Lourdes 23 June 2007

Readings: Isaiah 53: 1-5, 7-10; Luke 1: 39-56

We have come to what is really the high point of our pilgrimage – the Anointing of the Sick. The purpose of our journey here is to accompany you, our sick pilgrims, and to pray with you and for you at Our Lady’s shrine and to bring you, in this sacrament, into the healing presence of Christ who is with us as he said. And it is our privilege in this Mass that you pray with us and for us.

This pilgrimage is a symbol of the journey of our lives, the journey towards becoming reconciled to God, towards welcoming God’s love for us. In other words, it is a journey towards recognising that we cannot save ourselves; we can only accept the gift that God freely offers us. We have to learn that there is no point in placing our hope in our own qualities, our strength or our achievements. The reason we can hope is that God loves us and that God’s love is stronger than our weakness.

In this Mass of Anointing we are celebrating our faith, our knowledge that the love of God which is stronger than human weakness surrounds us and that in a particular way it surrounds people who are sick.

In today’s Gospel Mary rejoices and she praises God who love reaches out to the weak – God exalts the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and his mercy reaches out to those who fear him. He is a God who pulls down princes from their thrones, sends the rich away empty, and routs the proud of heart.

In other words, Mary praises God who cares especially for the weak, a God whose love is not understood or appreciated by people who rely on their own power or position or strength.

That is why Mary’s shrine of Lourdes should be, and it is, a place where the sick feel welcomed and at home. Mary who is full of grace, who is the first and greatest disciple of her Son knows that she owes everything to the generous love of God: “My spirit exults in God my saviour because he has looked upon his lowly handmaid”.

During this pilgrimage the lesson that we learn is that God’s love is poured out not on what we imagine to be our strength but on what we think of as our weakness.

The life which makes all things new opened up for us on Good Friday when her Son was crucified and died on the cross. As he hung on Calvary, without beauty, a thing despised and rejected the love of God was receiving him as the first born of the glorified human family beyond death and mourning and weeping. We were not saved by a display of military or political or economic power, but by weakness and suffering. “Through his wounds we are healed”.

Those of us who are healthy can often deceive ourselves into thinking that we can take care of ourselves. We fool ourselves by closing our minds to the truth: that our life is fragile; we do not know what the future may bring and we certainly cannot control it. When we gather to pray with and for the pilgrims who are being anointed in this Mass we know that there is a deeper stronger, more real hope than that.

Jesus hanging in agony on the cross shows us a love that is more powerful than suffering or death. This was what the prophet foretold, “Through him what the Lord wishes will be done”. In that scene of blood and pain and abandonment, the Lord was fulfilling the promise made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his descendants.

In the Anointing of the Sick, Jesus reaches out to touch the invalids, offering comfort and strength to help them to see their illness as a sharing in the his suffering on Calvary which opened up the way to eternal life. It is not just the sick who need that comfort and strength. We all need to realise that we are on the same journey, which passes with Christ from this fragile, often painful, often disheartening life to the glory of the resurrection.

This anointing, as part of this celebration of the Eucharist, is a celebration of the hope that we all share. You, our invalids remind us not to place our hope in things that are passing and unreliable but, like Mary, to believe that the promise made to us by the Lord will be fulfilled.

+Donal Murray
Bishop of Limerick