When Jesus walked among us, He made it His mission to relieve suffering. When He encountered a man possessed by demons, He expelled them and set the man free. In today’s gospel, He heals Peter’s mother-in-law of her fever. The blind, the deaf and the paralyzed all come to Him seeking to have their health restored
However, there was another kind of suffering that He came to relieve. Not only did He heal broken bodies but He also healed wounded souls. He brought the hope of forgiveness to sinners. He instructed all who sought Him out about the love of God and how we should respond by loving our neighbor. To those who were struggling to understand who He was, He opened the Scriptures to show them how the whole Old Testament points to Him. To those who opposed Him and sought to have Him killed, He showed great patience even to the point of asking God to forgive those who crucified Him.
As important as it was for Him to heal the sick and feed the hungry, Jesus considered serving souls through the preaching of the gospel to be His primary task. He makes this clear in today’s gospel when He says, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose I have come.” There is an urgency to Jesus’ mission to save souls and He will not allow Himself to be slowed down.
As important as it is to serve our neighbors’ bodily needs, we must also seek to meet their spiritual needs. In today’s world where there is much prosperity and abundance, it can be easy for us to overlook the signs of spiritual poverty. We can be fooled into thinking that because people have a roof over their heads, plenty of food and warm clothing that they have no other needs. But that is far from the case. The signs of spiritual poverty are everywhere. It shows itself in our culture through the growing lack of respect for human life. In individuals, the symptoms are despair, sarcasm, boredom, fear of commitment, anxiety and depression. Other signs are doubt, confusion, addiction, bitterness and selfishness. Do these characteristics describe anyone you know? Do we find these signs of spiritual poverty in ourselves?
How do we relieve the suffering of the spiritually poor? By practicing the spiritual works of mercy. The spiritual works of mercy are instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, admonishing sinners, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving offenses willingly, comforting the afflicted, and praying for the living and the dead.
By practicing the spiritual works of mercy we are bringing to life the prayer of Saint Francis to be instruments of peace. We bring love to those who hate, hope to those who despair, light to those in darkness and joy to those who mourn. There is a great satisfaction in bringing the joy of God’s love to others because they can never lose it. Those we feed bread to will go hungry again but those whom we bring the good news to will always have that joy illuminating their soul. At the same time, when we pray for others, encourage them or challenge them, we may not always see the fruits of our work. We can be fooled into thinking that we are not making a difference when in reality, God is working secretly in the hearts of all those we serve. Therefore, we need to be people of faith and prayer ourselves so that Jesus’ healing hand will reach not only the bodies of our neighbors but their souls as well.
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