Below are some exerpts from the homily delivered on Sunday, May 3, 2009 at the Diocese of Brooklyn's Annual Nurses Mass held at the Cathedral Basilica of St. James in downtown Brooklyn.
Today ... we come to honor you nurses who come to this Eucharist to seek a blessing upon your life’s work and vocation. You take care of others in their most vulnerable of situations. Even today in the midst of a healthcare world with so many new technologies and procedures, many things have to stand in the way of patient contact. Clearly, it was your desire and vocation to care for those in need, to assist them, especially when they are most vulnerable.
The Second Reading today from the Acts of the Apostles gives us a good example of the connection between faith and healing. St. Peter had to defend himself before a Jewish court for the good deed he had done in the healing of a cripple. You remember the story which just preceded the passage we read this morning. The cripple reaches out to St. Peter and his companion asking for alms since he had no other way of supporting himself. St. Peter stops, looks at the man with love and says, “Gold and silver I have not, but what I have I give to you; rise and walk in the name of Jesus Christ the Risen One.” And so the miracle happens. Would that too we would have that same power at times. And yet it is not miraculous cures that are most important, but the constant attention for those who feel the desperation of chronic and incurable diseases...
There is a strong connection between faith and healing and wellness. Truly, you who are involved in the works of mercy in healthcare understand that all too well because you see it on a daily basis. If only we could announce to the world the Resurrection and its benefits in the same way that medical scientists and professionals today with great fanfare publicize their latest findings.
Today, however, we are experiencing a medical emergency in the threat of the Swine Flu epidemic or possible pandemic. We know so much more about the transmission of disease today and about viruses than we did in the great pandemic of 1918. I often listened to the stories told by my grandparents of that event. My own mother was born in 1919, just after the pandemics had subsided. The stories of faith and courage of that time were something I understood to be true examples of faith. I remember a particular man who used to come and visit my grandmother frequently to thank her for preparing the bodies of his parents for burial since no one else would dare go near them. He was left an orphan and could never forget the good deed that my grandmother performed and how she took care of him for sometime afterwards. Crisis can bring the best and the worst out of us.
We take this occasion today to pray for those in charge with managing the healthcare of our Nation and our city, that they may make the right decisions, that all of our citizens will cooperate and do what is best to contain the spread of this possible pandemic.
...All of us are called to live our lives as a vocation, you who are nurses and others in various ways. And yet, we must not forget, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, and every day to pray to the Lord of the Harvest that He send us sufficient shepherds and shepherdesses to guide the flock, so that the mystery of the Resurrection can be preached in all of its glory and fullness.