Healing Masses? Caveat Emptor!

Please review carefully the flyer that was on a literature table in a Catholic church in Montgomery County. It was available for anyone to pick up.  In making it available to anybody walking by, the creators of this flyer were inviting the public to attend this event.  That is to say, it was a public event with no presumption to privacy whatsoever.  Thus, at Maryland law, it was fair game for recording.

I have heard of the concept of "healing Mass" before.  What strikes me is why a particular Mass would be classified as a "healing Mass".  That differentiation implies that there must also be those Masses that are not "healing Masses".  So, when we consider what the Church teaches about Holy Mass, this differentiation is, at best, peculiar.

Let's start our examination by what the Church has always taught about Holy Mass.  We'll keep this simple, for now.  The Baltimore Catechism is a good place to start.

Question 357 of the Baltimore Catechism is, "What is the Mass?  The Mass is the sacrifice of the New Law in which Christ, through the ministry of the priest, offers Himself to God in an unbloody manner under the appearances of bread and wine."

Now let's jump to Question 361.  "What are the purposes for which the Mass is offered?  The purposes for which the Mass is offered are: first, to adore God as our Creator and Lord, second, to thank Him for His many favors, third, to ask God to bestow His blessings on all men, fourth, to satisfy the justice of God for the sins committed against Him."

Of course one could say that petitions for healing do fit the third purpose for which Mass is offered, but the third purpose does not overshadow the other three purposes of Mass - at least not a rightly-ordered Mass.  However, on April 28, that overshadowing most certainly occurred, and I bear eye witness.  Father's homily (or at least what I could make out, given the less-than-ideal acoustics) focused almost exclusively on "healing".

Before I go more into the Mass and its issues, I'd like to touch upon an important element of authentic healing - that of the Sacrament of Confession.  Examine that flyer.  Do you see any hint of that Sacrament being mentioned just once?  Neither do I, nor did I hear anything Friday evening.  To be clear, I walked in just as Mass was about to get underway so I didn't hear anything that transpired before that.  However, since only two priests were present, that would not have been sufficient to hear confessions of any attendees in under an hour, nor did I see confession stations set up in the Church.

That dovetails into what Scripture gives for a reason for the healing component of Jesus' ministry on earth.   Let's look at Luke 5:16-25, where Jesus heals a paralytic.  When the paralytic's friends lower him through the roof in front of Jesus, Jesus says to the sick man, "thy sins are forgiven thee."  After He sees the scribes and Pharisees taking umbrage, He says to them, "...that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins..", then He heals the man.  Look at the underscored part.   That is a key reason why He heals: to demonstrate His authority to forgive sins.  

The Encounter School of Ministry's site claims that "the Gospel is not whole without signs, wonders and miracles."   But what does a sign do?  It points to another, usually greater, reality outside of itself.  Here's a simple example.  Say a starving person stumbles upon a sign that points to where that person may obtain food.  Does the starving person gape and marvel at the sign itself?  Of course not!  He/she leaves the sign and goes to where the sign indicated to obtain food.  Again, I saw no indication regarding the necessity of having sins forgiven, nor of the Sacrament of Confession.

Earlier in this post I alluded to issues with this healing Mass.  Most of the Mass was ok, for a Novus Ordo Mass.  However, it unraveled towards the end - and part of the problem is that the Mass was never properly concluded.  That is, I didn't hear the dismissal.  If in fact that happened and I just didn't hear it (which I doubt), please enlighten me.   Anyway, after the vessels were purified after Communion, the Blessed Sacrament was placed in the monstrance and it was processed up and down the aisles, with most people doing proper reverence.  Then it was placed on the altar and mayhem ensued as the "healing" got underway.

Here's how it went.  Father Escudero asked the congregation who was suffering from various ailments.  The first group he picked was those suffering from headaches and other head-related problems.  He asked those people to stand.  Then he asked those around these individuals to lay hands on them or extend their hands to them and led them in what he seemed to call prayer.  That is, he said prayers a few words at a time with others repeating.  This gesture on the part of laypeople serves to blur the lines between ordained clergy and lay folks, lines that are already becoming too blurred.

Some of the prayer was to God, but then some of it was directed at the ailments themselves, with such words as "headache, be gone" or "allergies, leave".  I've read the accounts of Our Lord healing people.  Not once did I read that He addressed the ailments.  He did address demons if they were the causes of the maladies, but never did He address the ailments or symptoms themselves.  I have never heard of that before.  It seems to have no Scriptural nor Traditional precedent.

Then he asked if any experienced healings.  Some said they did and they were called upon to tell the congregation all about it, after which the congregation broke out into applause. Recall that Cardinal Ratzinger decried applause during the liturgy.  "But Mass was over", you say?  Not so, for the dismissal was never properly given.  Mass was still in session, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed on the altar, and yet we had this kind of calling out and applause going on?  So much for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on the altar!

There were several repetitions of this pattern, for back ailments, stomach issues, leg problems, etc.  Finally that ended and it was announced that people could go to various team members at stations on the perimeter of the church.  Again, I heard no mention of Confession, and I still don't know if Mass was ever properly concluded, as I departed at that point.

Healing Mass?  The purpose of this Mass deviated from that stated in Tradition and proper rubrics were disregarded.  I saw no mention of Confession, which would have made possible real healing where it counts - to remove any impediment to eternal salvation.  In fact, I heard very little of heaven and other eternal matters, for even with all the temporal healing possible, we will all die and face Our Lord.  

Now were those people really healed?  I don't know.  Either way, there's no justification for the insult done to Mass.