Posted by The WORD in other words (2006) by Fr Martin Mandin SVD – Divine Word Seminary of Tagaytay
Tuesday 4th Week in Ordinary Time
Image source : Wikimedia Commons
In the Divine Word Hospital – Tacloban City, I was once a chaplain. As a chaplain, hospital personnel and patients’ relatives used to call me to pray for the sick when they were already so serious. People around observed that after I prayed over the sick, most of them died. Some doctors, even considered me as the ‘terminator’.
Confronted with sickness and death, human beings experience powerlessness. My pre-occupation in the hospital was how to initiate prayer for the sick, and not just wait until the few moments before death. I desired to have courage to pray for the sick and not be embarrassed, if they will not be healed. It was my obsession then to heal like Jesus in today’s Gospel. But experience tells me I am different from Jesus.
We may not be able to heal like Jesus, we may not have the expected result of healing. But we can be active in healing the sick and wounded world. As baptized in Jesus’ name, as his disciples, we have an unquestionable vocation to heal. If we are incapable of healing directly we can be “instruments” of his healing mission. It is not we who directly heal, we don’t have the power. We can only trust God’s power.
For Jesus, sickness is an occasion for a miserable man to encounter a loving God. As one encounters God, a person and a community realize how distorted their values can be. Human beings will realize the relationships between sin and suffering, between immorality and human disintegration.
In our openness to God, we gain wisdom and enlightenment on the value of life, its proper care and its prevention from destruction. No wonder, even in our secularistic society, Time magazine and CNN entertain a topic like: the significance of religion in health. Modern man reads Christotheraphy. May we allow ourselves to become authentic witnesses in a sick and wounded world.
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