Naaman the Syrian (Docility)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Naaman, army commander of the king of Aram, was a man who enjoyed his master's respect and favor, since through him Yahweh had granted victory over the Arameans.”

But the man suffered from a vigilant skin disease. “On one of their raids into Israelite territory, the Arameans had carried off a little girl, who became a servant of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my master would approach the prophet of Samaria, he would cure him of his skin disease.’

“Naaman went and told his master. ‘This and this,’ he reported, ‘is what the girl from Israel has said.’

“‘Go, by all means,’ said the king of Aram. ‘I shall send a letter to the king of Israel.’ Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten fester robes.”

“He presented the letter to the king of Israel. It read, ‘With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you for you to cure him of his skin disease.’

“When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes. ‘Am I God to give death and life,’ he said, ‘for him to send a man to me and ask me to cure him of his skin disease? Listen to this and take note of it and see how he intends to pick a quarrel with me.’”

The cure of Naaman, a general in the army of the king of Syria. He had suffered from leprosy. He had heard his slave say that in Israel there was a prophet who would cure him. Eventually he comes down and he brings this letter to the king.

“But then when the prophet Elisha heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent word to the king: ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me and he will find there is a prophet in Israel.’ Naaman went with his team and chariots and drew up at the door of Elisha's house.

“Elisha sent him a messenger to say, ‘Go and bathe seven times in the Jordan and your flesh will become clean once more.’

“But Naaman was indignant and went off saying, ‘Here was I, thinking he would be sure to come out to me and stand there and call on the name of Yahweh his God, and wave his hand over the spot and cure the part that was diseased. Surely Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, are better than any water in Israel. Could I not bathe in them and become clean?’ And he turned around and went off in a rage.”

Naaman did not understand the ways of God, so different were they from what he had imagined. He said, ‘Here was I, thinking he would come out to me with all sorts of pomp and splendor.’

The Syrian general did want to be healed and he had come a long way for this, but he had his own idea of what would effect his cure.

When he had returned, convinced that his journey had been in vain, “His servants approached him and said, ‘If the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? The more reason then, if he simply says, Bathe and you will become clean.’”

Naaman reflected on their words and he humbly returned to carry out Elisha's recommendations.

“He went down and immersed himself,” we’re told, “seven times in the Jordan, as Elisha had told him to do, and his flesh became clean once more, like the flesh of a little child” (2 Kings 5:1-14).

He was humble and docile enough to take advice, which, humanly speaking, seemed useless.

We need to have great faith in the people that God has placed to guide us. They might be younger, less educated, less experienced, but they're the ones that are chosen, like Peter was chosen by God.

John or Matthew or James were not chosen; Peter was chosen. We need to put great faith in the chosen instruments of God to give us His will, to point things out to us.

Because he was docile and humble, he was cured. His interior dispositions made Elisha's prayer effective.

I once heard of a man who ran many companies, and he had a number of management problems. He spent a lot of money on management consultancies and various things to try and solve these problems.

After some time he noticed that this management problem that he had was beginning to take its toll on his spiritual life. It was being very relevant in his spiritual life. He was praying about it.

He thought, “Perhaps I should bring this up in spiritual direction, because now it's become something that's relevant to my spiritual life.”

He used to chat with a person much younger than him, maybe twenty, thirty, forty years younger than him, with no experience in management, who was not into that line of work at all.

But anyway, with a lot of faith and humility, he talked about his management problem to this person that he chatted with regularly about his spiritual affairs. This person said, “Why don't you try this particular thing, or work in that particular area or that particular point?”

The man brought this to his prayer, and he thought, “Really, that's the answer. That's where the solution lies.”

He saw this was fruit of the Holy Spirit, working through the channels that God had given to him. He was attentive and docile and humble to those inspirations of the Holy Spirit.

That's a little bit what this servant pointed out to Naaman. Naaman could have dismissed his servant and said, ‘What do you know?’ Or, ‘Don't talk to me about things like this,’ or ‘I'm very experienced,’ or ‘I know what I'm talking about.’

But he had the humility and the docility to listen, and also to see that his servant was right.

It may be very frequent that people younger than us, less experienced, less educated—they may be right. That can include our children.

Elisha's interior dispositions made his prayer effective. It’s very important to have those interior dispositions—to listen, to be docile, to realize that the Holy Spirit may be speaking to us through this person.

Frequently we may have illnesses of our soul, with defects, shortcomings, that we haven't yet managed to uproot. Maybe we need all the help we can get in a regular way.

Our Lord hopes that we'll be humble and docile to the indications and advice that we receive from those whom God has placed to help us in our search for holiness, in the midst of our work and our family life.

We can't have our own way when Our Lord is pointing to a solution that goes contrary to our own notions and opinions. Part of humility is that we're flexible.

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. Now this comes with humility and docility.

Docility is a word that comes from a Latin word, doceô, to teach or to learn: doceô, docêre, docuî, docueram.

In matters of the soul, we are not our own best advisors. We are not our own good doctors.

It's very healthy for us to have someone with whom we chat in a regular way, with whom we can open our soul, our heart, and our thoughts—someone of confidence, of integrity, a holy person, well chosen—so that they can give us objective advice on what we need.

It can be the channel of the Holy Spirit to guide us along that pilgrimage of faith, which is our vocation.

The normal thing is that Our Lord makes use of other people. He doesn't send His angel Gabriel, or He doesn't give us special lights in our own conscience so that we always know what is the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Normally He makes use of other people, so that we can humbly submit ourselves to their guidance. Often, that's what obedience is, submitting our will to the will of another.

When Our Lord called St. Paul on that journey when he was going to butcher the Christians, He spoke to him.

He could have revealed to Paul, there and then, His whole plan for his holiness, but He preferred to direct him to Ananias, so that from his lips, Paul would learn the truth.

“Rise up,” He said, “enter the city, and you will be told what to do” (Acts 9:4-6).

“You will be told what to do.” St. Paul allowed himself to be led, and, we're told, “For three days, he neither ate nor drank” (Acts 9:8-9).

Some people like to suggest that this may have been in biblical terms a sort of a low period in Paul's life, maybe a minor depression of some type. He lost his appetite.

This was all part of the journey. Paul had a very strong personality. We see that very clearly on many occasions—that strong personality, that leadership quality that he had, that in this moment helps him to be docile, to use all his strength of character, to listen carefully, to do what he's told, to obey.

His fellow travelers take him to Damascus. They have to lead him by the hand because his sight is gone.

Then Ananias gave him back his sight (Acts 9:17-18), and now he's useful. He's a man useful for fighting the battles of the Lord.

These trials, or these stages, or these efforts in virtue that Our Lord invites us to go through, counting on our cooperation and our humility, are stages in which He wants us to earn a lot of merits.

He's forming us all the time to be better soldiers of Christ, preparing us perhaps for the apostolic battles that are up ahead.

Faith in the means that God gives us helps God to work miracles in us and through us—works miracles in our own life, works miracles in society, the people around us.

On one occasion Our Lord asked a cripple to do something which, from vast experience, the man knew he could not do. It was to stretch out his withered hand, and he was to stretch out his withered hand there in front of everybody.

Again docility, the sign of an operative faith, made the miracle possible (Matt. 12:9-13). We do what we're told when we listen.

A man told me once how thirty, forty years ago he and a few other people were trying to start a school in Chile. But there was a communist government there at the time.

They were hesitating. Is this the right moment to go forward? What should we do? We set up a school—maybe the communist government might take it away.

But that man was a businessman and he had to go to Europe on business on one occasion. He decided to pass by Rome and talk to the founder of Opus Dei, St. Josemaría Escrivá, and ask him for his advice.

He said, “Father, you see we have this possibility of starting a school and we're hesitating. We don't know whether to go forward or to wait until an opportune moment when things seem better.”

St. Josemaría said, “My son, the time to go forward with apostolic undertakings is now.” That man said he went back to Chile and communicated that to the other members of the committee.

And so, they started their school. Forty years later there are ten schools and a flourishing university in Chile.

When we listen to those gems of grace that are given to us, we put them into practice, miracles occur.

There may be times when we also are asked to do things which we think we're incapable of. But they’ll become possible if we allow the grace of God to act within us—a grace which, quite frequently, comes to us as a result of docility and spiritual direction.

“Master, we have toiled all night; we caught nothing. But at your word…” (Luke 5:5). Very frequently in Scripture, great importance is given to “your word.”

‘There isn't a single reason for listening to you. We've been toiling all night. We know the mobile, the email, and the contact number of every fish in this lake, and we say there are no fish here. There are no fish.’

“But at your word, I will lower the net.” They caught a miraculous catch of fish, 153 big fish (Luke 5:5-7).

The miracle is repeated again and again. We have to try and allow the grace of God to act within us. Our Lord asks us not to seek mere earthly supports which might inevitably lead to pessimism.

He asks us for supernatural trust, for us to be supernaturally realists—to count on Him, that is, being aware that Christ continues to influence our lives.

Ten men found their cure because they were docile. Our Lord simply tells them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

He doesn't cure them there and then. He wants to use other people. He wants them to really want what they're asking for. He wants them to use what's in their capacity to implement, to go, to make that journey.

“Go and show yourselves to the priests. And,” we’re told, “as they went along their way, they remained clean” (Luke 17:14).

How many great miracles happen in our family life, in our work, in our sport, in our finances, in our health, happen as we go along our way, almost imperceptibly.

Maybe the other nine didn't fully realize they were cleansed. Just the one fully realized it and came back to give thanks (Luke 17:15-18).

On another occasion, Our Lord had compassion on a man born blind.

St. John says, “Jesus spat on the ground and made a paste and anointed the man's eyes with the clay, saying to him, ‘Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam’” (John 9:6-7).

Our Lord uses other material things that He has created. In some ways, it's a bit amusing that Our Lord would spit on the ground—the Son of God made man—that He would use His spittle to work a miracle.

In some ways, it shows the humanity of Christ, “like us in all things but sin” (Heb. 4:15). He uses that spittle to work a miracle.

But not only that, He wants the beggar to go and do what was there on his part, to be docile, to be obedient, to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. The beggar didn't doubt for an instant. So he went and washed and he came back to see Him.

“What an example,” said St. Josemaría, “of firm faith the blind man gives us!”

We’re told in Friends of God: “His is a living operative faith. Do you behave like this when God commands, when so often you can't see, when your soul is worried and the light is gone?

“What power could the water possibly contain that when the blind man's eyes were moistened with it they were cured? Surely some mysterious eye ointment, or a precious medicine made up in the laboratory of some wise alchemist, would have been more efficacious? But the man believed; he acted upon the command of God, and he returned with eyes full of light” (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 193).

Our blindness, our defects, our weaknesses—these are shortcomings that have a remedy. We ourselves can't do anything, but Christ is all-powerful.

The water of that pool went on being water. The clay continued to be clay. But the blind man recovered his sight with a deeper living faith in the Lord.

As often happens in the Gospel, we are shown the faith of those who have trusting relations with Jesus. Without docility, spiritual guidance remains fruitless.

We can't be docile if we insist on being stubborn, obstinate, incapable of assimilating an idea different from those we already hold, or which we have gotten into our heads as a result of some negative experience when we have not counted on the hand of grace.

Pride makes us incapable of docility, because in order to understand, one has to be convinced that there are still things which are outside our experience, and that we need someone to point them out to us.

To achieve spiritual improvement, we have to realize that we are not as good as God expects us to be. In matters related to our own interior life, we ought to be forewarned, with a prudent mistrust in our own judgment.

Those are very interesting words: “prudent mistrust in our own judgment” so as to be able to accept criteria different from or even opposed to our own.

There's a story in the book of Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, where he talks about being at some board meeting one time, and the Chairman of the Board wanted to push a certain decision.

He asked the board members to think about it and they were all in agreement. Maybe it was the four corporations, or Chrysler, one of those big ones.

Because everyone was in agreement, he said, “We won't make that decision. We need somebody to argue against the motion. We need a devil's advocate to point out to us the negative aspects or consequences of the decision we're about to make.”

Very wise and prudent. There's always another side of the story that we need to hear. There may be other opinions or judgments or decisions that we need to hear in order to see our own decision in a different light.

We need that “prudent mistrust of our own judgment.”

We can allow, therefore, in that way, allow God to mold and remold us through events, through inspirations, through lights received in spiritual direction. This little thing and that little thing.

Every time you go to spiritual direction, try to come away with one idea. One simple, clear idea. You'll find, over time, that you'll amass, maybe, twenty ideas.

But those very important ideas, the fruit of the Holy Spirit in your soul, will help to guide your soul perhaps for all eternity.

We will permit ourselves in this way to be shaped, to be molded, to be formed with the docility of clay “in the hands of the potter”—another phrase from the Old Testament—without offering any resistance, with supernatural outlook, listening to Christ through the one who has the grace to direct.

With the prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament, it says, “‘I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he remade it into another vessel. … Like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand,’ says God.” (Jer. 18:3-4,6).

With availability, with docility, we will allow ourselves to be reworked and shaped by God as often as necessary.

If that clay in the potter's hand could speak, the clay might say, ‘Oh, that water that you threw on me was cold.’ And, ‘Oh, that thumb there and that finger there, oh, you're patting me in all the wrong places. Oh, I don't like it.’

Then the clay might be put into the oven to be baked and the clay shouts, ‘Oh, it's too hot in here, get me out of here.’

Then the more shaping, and more clay, and then they're glazed, and then put back in the oven again—finally, you get a wonderful bowl or jug or something that can last for a thousand years.

But if that clay could speak and that resistance could be made known, it might be screaming all the way.

We have to allow ourselves so that God can make us into the souls He wants us to be.

That could be a resolution from our prayer: to be more docile, to achieve that sort of docility that Our Lady had—to go here, to go there, to do this, to do that.

In Psalm 84, it says, “My soul is longing and pining for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.”

We have to try and correspond to grace with faith. Our souls need purification in order to see Christ the Lord.

To enter into the dwelling of the Lord, a soul has to be clean and humble. For us to be able to see Jesus, good dispositions are needed.

Again and again, the Gospel shows us this.

Having spent some time preaching in towns and cities of Galilee, Our Lord returned to Nazareth “where he had been brought up.” Everyone knew Him there; He was the son of Joseph and Mary.

“And as his custom was, on Saturday Our Lord attended the synagogue. He stood up to read the sacred text and he chose the Messianic passage of the prophet Isaiah” (Luke 4:16-17).

St. Luke makes clear the extraordinary sense of expectation that there was in the air.

“Then he shut the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. All those who were in the synagogue fixed their eyes on him” (Luke 4:20).

They'd heard marvels about Mary's son and expected to see even more extraordinary things in Nazareth.

Nonetheless, although at the beginning, “all bore testimony to him and were astonished at the gracious words which came from his mouth” (Luke 4:22), they did not have faith.

Jesus explained to them that God's plans are not based on ties of blood or of nationality. It was not enough to have lived with Him. A great faith was needed.

He produced examples from the Old Testament: “In the prophet Elisha's time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these were cured except the Syrian, Naaman” (Luke 4:27).

The graces granted from heaven, without any limits being placed by God, did not take into account one's race—Naaman did not belong to the Jewish people—so God does not take into account race or age or social position.

But Our Lord did not find the necessary dispositions in His hearers in the land where he was brought up, and so “He did not work any miracles there,” we’re told (Matt. 13:458).

These people saw in Him only the son of Joseph, only the one who made tables and repaired chairs. “‘Is not this the son of Joseph?’ they asked” (Luke 4:22).

They did not know how to see beyond appearances. They did not discover the Messiah who had come among them.

He did not work any miracles. They did not discover the Messiah who had come among them.

On contemplating Christ, we too ought to purify our soul.

In The Way, St. Josemaría says, “That Christ you see is not Jesus. It's only the pitiful image that your blurred eyes are able to form. … Purify yourself. Clarify your sight with humility and penance. Then… the pure light of love will not be denied you. And you will have perfect vision. The image you see will be really his: his!” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 212).

We can ask Our Lady for a deeper docility—to listen carefully to the things that are said to us in a spiritual direction, and to strive to put them into practice.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW