Ransomed or Healed?

Like many things in the Catholic faith, there a few things expressed as either/or or only this and not that. Instead there is usually a both/and.

In the context of our salvation, the words we often use focus on justice. Due to sin, we have a debt. On Good Friday, we remember Jesus' death on the cross, as a repayment of that debt, like paying a ransom, to free us from the consequence of our sin. A debt he didn't owe. As Scott Hahn often says, Jesus paid a debt he didn't owe because we had a debt we couldn't pay.

Last night, at our parish, we had a powerful evening of contemplation of the Jesus' Agony in the Garden. The readings for the evening included Isaiah 53. There is something beyond payment of a debt in Jesus' suffering. As Isaiah says, "it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured ... by his wounds we were healed." The words that struck me last night were: "Because of his anguish he shall see the light; because of his knowledge he shall be content; My servant, the just one, shall justify the many, their iniquity he shall bear."

But something else really hit home for me when I then read the readings in the Liturgy of the Hours for yesterday. The second reading was a sermon by St. Melito of Sardis, a bishop from the early 2nd century. He said this: "Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt man’s destroyer, death, a fatal blow."

In Jesus, God incarnate, we have the perfect source of healing of humanity: a body capable of suffering and a Spirit incapable of dying. With the body rightly ordered to the Spirit, Jesus can bear all of the diseases of soul and body of all of humanity, healing us - if we only respond to him in faith when he asks, "What do you want me to do for you?"

In God's justice, we are ransomed; In God's mercy, we are healed.