What would you give to work a miracle like Jesus?
April is organ awareness month. I say that as we hear stories of Jesus healing various people today and for the next few weeks. Today we hear of a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years; in two weeks we will hear of another paralyzed individual enabled to walk, and in the week after that, someone born blind gets to see again.
In today’s Gospel story Jesus asks the paralyzed man, “do you want to get well?” and he answers, “I have no one to help me into the water when it moves.” “I have no one to help me.” How sad! The cure is just feet away, and he has no friend willing to camp out with him in the porches of Bethesda to roll him into the water when it moves. What grinding frustration. But look at today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles (9:32 & ff.). First Peter heals Aeneas, a paralyzed man. Then we are introduced to a woman known for her many acts of kindness and help, but now a woman even beyond paralysis because she’s dead. Yet because she is a member of the Church, a message is passed to Peter to come. He comes and restores her to life. St. Luke seems to belabor the point of her name, “Tabitha, which is Dorcas in Greek, and which means gazelle.” And what characteristics do we associate with gazelles? Isn’t it the way they move, how they leap and bound, and sprint? Is St. Luke trying to make sure that we notice the contrast between utter inertia and powerlessness and a restoration to vitality and energy? The man at Bethesda had no one to help him; Tabitha had the Church, and that means she had us. Are we somehow inhibited from doing great acts of kindness and mercy?
So here we are today, the heirs of those who intervened to bring astounding physical healing to others and what are we doing? It is in that light that I want to speak about organ donation. For so many of us the thought of donating the remnants of our body makes us queasy; for the very thought of our death can make us nervous. It is not a pleasant thought and we would like to put it out of our mind. But a wise person realizes that our death is a great and final opportunity to do some truly significant good. We can arrange to donate as little or as much of our mortal remains so that others might be healed, or even that they might live. We can donate our corneas, and someone else will see again. We can donate vital organs, and someone else will be granted an extension of life. In fact, many, many people can be healed by the donation of our organs. We must only inform those who will acquire the legal right to arrange our final medical care and subsequent death that this is our stated wish.
Let me remind you that such a healing gift will not deprive us or our loved ones of the customary funeral rites we practice in our culture. We can still have a traditional funeral with a viewing, and so on. Organ donation will not disfigure the parts of our body that others might want to look upon for a last time in this world.
Let me remind you that there is no age limit now for organ donations. Even those of us who are older have an opportunity to help others in this very noble way.
Let me remind you that this will not put an added expense on those who survive us. The cost of retrieving our organs is borne by the individual who will receive them, and that usually means their insurance company.
But let me remind you most of all of what the late Pope John Paul II said about doing so great a good deed: that is it a heroic act of Christian charity. The man at Bethesda had no one to help him. Will you step forward to help him before you leave this world? At our last moment we can play God in the very best sense of the term. We can give sight to the blind, perhaps make the lame walk, even extend the life of a young mother who has children to care for. Can you think of a way in which we can better imitate our Lord and Savior than by such an act so like his work and ministry? Then consider how tender, how well disposed, God might be with us in return for imitating his Son so well.