Expectant Faith and the Power of God’s Healing
Homily, St Matthew’s Church, May12th 2026: Expectant Faith and the Power of God’s Healing
There is no doubt about the fact that faith is the key to the experience of healing. It is obvious in the gospels that Jesus encouraged people to have faith and commended those who had. For example, he said to a blind man, “Go your way; your faith has made you well” (Mk 10:52) and he said to the woman with the chronic menstrual problem, “My daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace” (Lk 8:48). What many people fail to appreciate, however, is the fact that there are two kinds of faith, hesitant and expectant. Over the years, I have learned to recognise the difference between them.
As a priest people often ask me to pray for healing. Although I firmly believe in my mind that God can heal people when we pray for them with compassion, at the level of my heart I often have hesitation. I would wonder whether God wanted to use me to heal this particular person, of his or her particular ailment, at this particular time. Rm 12:3 that we should pray within the measure of faith we have received. So, I would say a tentative prayer like this, “I know Lord that you have promised to heal sick people, if it is your holy will I ask you to heal this person of his or ailment.” Notice that this is an iffy, hesitant prayer rather than a confident, expectant one. In other words, it is praying with hope that something good will happen, but remember Jesus never said to anyone in the gospels, “your hope has made you well.”
Expectant faith is different. Jesus spoke about this kind of faith in our Gospel reading. He said, “I assure you that whoever tells this hill to get up and throw itself in the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.” In other words, if a sick person or a healer prays with no hesitation for an obstacle like cancer to be moved, it will be moved. But here is a vital question, how can we move from hesitant faith to heartfelt faith of an expectant kind? The answer is, we need a special touch of God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts which gives us a here and now awareness of the divine will. Fr. Edward O’ Connor has written “Evidently, the faith which Jesus speaks about is not belief in the strict sense of assent to a truth, but confident expectation, based on trust in God, which should animate our prayer. Future events, without a special revelation about them, can only be the object of hope and not belief.” I have found that the revelation of God’s will can come in various ways. Le me recount two healings which illustrate my point. The first is about receiving an inner inspiration.
In the 1970s when I was prayerfully wrestling with the passage in Mk 11:20-23, a pupil of mine, a fine footballer, injured his back. He was in considerable pain, found it hard to sleep or study, and was unable to play on the College team. At one point a number of the sixth formers approached me. "Fr. we need Neil for a cup match," they said, "we have heard you preaching about God's willingness to answer prayer. Will you pray for him?" I said I'd consider it, if Neil asked me himself. Secretly, because of my hesitant faith, I was hoping he wouldn't. Then the headmaster approached me and made a similar request. I gave him the same evasive answer that I had already given to the boys. Finally, Neil himself came to see me and requested prayer. I arranged to meet him after school.
When we got together, I read the passage from Mark 11:20-23 which we have heard being read. "Do you believe what the Lord promises?" I asked. "Well, let's put it this way, Father, I believe that what the Lord says is true, but I find it hard to believe it will be true in my case, just now." "I'm much the same," I said, "but we will pray as best we can and see what happens." I put my hands on Neil's back while imagining that the light of God's healing love was shining upon it and within it. As my concentration deepened, I found myself telling the injury to yield to the power of God. As I was doing this I became utterly convinced that what we were praying for was being granted. I concluded by thanking the Lord for what he was doing and would continue to do in Neil's back. When the prayer was over I asked Neil how he felt. "To tell the truth, Fr. The pain is worse now!" "Take no notice," I said, "Imitate St Peter when he was walking on the water. Keep your mind on Jesus; forget about your symptoms. We were praying for a healing, not a miracle. It is a process; it will take time."
The following day, when I got into class I asked Neil how he was. "I had a great night's sleep,” he said cheerily, “for the first time since the accident. My back is fine now," and he did a number of twists and bends to prove the point. That was the first time I saw expectant faith lead to healing.
A few years ago, I was in Malta speaking at a conference. Toward the end I was asked if I would celebrate an outdoor Mass in the orchard and pray for healing. I said I would. Before the Mass I prayed for words of knowledge which would reveal the divine will. One of them was about a man with a man who was suffering from a painful arthritic hip and walked with a limp. When I was praying for healing I asked if any man present was suffering from that problem. One guy raised his hand, and I prayed with confidence and expectation that he would be healed because I was convinced that I was praying within the will of God. A few days later he told me that all his pain was gone and that he walking without a limp. I asked him to get in touch a moth later if he was still OK. Four weeks later he sent an email to confirm that he was without pain and walking normally.
As we pray for healing be open to receive a sudden inspiration or a word of knowledge. We can experience both tonight. One barrier to both, however, is unforgiveness. Our gospel reading made that point. Un-forgiveness is a block to this kind of expectant faith. To withhold forgiveness is to lose the inner witness of God’s immediate presence and inspirations, upon which the prayer of faith depends. So with the help of God’s grace forgive anyone living or dead who offended you.
