30th Week in Ordinary Time 2025 - Friday - Jesus nourishes, heals, satisfies

All four Gospels contain accounts of the Lord eating and dining. All four Gospel record the Lord dining with his apostles on the night before he died at the Last Supper. Some stories of Jesus’ meals are shared between Gospels, some are unique. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record the Lord dining in the house of the tax collector Levi, while St. John is the only to record the Lord’s attendance at the wedding feast at Cana.

St. Luke is the only evangelist to record the meal in today’s passage in which the Lord heals the man with dropsy in the house of a pharisee on the sabbath.

It is not the only story in which the Lord heals someone on the sabbath, but it is the first time he heals someone at a meal—combining the two actions of healing and eating. It’s also interesting who he heals; he heals a man with dropsy. What is dropsy? Dropsy is a medical condition involving the build-up of fluid in a person’s tissues. Consequently, because of this imbalance of fluid, the person with dropsy is always thirsty—they are perpetually thirsty. And so in this story the Lord combines healing and eating and satisfying unending thirst.

What does that makes you think of? I don’t know about you, but this certainly makes me think of what we’re doing right now. In the celebration of Mass, the Lord feeds, the Lord quenches thirst, and the Lord heals.

In the Eucharist, the Lord feeds us with his body and blood, giving us spiritual nourishment for the work of the Gospel and the pilgrimage to heaven. In the Eucharist, the Lord heals us of sinfulness, pride, grief, loneliness, division, and estrangement from God. And in the Eucharist the Lord quenches our thirst for the infinite God—like a dry weary desert, our souls’ thirst for Him, and here that thirst is quenched.

Commenting particularly on the healing properties of the Eucharist, Pope Francis, said a few years ago, that the Eucharist is “powerful medicine for the weak”. We have many weaknesses: fear in preaching the Gospel, timidity in doing the work of the Lord, weaknesses of the flesh, the lack of willingness to suffer for Christ, temptations to sin, concupiscence. And the Eucharist is medicine for these weaknesses. Those who deprive themselves of the Eucharist, refusing to go to mass, deprive themselves of real medicine the Lord wishes to apply to their souls.

The Eucharist is also medicine for the greatest of our weaknesses: mortality.

Writing soon before his own death, St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Ephesians said that the Eucharist is the “medicine of immortality… the antidote which wards off death.” It “yields continuous life in union with Jesus Christ.”

Today and whenever we come to Mass, we do well to consider: what is the work for which the Lord wants to nourish us, what are the weaknesses the Lord wants to strengthen, what are the wounds he wants to heal?

May our souls be well disposed to the grace of the food from heaven, the food that strengthens, the food that heals, the food that quenches for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

We have gathered here dear brethren to celebrate the mysteries of our redemption; let us therefore ask almighty God that the whole world may be watered from these springs of all blessing and life.

 

For those who are deprived of the Eucharist, for lapsed Catholics, for the unbelieving, for those who doubt the Lord’s real presence, for those who have hardened their hearts toward God, and for a deeper appreciation of the great gift of the Eucharist among all God’s people. Let us pray to the Lord.

That young people will be blessed with good Christian example from their parents and fellow Christians, and that the word of God might be cherished, studied, and practiced in every Christian home.

During and following this month of October, dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary, Catholics may take up this devotion with renewed vigor and trust in Our Lady’s never-failing intercession.

For the healing of all those afflicted with physical, mental, emotional illness, for those in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice care, those struggling with addictions, for those who grieve the loss of a loved one, and those who will die today.

For the repose of the souls of our beloved dead, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, for the deceased members of our families, friends, and parish, for deceased clergy and religious, for those who have fought and died for our freedom.

 

May your mercy, we beseech you, O Lord, be with your people who cry to you, so that what they seek at your prompting they may obtain by your ready generosity.