Healing vs Visiting the Sick

I was sick and you visited me (Matthew 25:36)

We can get so focused on cure and healing through modern medicine (or even alternative medicine for that matter), that we forget Christ taught us to visit the sick. We won’t be judged if we didn’t heal the sick, but we will be judged if we didn’t visit them in their time of illness. We have to care for them, have concern and compassion, tending to their needs rather than thinking only about ourselves. We visit the sick because we are to see each of them as Christ and minister to Him. We don’t do it for the salvation of our souls, we do it to love the other.  Dr Daniel Hinshaw in his book,  SUFFERING AND THE NATURE OF HEALING, comments:

The Christian focus in the church’s healing ministry has always been on caring for and attending to Christ in the suffering one. There has been an ambivalence about cure – truly wonderful if and when it happens, but real healing, salvation, is what is to be sought. . . . The meaning and power of ‘I was sick and you visited me,’ has been almost entirely lost. It has no real meaning for many modern physicians. (p 248)

Most of us are not trained medical personnel, but all of us are capable of compassion, mercy, offering hope to others or just listening to them in their agony and praying with and for them.

Healing is distinguished from cure . . .  it refers to the ability of a person to find solace, comfort, connection, meaning, and purpose in the midst of suffering, disarray and pain. The care is rooted in spirituality using compassion, hopefulness, and the recognition that, although a person’s life may be limited or no longer socially productive, it remains full of possibility. (pp 206-207)

Cure relates to disease, whereas healing relates to persons. (p 248)

We perhaps get too caught up in the miraculous but then think if I can’t do miracles, I have nothing to offer the sick. But we can offer them our love, mercy, compassion, our time and talents to meet their needs. The Good Samaritan didn’t heal the man who was assaulted by the thieves, but he did what he was able to do –he was able to be the good neighbor and show the severely wounded stranger compassion.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)

Liturgy Book Back in Print

Years ago, I edited a scriptural commentary on the Divine Liturgy published by Light and Life Publishing. It was one of their bestsellers. After the death of their founder, Fr Anthony Coniaris, Light and Life ceased publication. Through the years, numerous people have asked me where they might be able to purchase the book. Happily, the book, now expanded, revised and updated by the good folk at St Mary’s OCA Cathedral in Minneapolis, has been republished by Orthodox Journeys. The spiral bound book sells for $19 and can be purchased at https://www.orthodoxjourneys.com/liturgy-and-scripture.