As I write this article on this first day of the year, I am still distraught at having to give one of my best patients not very good news on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, this is one of the less pleasant duties that go with being a doctor. These occasions often help me to reflect on the meaning of life especially at a time like this. We often idealise life by looking and hoping for the good things that give us pleasure and by tending to minimize the memories of unpleasant experiences. The reality is that life consists of both good and bad moments, and not just either condition alone. One ought to keep in mind that in life what goes round comes round and one should never despair. I often consider what the merit of suffering is, as I am sure we all do when suffering affects us all sooner or later. The typical Christian response is that sufferings have their own intrinsic redeeming merits that we might not understand at the time. This might or might not provide sufficient comfort for the afflicted but I may hazard a tangible suggestion at the beginning of the new year, when one is allowed to be sentimental and religious without being instantly pooh-poohed.

When one takes a good look at the ministry of Christ while on earth with the sick and disabled, one admires the healing ministry that He carried out among the physically deprived and one immediately wonders what the aim of this wonderful ministry really was. Was it a physical healing alone, for which all people were grateful? Was it the simple restitution to a previous or not so previous healthy life, which one can only watch as it slowly ebbs away again? When Christ raised people from the dead, once, twice, three times, did the action simply merit the restitution to life and physical healing of those people and the relief of anguish of their relatives, or was there a hidden merit to those actions besides the alleviation of physical sufferings? After all, in the long run, those raised from the dead also had to die once again! Was Christ’s work among the sick and suffering simply one of a philanthropic nature aimed at the relief of suffering itself? Well, the short answer is yes. Christ wanted to relieve people of their physical and mental anguish but was the merit only in the healing act? Could there have been another merit in man’s illnesses and Christ’s healing ministry? Romano Guardini, the famous Catholic theologian, says that the healing by Christ showed not only his magnanimity in showing pity for the ill and dying, but also showed these people and those around them, that as the promised Messiah, he was the only source of all comfort for the afflicted on earth. By his healing Christ wanted to show that illness and suffering itself was in effect a calling to God. Through our illnesses, rather than being a curse, Christ wants to call us to himself. Illness is a manifest calling by God to himself, who alone provides the ultimate satisfaction and cure for our very ills.

This physical reality also reflects our spiritual state. Just as we can be physically ill, so we are often spiritually ill. The danger of spiritual illness, often a result of our own weakness and volition, is that we then feel cut off from God by our actions and then consider ourselves unworthy to call upon God, again by cutting ourselves off from what in effect is the essence of love and the sole source of our fulfilment. The reality is that our worthiness to look upon Christ’s face, is not our own merit, but that obtained by Christ’s own redemptive action. That is what the tearing of the temple curtain upon his death signified. Of course God does not want us to sin, but since we do not have the ability to save ourselves by our own efforts alone, and therefore we inevitably do, Christ expects us to realize through our spiritual illness, our sin, our weakness, that we need to turn to him, as he takes us up from spiritual despair back to the realm of love. Sin pre-empts a turning to the Father. It is this turning back that greatly delights God.

St Josemaria Escriva used to say, with realistic relish, that those who wanted a personal relationship with God were simply sinners who love God. He used to like to say, “Saints were simply sinners who loved God”. Whether we are partakers of physical or spiritual illnesses, which we all are in one way or another, we ought to look on our condition as a signal to turn to Christ, rather that away from him. God is the personification of love and it is only in searching for this love that we will find our real fulfilment in life.

With these thoughts, I would like to convey my best wishes for the new year to all your readers.

Michael Asciak