I Trust You, Lord, in All Things

Have you ever wondered what happened to all those people Jesus healed? Or all those He raised from the dead? Where is Bartimaeus now? Where is Lazarus?

Of course, Lazarus died again. So did Bartimaeus, together with all the other blind people Jesus healed. So did all the lepers. So did Peter’s mother-in-law. And so did all the others. So why did He heal them? Why did He raise them?

The physical miracles worked by Jesus were signs. Like His calming the storm to bring peace to our anxious souls, or His miraculous catch of fish to foreshadow the multitude of people who would be brought into the Church by the work of the Apostles. Everything Jesus did was a sign.

Consider that time when a paralyzed man was brought to Jesus on a stretcher. Jesus said to the man, “Your sins are forgiven.” The people demanded a sign that the man’s sins truly were forgiven. So Jesus said to him, “Rise and walk.” And the man rose and walked.

Incidentally, events like that help us to believe Jesus when He says about the Eucharist, “This is my body,” and to trust Him when He says, “I am going to the Father to prepare a place for you, and I will return again to take you to Myself.”

So yes, all those people Jesus healed did eventually die again, but their healings are the reason we believe they were not abandoned in death.

This may seem obvious. But I don’t think it is. I think, rather, we tend to smuggle in the idea that Jesus came to save us from sickness and from having to die. But this leaves us full of doubt at the bedside of a loved one, and full of fear when we think of our own future.

Yet this is what we do. We reduce faith to the idea of having to persuade God to heal us, as if He were some reluctant giver. And then Gospel passages, which are supposed to comfort us, only torture us until we cry out, “You healed them! Now heal me!”

There is another way of thinking about faith. It is a way of walking toward circumstances carrying no money, no food, nor an extra tunic. It is a way that says, “I trust You, Lord, in all things. I know that You will take care of me.”

This past week we celebrated a Funeral Mass for a woman who died of cancer. In fact, she suffered very much for many years of that cancer. And all the while, she was devoted to Saint Peregrine, the patron saint of people with cancer. So did he abandon her? Did he reject her prayers?

Of course, she was no more abandoned than Christ on the cross. And the sign of this? It was how she faced death - the way she moved toward it. Instead of envying the people in the Gospels whom Jesus healed, she allowed what the Lord did for them to strengthen her faith, inspiring her to pray, “I saw how You were able to heal those people, Lord. So I trust You when you say that You are with me always, and that You will take me to Yourself.” +