First Friday Holy Hour - July 2022 - The Eucharistic Physician

 

In the Gospel for today (friday of the 13th week in Ordinary Time), the tax collector Matthew leaves behind an old way of life to follow the Lord., and immediately upon beginning this new life, Matthew welcomes Jesus into his home for a meal. 

There is something healing about a good meal. This is especially true when two people, who are enemies, who are estranged from each other in any way, sit down and share food, and conversation, and intimacy together. If you are willing to sit down and have a meal with someone, the healing has already begun.

This is why, at the meal in the house of Matthew, the Lord Jesus identifies himself as a physician, a healer. “I eat with tax collectors and sinners because the sick require a physician.” Jesus dines with sinners for the same reason a physician goes to the sick—to heal—to heal our estrangement from God, and from one another.

I think of that beautiful scene in the story of Babette’s Feast. At the death of their pastor, this small Christian community had become estranged from one another, division and bickering had entered into their daily lives. And so the french chef, Babette, provides a meal, and through good food, some of the divisions within this community begin to melt away; they begin to laugh together again, and share memories of happier times. The meal became an occasion for God's mercy and healing to work.

At the sacred meal of the Eucharist, the Lord Jesus is encountered as the Divine Physician, who heals those parts of us that are estranged from God, and within our community. 

In the section regarding the Eucharist, the Catechism quotes St. Ambrose, who speaks of the Eucharist as a remedy for sin and concludes, “Because I always sin, I should always have a remedy.” Sinners, like us, need that constant medicine which the Lord gives us. 

One of the reasons we do well to spend time in Eucharistic adoration, in addition to receiving the sacred medicine of the Eucharist at Mass, is that sometimes we take the Eucharist for granted, and adoration helps to open us up to the power of the Eucharist again. 

Sometimes during the celebration of Mass be can become distracted from the healing power of the Eucharist: crying babies, off-key cantors, tangential preaching, not to mention the busyness of Sunday morning, which hinders us from coming to mass with proper recollection of our sins—with the proper interior silence.

But the blessed moments of silence during Eucharistic adoration can help us identify those parts of our lives, our psyches, our egos, our souls, that the Lord wishes to heal, the burdens of daily life, the fractured relationships.

Before our Eucharistic Physician tonight,  we express our desire for the healing the Lord wants for, to strengthen us in holiness, and to strengthen the bonds of charity among us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.