Reflection for Sunday – May 18, 2025

Meghan KellogSunday Readings Homilies

Readings: Acts 14: 21-27; Revelation 21: 1-5a; John 13: 31-33a, 34-35 
Preacher: Meghan Kelly

May 12th is International ME/CFS Awareness Day.  It’s easy to miss for two reasons.  There are so many days that focus on serious health issues that we have trouble remembering them all.  Most significantly, many people have never heard of the complex neuroimmune disease called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome because it is severely misunderstood. While more researchers worldwide have become interested in it as cases have risen post-COVID, there is still no cure and society doesn’t see the sickest among us because they are bedbound, many on feeding tubes, unable to function.

This awareness day comes and goes in the midst of an Easter Season of hope, the blooming of new life in the Spring, and is less than three weeks before the Feast of the Ascension. There are so many positive things upon which to focus, why do I highlight ME/CFS?

It is a chronic disease from which I have suffered for almost thirty years, when at the age of twelve I contracted a serious bout of mononucleosis and was left with life-altering symptoms that developed into ME/CFS. While mine is not severe like many others, I operate at about seventy percent. However, I share this predominantly because if you suffer from chronic health problems in any severity (or anything that affects you daily, such as mental illness, addiction, grief, etc.) you know exactly what it is like to have your faith tested and you have sat with doubt, rage, tears, limitation, and frustration.

If you read chapters 13-17 of the Gospel of John, you’ll find Jesus preparing His disciples for his impending suffering in His farewell discourse. Just like we are in the face of suffering, the disciples seemed confused, uncertain, and frankly, unaware, or unaccepting.

Our Gospel today points to the glory of the cross —the essence of the Christian story. Yet, even as Christians, when we are faced with cruel, unjust adversity in our lives, we panic. We can’t always comprehend that our loving Savior is present amidst the pain and despair. We hide, we flail, we go numb, we deny, we doubt. We align ourselves with the twelve disciples on the way to Calvary and avert our eyes, shield our hearts, and guard our minds from both the suffering and the love of Jesus.

But slowly, if we are open to the grace of God, we begin to let our guard down— maybe out of desperation, out of hope, or perhaps both.

In our first reading, Paul and Barnabas arrive in Antioch and call the church together. We read that they report on “what God has done with them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.” (Acts 14:27) Notice they don’t take credit but recognize the grace of God at work. They bear witness to the gift that God is working within each of us, inviting us to open our hearts, hands, and minds and let our Lord in.

And as we do this, in time, maybe we will be able to identify with the life-affirming passage from our second reading from Revelation: “Behold, I make all things new.” (Rev 21: 5) 

So many people with chronic conditions know their illnesses can linger relentlessly. Yet, every single person is promised: “Behold, I make all things new.” How this will manifest is only known by each person in the depths of their being. Pope Francis, who certainly knew what it was like to suffer physically, many times publicly, reminds us in a general audience in 2017 that:

“Christian hope is based on faith in God who always creates newness in the life of [human]kind, creates novelty in history, creates novelty in the universe.  Our God is the God who creates newness, because he is the God of surprises.”

For me, the transformation includes truly knowing gratitude in a new way, seeing beauty in ways I never noticed, and a relationship with a God whom I thought may have deserted me in my teen years after I didn’t find physical healing. My hopes and dreams ended up looking very different than what I had expected would unfold in my adult life. But, even after struggling with this disease for almost thirty years, God continues to refresh my heart and soul renewing me—a promise for us all.

May our God of newness renew us and bless us with a spirit of openness, particularly as we welcome our new Shepherd, Pope Leo XIV!

Meghan Kellog
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