Welcome.
I am Fr.
Koral Pit from Eden from the White-rope monks of St.
Benedict in South Africa.
We bring you today's homily from the Chapel of St.
Luke in Johannesburg.
I really hope you enjoy the next couple of minutes that we get to share together in the presence of the Spirit.
So today I would love to share a very personal journey,
A journey that has taken my family and myself through some intense realizations.
And when I sat down to read the Gospel reading today,
Which is the story about the synagogue official whose daughter was sick and subsequently passed away,
And Jesus told them that she was merely asleep and that he then went to her and woke her up with the words,
Dalita cum.
It really hit me straight in the chest that the healing power of God is phenomenal.
My family and I have been through COVID the past two weeks and many of you will know that hospital beds are not readily available in South Africa at the moment because of the pandemic.
So we had to make do at home for the most part and I recall very clearly one morning standing in the shower,
Not knowing if it's hot or cold or what to really feel.
I went into a conversation with God and I was tired and I said to God,
You know what?
This exhaustion,
This stringing us along,
It's not working for me anymore.
Please,
Please make up your mind.
Either make us better,
Make me better or take me to heaven.
But this waiting and not being able to breathe properly and not being able to find a comfortable position to just stand in or sit in or lie in without coughing or pain racking through your body,
I can't anymore Lord.
Make a plan.
And that was the day that things slowly started shifting and I was just reminded again of God's awesome power and of the fact that we can talk to God.
You know,
God is not this alien out there or as other people would see him,
This angry white man waiting for you to make a mistake so that he can smite you and send you down to hell.
God is always there and we need to have the openness to talk to God and to be honest with God.
I don't think in as much as God is awesome and beautiful and powerful,
All powerful,
That he only wants us at our best.
Because in the times that we are at our worst,
The times that we don't know how to take the next breath,
That is where God shows his absolute majesty and power and love and that is where the magic lies.
That is where when we are at our absolute worst,
When we don't know where to go or what to do,
That we can hear the words of the Lord,
Talitha kum,
Little girl,
Person,
Stand up.
Because in that awesome majesty of God is healing if we so accept it,
We need to just be able to go to God and say that you know today I'm not doing good,
I'm not feeling well and that is okay.
In this times that we are so tired with disease,
With not knowing what the future is going to bring with fears,
With family,
With challenges that we are facing,
It's okay to bring those moments to the Lord as well.
It is especially those moments that we need to bring to the Lord.
God is not just there for when things are going good,
God is also not just there for when things are going bad,
God is constant,
God is always there.
And I would love for everybody to start breaking down those walls of uncertainty,
How dare I bring my problems to the Lord.
That is exactly what the Lord wants us to do.
Go to the Lord,
Bring your problems,
Bring your joys,
Bring your fears,
Every single thing.
We are taught that we need to pray constantly and it's not necessarily in the pious way,
Hands together and on our knees in front of an altar.
But every single moment is an act of prayer.
Whatever we do,
We do with God,
God is there.
With or without our permission,
God is there.
So what we can do is we can become aware of that fact and every moment we can start living in communion with God.
And when we have that communion with God or the awareness thereof,
Life starts changing,
Life starts becoming less alone,
Maybe even less scary.
And it might not always change the physical outcome or the physical aspects of what we are facing,
But knowing that we are not alone is such an awesome piece of knowledge that even if we stand in a shower tired,
So tired,
We know that our prayer will still be heard because God is right there with us.
God sheds in our tiredness,
In our disease,
In our happiness and everything.
It is just sometimes that us mortals on this earth plane who forget our connection to the divine and our own level of divinity that resides deep inside ourselves.
Amen.
