this brings. Jesus brought that peace that we all long for and often brought that peace through healing.
Jesus knew how much illness also brought upset and disruption and even ruin into people’s lives. So he healed people all the time. He encouraged them to believe in his power to heal and restore peace, peace of heart, peace of mind, peace in one’s life.
In the Gospel today we see that Jesus is putting into place the way that his healing will continue to touch everyone in the world, for all time even after he returns to the Father. The disciples would become Jesus’ Church. Like the 70 in the Gospel, Jesus sends out the Church to carry on what he began: to bring peace and to cure the sick and tell them to take heart because the Kingdom of God’s love and life and freedom from pain and darkness is really very close to them.
Here we see the great miracle of the Church. We are never alone regardless of how difficult life can be for us. Jesus dwells within us, abides within us, and makes his home in us because of our baptism and because of the life breath of God given to us in Confirmation by the Holy Spirit which breathes within our souls.
Through Holy Communion we are continually brought into the most intimate union with God. Through this sacrament of the Church, Jesus makes us one with him, bringing us into an ever intensifying union with him as the members of his very body. This oneness with Jesus, the Saviour, floods us with healing.
Through the Sacrament of the Sick, through the hands of the Church, Jesus, the Compassionate Healer touches us and brings healing of our soul which spills over to bring comfort and healing of to our body.
In the Psalm today, we prayed:“The Lord is just in all his ways and kind in all his doings. The Lord is near to all who call on him to all who call on him in truth.”
May God help us to always find encouragement in the Lord’s great kindness to us and find strength and comfort in knowing that our Saviour, Jesus the Christ, is always near, never to abandon us but rather to draw us to himself in a union of love which endures for ever into all eternity.
