Seeing Christ in Illness

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.

“Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them” (Luke 4:40). We're told this in St. Luke and in St. Mark.

The sick were so numerous that “the whole city was gathered together about the door.” They brought the sick “when the sun was setting” (Mark 1:32-33).

Our Lord makes Himself present to the sick. We're told the sick were brought “when the sun was setting.” Why not earlier? Because that day was the Sabbath.

After sunset a new day began and the obligation to observe the Sabbath rest ceased; it was an obligation that pious Jews practiced faithfully.

St. Luke's Gospel has recorded for us this homely detail about Christ. He cured them, “laying his hands on every one of them.”

Our Lord pays great attention to each one of the sick and gives that person the whole of His attention, because each person, and particularly a person who is suffering, is very important to Him.

Every single one is always welcomed by Jesus, who has a compassionate and merciful heart towards everybody, without exception, and especially for those who are most in need.

Our Lord characterizes His presence among us by “preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and,” says St. Matthew, “healing every disease and every infirmity” (Matt. 9:35).

This is why “the throng wondered when they saw the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel” (Matt. 15:31).

John Paul II says, “In his messianic activity in the midst of Israel, Christ drew increasingly closer to the world of human suffering. In the Acts of the Apostles, we're told, ‘He went about doing good’ (Acts 10:38), and his actions concerned primarily those that were suffering and seeking help” (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Salvifici doloris, February 11, 1984).

In his Apostolic Letter, Salvifici doloris (The Salvific Value of Pain), John Paul II said, “He healed the sick, consoled the afflicted, fed the hungry, freed people from deafness, from blindness, from leprosy, from the devil, and from various physical disabilities; three times he restored the dead to life.

“He was sensitive to every human suffering, whether of the body or of the soul. And at the same time he taught, and at the heart of his teaching, there are the eight beatitudes which are addressed to people tried by various sufferings in this temporal life.”

We, who want to be faithful followers of Christ, must learn from Him how to treat the sick and how to love them. We have to approach them with great respect, affection, and mercy.

We should be happy when we're able to do some little service for them, visiting them, keeping them company; making it possible for them to receive the sacraments at the right time. In them especially, we see Christ.

In The Way, Point 419, we're told, “Children. The Sick. —As you write these words, don't you feel tempted to use capitals? The reason is that in children and the sick a soul in love sees Him (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 419).

There may be moments in our life when we are sick ourselves, or people around us are sick. This is a treasure that God gives us to look after.

Our Lord comes close to us so that we may learn to love more and also to find Him. In our dealings with people who suffer from various sicknesses, the words of Our Lord have become a reality in our lives: “As you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

We're called to sanctify illness and to learn to be good patients. Illness, when it's borne for love of God, is a means of sanctification, of apostolate, an excellent way of sharing Christ's redeeming Cross.

Fulton Sheen tells a story of a lady at the turn of the 20th century in Paris who was a very ordinary lady. She married a very intelligent man who was the chairman of the Communist Party and the editor of the communist newspaper.

She felt that God had given her this husband; it was to bring him to the faith. She tried to engage him intellectually, to teach him aspects of the faith, but she got nowhere.

After a number of years of marriage, she developed a very severe illness and she had to be in an iron lung for several years. It could be TB of the spine or something.

One day she said to her husband, “After I die, you will convert and become a Catholic.”

The husband was a bit surprised because there was nothing that was further from his mind. Then she said, “Because I have asked God in my life.” But before that, she said, “Then you would become a Catholic priest.”

He dismissed these thoughts as the thoughts of a dying woman. Then she said, “Because I have asked God to send me in my life enough suffering so as to save your soul.”

A couple of months later she died. Then the husband, who had so much grief, wanted to go on a tour around France and visit all the places that they'd been on their honeymoon to somehow reconnect with her spirit, to bring those moments back, to relive them again.

At one stage of this journey, he found himself outside the church in a small little village in France. He remembered that they had gone into the church on their honeymoon.

He hated going to churches. It wasn't politically correct for him to be seen going into churches. But he had promised himself that he would go everywhere they'd been on their honeymoon.

So, he went inside the church, and in the church, he got this great desire to go to Lourdes. He hated Lourdes. He dismissed Lourdes in his communist newspaper as another one of those Catholic frauds.

But he had this great desire to go to Lourdes, and so he went to Lourdes. Standing in front of the grotto of Our Lady in Lourdes, he had a monumental conversion.

So great was the grace of his conversion that the thought of going back to Paris and resigning from the editorials of the communist newspaper and the chairmanship of the Communist Party didn't cost him a thought.

Three months later he entered a Dominican seminary. Fulton Sheen says, “I can testify to the veracity of this story because in 1925 I did my retreat given by that Dominican priest, Fr. Félix Leseur (Fulton J. Sheen, Audio, Marriage Problems).

The story is on the Internet. He said, “It's not often in the course of your life that you attend a retreat where the preacher frequently says, ‘As my wife Elizabeth used to say…’”

Our Lord gives us periods of suffering for those times to be apostolic. It can be very fruitful; in those ways, in those moments, an excellent way of sharing in Christ’s redeeming Cross.

Physical suffering, which very frequently accompanies man's life on earth, can be a means that God uses to purify our faults and imperfections, and to exercise and strengthen our virtues.

It can be a unique opportunity to unite ourselves to the sufferings of Christ, who, although He was innocent, bore within Himself the punishment merited by our sins. Particularly in times of illness, we have to be close to Christ.

If you ever have a child who is suffering in some way, try and tell them to offer it up. They may not come to fully appreciate those words, but they can learn an awful lot from them. In time, that can give them great consolation.

In one book an author says, “‘Tell me, my friend,’ the beloved asked, ‘will you be patient if I redouble your sufferings?’ ‘Yes,’ replied the friend, ‘as long as you redouble my capacity to love’” (Ramón Lull, Book of the Friend and the Beloved).

The more painful the illness, the more love we will need. At the same time, we will receive more graces from God.

Periods of illness that God may send us from time to time are very special occasions that God allows so that we can co-redeem with Him and purify ourselves from the stains of sin that remain in our souls.

If sickness comes, we must learn to be good patients. First of all, we have to accept the illness.

St. Francis de Sales says, “We need to suffer patiently not only the burden of being ill, but of being ill with the particular illness that God has given to us, that he wants for us, among the people that he wants us to be with, and with the discomforts that he permits us to experience. I say the same of all other tribulations” (Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life).

We have to ask God for help to bear our illness gracefully, whatever it may be, trying not to complain, obeying the doctor.

St. Josemaría in Friends of God, Point 124, says,”When we are sick we can also get a bit tiresome for other people. We might be thinking, ‘people aren't looking after me properly, nobody cares about me, I'm not getting the attention I deserve, nobody understands me.’”

In these times sometimes all the more we have to try and forget ourselves, leave ourselves a little more in the hands of God.

St. Josemaría says, “The devil, who is always on the lookout, can attack from any angle. When people are ill his tactics consist in stirring up a kind of psychosis in them so as to draw them away from God and fill the atmosphere with bitterness, or destroy that treasure of merits earned (on behalf of souls everywhere) by pain, that is, when it is borne with supernatural optimism, when it is loved.

“Therefore, if God wills that we are struck down by some affliction, take it as a sign that he considers us mature enough to be associated even more closely with his redeeming Cross.”

St. Paul tells us that the person who suffers united to Our Lord ‘completes’ with his suffering what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ (cf. Col. 1:24).

Fulton Sheen tells a story of how he was with Pope St. Paul VI in 1968 just after he issued the encyclical Humanae vitae, one of the greatest Encyclicals of the 20th century, which is all about conjugal love. Beautiful, short encyclical.

But it's better known for the fact that it banned contraception. Pope Paul VI was getting a lot of flak in the international press because of this.

Fulton Sheen said to him, “Holy Father, you're well named Paul, because Paul they stoned, and now they're stoning you.”

Pope Paul said, “Yes, it's ten in the evening before I get to open my personal mail, and with each letter, there comes a thorn. And when I lie down on my bed at night, I lie down on a crown of thorns.”

“But,” he said, “I can't tell you the joy, the happiness, the peace I get out of knowing that I am ‘making up in my body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.’”

Nothing is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. But often what is lacking is our cooperation in those sufferings.

Pope John Paul said, “The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world's redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it.

“But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering” (John Paul II, loc. cit.).

With Christ, sickness and illness have gained their full meaning. One of the prayers in the Divine Office says:

“Grant, Lord, that your faithful may become partakers in your Passion through their sufferings in this life, so that the fruits of your Salvation may be made manifest in them” (Divine Office, Vespers, Friday of the Fourth Week in Lent).

Among the errands entrusted to the apostles was the task of preaching to and healing the sick. It stands out in particular.

We’re told in St. Luke, “He called the twelve together and he gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases … And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere” (Luke 9:1-2).

The mission entrusted to the disciples after the Resurrection contains this promise: “And these signs,” said St. Mark, “will accompany those who believe…they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18).

The disciples carried out this task, following the Master's example. The Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of the New Testament describe and lead us to meditate on the way the first Christians watched over the sick.

The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, instituted by Our Lord and proclaimed by the apostle James in his Letter (James 5:14-15), makes particularly present Our Lord's concern for all those who suffer a serious illness.

Sometimes the illnesses God may send us will not be temporary. We might begin to suffer something that will not change in the course of this lifetime.

It seems to be our destiny for eternity, or there's no cure, or there's no solution, or we come to see that medical and surgical possibilities in this world will also have their limits.

We may have to see that this is the will of God for me. Maybe my time has come. It's a divine call to grow in my soul, to be prepared. When the body is not so well, it's a time for the soul to dance.

With the Anointing of the Sick we can receive untold benefits that God confers through the sacrament in order to sanctify grave illness.

We don't need to be worried about the gravity of our illness, because we can laugh at this life and laugh at ourselves, and laugh at situations, and just focus on the supernatural.

The first effect of this sacrament is to increase sanctifying grace in our soul; and that's why it's good to go to Confession before receiving this sacrament.

If a person is not in the state of grace, and it's been impossible for him to go to Confession—if they have an accident or they're unconscious—this holy Anointing can blot out even mortal sins, even though the person must make a point of confessing them later.

In those situations, it's sufficient for the sick person to make an act of contrition, even of imperfect contrition.

As well as increasing grace, it removes the stain of sin from the soul, gives a special grace to overcome the temptations which may arise in that particular situation. It can also restore bodily health if that is for the good of salvation.

And so, the soul is prepared to enter heaven. Reception of this sacrament can often produce great peace and joy in the sick person, as they consider that they're already very close to their Father God.

Our Mother the Church reminds us that the sick and the elderly should receive this sacrament at the opportune moment, without delaying its administration out of false reasons of compassion.

It would be a pity if people who could have received the Anointing were to die without it through ignorance, carelessness, or a wrongly understood affection of friends and relatives.

Preparing the sick to receive it is a special sign of charity, and sometimes of justice.

We could ask Our Lady, Our Mother Mary, who is always very close to us.

“The presence of Mary and her motherly help at those moments of grave illness could not be thought of as something marginal and simply parallel to the Sacrament of the Anointing. It is, rather, a presence and a help which is set in motion and transmitted by the Anointing itself” (A. Bandera, Our Lady and the Sacraments).

We could ask Our Lady. She might help us to have a special sensitivity for those who are sick, so that we might go out of our way to find Christ in them.

St. Paul says, “In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.”

St. John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter Salvifici doloris (The Salvific Value of Pain) says, “These words are to be found at the end of the long road that winds through the suffering which forms part of the history of man and which is illuminated by the Word of God.

“These words,” he says, “have, as it were, the value of a final discovery, which is accompanied by joy. So, St. Paul says: ‘Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake’ (Col. 1:24).

“The joy comes from the discovery of the meaning of suffering, and this discovery, even if it is most personally shared in by Paul of Tarsus who wrote these words, is at the same time valid for others.

“The apostle shares his own discovery and rejoices in it because of all those whom it can help—just as it helped him—to understand the salvific meaning of suffering.”

“It is a universal theme,” he says, “that accompanies man at every point on earth. In a certain sense, it co-exists with him in the world, and thus demands to be constantly reconsidered.

“Even though Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, wrote that ‘the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now’ (Rom. 8:22), even though man knows and is close to the sufferings of the animal world, nevertheless what we express by the word ‘suffering’ seems to be particularly essential to the nature of man.

“It is as deep as man himself, precisely because it manifests in its own way that depth which is proper to man, and in its own way surpasses it.

“Suffering seems to belong to man's transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense ‘destined’ to go beyond himself and he is called to this in a mysterious way.”

“It can be said,” said St. John Paul, “that man in a special fashion becomes the way for the Church when suffering enters his life.

“This happens, as we know, at different moments in life, it takes place in different ways, it assumes different dimensions; nevertheless, in whatever form, suffering seems to be, and is, almost inseparable from man's earthly existence.

“Assuming then that throughout his earthly life man walks in one manner or another on the long path of suffering, it is precisely on this path that the Church at all times should meet man.

“Born of the mystery of Redemption in the Cross of Christ, the Church has to try to meet man in a special way on the path of his suffering. In this meeting, man ‘becomes the way for the Church’, and this way is one of the most important ones.”

“Human suffering,” he says, “evokes compassion; it evokes respect, and in its own way, it intimidates. For in suffering is contained the greatness of a specific mystery.

“This special respect for every form of human suffering must be set at the beginning of what will be expressed here later by the deepest need of the heart, and also, by the deep imperative of faith.

“About the theme of suffering these two reasons seem to draw particularly close to each other and to become one: the need of the heart commands us to overcome fear, and the imperative of faith—formulated, for example, in the words of St. Paul quoted at the beginning—provides the content, in the name of which and by virtue of which we dare to touch what appears in every man so intangible: for man, in his suffering, remains an intangible mystery.

We could ask Our Lady, Health of the sick, Comfort of the afflicted, that she might help us to go deeper into this great mystery, this intangible mystery, where she can lead each one of us to find her Son, Jesus Christ—and there, to find the joy of which St. Paul speaks.

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