Gradual Mercy

Often times we end up in one of two camps when it comes to miracles: the first says that miracles are rare and will happen but only for a select few, and the second says that miracles happen often but you need to have faith and be open to them and they will happen for you. Both are incorrect and I will show you why. My example will be a well known man, the Son of God, I'm sure you've heard of Him.

Now I will get to that point in just a moment, but I wish to speak specifically about healing for a moment. So many of us think that healing is an all-or-nothing game, that you are rid of the cancer or you keep it, your disease disappears altogether or it remains, your infirmities are washed away or they must remain wholly with you. God is not so binary as this. The miracles which He chooses to bestow upon us are as efficacious as He wishes them to be, and there is a degree of limiting their effectiveness based on our ability to receive them. It is not the case that it is suddenly day or suddenly night, there is dawn and dusk which herald the transition into the next phase of the celestial cycle. You are not a child then suddenly an adult, you have a transitory period where you shift from one to the other. In this world you are not wholly good or wholly bad, you work through the process of choosing what is wrong and choose more what is right. You are a process, you are a spectrum, and the works of God in this world often manifest in ways which are not so simple for us to label as "good" - which I have found both frustrating and comforting, and I find comfort in the fact that God does not operate according to what I think makes sense.

Here is the point, that healing can take time. Often when we read Scripture we see Christ touch someone and rid the person of their sufferings, but this is not always the case. Christ went to heal a man, but "it did not take" the first time. Don't believe me? Let's read Mark 8:22-26 together and explore the meaning of the passage.

22 They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Can you see anything?’ 24 And the man looked up and said, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.’ 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Then he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even go into the village.’

I will make the point I have been working towards bluntly: the thing which you are asking for healing from the Lord and you are frustrated that you're not rid of it yet, perhaps He is trying to work on healing you but your lack of patience is working against the healing. Perhaps, maybe, this thing you want healed does not take seconds to heal, but takes years, or a lifetime.

My sister, my little twin who was born the same day as me but fourteen years later, was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 2020 when she was just nine years old. This bodily disorder has been a huge weight on her, and it hurts to see her suffer so, especially as a brother who attributes several of his virtues to her arrival in his life. Myself, my family, our many friends, have prayed for her healing for years, but she continues to be subject to the terrible disease. And then came a healing service at St. Mary's University Parish in Mt. Pleasant, MI where the priest, the bishop, and a number of parishioners gathered. I have seen miraculous healings from this healing service with my own eyes, and I was hopeful when I heard they were going. My sister, Hazel, returned from the healing service still with Type 1 Diabetes, but... changed. The days following the service she had to lower her dosage of insulin because it was too much now; her body had somehow come to need less insulin and produce a small amount of her own once again. There is a trackable and noticeable difference of her intake before and after the healing service - but the numbers haven't changed since, it is just that she needs less insulin.

This is the process of gradual healing. Some will have their ailments removed immediately, like a friend of mine who went to that same healing service years ago and was blessed to be able to walk without pain in her joints. Some will receive a first step in healing, like my sister, like the blind man in Mark, and you will need to return to the Healer again. Of course I do not know why some heal immediately and others over time, and I wouldn't presume to say the reasons why God works the way that He does. All I know is that God wishes for us to be with Him and listen to Him so that He may give us all the gifts He has for us, and to do that we must be open and receptive.

And so, this is my invitation to you, that you be open to whatever God wishes to bless you with, but especially that you are open to God working on you outside of your own expectations and timeline. Sometimes my own healing comes from heartbreak and suffering, sometimes the healing comes around the time of this pain but is not related to it, and sometimes I can only see the healing years after His work was started in me. The one throughline is that I walked with and listened to Him (though, of course, much of the time I did not do this well) and so He blessed me - never in the ways I expect, but in the ways I need. I ask you to, as the image header of this article shows, walk with the Lord and go where He leads you. Be alongside Him, trusting Him, and He will look after you. Sometimes your healing is as simple as the relief of removing a thorn, and sometimes it is a gradual process of healing a broken foot. Even for the God-Man, healing us can take time.

Written for VME Catholic, by Ethan Hall