March 31, 2025

Contemplative prayer is meant to be a space of peace, where the world-weary soul can find some moments of respite and rest.  The messages of the Holy Spirit cannot easily be reduced to words on paper; the Holy Spirit is living and moving in our lives.

John 4:43-54

In today’s reading, a royal official comes to ask Jesus to heal his son who is dying. He wants Jesus to come down to his town to save the child. But Jesus says, “You may go; your son will live.”  The man believed what Jesus said and left. When he got home, he found that the child had been healed at the very time that Jesus had told him this. 

This story means, among other things, that Jesus’ healing does not depend on physical touch. The healing occurs on the spiritual level, amid the connection of the royal official to Jesus, his trust and belief in that connection, and the love he had for his child.  Along these energetic pathways and connections, the healing flowed.

In modern life, we need to pay more attention to these spiritual level and energetic pathways. Science is beautiful, but it has caused us to be too literal minded about earthly reality. Sometimes we may pray for healing, and then healing occurs; sometimes we may pray for guidance, and then a solution we never thought of arrives, far better and more elegant than the solution we would have proposed. In these subtle ways, we may know that God is working in our lives.  We should not discount this force, this gentle power.  Amen.