“Go and wash seven times in the Jordan,
and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.”
What the Lord asks of us is often very simple, even though it has the potential to change our lives. But we often reject his direction because we would prefer something more dramatic, more to suited to our expectations of how his help should come, how we ourselves do it if we were him.
But Naaman went away angry, saying,
“I thought that he would surely come out and stand there
to invoke the LORD his God,
and would move his hand over the spot,
and thus cure the leprosy.
When the Lord asks of us something specific but the reason for the specificity is unclear we often reject his direction. This happens when the Lord proposes one thing and one counter with all the other ways it could be done that we imagine would be better.
Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar,
better than all the waters of Israel?
Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?”
With this, he turned about in anger and left.
The Lord wants to offer healings and transformation to us. It may seem mundane that his gift is given through baptism and the other sacraments. Because of this we may well squander the graces that have been given to us in baptism by hoping for something more dramatic. We may avoid the steps needed to unleash that grace, not because we don't know them, but because we don't understand them. Naaman didn't understand to go to the Jordan specifically and not to any other river was because in accepting that requirement his pride would be humbled. God's requests of us are often similar. They call us beyond ourselves. But we wish since we wish to remain as we are and are not fully aware of the problems he wants to address his commands may at times seem arbitrary, at least unless and until we obey them.
But his servants came up and reasoned with him.
“My father,” they said,
“if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary,
would you not have done it?
All the more now, since he said to you,
‘Wash and be clean,’ should you do as he said.”
The Lord wants to convince us to look beyond our preconceptions and expectations. He can and will work in the mundane and the specific of daily life. Our trouble is that since we have become the native place of his dwelling we tend to ignore him when he says something new and unexpected, especially something that looks mundane on its face. But the old and expected with which we are familiar are still tainted by sin and imperfection. He is wants to shake our comfort. He is calling us higher.
The Lord sometimes unleashes his power around us rather than in our lives not in condemnation but to help us to recognize that there is more for us, and to stir up our desire for that which we have not yet received but which he himself desires to give.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
How much more has the Lord done for us than what he did in Zarephath. If he ended their famine by sending rain from heaven, how much more has the Holy Spirit descending like the dewfall upon our altars given us the bread of everlasting life. Does this bread seem too ordinary and familiar to us? Is Jesus no longer welcome in his own native place? If we ourselves lack the zeal for the Eucharist let us look toward those who have it and be inspired with a sort of holy jealousy. In blessing those others with zeal he is trying to awaken our hearts as well.
So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous (see Romans 11:11).
We have been washed in healing waters. The famine for the word of God has been ended in a marvelous way. Our daily bread is available on the altar of every Church. There is nothing ordinary here, no matter how it seems to us. Let us learn to long for it.
As the hind longs for the running waters,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
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