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Voices Online Edition
December 1998
Volume XIII, No. 4
Bishop
Joseph Naumann
"We
do well always and everywhere to give you thanks"
Following
are excerpts from Bishop Naumann's homily given at Mass at the
Basilica of St. Louis, King of France (The Old Cathedral), the
closing event of the 1998 Women for Faith & Family Conference.
In a few moments
I will say to you what the Celebrant at Mass always says to the
Congregation: "Let us give thanks to the Lord our God".
And you will reply: "It is right to give him thanks and
praise." I will then begin the Eucharistic Prayer with the
introductory sentence for all Prefaces: "We do well always
and everywhere to give you thanks". These words, because
we say them so often, because they are so familiar, routinely
trip off our tongues. Yet these words express a truth that is
at the heart of the Christian experience.... Our Gospel passage
[Luke 17:12-19; only one of ten cured lepers returned to thank
Jesus] reminds us how difficult it is to give thanks even when
the most remarkable blessings have occurred in our lives. It
seems incomprehensible that nine out of ten, after having experienced
a cure from the most devastating of terminal diseases, would
fail to give thanks. At the heart
of our Christian belief, is that we have each received a spiritual
healing far greater and more significant than the one given to
the lepers that Jesus encountered on the border of Samaria and
Galilee. Several years
ago I happened upon a book entitled Fearfully and Wonderfully
Made, coauthored by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancy. The
entire book is a meditation on the wonder of the human body and
an extrapolation of Saint Paul's analogy of the Church as the
Body of Christ.... Dr. Brand and Mr. Yancy... recognize a parallel
between the way diseases attack the body and the impact of sin
in the life of the Christian and in the life of the Church. Dr.
Brand describes cancer as the body in rebellion against itself....
Sin is a rebellion against God, but it is also a rebellion against
our human nature. We are designed to live in union with God and
to share love and life with others.... Dr. Brand writes:
"As I studied leprosy patients in India several findings
pushed me toward a rather simple theory: could it be that the
horrible results of the disease came about because leprosy patients
had lost the sense of pain? The disease was not at all like a
flesh-devouring fungus; rather it attacked mainly a single type
of cell, the nerve cell. After years of testing and observation,
I felt sure that the theory was sound". The loss of a
sense of pain allows the body to maim itself without even being
aware the destruction is taking place. This image of the physical
consequences of leprosy has many points of comparison with the
effect of sin on our lives. In our own time
we often talk about the loss of a sense of sin. In reality, we
are often talking about a loss of a sense of guilt or a deadening
of our conscience. Much like the sense of pain alerting us to
remove our hand from the hot stove, guilt is a protective feeling
that alerts us to the fact that spiritually we are in a perilous
situation. It is a spiritual warning system alerting us to danger. When our consciences
are dulled and our ability to distinguish good from evil impaired
then we are in grave danger, because we are virtually defenseless.
The Holy Father in his Encyclical the Gospel of Life talks about the seriousness
of our present condition when the crimes against life are no
longer even perceived as evil, but rather exalted as rights and
freedoms. [The dull conscience]
leads us into self-destructive activities that not only harm
us but also harm those around us.... We see the results everywhere
in our society. We see it in the recent presidential scandal....
We see it in a nation where we cannot reach a sufficient consensus
among our legislators to over-ride a presidential veto to ban
the barbarous procedure of partial-birth abortion ... [and] in
the efforts to legalize assisted suicide. We no longer respond
to pain by attempting to eliminate or reduce the pain and, when
that is not possible, to surround the one suffering with a community
of love. The solution proposed today is simply to eliminate the
sufferer.... We see its effect in the prevalence of divorce ...
broken homes ... dysfunctional families ... violence that erupts
in our schools. It is with full
realization of all these problems, some of which touch us personally
and all of which impact the society in which we live that we
are challenged "always and everywhere to give thanks!" Returning to
this morning's gospel, we are called to give thanks not after
the healing, but even as we contend with our sin, from our spiritual
leprosy. It is precisely in a world that is a mess and a Church
in its humanity that is far from perfect that we are called to
give thanks and praise ... [which is] possible only through the
grace of the Holy Spirit. For as Saint Paul discovered long ago,
it is in our weakness that the power of God is most clearly evident.
It is the Holy Spirit that opens our hearts to accept the truth
of God's love as revealed in Jesus Christ a love that is available
to us despite all our weakness, all our frailty. Yes, it is right
that we always and everywhere give thanks to our God!
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