A Homily for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Exodus 19:2-6a  Romans 5:6-11  Matthew 9:36-10:8

Last fall, a parishioner mentioned a family who might appreciate a visit. The husband had Lewy Body Dementia—I had never heard of it—but had remained at home under the care of his wife. When I first began to visit, I’d find him sitting in his chair. On good days, the three of us could visit nicely before sharing Holy Communion. 

Then he was confined to bed, barely eating or drinking. He was no longer able to receive Holy Communion, but I would kneel at his bedside and recite Scripture for him and his wife. He passed this week. 

And last fall, another parishioner approached me about getting his marriage blessed in the church. The only thing slower than getting married in the church is getting the church to declare that you’re free to marry again. He and his wife have thrown themselves into both projects with enthusiasm. 

A few days ago, this parishioner, a truck driver, was on his way home from a long haul. He began to shake with fever. Reaching home, he was admitted to the hospital and has since lost some of his toes to a virulent infection.  

Visiting him in a distant city, I asked where his wife was staying while he was in the hospital. She pointed to a couch in the hospital room. “She doesn’t leave,” he explained. 

During this past Holy Week, after several years of dormancy, an old problem of mine returned: narcolepsy. For me, it is more than feeling tired. It includes cataplexy, sudden falls from muscle weakness. I often cannot stop myself from swaying when I sit still, sometimes so badly that I cannot drive.  

I refuse to think of narcolepsy as the progressive disease it is. For me, it is pure weakness. I hate falling in front of others, especially at Mass. But evidently the Good Lord must teach some of us humility in the most humiliating of ways. I fell while visiting the parishioner with Lewy Body Dementia. His wife insisted that I sit down. She wanted to feed me. My parishioners are convinced that they can feed me into good health. 

On Nov. 1, 2025, Pope Leo named St. John Henry Newman—the 19th -century Catholic convert and theologian—the newest doctor of the church. Pope Francis had canonized him in 2019. 

Like many a saint, Newman was a unique combination of physical frailty and spiritual vigor. He wrote this about being seriously ill: 

[I]n sickness also there is much happens to us that is strange, much that we must feebly comprehend and vaguely follow after. For in sickness the mind wanders from things that are seen into the unknown world, it turns back into itself, and is in company with mysteries; it is brought into contact with objects which it cannot describe, which it cannot ascertain. It sees the skirts of powers and providences beyond this world, and is at least more alive, if not more exposed to the invisible influences, bad and good, which are its portion in this state of trial. And afterward it has recollections which are painful, recollections of distress, of which it cannot recall the reasons, of pursuits without an object, of gleams of relief without continuance. (Parochial and Plain Sermons V.23) 

Serious illness is an entrance to an unknown world, into mysteries that both envelop and confound us.  

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that God, who is goodness itself, never actively wills anything evil, though “God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good.” (ST III,1,3, ad 3)  

Illness is, of course, part of nature’s order. All living things eventually suffer infirmity and pass. We, however, suffer both physical and spiritual assaults. The illness that attacks the body assaults the soul as well. How does one summarize the experience of watching your spouse slowly die? Or the worry that comes from missing work and the sustenance it provides for your family? 

How right Newman was when he said that the one who is sick “sees the skirts of powers and providences beyond this world, and is at least more alive, if not more exposed to the invisible influences, bad and good, which are its portion in this state of trial.” 

The mystery of the cross, which we call serious illness, is a time of looking again, when the soul “turns back into itself,” seeing what one did not see before: the contingency of the work, the people, the world itself, which we once took for granted. 

Faith is a sort of sight. It is seeing what others cannot see. It is seeing what we ourselves did not see at first. Only God can grant faith, because God remains more than we can ever see unless he chooses to bestow the gift of this sight.

How curious that St. Paul, when writing to the church in Rome, described faith as a sort of hindsight, something we see when we look behind our own wake in the water, something often overlooked at first.  

Christ, while we were still helpless,  
yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. 
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, 
though perhaps for a good person 
one might even find courage to die. 
But God proves his love for us 
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (5:6-8) 

Sickness takes us where we would not choose to go, but it can be a time of hindsight. So often it defies our acts of will, but it always leaves us one choice, though it is a difficult one and must ceaselessly be repeated: to open our eyes and see. 

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.