Balm
For the Feast of St Luke the Evangelist
Editor’s Note: This essay also appears in The Line Issue 11.10 (October 2024); subscribe to The Line here.
Are you hurting?
The standard “liturgy” of greeting among us is “How are you,” to which the response is “fine, thanks.”
℣ How are you?
℟ Fine, thanks.
Please do not answer the question with the facts, because the question does not mean what it says. The greeter rarely wants to know, let alone know in detail, how you are. We seldom ask each other, “Are you hurting?” Yet, so many are hurting in so many ways.
Many of us were raised with the admonition to keep “a stiff upper lip.” Hurt was to be handled by denying it to others and, if possible, to yourself as well. In the gender world I grew up in, this applied in particular to men. Women were cut some slack, being “the weaker sex.” Denial is, of course, how many animals respond, because it is dangerous in the wild to let others see your weakness. In many ways, it is likely dangerous in our civilized world, too.
But denial really doesn’t work for hurts bigger than skinned knees or minor insults. As it turns out, women aren’t the weaker sex, after all. Repressed hurt pops up sideways into other manifestations: anger, withdrawal, revenge, depression, psychosomatic illness. It can also funnel into creativity, so that some claim no one has ever been a great writer, composer or artist unless their life was full of hurt. It can even lead to being a good comedian.
So, it has its positive uses, and it does sometimes make us empathetic for the hurts of others. Nevertheless, hurt, whether spiritual, physical, mental or emotional, is destructive, and can take away the natural joy that we, as Christians, particularly feel, as the Gospel people of the Resurrection. Hurt even makes many people angry at God.
You have probably heard them. “God, why are you causing me to suffer?” God, why are you allowing people to do these bad things to me, or my loved ones, or my people?” Nor do I fault anyone for asking. These are good questions, to which I have heard a lot of bad answers. And this doesn’t include those who don’t ask, they just resent and are bitter, not only about God, but by extension, his Church. Most who call themselves atheists are actually anti-theists, who because of some negative experience causing hurt, feel that God has some explaining to do.
Our whole nation, while not atheist nor anti-theist for the most part, is filled with people so filled with hurt that they are permanently angry. Smart politicians cater to this, articulating the anger, often directing it against scapegoat groups or against incumbents. It is neither scrupulous nor truthful, but it works.
Yet anger is but one expression of the hurt. There are so many around us who are simply sad, depressed, discontent with life, some to the point of suicide, lonely because they are too wounded to reach out, too wary of further hurt inflicted to let down their guard. Perhaps most serious of all are those who respond by wanting to hurt others. Abused kids often grow up to be abusive adults. Felicia Langer, an Israeli lawyer, comments that the memory of the Holocaust causes many to want to get revenge somehow, by causing a genocide to others, even though the new target had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Revenge is so serious because it does not bring closure, it brings retaliation, keeping the cycle of hate alive and thriving over generations.
We need therapy.
Nor is there a shortage of therapies to chose from. Most of us have tried one, or many. Drugs, illegal or prescription, are a popular choice. The mess in Mexico of competing cartels exists because Mexico is next to the biggest market for illegal drugs in the world. This market thrives because in one of the most affluent nations in the world, there is a great swamp of hurt people wanting to treat their pain, and they have the money to pay for it. The bigger question is why, in a country many consider the best place on earth, there are so many people who only want to dull their pain and avoid reality.
There are lots of other therapies as well, each with its devotees. Addictions abound, from alcohol through cococola, junk food, porn, work, sports and more. Psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, gurus, faith healers, AA and NA, Est, and many more, all are there trying to help.
What all of these have in common is that they usually don’t work, at least not to the level of a “cure.” The pain can be dulled but if the root causes are not confronted, it won’t go away.
In the Old Testament, there was an expectation that the Messiah would confront the pain and cure the problem. When Jesus heals, he is fulfilling this expectation. It is not his intention to have a career as a traveling physician or faith healer. The point is to show that he is indeed the Messiah and his healing is beyond what your doctor or drug dealer can do for you. When the paralytic is brought to him, he does not fix his paralysis. He absolves him, tells him his sins are forgiven. The self-appointed religious righteous scoff, commenting that is easy to absolve sins (it isn’t, in fact; they are showing their ignorance of real absolution). Only then does Jesus heal the physical problem, to prove his power can do both. But the need for absolution is prior to and greater than the need to walk. Once we understand that, we have left behind the multitude of therapies outlined above, and entered the world of true healing.
Most of the reports of Jesus’ healing in fact show Jesus assessing the person for the potential to heal. Not infrequently, the request for healing was not for the person asking, but for someone close to them. Ascertaining the person’s faith was pivotal in a lot of the healings, and commonly, Jesus would comment “Your faith has made you [or the person you are petitioning for] well.”
True healing, therefore, starts with your relationship with God. Why does God not abolish suffering? It is the wrong question. The real question is to ask God how to utilize your suffering to grow in faith, reach out to others in empathy, and learn from it to express your faith in creative ways for the good of all. True healing also is about confronting the root causes. You will not find bliss by dulling your pain. Jesus heals sacramentally, transcending your pain and what it has triggered in you. Life is a process of phases, maturing you when it works right. The purpose of Unction is not to replace your doctor, but to further your maturation, even as the healing process leads inevitably towards the day when you yourself are transformed into a new maturation following your death.
On October 18, we celebrate St. Luke, the Evangelist and author of the Book of Acts. He was a physician. While we should not retro read him as a modern physician, he was nevertheless in an occupation of healing, with perhaps more tools for that than is generally realized. He does not write much about his career. Instead, his purpose is to tell about Jesus and the Church. His priorities are straight. In the narratives, you can grasp his worldview, how true healing is accomplished. When you are looking for therapy, I would highly recommend a careful read of Dr. Luke’s Gospel.