Look at Jesus

Parish Feast Day - Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (World Day of Prayer for the Sick 2016)

Today we celebrate our patronal feast day in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes, the day declared by St. Pope John Paul II as World Day of Prayer for the Sick, we are asked to contemplate not just the message of healing, which all the sick and elderly would happily welcome, but also the message of suffering as prophecy, suffering as redemption. Today, the shrine of Lourdes in France is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world - principally because of the apparent healing properties of the waters of the spring that appeared during the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a poor, fourteen-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubiroux. Today, many of you have come to this church in Klang and other pilgrims have travelled here and waited patiently to get a taste of Lourdes water for the same reason. Many hope to receive some miraculous cure to your diseases. Others hope to find a solution to your predicament. Still many others come here seeking for peace in the midst of troubles. But Our Lady of Lourdes promises more than just physical healing. The message of our Lady in Lourdes as in many other shrines all over the world remain consistent – it is a call to conversion, a call to faith, a call to unite oneself with her Son.

The paradox of suffering as something redemptive and prophetic can be seen in the seer of Lourdes, St Bernadette. Although she was singly privileged with the apparitions of Our Lady and was the first to taste the miraculous healing waters of Lourdes, she would continue carrying the burden of illness throughout her short life. In one particularly moving episode of her life, the Mother Superior of her convent confronts Bernadette who appeared loitering in the refectory whilst her other sisters were out doing fruitful manual labour. The Mother Superior asked her in a stern voice, ‘What do you think you are doing here?’ To which she received this reply from Bernadette, ‘I’m busy working.’ Her superior sensing sarcasm in the answer, presses, ‘Pray tell me, what are you working at?’ Bernadette replies, ‘My work is to be sick.’ 

We cannot really choose to have no pain in our lives, because pain in some form is inescapable. We have no choice about pain or suffering. Sooner or later everyone must face it. Even Jesus and his mother had to undergo pain. Whether we bear it with love or not, however, is a different matter. We do have a real choice there. We are free to choose “the pain of loving” or “the pain of not loving,” the latter being a pain that is empty and barren—a pain without any redeeming qualities. We know that Jesus and his mother and other heroic witnesses like St. Pope John Paul II and  St. Bernadette Soubiroux have chosen the “pain of loving.” That is, they undergo suffering for the love of God and of humanity, so their pain has rich meaning.

Those who suffer the limitations exacted by old age and illness would sound just like the servants of the wedding feast who came to report to Mary, ‘The wine has run out … we have no more wine.’ Many who suffer the infirmities of aging and illness may ask the poignant question, ‘What can I possibly do in my present condition?’ Old age and illness both seem to be impediments to all the things a person hopes to achieve in his or her life. But the lives of St. Pope John Paul II and St. Bernadette Soubiroux reminds us, especially those of you who have come leaning on the cross of Christ, that your suffering need not be futile nor meaningless. Know this - your infirmities are no obstacles to life and to ministry. Just like Bernadette, your greatest work at this point is to be sick, for in courageously bearing with your sickness, in continuing to show love despite your pain and fatigue, you reveal and proclaim the profound mystery of Christ presence even in the midst of suffering. Today, Christ comforts you. He consoles you. He encourages you. And if any of you feel like giving up, Christ from the cross says this to you, “Look at Me!”

St. Bernadette, Pray for us! 

St. Pope John Paul II, Pray for us! 

Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for us!