13 October 2019
Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
When you are suffering from some affliction, and you go to a health care professional, and you are given a course of treatment that involves repetition, you do it. You take the same pill over and over again. You apply the same ointment over and over again. Then again, maybe you get bored or tired and quit. Or, maybe you doubt the efficacy of the treatment.
When Naaman, the army commander of the King of Aram, was suffering from Leprosy, the great prophet Elisha gave him a repetitive course of treatment: plunge into the river Jordan seven times(2 Kings 5:14). He hesitated to try such an apparently useless treatment, but, upon the advice of his servants, he did it anyway, plunging himself all seven times. Through the prophet’s intercession, he experienced a miraculous cure.
There is a Latin dictum that repetitio est mater studiorum, which means that repetition is the mother of study. Another way to translate that Latin word studium is zeal, thus, the dictum can also mean that repetition is the mother of zeal. Such a translation would be apropos of the case of Naaman. It turns out that, after repeating his plunge into the Jordan over and over again, Naaman acquired zeal for Elisha and for the God of Israel, and even for the sacred land of Israel.
St. Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, has the exercitant make frequent repetitions. Repeitio est mater studiorum. When and if you make Spiritual Exercises, don’t underestimate the repetitions. They give birth to zeal for the Lord.