God’s “Galling” Healing of Our Blindness, Ninth Friday (I), June 5, 2015

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY
Friday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
June 5, 2015
Tob 11:5-17, Ps 146, Mk 12:35-37

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• The Book of Tobit on which we’ve been meditating all week is about God’s healing. The quiet hero of the book is the Archangel Raphael, whose name means “The Healing of God.” We see in the book how God heals both Sarah, as we saw yesterday, and Tobit as we see today. He heals them after some suffering, to perfect them who were already good and virtuous. We see the particularly “galling” way Tobit was healed in today’s Gospel, by his son’s smearing his cataracted eyes with gall from a fish who had bit him, the same fish that had supplied the heart and liver that was burned to heal Sarah and Tobias from the wiles of the pagan god of lust in this allegory. There’s a clear sacramental allusion in this healing by something a little gross, much like Jesus would later heal someone of blindness by wiping saliva on his eyes. As soon as Tobit was cured, he rejoiced that he could see his son. He could in fact see much more clearly than he did before he was blinded four years earlier by bird droppings. His vision had been enriched by faith.
• We see Jesus seeking to do a similar healing in the Gospel. He was trying to help the scribes and those around him in the Temple see what God the Father had revealed to St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi, that the Messiah would also be God. That’s what was happening in Jesus’ question, that David who traditionally is understood to be the one who composed Psalm 110 which Jesus quotes, would call the Messiah — who would be his descendent according to the flesh — “Lord.” That’s precisely who Jesus was, not merely David’s descendent according to the flesh, but also his Lord and Creator. Jesus was opening the eyes of the minds of his contemporaries to a much deeper understanding of who the Messiah is, to help them to be able to embrace better what was coming.
• Helping others to see much more clearly, curing people’s blindness, summarizes likewise the life of St. Boniface. As a young monk, he was an incredible Scripture professor, opening others to see God and themselves in the mirror of the Word of God. Later, when he started to get inklings that he would be made either an abbot or a bishop, he asked for permission to become a missionary in the wild regions of central Germany, so that he could bring them to see by the light of faith. In addition to that pure missionary work bringing whole territories to the Gospel, he likewise reformed the previously evangelized areas in southern Germany and the Church in what we would now call France through Synods and Councils. He helped those who previously had been baptized to see the consequences of living by the light of faith.
• And today, two days before the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, God wants to open our eyes to see the Eucharist not routinely but with a new vision, especially in terms of how we are called to center our whole life on Jesus whom we receive, to become living walking monstrances carrying God within out to the streets here of Manhattan. St. Ignatius of Antioch called Jesus in the Eucharist “the medicine of immortality.” This is the greatest source of God’s healing, which he places not our our eyes but within us to heal not just our vision but so much more, making it possible for us to become the “gall” that can go out, attached to Him and all his healing power, to help others to see anew as well.

The readings for today’s Mass were: