The Third Sunday of Lent

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In Nicholas Evans' popular novel The Horse Whisperer Annie Graves
travels across a continent with her daughter Grace and Grace's severely
traumatized horse Pilgrim in a desperate attempt to convince a Montana
rancher named Tom Booker to help them; for a friend has told her that
Booker is one of that elite group of people with the ability to heal
injured horses.

They could see into the creature's soul and soothe the
wounds they found there. Often they were seen as witches
and perhaps they were. Some wrought their magic with the
bleached bones of toads, plucked from moonlit streams.
Others, it was said, could with but a glance root the
hooves of a working team to the earth they plowed.... For
secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears,
these men were known as Whisperers.

In addition to the challenge of calming Pilgrim, who has been
severely injured in a gruesome riding accident, Booker soon discovers
that he has two human souls to heal as well. Grace has blocked out all
memory of the terrible accident in which her dearest friend was killed
and she herself has lost a leg. Crippled for life, she turns her fear
and anger inward, blocking anyone's attempt to help her get on with
life.

Her mother, Annie, a high-rolling advertizing executive, has
alienated herself from both her husband and daughter for years and is
suddenly forced to come face to face with what she has sacrificed
because of her career. Grace's physical and emotional injury following
the accident is but a shadow of Annie's inner alienation from herself.
Annie has lost the ability both to give and receive human affection.

It is a story about a woman in search of healing for a wounded animal
and her daughter who ends up finding herself healed in ways she was
neither looking for nor expecting.

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This week's gospel story does something that few other gospel
passages do: it tells us how wounds and divisions, especially ones that
are longstanding, get healed. Jesus is a healer in this week's story
but in ways that are not obvious at first glance.


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