Christ the Deliverer and Healer

Following the Baptisim of the Lord and during these days before Candlemas, many of the Gospel readings at Mass manifest the authority of Christ over the spiritual world and His power to heal. This Sunday, to contextualize the call of the first of followers, these messianic powers and authority are connected to what the prophet Isaiah foretold about deliverance of Israel,

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing (Isaiah 9:2-3).

Matthew 4:12-17 appropriates this declaration of victory to Jesus and his declaration that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." When Isaiah first uttered this prophecy, Israel faced the gloom of total destruction and he was gathering disciples who would pass on his message of hope. In the case of Christ, his mission begins after Herod arrests St. John the Baptist. In silencing John's voice of truth, darkness has fallen on Israel, and it is exactly in this darkness that the mission of the Messiah begins. Jesus himself is the light who shines in the darkness and brings great joy, and He invites those who hear is voice to join in the work that He has begun. He is leading an invasion that brings to those who live in the gloom of a darkened world "abundant joy and great rejoicing."

This is a spiritual invasion that requires a spiritual response. To welcome this Kingdom, one must obey the Lord's command and "repent." Repentance - to re-think, to think again, to change one's mind, to let go of false judgment, to accept God's judgment, all of this describes entering into the truth by changing how I relate to God and to others. In other words, welcoming the Kingdom of God is in the decision to believe the truth about Christ and to choose to follow the way of life that He teaches. Real joy requires a lived possession of truth of Christ's rule over the heavens and the earth. And with the manifestation of His messianic powers, this truth rises in Galilee like a sunrise.

Isaiah believed that God would deliver Israel in the face of the total disaster that awaited it miliarily, politically and socially. This catastrophe was brought on because the People of Israel had forsaken God and were driven by all kinds of irrational fears. Without the truth, they were vulnerable to the irrational powers of the times. So a certain spiritual gloom and anguish had defeated them even before the Assyrians would destroy their society and take them into exile. But Isaiah sees this only as the darkness that preceeds a new dawn. If darkness is invading now, the prophet foresaw that the Light will also come to conquer. He was convinced that the darkness of gloom is not the final word about God's People. There will be a new beginning, and it begins by believing that the light of truth will come.

Today, a certain gloom has gripped so many hearts and Christ is working to dispel this gloom . If in our own families, among those we most love, a certain anguish has taken hold, Christ is not indifferent. If technocracy has nudged us into a sort of spiritual darkness, Christ is no bystander. If the media spouts all kinds of conflicting narratives of accusation and vitriol, the Truth is not silenced. If political and cultural leaders, wrapping themselves in all kinds of righteous causes, recklessly destabilize social order with little regard for the most vulnerable, the Judge of the Living and the Dead is not deceived. And if in our own hearts, we feed on all kinds of inner narratives that stir anger, resentment and anxiety, with little regard for our own need for the truth, the Word of the Father is not silent. If we have opened the door to all kinds of wickedness, even to the extent of demonic possession, Our Deliverer is not delayed. If disabilities and diseases have become an insurmountable obstacles to our thriving, the Healer is come in our midst.

Being a Christian, following Christ is never a defensive or passive way of life. The Kingdom of God is an offensive mystery, breaking into our time, crashing with boldness on the public square, a call to rise up from our sleep. His armies storm the Gates of Hell. Myriads of angelic host rush into human brokenness and despair to bring wholeness and hope. Into the gloom technocracy, the Kingdom of God invades materialistic assumptions and establishes the truth to rescue our human dignity and freedom. This divine invasion has a definitive pattern established by the Son of the Father Himself. The new dawn of Christ's kingship conquers through human frailty and limitations, not despite them.

Consider the weakness and frailty of even the very first apostles who Jesus calls. This new bright warmth also rises in our own time through the preaching and sacraments of these apostles and their successors. And all that these sacraments of Christ's power accomplish in the public work of the Church find echo in even the worst sinner's prayer. If the first rays of dawn, the first disciples who were there at the beginning, failed in one way or another, it is even more true that, in the end, their failures did not define them or impede the mission of the messiah that Isaiah fortold. Instead, they were defined by His faithfulness to them, in them and through them. What does this mean today? His faithfulness gives us cause to believe that in our own brokenness, his faithfulness is also manifest to those we most hold dear. We only need to repent and believe in His coming. Through our own repentance, even in a crazy culture during confusing times, when people are driven by call kinds of anxiety and resentment, the healing and delivering power of Christ is dawning to bring joy and freedom anew.