Part One: Is It for Real?
Catholic Christians take it for granted that the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth, wants to heal the sick and the suffering. In fact, care for the sick and prayer for their healing has been a part of the life of the Christian Church from the very beginning, to this very day. For example, one thinks of the regular “Healing Masses” going on at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and about miracles of healing through St. Faustina’s intercession, such as the famous and well documented cures of Maureen Digan and Fr. Ron Pytel. “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be”: most Catholics today seem to have little doubt that healing, both through medicine and through prayer in the Holy Spirit, remains a vital part of the life of the Body of Christ.
It may come as a bit of a surprise to us to learn, however, that this emphasis on helping people “get well” is something rather rare in human history — and even some Christian groups, while accepting the use of modern medicine, have cast a lot of doubt on the practice of healing prayer.
Ancient Greece may have given us the doctor’s “Hippocratic Oath,” but the healing arts were a relatively minor aspect of Hellenistic society. The Greco-Roman world generally looked upon disease as an affliction sent from the gods, and for the most part they considered the sick as unlucky, tainted individuals to be shunned and avoided. There was a god of healing in Greek mythology whose temples dotted the landscape — the god Aesculapius — but he was a relatively minor god in the overall religious culture. His power was believed to be subject to the higher authority of the other Olympians such as Zeus, Athena, and Apollo, who often capriciously afflicted human beings with illness and disease.
The ancient Hindu culture also did little to promote healing: sickness and misfortune often were seen as necessitated by the cosmic process of “karma,”—and those who were ill were held to be working off their “bad karma,” so to speak.
Even the ancient Jews tended to be of “two-minds” about the work of physicians, and about prayer for healing. According to the ancient rabbis (as expressed in the Mishnah and the Talmud), sin is the root cause of illness, and sickness is simply divine punishment for people’s sins. But there was another strand of belief about healing tucked away in the Old Testament, a strand which was often overlooked. The prophets Elijah and Elisha healed children by prayer, out of compassion and by the power of Yahweh, and Elisha was instrumental in the cleansing of Namaan the Syrian of leprosy. In the book of Tobit the angel Raphael heals a man of blindness and defeats a demon, and in Psalm 103 the Lord God is praised because, among other things, “He forgives all your sins, and heals all your diseases.” Still, these are relatively marginal comments in the Old Testament as a whole. It was not until the book of Sirach was written (ca. 160 b.c.) that we finally find positive teaching about the role of physicians among the People of God (more about that later).
When we turn to the New Testament, however, it seems as if we have entered a different world. According to Luke 9:11, wherever Jesus of Nazareth went He “talked to [the people] about the Kingdom of God and He cured those who were in need of healing.” As Morton Kelsey pointed out in his classic work, Healing and Christianity:
Nearly one-fifth of the entire [text of the] gospels is devoted to Jesus’ healing [ministry] and the discussions occasioned by it. … Forty-one distinct instances of physical and mental healing are recorded in the four gospels. … It is also clear that Jesus sent out his disciples to continue this basic ministry (Mk 6:7-13; Mt 10:5-10; Lk 9:1-6).
Let’s look at a couple of examples of Christ’s exhortations to His apostles. In Luke 9: 1-2 we are told: “[Jesus] called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God.” Again, according to Luke 10:8-9, Jesus said to the seventy disciples He was sending out: “Whenever you go into a town where they make you welcome, eat what is set before you. Cure those in it who are sick and say, ‘The Kingdom of God is very near you.’”
Some historians today question whether Jesus really performed miracles of healing during His lifetime on earth. After all, maybe the stories in the New Testament about His miraculous healing powers are nothing but ancient myths and legends. However, as a teacher of the New Testament with a degree in history, I had the chance to do in-depth research on this question myself, and the conclusion I came to was that the evidence for the healing miracles of Jesus is simply overwhelming. As a matter of fact, healing powers were not attributed to most of the great religious figures of the ancient world (for example, none by John the Baptist or Mohammed). Moreover, the nature of Christ’s healing ministry requires us to treat it with historical respect: unlike the Old Testament prophets and the charismatic rabbis, Jesus did not cure the sick and the suffering by means of prayer to God, but by His own touch and/or an authoritative command: “Be clean!” and “Rise, Take up your palette and walk!” There is no parallel to this anywhere in antiquity. Besides, there is plenty of evidence that even our Lord’s Jewish opponents admitted the brute fact that Jesus performed miracles: they simply attributed these miracles to the power of Satan rather than to the power of God (Mt 12:22-28). For example, in the records of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish high court in Jerusalem) that were preserved in Persia, the condemnation of Jesus is mentioned: it was claimed that he practiced “sorcery” and “led the people astray.”
The real question, therefore, is not “Did Jesus of Nazareth heal people with supernatural power?” (Many New Testament historians today admit that he did). The real question is: “Why did He do so? What was the purpose of this extraordinary and unprecedented aspect of His earthly ministry?’
On the one hand, Jesus clearly intended His miracles as signs: for example, to show that He was God’s Messiah, anointed with power from the Most High to bring about the dawning of God’s Kingdom in this world. Thus, at the start of His ministry in Galilee, Jesus read a prophecy aloud in the synagogue in Nazareth about the Messiah, and applied it to Himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor … recovery of sight to the blind … to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk 4:16-22). Later in His ministry, when the emissaries of John the Baptist asked Him, “Are you the one who is to come [that is, the Messiah], or shall we look for another?”, Jesus replied: “Go back and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see again, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the Good News is proclaimed to the poor, and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me” (Lk 7: 20-23).
On the other hand, the healing miracles of Jesus were not just meant to be “proofs” of His divine, messianic authority. In addition, they were meant to be clear demonstrations of His work of salvation. In other words, the visible sign that God’s plan of salvation through Jesus was underway was that people were actually being saved from all that oppresses and afflicts them, including their illnesses. So Jesus preached salvation by actually saving people: saving them especially from illness and demonic possession, thereby showing to the sick and afflicted the love of His heavenly Father, and showing to everyone that His Father’s Kingdom was beginning to break into the world through His ministry.
Jesus often healed the sick merely by the touch of His hand, coupled with a word or command: “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” These physical media acted as channels of His compassionate love, and the healing power of the Holy Spirit. Yet this flow of healing love was not only offered by Jesus: to be fully effective, it needed to be welcomed and received by the sick individual too. So Jesus drew upon the faith of the sick person, or of those around him, to “open the floodgates,” so to speak, to His supernatural healing power.
At the same time, Jesus showed no aversion to contemporary, natural medicine. He spoke of doctors quite positively when He compared those in good health who have no need of a physician with those who are sick who do need one (Mt 9:12; Mk 2:17; Lk 5:31).
In short, Jesus’ ministry of healing by the power of the Holy Spirit showed to God’s people that their heavenly Father is truly a God of love and compassion, and that His Kingdom coming, “on earth as it is in heaven” includes their liberation from every human misery, including all kinds of diseases and sicknesses.
This is surely what all Christians want to believe today as well: that Jesus continues to heal the sick, through both natural and supernatural means, and to show us His love in this down-to-earth, personal, and tangible way. Sometimes He may heal us through the providential use of just the right medicines, sometimes through prayer in the Holy Spirit, sometimes (as Catholics believe) through the sacraments, and through the special relics and intercessions of His saints — and often through a combination of these means of healing grace.
And yet, we also know that many people — even many people of faith — do not seem to find healing today (or at least, they are not healed in ways, or to the degree, that they ask or expect). There is a deep mystery here: how can we understand this? Are we as Christians somehow blocking Jesus from pouring out the fullness of His supernatural, healing love on His suffering people? Granted that healing by the power of the Holy Spirit was for real in the life of Jesus — is it still for real today?
Next Time: The Healing Ministry of the Church: Yesterday and Today
Robert Stackpole, STD
Mere Christian Fellowship
© Congregation of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, 2016
