Every year, the Holy Father issues a message on the occasion of the World Day of the Sick celebrated on 11 February, the liturgical feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. This year’s text centres on Jesus’ affirmation to the Samaritan man healed from leprosy: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” (Lk 17:19).

In the Pope’s words, “the encounter of Jesus with the 10 lepers … helps us to become aware of the importance of faith for those who, burdened by suffering and illness, draw near to the Lord. In their encounter with him they can truly experience that he who believes is never alone! God, indeed, in his Son, does not abandon us to our anguish and sufferings, but is close to us, helps us to bear them, and wishes to heal us in the depths of our hearts” (§ 1). Sacramentally, God, in his Son Jesus, approaches our suffering and relieves it by his healing touch precisely by the administration of the sacraments of Penance and Reconciliation, the Anointing of the Sick and the Eucharist.

In his homily at the Chrism Mass last year, Pope Benedict XVI stated: “The unity between creation and redemption is made visible. The sacraments are an expression of the physicality of our faith, which embraces the whole person, body and soul.” For instance, through the sacrament of penance the Church specifically proclaims God’s Kingdom by “bind[ing] up the brokenhearted” (Isa 61, 1). As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “The whole power of the sacrament of Penance consists in restoring us to God’s grace and joining us with him in an intimate friendship” (§ 1468). The Church takes on her the responsibility bestowed by Our Lord of being the ambassador of His forgiveness and reconciliation. In this way, the Church keeps inviting the entire human race to repent and accept Christ’s gospel of salvation. On the example of Jesus who “came not to condemn but to forgive and to save, to give hope in the deepest darkness of suffering and sin, and to give eternal life”, the Church offers the sacrament of penance, the “medicine of confession”, so that in “a time of suffering, in which one could be tempted to abandon oneself to discouragement and hopelessness, can thus be transformed into a time of grace so as to return to oneself, and like the prodigal son of the parable, to think anew about one’s life, recognizing its errors and failures, longing for the embrace of the Father, and following the pathway to his home” (§2).

In the letter of James, there is the institution of the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. “Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (Jas 5, 14-15). In his homily, the Pope explained that in the anointing of the sick, the sacramental matter of the oil is offered to us, so to speak, “as God’s medicine … which now assures us of his goodness, offering us strength and consolation, yet at the same time points beyond the moment of the illness towards the definitive healing, the resurrection (cf. Jas 5:14).”

Jesus says: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6, 54). In this perspective, Benedict XVI makes the following comment on the Eucharist: “Received at a time of illness, it contributes in a singular way to working this transformation, associating the person who partakes of the Body and Blood of Christ to the offering that he made of himself to the Father for the salvation of all” (§ 4).

Do we believe that God heals all our infirmities by the sacraments of penance and reconciliation, anointing of the sick and the Eucharist?

Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann