The Gift Is Next to the Wound

Sunday, August 16, 2026 – 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A, Cycle 2
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7, Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8, Romans 11:13-15, 29-32, Matthew 15:21-28
 
Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the Kingdom and cured every disease among the people.  Matthew 4:23
 
Our readings today guide us in learning how God wants to heal us Physically, Mentally, and Spiritually, but it’s very hard for us to understand this because God’s ways are not our ways.  We tend to look at our life in human terms, which is not how God views our life.   We look at our lifespan as the time we spend here on earth, but God, who is outside of time, as we all will be after our earthly body dies, looks at our life as eternal.  
 
You see, from the moment we are conceived in the womb, we become eternal beings.  From that point forward, our life never ends.  Of course, life is constantly changing, with the biggest change coming when our bodies die, and our soul moves on to eternal life.  Either eternal life with God in heaven or eternal separation from God in hell, but either way our life is eternal.
 
This is something we don’t often think of.  We go about, busy doing our daily tasks, but how often do we really think about how the life we are living right now, the decisions we make every day, the choices we make to either spend time with God, showing our love for him, or excluding God from our life, has a direct impact on our eternal life?   How often do we slow down or just stop what we are doing and allow ourselves to hear in our hearts the message that God has for each one of us, the path he wants us to follow?  The narrow path of Prayer, Self-Denial and Works of Mercy that lead us to eternal life in heaven.  Now I know that none of us have ever heard anyone say this before, right?   This is a totally new concept, right?
 
But if we are not in the state of mind, for whatever reason, to be able to open our heart and mind enough to hear God when he speaks to us, God does provide ways to get us there.   Reading the scriptures is a perfect example of how God can draw us to himself, leading us to hear him and live according to his Will.  For example, our first reading today lays out very clearly and simply how God wants all of us to live.  If we read it slowly and break it down, it is clear that we please God and maintain a strong relationship with Him by…

1. Observing what is right.
2. Doing what is just.
3. Joining ourselves to the Lord.
4. Loving the Lord, as he has loved us.
5. Becoming his Servant.
6. Keeping the Sabbath.
7. Holding to God’s Covenant by receiving the Sacraments regularly, especially the Eucharist and Confession.
 
In short, we should always strive to grow in our relationship with God and stay in God’s grace.  This message from Isaiah was written centuries before the birth of Christ, but it shows us that God in his love and mercy does not change.  He is, as the scriptures tell us, the same Yesterday, Today, and Forever.  He loves us more than we can imagine and provides us with a simple way to holiness, not an easy way, but a simple way. 
 
God wants to heal us Physically, Mentally, and Spiritually.   But the most important type of healing we could ever receive is Spiritual Healing because that is the only type of sickness that directly affects our eternal life.  The enemy knows this, and that’s why he is always trying to prevent us from growing closer to God.  Now, of course, the enemy is constantly feeding us lies like, “You’re good, or you don’t need God,” and especially if we are involved in something gravely sinful, the devil might even try to lead us to believe it’s ok reasoning: God wants me to be happy, and this makes me happy.  Or if we are suffering physically or mentally, he may try to lead us to despair or anger with God, causing us to question why God won’t heal these afflictions.
 
But there are a few things we need to remember:
 
First - God will never lead us to something that is sinful or bad for us.  God is pure love and it is not loving someone to approve of or lead someone to sin.
 
Secondly - God doesn’t make bad things happen to us.  He doesn’t play games with us like that.  We live in a fallen world, and it is the devil not God that encourages and promotes all evil.
 
And finally, when we unite our sufferings to the sufferings of Christ, God can and will take any Physical, Mental, or Spiritual affliction we have, and turn the tables on the devil, using it for good, healing us, and in his love and mercy, draw us closer to him.  
 
As the Father of a son who was diagnosed with cancer at 8 years old and fought and prayed for his healing for 10 years, these truths are the reasons I’m here today.  While we saw many miracles occur during the 10 years our son Justin fought cancer and ultimately died, by the time it looked like he was unlikely to recover, my son and my wife and I all understood that our life here on earth is short compared to eternity, and that God had used the time Justin did have, while fewer years than most, to ensure he was fully healed and prepared spiritually for eternal happiness with God in heaven.
 
At a retreat I attended just a few weeks before being ordained a deacon, while sharing some of my own sufferings with a Spiritual Director he said something that I had never heard and will never forget.  We were discussing how when we unite our sufferings to the suffering of Christ, God can and will take that suffering and bring good from it.  He said, “You should always remember that the gift is next to the wound.”  I asked what he meant by that.  He said, when we unite our wounds, our sufferings to Christ, allowing God to heal our heart, he prepares us to be a Gift for others who are enduring similar trials.  
 
In our reading from Romans, St. Paul tells us that, “The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”  As baptized Christians, God will never take his gift of love from us, and he will always be calling us to himself.  This is the nature of God, and although he allows us to be disobedient to him, he is always there ready to shower his mercy upon us when we return to him with a contrite heart.  He will never abandon us.
 
Our gospel reading presents a great example of the love, mercy, and healing of God.  Jesus encounters a Canaanite woman, whose daughter is tormented by a demon.  She begs Jesus for help, but he ignores her, saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  However, this mother is persistent; she doesn’t give up.  She does Jesus homage and cries out, “Lord, help me.”  Jesus tries to shoo her away and explains why by saying, “It would not be right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  In her humility, desperation, and faith in Jesus, instead of being insulted, she continued saying, “Please Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their Masters.”  This got Jesus’s attention, and he said to her, “O’woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.
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Now we aren’t told how this demon had been tormenting her daughter.   We just know that the mother recognized that her daughter was in need of healing, went to Jesus persistently and in all humility, begged him to heal her.  It doesn’t say that her daughter is possessed by the demon; it says that she is tormented, so we don’t know exactly what the problem was.  It’s possible that her daughter was involved in some type of activity that the mother knew was sinful and bad for her, or maybe she had some sort of physical or emotional illness.  But we do know this: she was willing to endure any humiliation to ask Jesus to heal her child, and Jesus did.
 
My friends, our message today is that Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the Kingdom and cured every disease among the people.  Let us go forth in all confidence, no matter what difficulties or illness we face in life, even if we or those we love fall to the temptations of the demons that attack us.  We know that when we go to Jesus in humility with perseverance and faith and ask for his healing even when the healing doesn’t come in the manner we desire, or the time that we hope for, in his grace and mercy Jesus will say to us just as he did the Canaanite woman who begged Him to save her daughter.
 
Oh, you of great faith!  Let it be done for you.
 
Amen!