“The Lord makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.  He secures justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry.  He sets captives free; the Lord raises up those bowed down.  The eyes of the blind are opened.  Streams will burst forth in the desert; the burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water.”  Without re-hashing every last word of the readings we’ve just heard, I do want to emphasize and draw out this important theme that Sacred Scripture brings before us today: whatever we lack, whatever our need is, whatever our struggle, whatever in us is broken: Christ is the answer.  Christ is the solution.  Christ is the healing. 

We know that our Faith isn’t magic.  Grace is not dispensed from some metaphysical ATM, where if you put in the proper card and push the right sequence of secret codes, then the reward you want will come spewing out on command.  Our Lord is not a genie to be manipulated.  But he is, by his own self-identification, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  For our basic, physical needs, he is the Way.  For our mental and emotional needs, he is the Truth.  And for our most profound spiritual needs, those needs deep down in our soul, he is Life.  He is food for our bodies, truth for our minds, and life for our souls. 

Of all three of those, perhaps the easiest to forget and overlook, is that he is food for our bodies: the source of all we need, even on a physical level.  That could actually be the hardest to see.  I certainly know my relationship with God gives comfort to my soul: sure.  I can even see how the Faith and all of its beautiful insights give peace and order to my mind.  But my body, my physical needs?  It seems that those needs are provided less by God and more by Kroger.  Or, to think about it another way, my physical needs, food, shelter, clothing, and so forth, are provided for by my employer through my salary (in my case, from you all, and thank you very much).  That’s true, of course, and I’m very grateful to you.  But that’s not the beginning or the end of the story.  We have to remember how central and essential God is, to everything.  As I’ve said before, it’s important that we try not to view God as a really old human, or even as an extremely powerful angel.  He’s not like Zeus was to the Greeks, a powerful and important part of the universe.  Our Faith makes the claim that God is far more important than all that.  He’s not an important player in the universe.  He’s the reason there is a universe, at all.  He existed before all time and space, and created all of this out of nothing.  He’s the reason there is life at all.  He’s the reason that anything exists at all in the first place, and he’s the reason that anything continues to exist at any given moment.  That means, there is no thing at all that we have or receive, that is not a free and unmerited gift from God.  Every single time, every single thing.  So even though I do rejoice that there’s a wheat farm in Kansas, and a supply chain operator in St. Louis, and a grocery store on Franklin Pike that all contributed to me having bread for my sandwich today, God is the reason that there is a Kansas, or any such thing as wheat, and it’s through his kindness and providence that human industry is able to get what I need to me.  Or on a more personal level, the last time I was sick: my doctor is the one who most directly helped me to get better, but God is the reason my doctor exists, and God is the reason that my doctor is intelligent and well-educated.  And God gave me a resilient body able to respond to medicine and fight off infection.  God is always there, even when human beings are playing their part, even when nature is playing her part.  God is behind it all.  And not just way back in the recesses of time when he started this whole project.  He’s always at work, in every time and in every place. 

This should fill us with joy and confidence and gratitude.  My life is not an accident.  God did not need to cause and permit my existence.  But he did, out of love.  Therefore I can be certain that, for the basic needs of my human life, Our Lord is certainly the Way.  For the profound needs of my mind, Our Lord is the Truth.  And for the final, most important needs, the needs of my soul, he is Perfect and Everlasting Life.