Preacher: Fr Simon Yong SJ
Today’s topic at first glance looks like an easy walk
in the park but on second thought, it is not as easy as it looks. Our spotlight
shines on the visitation of the sick. If you like, what is spiritual in
comforting the afflicted or consoling of the sorrowful is made corporal through
the visitation of the sick and elderly. So, rightfully, after the homily we
will have the elderly and the sick stand up to be prayed over.
I alluded to the difficulty of accompanying the sick
on the 1st day of our Novena arising from the helplessness to
ameliorate a situation. Another constraint we face is time. The demands of family
and career present a challenge to being physically available to a sick person.
Remember the promise of the 60s? When time-saving gadgets or devices invaded
our lives, they were supposed to free us for family, friends and fun. That did
not happen as life, instead of slowing down for us to enjoy, seemed to have
cranked up into the fast lane and nothing in the near future has revealed that our
craving for the instantaneous will diminish.
But, is the lack of time a good excuse for our absence
from the sick? Or is there a deeper reason for our seeming fear of the sick?
There is a connexion between on the one hand, sickness
(diseases, illnesses, psychoses) and on the other, sin. You can say that when a
person sins, sickness is sure to follow. For example, lying or telling lies. A
person who lies habitually will have to construct one lie to cover another lie.
After a while his life will be an entangled web of deceit and his conduct,
demeanour and mannerism will soon slide onto a shifty and slimy slope. You must
have come across characters who ask you for money and they spin a tale so tall
that it makes 1MDB sound like a harmless fairy tale. Or if you eat more than
you should every day, the sin of gluttony will soon be brought to bear in the
breakdown of the body’s integrity. Gluttony is frequently accompanied by the giddy
trio of friends—elevated cholesterol, sugar and blood pressure and not to
mention an expanding waistline.
Sin has an effect on our well-being either physical,
psychological or spiritual. But, with regard to sin’s effect on us, two contrasting
points can be raised with regard to the connexion between sin and sickness.
Firstly, we have learnt how to excuse ourselves from
the responsibility for our actions. In this endeavour, we have reversed the
relationship from sin as having an effect to sickness as the cause of
our sins. Two illustrations may help. One, gluttony may manifest itself through
binge eating or supersizing our happy meals. So, when I am depressed, I tend to
binge eat to feed my depression. Or two, I suffer from a mental disorder which
is marked by compulsiveness. I take things not belonging to me that are of
either of not value or I have no need of. My depression and my kleptomania have
caused me to overeat and steal. Hence, I cannot be held responsible. Like Bart
Simpson: I didn’t do it and for every disorder you can dream of, psychology has
found a sickness for every sin in the book.
But that is not the whole story which brings me to the
second point and this is important.
The connexion between sin and sickness may also be
analogical in the sense the sickness is an image of sin and not an evidence of
sin. The Jews believe that sin is the cause of sickness. The NT is replete with
such corollary examples. The Pharisees (the so-called separated one) who are
keen on the boundary separating the pure from the profane, find themselves at
odd with many of the practices of Jesus. He broke many taboos by erasing the
border between clean and contaminated. He ate with sinners, He touched lepers
etc. But, when the man born blind was brought to Him in John 9, the question
that followed reflected the conventional wisdom of that time. They asked, “Who
sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind”? We know the response
given by the Lord: “Neither. His blindness was not a result of sin but that
God’s work might be made manifest”. Here, we find the analogical connexion
between sin and sickness. Sickness is not always the result of sin but rather it
is an image of sinfulness which means that sickness is not always evidence of
the sinfulness of the victim.
Otherwise, how can we explain the Sinless One
according to the descriptions of the Suffering Servant in Prophet Isaiah: He
bore our pains and carried our sorrows. He was pierced through for our
transgressions. He was crushed for our infirmities. Physicality is
sacramental in the sense that Christ in addition to touching lepers, He ate
with sinners, allowed a woman with haemorrhage to touch His cloak and consorted
with the Gentiles.
The Sacrament of Anointing follows the example of
Christ in recognising sin, if present, to be absolved through Sacramental
Confession when needed and also dissolving the barrier that isolates the one
who is sick. He has helped us do what is needed. He made clean was what deemed
unclean because the physical grossness of pus, mucus, sores, vomit, blood,
broken bones are not the effects of sin, nor are they the reasons for our
shying away from the sick. You know our hospitals are symbolised by a Crescent
for obvious reason. But, the institution of the hospital as a Catholic gift to
humanity actually grew out of Jesus’ embrace of the sick person. So, time is
not only of the essence but also fear or the lack of courage is. We may like to
think that we have outgrown superstition but the truth is, we are still full of
taboos even though we may have arrived at sophistication. Many are afraid of
sick people because they fear infection or contamination and as a result,
isolation.
Even as we speak of the hospital as a gift of the
Church to the world, the hospital is also a symbol of the Church. And it flows
from yesterday’s theme on “instructing, counselling and admonishing”. Some
saints are called Doctors of the Church because through their
teachings—instructing, counselling and admonishing—the infirmities of
ignorance, doubt and sin are dispelled thereby healing is brought upon the
soul. In the Orthodox tradition, the Crozier that a Bishop carries is actually
replaced by the common symbol associated with health—the caeduceus with the
intertwined serpents that recall the episode in the desert where Moses was
instructed to mount the bronze serpents upon his staff. The Church has the
medicine of immortality and what Pope Francis has done is to highlight the
Church not only as a hospital but also a field hospital for the wounded. In a
nutshell if you want to understand the mind of Pope Francis, the field hospital
is aptly an excellent symbol because the foremost mission of the Church is the
salvation of souls and what a messy task that is.
Sad though, the more developed a society becomes, the
greater is the tendency to marginalised the sick or even do away with them in
the name of “quality of life”. But, the sick ground our feet upon the earth of
mortality recalling what a German philosopher says: We are beings unto death.
For each child born, the natural thing is to watch him grow up and when he has reached
his 40s, we joke that it is downhill from then on. But the more profound truth
about human existence is that the minute a child is born he is already cruising
inevitably along the highway of death. At funerals I tell people, “Every breath
you take, you are one breath closer to death” and as I finish this sentence,
you are already 3 breaths nearer to death.
This is not supposed to depress but to prompt you that
the sick lay claim on our compassion and pity as they hint to us the reality of
our mortality and that their weakness and frailty will also be ours no matter how
many “forever young pills you pop”, and like my favourite fat lady, no matter
how many nips, snips and tucks you undergo, one day you will be like them. The
sick remind us to order and set your priorities right.
Finally, the extra-biblical personage of Veronica
(whose memory is preserved in our rosary mysteries) stands as a powerful
reminder that the care of the sick requires moral courage. If you remember, the
Disciples had deserted the Lord. The only help He got was from a stranger—Simon
of Cyrene. Almost everyone along the Via Dolorosa was braying for His blood. She would have to muster enough courage
to breach the wall of rejection and exclusion in order to wipe the face of
Christ. For that she was rewarded with the imprint of His suffering face on the
sweat cloth or Sudarium or Manopello and not least also on her soul.[1]
She should be a patron saint for those who want to step outside the circle of
comfort and convenience to attend to those who are sick. They will continue to
claim to our attention and we are obliged to come to their aid according to our
ability and their need as Matthew 25 is pretty clear that they are sacramental
signs of Christ for us: I was sick and you visited me.
[1]The etymology of the name Veronica itself
is suggestive. It means “True Image”. Perhaps the inclusion of “her” memory is
testament to the need for an intensified search for Christ the Lord. The more
we desire Him, the greater will our reward be. The reward we are accustomed to
takes a monetary form. The reward for our desire will be God Himself…
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