This weekend, with a special gospel reading and with the anointing of
the sick after the12:15 Mass, we focus on Jesus and his healing. I
want you to think for a moment if we take away the trial and
suffering and execution of Jesus, during his life, if you had to list
three things he kept doing, what would the three things be, because I
am going to talk about the three things he kept doing, and what is
the lesson for us. What are the three things Jesus kept doing? I
would say the three things are, first of all, he told stories.
Secondly, he went to parties, and thirdly, he healed people.

He told stories, stories of the Good Samaritan, stories of the Lost
Coin, stories of the Lost Sheep, stories of the Baker Woman, stories
of the Dishonest Servant, stories of the Prodigal Son, story after
story after story which challenged people and consoled people and
confused people and made people think and got him into trouble. So,
what are we to do? We’re to hold onto those stories and treasure
them, and it’s not always easy. You know, we hear the stories read
and we say, “Same old, same old....” and our minds wander somewhere
else. But we have to work at listening with our ears, with our minds
and our hearts to the stories, and let those stories make us think
again and let those stories trouble us. That’s the first thing we
have to do with the first thing Jesus did, which was to tell stories.

The second thing Jesus did was he went to parties. I can remember....
I know the gospel describes him as a great party-goer. And he had
gotten into trouble for that too. But I can remember going to Mt.
Mary Immaculate, which used to be the seminary on Gloria Terrace,
then became a retreat center, and now it’s a Buddhist Monastery. I
went there for a retreat and the first time I came to a meal, I sat
down and they had a big banner right over the table which read, “This
man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” That’s what Jesus did. He
welcomed sinners and he ate with them. He went to parties with the
distant, with the disrespected, with the disreputable, and he got
into trouble for that. And what does he tell us to do? Well, it tells
us to welcome people to our table. I’ve got to be honest with you.
Jesus says that explicitly. He says, “When you’re throwing a feast,
don’t just invite your friends and relatives and people who can repay
you. Invite the lame, the cripple, the blind, the poor.” That’s a
nice message and there’s meaning in it. But I really, to be honest
with you, I don’t think it means that we’re regularly to bring to our
Thanksgiving Dinner all these strange people. I don’t think so. We
do, in a way, already. Come Thanksgiving, every one of us has a
family gathering and we invite everyone in the family, including our
crazy Uncle Charlie. Everybody has a crazy Uncle Charlie. I know this
because I use this as an example now and then, and somebody came up
to me a few years ago and said, “I wish you wouldn’t say that because
we have an uncle whose name is Charlie, and he is crazy!” But what we
are called to do is to welcome people to the table of our hearts and
to allow them in, and to welcome people to the table of the earth,
that they not go hungry, that they not be disrespected, and that they
find respect and compassion, and food. That’s why the work of our St.
Vincent dePaul is so important. So that’s one of the things we are
called to do by Christ’s party-going, to be a people of welcome.
Welcome all the people of the earth to our hearts.

But there is something else. We are also called to be a people who
look forward to THE party. What do I mean by “THE party?” When we had
Garry Wills, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, here for adult
education, he wrote “What Jesus Meant” and “What Paul Meant.” Someone
raised their hand and said, “What do you think it’s going to be like
after death? What do you think heaven is going to be like?” And he
said, “It’s the Inn at the end of the world, where Jesus gathers us
all in party. We’re to look forward to that party.” A friend of mine
is Father Ed Haasl. Father Haasl served for thirty-three years in one
parish, St. Louis Bertrand’s in East Oakland. Tough assignment! East
14th Street and 100th Avenue. I remember, I was with him there for
five years. Two things I remember about him: He never would let
anyone honor him or praise him. So once we surprised him by putting
on a birthday party, and we had gathered everyone around and we had a
birthday party for Ed. And everyone came to the party..... except Ed.
He stayed outside and worked and he wouldn’t join us. I remember
that. I remember about ten years after I left there, he had a Chevy
Nova that he loved, and in fact, he had it when we went to the moon,
and he measured the mileage from earth to moon and back and he said,
“My Chevy can do that.” He rebuilt the engine four times himself, and
he covered the right distance to the moon and back. He was working
one afternoon in his garage and two men, two thugs, trapped him
there, and they beat him badly with a two by four. I went out and
stayed with him. He was pretty badly disfigured. Someone had to be
with him overnight, to wake him up every hour to make sure that his
brain was allright. When we found who had done it, he would not press
charges. He said, “They’re needy people. I’m the stupid one. I
shouldn’t have put myself in that danger. And I remember that Sunday
morning, right after, he didn’t come out to the Masses because he was
too messed up. But the first thing I heard was sweeping. He was out,
he also served as janitor of the parish, and he was out sweeping the
parking lot for us. Well, Ed died October 4th, and his grand nephew
went through his writings and found something he wrote and we put it
on his memorial card for his funeral. Ed wrote, “The strong carry the
halt, the lame and the elderly in their arms or on their shoulders.
From every direction, all ages of people came walking, running,
limping and stumbling, laughing, crying, shouting, singing, dancing,
hugging and kissing everybody, jubilant, ecstatic in their total and
final victory. I have often thought maybe that’s how we’ll enter
heaven. We have to look forward to the party.

And the third thing Jesus did was he healed people. Even his enemies
could not deny that. What they said was, “Allright, you’re healing
people but you are doing it by powers of evil. You’re not doing it by
God’s power.” But they couldn’t deny that he was a healer, and that
calls us to be a healing community, a community that cares for
people. You know, the early Church historians tell us that people
joined the Christian Church in droves because they saw the way they
cared for the poor, and they cared for those who were sick. Thomas
Cahill writes in his book, what difference did Christianity make. He
asked that question. And one of the answers comes with the promise of
lasting life. We fear no death. And with the call to compassion, we
take care of one another. And so, for the first time in world
history, people began standing with one another through plague and
disease and disaster, and they did it because we are called to be a
healing community by Jesus. And we continue to care for one another.
We do it by the St. Vincent dePaul Society. We do it by Catholic
Charities. We do it with Catholic Relief Service. We do it with
Catholic Hospitals. On and on... We are called to be a healing
community.

And then we celebrate it in a special way, the sacrament of the
anointing of the sick, which through history has been distorted
pretty badly. Anointing of the sick. I remember when John F. Kennedy
was killed. The first major biography that came out was by William
Manchester, and he described the scene at Dallas that morning and he
said, “When that raven of death arrived, the priest coming to anoint
him, we knew he was gone.” Such a symbol! The anointing of the sick
means “raven of death,” means you are going to be dead? It’s the
sacrament of healing. It’s the sacrament of getting better. It got
called the Last Rites, although it is not the last rites. We used to
call it “Extreme Unction,” the last anointing. But we always said
“Extramunction.” We ran it together. If you were a real Catholic, you
would never say “Extreme Unction.” You said “Extramunction!” But the
purpose of the sacrament is twofold. The first purpose of it is to
get better. That’s why we encourage people to call us early, not to
wait, to take advantage of the healing power of the sacrament and of
our God. The second purpose of it is to prepare us for the future,
whatever it might hold. When we anoint people, the prayer we say
refers to the Bible and this sacrament. It says, “Lord Jesus Christ,
by your apostle St. James in the Bible, you say, ‘Is anyone sick
among you? Let them call in the priest of the Church. Let them lay
hands on the sick person and anoint them with oil and the prayer of
faith will raise that person up.’ ” We believe that that person will
be raised up in mind and spirit, in soul and in body. So may we be a
people who are a healing community and trust in the loving power of
our God to raise us up. Amen.