Upon leaving the synagogue, Jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and the first thing they did was to tell him about her. He went over to her and grasped her hand and helped her up, and the fever left her. She immediately began to wait on them.

After sunset, as evening drew on, they brought him all who were ill and those possessed by demons. Before long the whole town was gathered outside the door. Those whom he cured, who were variously afflicted, were many, and so were the demons he expelled. But he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. Rising early the next morning, he went off to a lonely place in the desert; there he was absorbed in prayer. Simon and his companions managed to track him down; and when they found him, they told him, "Everybody is looking for you!" He said to them: "Let us move on to the neighboring villages so that I may proclaim the good news there also. that is what I have come to do." So he went into their synagogues preaching the good news and expelling demons throughout the whole of Galilee. (Mark 1:29-39)

It's interesting to me that in Mark's Gospel, there are cures, but there is a kind of pattern that emerges about the cures. Jesus never initiates a cure. He's never the one to begin the activity of the cure. If you look at all the cures that he performs, it is at the prompting of someone else related to the person or a friend of the person, or it is because the person himself or herself asks to be cured. Or the person doesn't simply ask, but in the case of the woman who had the flow of blood for 12 years, she simply on her own initiative, comes and touches the tassel of his cloak, and the flow of blood stops.

We see that in this morning's Gospel, where we have at least two cures: Simon Peter's mother- in-law. And they tell Jesus about her. And there is implied in that telling a kind of request that they cure her. And then you notice that people brought all who were ill and who were possessed. They were at the door, they were pleading. Jesus always handles the cure at the initiation of someone else. And he always tells people, "Go, your faith has cured you." He never attributes the cure to himself. It's always the faith that he credits, the faith of the individual--or in the case of the paralyzed man who was let down through a hole in the roof before Jesus, it's the faith of the people who brought him to Jesus. And of course the amazing thing is, if you analyze it very carefully, Jesus can't work a miracle where there is no faith. The faith implies a belief that he can work the miracle. The faith means that one is open, one is receptive to God. And if there is not that openness, that receptivity, if there is not that belief in Jesus, there's not a blessed thing that Jesus can do. He can control demons; he can heal illnesses; he can control the elements of the universe. But there is one thing he will not do: he will never use his power to coerce the human heart. He is so--how shall I put it?=-- respectful of the human heart.

Now someone asked me the other day, does Jesus continue to heal? And the answer of course has to be yes. He continues to heal in many ways, in response to prayer; in the sacrament of reconciliation, that is certainly called in the Church a Sacrament of Healing. The Eucharist is a sacrament of healing, in the sense that it forgives venial sins, when it is received worthily. And of course the second sacrament of healing in the church is the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. It is a sacrament, the full significance and purpose of which we are beginning only very gradually to understand. It's a real shame that over the centuries we came to call it the "extreme anointing." It was a real deprivation of people of the healing hand of God that we said one had to be in the extreme danger of death, that you had to, if I may use the figure, have one foot in the grave and the other foot on the banana peel before one could be anointed. It was a great disservice to the people of God, because it denied them the opportunity of the healing touch of Jesus.

Now remember that there is a real distinction between healing and curing. Let me tell you a personal experience that I had about 25 years ago. I received a call from my youngest sister, who at that time lived in BUrlingame, California. She said "Jean [who was a very good friend of the family's] has an aunt in the hospital in Concord, California, with cancer. Will you come down? We'll send you the ticket." So I went to Abbot Gerald, and I said, "What do you think?" Abbot Gerald said, "It sounds to me like a reconciliation to the Church, to God. Go immediately!" When I got there I found out that Aunt Rose had not been reconciled to the church for over 30 years. And they really hadn't prepared her for my coming. Jean and my sister said, "This is what we plan to do: We'll go out to see Aunt Rose, in intensive care, riddled completely through the body with cancer, in every place in the body. We'll take you in and introduce you to her, and say, `Oh, Aunt Rose, isn't it marvelous! Father Adrian came to visit Lola, and we thought we'd bring him and let him see you.' And then as soon as we've introduced you, we'll say to Aunt Rose, `Now Lola and I haven't had any supper, so we're going to go get a cup of coffee and a candy bar,' and we'll you alone in intensive care with Aunt Rose, and you take care of things." Well, before we went into the room, the doctor--an Indian doctor, a Hindu--stopped me in the hall and said, "Are you here to see Rose?" "Yes." "There's something bothering her, Father. I don't know what it is, but I cannot do anything more for her. Maybe you, as a priest, can help her." So we went into the room. I was introduced, the excuse was used, they left the room, and old Aunt Rose, who was--how shall I put it?--a curmudgeon of the first rank, said as soon as they walked out the door, "I know why you're here, let's get it over with." And I said, "Do you really know why I'm here?" "Yes, I do. Let's get it over with." And so I heard her confession, and I anointed her. And she said, "Now I would like to go to communion."

Well, I don't like to speak ill of my fellow priests, but of all the parishes in Concord, would you believe it, not one had a priest there, and we could not get the Holy Eucharist. So we drove back into Oakland, and I said mass. I wanted to get the Eucharist at Providence Hospital in Oakland, but some pious sister was walking around with the tabernacle key in her pocket, so we could not open the tabernacle. So I said mass, took a large part of Host, went back to the hospital, gave Rose communion, and left. The next day Rose was moved out of intensive care to a regular room in the hospital. The day after that the doctors could find absolutely no trace of cancer, none whatsoever. The third day Rose left the hospital and went home. Three years later Rose had to go to the hospital because of a heart condition. And she said to Jean, who was her favorite niece, "Jean, I have two favors to ask you. I shall not return from the hospital this time." And Jean said, "Oh, Aunt Rose, don't think that way. You certainly will. Look what happened before." "No, God was good to me then. He gave me three years to put things right between myself and himself, between myself and the church. But this time I shall not return. Now there are two favors I'd like to ask you. Before I go to the hospital, I would like you to fly Father Adrian down to anoint me. And when I die, I want him to be the one who has my funeral." Things worked out exactly as Rose had said they would.

Jesus heals through the sacrament, the anointing of the sick. One of the most effective sacraments that we have outside of the Eucharist. The basis in Scripture for this Sacrament, the anointing of the sick, is of course the Epistle to St. James, chapter 5, verse 14: If there are any sick in the community, let them call the elders, the priests of the community, and let them come and let them lay on hands and pray for the sick and anoint them with oil in the name of Jesus the Lord. Now you notice that James says, "Let them call the priests." Why the priests? Because they represent officially the community. They represent the unity of the community. When the priest comes who represents jesus, who is Jesus in a sense, it is the whole Christian community which comes to the person who is sick, to bring the graces, to bring the aid, to bring the assistance that the community can bring that Jesus has given to the community. And what is the elder, the priest, to do? He is to pray. But because he is a representative of the whole Christian community, and the unity of the community, it is the whole Christian community who, in the person of the priest, prays for that individual. And then the laying on of hands, which is reminiscent of what Jesus did when he went to Peter's mother-in-law and he grasped her, and he raised her up, and then she waited upon them. And then he anoints with oil. The ancient symbol of health, of strength, of restoration. And all of the background of this Scriptural passage of James is of course Jesus' own concern for the sick, for the aged, for the elderly. And oftentimes the sacrament does not cure, but it heals. And in what way does it heal? Well, maybe I can give an illustration. Several years ago, a friend, Betty Hedrean, who was in the advanced stages of multiple sclerosis, still able to walk with the use of a cane, decided with her husband to go to Lourdes, where possibly there would be a cure. She went to Lourdes, she came back, and one night Dick and Betty Hedrean came into the art gallery where I was attending a show, and one of the art dealers said to her in a kind of--how shall I put it?--non- reverent tone, "Well, Betty, did you get cured?" And it was obvious from the way Betty was walking that she had not gotten cured. "Was there a miracle, Betty?" And she turned and she said, "Gordon, there was a miracle, but not of the kind that you think there was. The miracle was, I came back and I'm no longer angry. I'm no longer angry at God. I came back and I can put things in perspective. I have the grace to bear this illness." Most of the time, that's the cure, to allow us to put things in perspective.

When we get ill, seriously ill--heart condition, cancer--we go through various stages. Denial is one of them; "Not I; I don't have it." We go through a stage of anger, "Why did God do this to me? I've still got years to live. I have a lot in life to do, and why does God do this to me?" And then there comes a time when we simply tolerate it. We simply put up with it. And then there is a time when we come to realize that it is in the illness that we can grow, that we can become what it is God wishes us to become. In other words, the illness becomes not so much a burden or a punishment, or something to make us angry, but we begin to see the illness, even the advancing years of age, we begin to see it as a means, a possibility of growth, a possibility of becoming a better person spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, an entirely better person. And that is primarily what the grace of the anointing of the sick does. It allows us to look upon the limitations of human flesh, of our human nature, not so much as punishments--they're never punishments for sin, but as a means, a possibility, of becoming the people that God wishes us to become. They become then a very positive means of growth, and what happens when we are sick is that we suddenly turn all into ourselves, and we begin to feel sorry for ourselves. We begin to envy the people who don't have the illnesses that we have. We begin to say, "Why me, Lord? Why me?" Sort of the Job complex of our first reading, you know, "Man's life on earth is a drudgery. Are not his days those of a hireling?" The grace of the sacrament of the anointing of the sick, is that it changes that. And of course we begin to see that our sufferings are part of the sufferings of Jesus. And that in uniting our sufferings with the sufferings of jesus, it is only in that way that Jesus is still able to suffer for the redemption of sin, for the salvation of humankind, for the salvation of the world. And the anointing of the sick you might say takes us out of ourselves, and lets us put things in proper perspective. It is a marvelous sacrament. It is not a sacrament of the dead. None of the sacraments are for the dead; they are all sacraments for the living, they are all there to give life, but perhaps not life as you and I know it, but rather life as God intended it. Divine life, a sharing in His life. We need to think about this great sacrament, the anointing of the sick, and we need to realize that through it Jesus still continues to heal in the community. He still continues his work among us, through us, because he is no longer here physically able to do it. But we are His body, and He is the head. And therefore we are the instruments that He uses to continue to bring life, real life, eternal life to ourselves and to all of humankind.