The prayer of faith will raise up the sick person. Those were the words that Joan said from the reading from the Letter of St. James, and it’s that reading that gives us what we call the Sacrament of the Sick. The prayer of faith will raise up the sick person. It’s a very rich phrase, and we can think of it on at least four different levels. 

First of all, there’s the level of healing of the mind, because when you get sick, your mind can play strange tricks on you. When I was first diagnosed and then later learned that this disease is not operable, I felt very low for a time, and the thing that raised me up definitely more than anything else, was the extraordinary outpouring of love and support and prayer I had from people like yourselves. I said at the time I felt like I was born aloft on a warm blanket. There’s such a thing as the healing power of friendship, and I can definitely testify to it, but I need continuing prayers for the healing of the mind. 

The prayer of faith will raise up the sick person. The spirit also needs to be healed. There was a time early on when I have to say I resented the Lord. I felt he was kind of asleep in the back of the boat while the storm crept up on me. While we’ve thrashed it out since, I think we’re okay, but I continue to need, as we all do, prayers for spiritual healing.

Then there’s the prayers for physical healing, and I know that’s the prayer many of you will be making this evening, and far be it for me to deter you in any way. Go for it. Sister Peggy Dwire, almost at the beginning after I was diagnosed, she came up with the idea of praying to John Sullivan for my healing. John Sullivan was an Irish Jesuit priest who died in 1933. He was a man of great holiness, and he healed many sick during his lifetime. He is now a servant of God, which is the stage just below blessed. He needs a miracle in order to bump him up one grade. I remember when I was a young Jesuit in Ireland, some of the older priests, had, of course, known him and lived with him, and they spoke of him in terms of great veneration. You don’t often find that in community, you don’t often speak of each other with huge veneration, but they did of him, and I have a distinct memory of one older priest saying to me, “We all loved Fr. John, but we all avoided him on feast days because if you sat beside him, you’d be enjoying the good food and the good wine, and he’d be crumbling up little pieces of bread and talking about his beloved cancer sufferers.” At the time, I’d thought he sounded like a very odd fellow, but nowadays, he sounds to me like a great guy. So if you’d like to invoke his intercession or that of St. Peregrine or St. Jude, of Mary, or if you want to go straight to Jesus himself, as I’d say, “Go for it.” 

There is, of course, the fourth level. The prayer of faith will raise up the sick person. That is when one comes to the end of one’s life and we pray that the person will be raised up and make a gentle transition from this world to the next. I don’t mind if you put that level in cold storage for the time being. 

The little gospel event happened in the town of Capernaum, after sunset. Jesus healed the mother-in-law of Simon Peter, and then came out and healed people who were sick in the crowd. In 1997, I was on my own late pilgrimage to the Holy Land with parishioners from St. Joan of Ark, arranged by Anne Louise Van Hoomissen, and we came to Capernaum to the chapel, which is called the House of Simon Peter, and it was closed, but nothing daunted Carol Roth. She went into the rectory, and she butted into the Franciscan fathers at their lunch. She told them that we were from California, that she worked for the Franciscans in San Damiano retreat house, and one of them was impressed enough that he came and opened up the church, and we did a guided meditation on that scene of Jesus curing the sick after sunset, laying his hands upon them. So if you want an image to bring with you into the little ceremony we are going to do a bit later on, I would recommend that, just imagining Jesus after sunset, laying his hands on everyone and curing them.

So we’re not only praying for me this evening, we’re praying also for the healing of anybody here who might be sick, but, well, especially me. Thank you.

 

rpb