Be Healed!

A Reflection in a Chaotic and Uncertain Time. 10-12-2025

A week ago, my husband and I went to get our COVID and flu vaccines. My husband can take both shots without any side effects. I can only take one shot at a time. In past years, as members, we could just walk into Kaiser to get the vaccines. This year, changing federal guidelines meant that we had to have appointments for the COVID booster, although we could get the flu shot at the same time. I just got the COVID booster.

I have a complicated relationship with some vaccines. For ten years, at my doctor’s suggestion, I did not have an annual flu shot because I got sick and my arm swelled. As I got older it was suggested I try again and so I did with no atypical reaction. Then came the COVID vaccines. When I had both shots, I got really sick. When I got one at a time, I was okay. But not this year. I really reacted to the COVID vaccine, and I have not yet submitted to a flu shot as I want to wait until after a couple of events I would like to attend. Yet, in spite of my reactions, I am grateful to have access to modern medicine and the vaccines that have kept my family and myself healthy overtime.

My generation should be the last that grew up knowing people who were crippled by polio, or who ended up in an iron lung. When the first polio vaccine was available, I remember lining up outside the local grade school with my mom and my sister and baby brother. The whole community it seemed was grateful to be offered a way to avoid the chance of getting polio. We also understood that people could be blinded by measles. I remember spending a week in a darkened room and missing my sister’s Junior Rose Festival Court appearances while sick with measles. Infants and toddlers used to die from whooping cough. Mumps was one of the leading causes of deafness, meningitis, and encephalitis. Calling these viruses “childhood diseases” makes them sound a lot less serious than they are. I don’t understand people who categorically refuse vaccines for themselves or their children. I have always thought of them as blessings that come from the reasoning and abilities given by God to those who enter into the field of medical research.

This Sunday’s readings speak of divine healing. The first reading, 2 Kings 5:14-17, tells the story of the healing of Naaman. Naaman was an army commander of the King of Aram, but he had leprosy. He was sent to the prophet Elisha for healing by a slave girl from the land of Israel. Elisha sent him to plunge seven times into the River Jordan. Naaman was cured and in response brought gifts to give Elisha. Elisha would take no payment for the cure because Elisha was a healer in service to the Lord. The gospel reading from Luke 17:11-19, tells the story of the ten lepers who asked Jesus to have pity on them and cleanse them of their leprosy. Jesus sent them to show themselves to the priests, but on the way, they realized they had already been healed. Only one of the ten went back to offer gratitude to Jesus and he was a Samaritan. Healing was a central ministry of Jesus in a time when diseases, viruses, and germs were not readily understood. To be sick, especially with disfiguring diseases like leprosy, or crippling diseases that limit one’s ability to work, generally condemned people to poverty and isolation. Surely the Samaritan who was healed was grateful to be made whole again. Jesus, however, did not accept the man’s gratitude as a personal thank you, but as gratitude to God, the One who sent Jesus.

Many people like to think of the United States as a Christian nation and yet it is one of the only industrialized countries that does not guarantee healthcare for its citizens. One of my daughters lives in Mexico where she can receive medical care at low cost. I have friends from Canada, and they do not understand how Americans tolerate the system we have. When a person is without a job, they are most likely without healthcare. When a dependent child gets ‘too old’ they can no longer get healthcare through their parents’ policies, even when they have yet to secure a job with benefits. When a visitor to the United States has a medical emergency – I have no idea what happens to them. Medical care is very costly, likely because it is based on a for-profit model rather than a non-profit one. How amazing would it be if people could receive the care they need and offer gratitude in response rather than their life savings? In his very recent Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi Te (I have loved you) Pope Leo XIV addresses healing and the care of the poor:

“49. Christian compassion has manifested itself in a particular way in the care of the sick and suffering. Based on the signs present in Jesus’ public ministry — the healing of the blind, lepers and paralytics — the Church understands that caring for the sick, in whom she readily recognizes the crucified Lord, is an important part of her mission. During a plague in the city of Carthage, where he was Bishop, Saint Cyprian reminded Christians of the importance of caring for the sick: ‘This pestilence and plague, which seems so horrible and deadly, searches out the righteousness of each one, and examines the minds of the human race, to see whether the healthy serve the sick; whether relatives love each other with sincerity; whether masters have pity on their sick servants; whether doctors do not abandon the sick who beg for help.’ The Christian tradition of visiting the sick, washing their wounds, and comforting the afflicted is not simply a philanthropic endeavor, but an ecclesial action through which the members of the Church touch the suffering flesh of Christ.” Citation

The healing ministry of Christ has been continued through many religiously centered medical facilities including Catholic Hospitals and overseas through the Catholic Aid Society, as well as in the individual lives of Jesus’s followers as they care for people in need, whether they are family, friends, or strangers. The current stalemate in Congress, which has become centered around the issue of keeping healthcare moderately affordable and available even in rural areas, is confounding in a modern, affluent, country – especially when so many legislators openly claim to be followers of Jesus. Healing is always a gift from God. But God works through God’s people.

Let us pray for a kinder, gentler, national perspective.

Let us pray for the healing of our country.