We Need a Revolution

A Reflection on this Friday’s Gospel, Matthew 8:1-4 – 28 June 2024

     Many years ago, I visited a woman named Anne in a rehab clinic. She had been hospitalized or in rehabilitation for nearly twelve weeks altogether. What really scared her was that no one could pinpoint the reason behind her physical deterioration. Doctors questioned, tested, poked, and prodded for the first two weeks with no result. She endured all with a growing frustration at her helplessness and fear for the loss of the world from which she had been ripped.

     In her third week, Anne was transferred to rehabilitation. In waiting to be transferred, her heart failed as she lay in a corridor. Responding quickly, the staff revived her and brought her back into the hospital. Ultimately, doctors determined that her body had been reacting to a change in a prescription. She spent the next eight weeks recuperating from the devastating effects of her hospitalization.

     During the ordeal, I frequently brought Anne the Eucharist. In about the tenth week, I visited her and found her in a room stripped of all but a statue of Our Lady of Fatima which the Legion of Mary brought her. After she received the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, I told her that she seemed to be wonderfully at peace. She said that her sickness had been an effective spiritual tool. Slowly but surely, the sickness had stripped her of ego and attachments to the things of the world. She laid prostrate before the Lord entrusting all to Him. She trusted that if He wanted, He would heal her and if He would not, that she could hope in His mercy and love in heaven. As she told me; “Either way, I have only two priorities in this life, God and my family, nothing else matters.” She did our Lord homage.

     Anne had experienced a “revolution” which drove her to her knees. This revolution brought her back to her true self, stripped of all but love. In this moment of self-abdication, she found peace. Venerable Fulton Sheen wrote,

A revolution is involved whenever any soul dethrones the ego which has mastered him and submits, instead, to the principle of love. A revolution occurs whenever humility replaces pride in us, and we abandon the foolish striving for “success” and notoriety. (Sheen, 10)

     Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s use of the word, “revolution” is unusual, and perfect. It comes from the Latin, “revolvere,” meaning “to roll back.” We often use the word to indicate a radical change, a rolling back, in the governing regime. It is an emptying of the old to be filled with the new. A spiritual revolution empties us of pride so that we are open to an outpouring of God’s grace. So many live their lives so stuffed with their own ego that it is impossible for the love of God or neighbor to enter. We must empty ourselves in order to be filled.

     The leper in the Gospel today has had everything stripped away through sickness. He is a social outcast, an object of fear from whom others run, rejected by his family and friends alike. He has lost his health. Whatever he was before, whatever his source of worldly self-worth, is now completely unimportant.

     We hear that he pays homage to the Lord. The Greek word for “homage” is prŏskunĕō, to prostrate oneself in order to reverence and adore the other. Homage, prostration, is a posture of surrender to one who is greater. He or she who surrenders, lays down their arms and stops fighting back. A fighting against grace.

    The leper lays down in complete humility. He surrenders. Stripped of the weapons of this world, pride and ego, he stops “kicking against the goad” (Acts 9:5 DRB). He no longer arrogantly resists the Holy Spirit, but instead lays down, to worship and adore the only person who can truly fill him, heal him, bring him into the realm of peace. Ego set aside, rivers of living water, grace, flow to fill him. (John 7:38) He is healed first spiritually and then physically.

     Peace comes as we open ourselves to an inner revolution through which pride is rejected and all resistance is set aside. The regime of Love replaces the regime of sin. That peace then acts like a happy contagion which moves from soul to soul. Grace spills out from those who are filled, as water from a bucket, filled to the brim, bringing peace to all.

     Pope Benedict XVI preached that,

“Believing means surrendering ourselves to God and entrusting our destiny to him.” (Homily 28 May 2006)

     Jesus calls us to surrender, not to a master, but to a savior. He desires that we say with complete trust, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” (Matthew 8:2) He is waiting to reach out His hand and reply, “I will do it. Be made clean.” (Matthew 8:3) To do this, we need a revolution, a change of regime, from attachment to the world and sin, to the God of love.

End notes

Benedict XVI. Homilies of His Holiness Benedict XVI (English). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013. Print.

Douay Rheims Bible (DRB), Translated from the Latin Vulgate. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009. Print.

Sheen, Fulton J. Way to Happiness. Ashland, OH: TAN Books, 2022. Print.