(This homily was given by Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde during the Respect Life Mass at All Saints Catholic Church in Manassas, Virginia on June 26 for the Votive Mass of Our Lady, Blessed Virgin Mary, Health of the Sick.)
Today, we celebrate a Votive Mass of Our Lady, honoring her under her title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Health of the Sick. This celebration of the Mass is also our monthly Respect Life Mass followed by our prayerful witness in front of the local abortion facility where we will pray the Rosary.
Why are we celebrating a Mass in honor of Our Lady, Health of the Sick? Because we are seeking to be healed. The Introduction to this Mass summarizes so beautifully the healing for which we are praying.
Divine healing affects our whole human nature, body, soul, and spirit, while we are pilgrims here on earth and especially citizens of heaven. Through the healing made possible by Christ in the Holy Spirit, our human condition is completely altered: oppression is changed into liberty, ignorance into knowledge of the truth, sickness into health, affliction into joy, death into life, slavery to sin into a share in the divine nature. Yet we cannot achieve absolute and perfect healing in this world: our life is exposed to suffering, illness, and death. But “God's healing” is Jesus Christ Himself, whom the Father sent into the world as our Savior and as the physician of body and soul, as the liturgy describes Him, echoing the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch (see Ad Ephesios, VII, 2: 10, p. 74). In the days of his flesh, moved by compassion, He healed many sick people, often freeing them at the same time from the wound of sin.
Yes, we are asking Mary's intercession that each of us and our society as well be healed from the wound of sin, especially sins against the Truth — that Truth revealed in the Scriptures and in the Living Tradition of the Church and taught by the Official Teaching Office of the Church.
I propose three truths for our reflection:
1. The truth about human life, that life is present from the moment of conception and that this human life must be respected and protected from conception all the way through to natural death. We must never cease to proclaim the Gospel of Life. Thus, we must continue to pray and to do penance, to enter into ongoing dialogue, especially with those who do not understand the truth about life, to educate and inform, to influence and to persuade, and to witness by our personal convictions and example.
2. The truth about married love, that this love is simultaneously unitive and procreative — and sacrificial as well. In today's gospel we encounter Mary visiting [a member of] her extended family, Elizabeth — both of them pregnant. As I visit parishes within the diocese and especially last month at the Diocesan Expectant Parents' Mass, I witness the true joy of parents, of all ages, glowing during pregnancy, whether the first child or the tenth. These children are the manifestation of the physical love between the husband and the wife. These children are love with a name. Again and again, I see dad bringing the car around to pick up his very pregnant wife. I see older children helping younger children with household chores, with school work, with the age-old traditions of growing up. I see younger children looking to their older siblings for expressions of good example. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, “Sacred Scripture and the Church's traditional practice see in large families a sign of God's blessing and the parents' generosity” (CCC No. 2373). Additionally, “Couples who discover that they are sterile suffer greatly” (CCC No. 2374) as they desire marital fulfillment in children. That is why adoption is such an important aspect of the charitable mission of the Church.
Contrary to what society tells us today, the sacrificial love of a husband and wife expressed through the begetting of children is the norm of marriage, rather than the exception. Marriage preparation within the diocese focuses on the sacramental aspect of the nuptial union. In the sexual union, the spouses are “called to express that mysterious language of their bodies in all the truth which is proper to it” (Theology of the Body, p. 406, General audience, October 3, 1984). Openness to children allows the couple to experience the true love-giving and live-giving aspect of marriage.
For families who have been blessed with children, recall that first moment the child's movement was felt in the womb. What a unifying joy between husband, wife and child! Imagine the same joy experienced by Elizabeth when St. John the Baptist leapt for joy at the arrival of his Lord, in the womb of Mary. Children are true blessings in the lives of couples.
On the other hand, contraception separates the love-life bond of the couple's relationship. Vowing to love each other “for better and for worse” except for one's sexuality, places conditions on love. It is no longer an unconditional act. It separates the sacrament from the union because one of the ends of marriage, the fruitfulness of conjugal love, is no longer present (cf. CCC No. 2366). Couples are no longer open to “share in the creative power and fatherhood of God” (CCC No. 2367). With this turning away from the Lord, the permanence of the marriage covenant also is called into question, and divorce suddenly becomes an option. The union of the couple in turn becomes a selfish encounter of exploitation of the other. Since unions are then selfish encounters of exploitation, the sexual identity of the partners no longer becomes important, and society is in the situation that it is now, where same-sex marriages are allowed by law and civil unions are being proposed as the norm.
3. The truth about marriage as the union of one man with one woman. This turning away from the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and the turning toward homosexual and heterosexual civil unions place the emphasis on what each partner could get out of the relationship, rather than what each partner can give to the relationship.
Our society is sick because we have sinned against the truth. Let us call upon our Blessed Lady to heal the sickness of our culture by bringing it back to the Lord. Let us call upon our Blessed Lady to intercede for us as we ask for God's mercy for our past sins, and as we strive to do God's will. Let us call upon our Blessed Lady to be the radiant “sign of health, of healing and of divine hope” (Preface).
Our Lady Health of the Sick, pray for us!
