Homily for Monday, 16 March 2015‒ Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings of the day: Isaiah 65:17-21; Psalm 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-12a, 13b; John 4:43-54

Are not the images in our first reading today, from the prophet Isaiah, fantastic? At this point in Isaiah, the people of Israel are returning to Jerusalem from Babylon. In reality Jerusalem lay in ruins, but the point of this ending of the Book of Isaiah is to give the people the courage necessary to return and to rebuild the city.

Imagine, Isaiah says to the people: God is “about to create” something wonderful out of the ruins of Jerusalem; not only to return Jerusalem to its former greatness but to “create new heavens and a new earth”! In this kind of utopia there will be never-before-experienced “rejoicing and happiness.” “I will create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight,” God says through Isaiah. There will no longer be “weeping… crying”; no longer suffering. All this new city’s people will live a full lifespan and be prosperous beyond what they ever were before.

The difficulty for me, and likely for the people of Jerusalem of Isaiah’s time or any time, is that all this sounds a bit too fantastic to be true. Look around even this parish: Do not most if not all of us know somebody who has suffered? Do we not know good people who have suffered through no fault of their own: People who have lost loved ones; people who are unemployed; who are poor; people suffering from severe, even terminal, illnesses; children and their families who suffer? Where is God in this suffering? Where is the fulfillment of prophecies like that of Isaiah: the creation of “new heavens and a new earth”?

This problem of suffering in our world can lead and has led many to question even God’s existence. Do we know of somebody who looks for a sign; a miracle from God, perhaps lessening of or deliverance from suffering, to support their faith in God?

Through his encounter with the royal official’s son in today’s Gospel reading from John, Jesus cautions us not to seek “signs and wonders” as the first means to support our faith. God is capable of working through the fantastic; the miraculous, but this is not God’s usual way of acting in our world.

There is at least one regular exception to this rule: our Eucharist. Every time we celebrate Mass, we witness a miracle before our very eyes. The gifts of bread and wine we bring to the altar are transformed into the body and blood of Christ! But even this happens without fanfare; humbly; prayerfully; silently. This is how God usually acts in our world.

In John’s Gospel, after confirming the royal official’s faith, Jesus works one of his great signs: The healing of the royal official’s son. But Jesus brings the boy back from the brink of death not with fanfare, but humbly; prayerfully; with the simple words to the royal official: “You may go; your son will live.”

God has redeemed us and our world through Jesus Christ. God is still working to save us; to free us from suffering and death, usually without fanfare; humbly; prayerfully; silently creating “new heavens and a new earth.” We will live. This is how God acts in our world.