Presented to The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 11 June 2023, by Major Michael Ramsay
John 7:37-38: On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
We went to Sanctuaire
de Notre-Dame de Lourdes. They have healing water in a spring there under
the church that you can walk right up to. The story of the healing spring and
the cathedral goes a little like this: Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old
peasant girl, on 11 February 1858 saw a vision of Mary, the mother of Jesus and
was told to go and drink water from a spring which was to appear inside the
grotto and wash herself with it. She did and she kept going there and by
mid-July had seen Mary 18 times. She was also told to tell the priests to build
a chapel at the grotto site. They did. The Cathedral was built over the spring and
people – like us - still visit today.
God is a God of miracles even today. There is
a whole community built up around that healing. The rocks with healing water
running from them – the Cathedral is built on top of those rocks - and people
line up to touch the healing water flowing through them. There are also fountains
with taps and troughs where people can touch the water. (This actually reminded
me of a trip we took to Santuario de Chimaya in New Mexico in the
USA – but there it was healing dirt instead of healing water - I have both
healing dirt and holy water from there in my office.) In Lourdes, where we just
were, there were nuns in habits everywhere. There were physicians and
caretakers everywhere. There were patients, sick, and infirm everywhere. People
in search of God and people in search of healing everywhere: People come from
all over the world to hear God and be healed by Him. It reminds me of Luke 13.
Luke 13: 29-30:
People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their
places at the feast in the Kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last
who will be first, and first who will be last.”
Here is a picture of
the lantern procession. People from the east, west, north, and south gather to
take part. It was quite something. The Cathedral was right below our hotel
room. We went down, got ourselves a couple of lanterns and joined them. There
were thousands of people there – from all over the world, speaking in all kinds
of languages, singing in all kinds of languages, praying in many languages. It
reminded me of Acts 2
Acts 2:5-8: Now
there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under
heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment,
because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they
asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each
of us hears them in our native language?
Now I did not notice
the gift of tongues or more accurately the gift of hearing languages that is
mentioned in Acts Chapter 2 but I did hear the words sung, recited and prayed
in English, German, French, Spanish, Latin… and people were gathered from far
away places. Groups would be there flying their national flags in the holy
procession showing that they are part of the gathering of the nations like in Acts
2, Matthew 25 or Revelation. Nations from all over the world were gathered here
together, today, on that day, expecting a miracle and many received miracles
and they were worshipping our Lord at the Cathedral in Lourdes, France.
One of the things that
was quite moving about this whole experience was just like the pericope we read
from John Chapter 5 about the man wasn’t able to be healed because no one would
bring him to the healing water. I am sure this passage must have been in the
minds of so many people there: for at the front of the line of the procession
were nuns and nurses and others pushing people in wheelchairs bringing them to
the front of the line of people cueing up for the healing at the waters. This
love and compassion also reminded me of Luke Chapter 5. Do you remember this
story?
Luke 5:17-25: One
day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting
there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and
Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. 18 Some
men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house
to lay him before Jesus. 19 When they could not find a way to do this because
of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the
tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20 When Jesus saw
their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
21 The Pharisees and
the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who
speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
22 Jesus knew what
they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your
hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get
up and walk’? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on
earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up,
take your mat and go home.” 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took
what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed
and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen
remarkable things today.”
I was really impressed
to see the parade of nuns in habits and others each pushing someone in a
wheelchair in the morning to the healing water and in the evening to the parade
of worship and praise. People for more than one hundred years have loved their
neighbours, their family members and others enough to save up enough money for
a trip and travel, enough to take time off from their lives and their
day-to-day responsibilities; people since the 19th Century and even
now are sacrificing and putting everything on hold to bring others to the water
in Lourdes to be healed and to be saved. This is a perfect parable, an accurate
analogy for our responsibility as Christians, as friends, as family members, as
people who know the healing power of God and from where it comes. John Chapter 4, that we read earlier tells us
Jesus is the Living Water!
Now we all probably
know that God doesn’t heal everyone how and when we expect as they are brought
to the water in Lourdes. And, we all probably know from experience and other
ways that God doesn’t heal everyone here, how and when we expect – even when
they are brought to the Living Water of our Lord (sometime before Jesus’
return, of course, each of us will still have to die of something) but
sometimes, so we know it is a miracle and so that we know that God is sovereign
and sometimes so that we know God loves us, sometimes He heals us, through the
Lord’s Living Water like He has healed many people through the Cathedral healing
water in Lourdes.
Let us pray
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