The nineteenth World Day of the Sick which was celebrated on 11 February, memorial of the Blessed Virgin of Lourdes, had the following theme: “By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt 2:24). Christ’s wounds earned for us the long-awaited salvation.

Every illness has a human face. Pope Benedict XVI highlighted this point in this year’s message for the World Day of the Sick: “If every man is our brother, much more must the sick, the suffering and those in need of care be, at the centre of our attention, so that none of them feels forgotten or emarginated”. Any society which neglects this important duty of aiding the sick betrays its communitarian nature and becomes tyrannical. As a matter of fact, in his second encyclical letter ‘On Christian hope’, Spes Salvi, the Pope stated that “the true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘compassion’ is a cruel and inhuman society” (§ 38).

The Christian faith presents a God who is not aloof from humanity’s suffering. On the contrary, the Christian God is so much involved with the mystery of suffering that, in the person of Jesus Christ, he personally experienced it.

The Nicene Creed which we recite every Sunday at Mass explains this unfathomable event: “Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again”. The powerful novelty of Christ’s suffering is its transforming nature which occurred once and for all when he was resurrected from the dead. Thus, the Holy Father explains: “Even the apostle Thomas manifests the difficulty of believing in the way of redemptive passion: ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and put my hand into his side, I will not believe’ (Jn 20:25). But before Christ who shows his wounds, his response is transformed into a moving profession of faith: ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Jn 20:28). What was at first an insurmountable obstacle, because it was a sign of Jesus’ apparent failure, becomes, in the encounter with the Risen One, proof of a victorious love”.

Jesus’ resurrection transformed suffering into a powerful means of salvation. Thanks to the paschal mystery of the Son of God, suffering becomes redemptive. “It is precisely through the wounds of Christ that we are able to see, with eyes of hope, all the evils that afflict humanity. In rising again, the Lord did not remove suffering and evil from the world, but he defeated them at their root. He opposed the arrogance of Evil with the omnipotence of his Love. He has shown us, therefore, that the way of peace and joy is Love: ‘Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’ (Jn 13:34). Christ, victor over death, is alive in our midst”.

In his Urbi et Orbi Message of Easter 2007, Pope Benedict XVI stressed that the Christian God is worthy of faith because in Jesus Christ he could suffer with us. “Only a God who loves us to the extent of taking upon himself our wounds and our pain, especially innocent suffering, is worthy of faith”. In Saint Bernard’s words, “God cannot suffer but He can suffer with”. By means of the invaluable work of health-care workers, volunteers and all those who dedicate themselves to serve the sick in hospitals, nursing homes and in families, God is shouldering the suffering of his people. May in the faces of the sick these people know how to see always the Face of faces, that of Jesus Christ!

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann