On July 2, 1881, about four months after James Garfield was inaugurated President of the United States, he was shot in the back by an assassin while waiting to board a train in a Washington railroad station. Several renowned physicians rushed to the scene, and one of them, who had treated President Lincoln after he had been shot immediately took charge of the President’s care. He pulled out several medical instruments from his case, and while the President was still lying on the floor of the railroad station, used the instruments to probe the womb in search of the bullet. The effort to locate and extract the bullet was unsuccessful. Over the following months, the President’s health deteriorated and he died on September 19. When an autopsy was performed, it was discovered that the bullet had not actually pierced any vital organs. Tissue had already grown around the bullet and it had been fully encased by nature. He died because his doctor did not believe in the new-fangled idea that medical instruments needed to be sterilized to prevent infections. His doctor had operated in the most germ-infested operating room imaginable—the floor of a train station. President Garfiels’ body would have healed itself if his medical team had simply done nothing.

After the 12:10 Mass on Mondays, we have a brief prayer service in honor of St. Peregrine, a fourteenth century Servite friar who was healed miraculously of what appeared to be cancer, after spending the night in prayer before an image of Christ crucified. Jesus in his won ministry worked many signs and wonders. Yet in praying for a healing in extreme cases, it is easy to take for granted the ways God enables our bodies to heal themselves. Putting a cast on a broken limb does not heal the broken limb; it simply creates the conditions under which the limb can heal itself. During the height of the COVID pandemic, when much of the world’s industry was shut

I think the same is true of our body and our environment is also true of our soul.  The traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and  works of charity create the conditions under which our soul can heal itself. When we give up something that we normally depend on to comfort ourselves or entertain ourselves, we are forced to look elsewhere—and likely outside of ourselves. We pay more attention to the people whom we have been neglecting or rushing past at full speed. Prayer means opening our minds and hearts to God. Like any relationship, it requires communication to sustain it. Prayer involves talking, but also listening. Sometimes in a moment of silence before God, we become aware of some fault, some sin, or something we have been failing to do. We then have the opportunity to address it; When we got out of the house and get involved in a charity or dedicate the money we might normally spend on our hobby to a charitable cause, our circle of love expands. We feel a connection with people whom we do not normally think about. Perhaps this leads us to think about all the other people we do not know—even people dodging missals in the Middle East. If we are faithful to our Lenten practices we will find ourselves spending more time with God and other people and less time and less time with things and virtual reality. We get back a sense of discipline in our life and realize how many of the really important things in lie we have been missing.  Along the way we might be moved to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time in a long time and release some of the old poisons from our soul. God made our souls to be resilient—just like our bodies. Lent can be the world’s most effective and least expensive rehabilitation facility we’ll ever visit—as long as we remember we are looking for a long-erm cure and not just a temporary fix for forty days. There is a certain joy in finding ourselves more alive in the present and less dependent on things.

Anthony De Mello tells the story of a miser who hid a stash of gold beneath a tree in his garden. Every week he would dig it up and look at it for hours, and then bury it again. One week when he came to look at his gold, it was missing. A thief had stolen it. He found himself staring into an empty hole. He started screaming in anger. One of his neighbors heard him and came running. He told the neighbor, “A thief has stolen my gold.” The neighbor aske, “Did you ever use the gold for anything or anyone?” The man said, “No.”  “Well,” the neighbor said, “For all the good the gold did, you might as well have been staring into an empty hole all along.””

                                                                Fr/ Joe