Today’s first reading is one of the best, in my opinion, and is a model for the sort of television shows one frequently sees on the SciFi channel. It also reminds me of the 2005 long-running television show, “Bones,” a comedy-drama, crime series in which a forensic anthropologist helps solve crimes by examining skeletal remains of victims.
We can all relate to bones, especially when they are broken, and a visit to the emergency room is in order for x-rays, diagnoses, and casts. With me it has been fingers and toes. One of my sons had a collar bone broken during the last game of his senior year in high school. Gotta love that pad-skimpy game of lacrosse – a game of slashing sticks and high-speed balls.
Our passage from Ezekiel reminds me of ER doctors. We enter the hospital with pain and worry. Sometimes we seem lifeless. They put our rattling bones together, bone joining bone. They repair our sinews and stitch our flesh. They raise our spirits though their care and healing work. For many of us when our injuries are dire and we are near death, they bring us back to life. In a way, they open our graves that we’ve fallen into when our EKG has flat-lined and our pulse is no more.
Of course, this reading is really about the dryness caused by little or lost faith making us appear as dry bones: no flesh on the bone. And we’re not alone. We have many companions in the center of the plain filled with bones. But, as Ezekiel says, our bones can come to life. This happens when we hear the Word of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit then breathes life back into us.
And how is that life regained? Our Gospel tells us how: by loving the Lord, our God, with all our hearts and by loving our neighbor as ourselves. This is the prescription for putting flesh on our bones, opening our graves, and having us rise.
Deacon David Pierce
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