When confronted with illness, most especially when healing does not come, we are tempted to challenge God, “Why!?” The same was true for the Disciple who were unable to heal a boy who had a demon. Christ’s response to them, and to us, “Because of your unbelief.” We must take the seed of faith planted by our parents at our baptism and nourish and cultivate the seed to become a great tree of faith strong enough to move mountains. The seed of faith requires prayer and fasting and the sacramental life of the Church.

When we are faced with the storms of life, it can be very tempting to focus on the storm rather than Christ. It is very easy to become crippled with fear when we take our eyes off Christ. God is present in the Church and He promises that when we need Him, we will find Him in the Church. When we turn our attention to God, and when we leave the cares of life outside the doors of the Church, we will be comforted and protected by God.

God has given to each person, whether a believer or not, certain gifts and talents to assist others. When we are faced with the needs of others, sometimes our temptation is to excuse them away to others maybe because we fear we don’t have enough resources, or maybe we think we don’t have time. In either case, it is only when we allow God to bless others through our cooperation, through our efforts, that God’s mercy and blessing is experienced by others.

When we are faced with spiritual and physical illness, we sometimes need to be reminded that God wants nothing more than to heal us, especially our souls. When the elites of the day witnessed God’s miracles healings, they accused Christ of partnering with the devil. Even after they witnessed God healing the blind, they remained blinded to God’s love and grace. Even after they witnessed God those who had been healed give praise to God, they insisted on using their voices to accuse God. We sometimes fall into this same habit. Sometimes we remain blind, out of sinful pride.

The Lord challenges us to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven in our lives without worrying about tomorrow, next week and next year. Just as He makes sure the birds of the air have their needs met, He promises us that we are of more worth than the birds. He promises that we will always have enough when we seek Him first without anxiety about the future. The world is a very anxious place, but we must have courage and faith in God that His promise to care for us when we put Him first.

When God called His first disciples to follow, they dropped their nets and left everything they knew behind to follow a new way of thinking with God. They were willing to leave their own logic behind and live as God wants, and God was able to heal the crowds from every disease they had. When we are willing to step out of our comfort zone and leave our way of thinking behind for God’s way of thinking, we too can be the agents of healing in our society. We can be the vaccine that heals the pain and suffering of our society.

In a secular society that is focused on worldly desires, God desires for us is live holy lives as the Saints have done for more than two thousand years. The Saints lived lives dedicated to God instead of the world. They were willing to confess God in front of others, and they were willing to treat others with love, no matter how they were persecuted. Holiness is being willing to live for God rather than the world. Now is the time for us to live holy lives, and then we will affect change in others around us.