And so, to keep me from being unduly elated by the magnificence of such revelations, I was given a sharp physical pain which came as Satan's messenger to bruise me; this was to save me from being unduly elated. Three times I begged the Lord to rid me of it, but his answer was: "My grace is all you need; power comes to its full strength in weakness".
(2 Cor. 12:7-9)
No account of the ministry of healing is authentic unless it deals with the painful and very pertinent question of those who apparently fail to be healed. These, at least on the surface, would seem to include a considerable proportion of those who seek spiritual help when the scientific methods have failed to cure them. It is noteworthy, in this respect, that the orthodox doctor tends to remember his failures, whereas the unorthodox practitioners of healing usually regale the world with impressive accounts of their successes. The not inconsiderable number of people who fail to benefit from their diverse ministries are summarily swept from public view under a carpet of oblivion. Indeed, we still look for the controlled type of trial in heterodox healing methods that is now the rule in assessing drug and other orthodox therapies. Anecdotes of success are not an acceptable alternative to the sound, probing analysis of results that is taken for granted in scientific circles. And yet is this the heart of healing?
When we sift out those people who have never truly played their part in co-operating with God, through a lack of humility, faith or commitment, there is still a considerable number of earnest sufferers who have failed to respond in any manifest way to the full ministry of healing. These are a source of constant embarrassment to the agencies of healing that pride themselves on a near perfect restoration to health of all who consult them: worse still, this failure calls into question either God's power or his love. If prayer remains so blatantly unheard that no response appears to have been made, the questing human being will have considerable difficulty in locating God's concern in the world.
The answer to this problem appears to reside in the universal prevalence of hatred and sin. We are indeed parts of one body, as St Paul puts it (Eph. 4:25), and the very concept of individual healing is selfish and indeed unreal except in the context of a resurrection of the world from the domination of the powers of darkness to the effulgent radiance of the uncreated light of God. It is in this frame of reference that the conversion of all people from the way of selfish abandon to the challenge of growth into the fullness of humanity, as shown in Christ, is constantly before us and is our most urgent priority for the healing of the world. While even one person is in hell, not even the greatest saint can be truly in heaven. Thus it is well said by Pascal that Christ will be in agony until the end of the world, and we dare not, like the three disciples with him in Gethsemane, fall asleep. It is, in a very intimate way, a privilege for those who love Christ most to share this vigil. In this frame of mind St Paul writes (in Col. 1:24): "It is my happiness to suffer for you. This is my way of helping to complete, in my poor human flesh, the full tale of Christ's afflictions still to be endured, for the sake of his body which is the church." The suffering is something more than a gesture of solidarity, important as this may be in a heedless world where it is never easy to stand up, for righteousness' sake and be counted amongst those who are prepared to give up their very lives for what they believe most passionately. The suffering that St Paul underwent as described so starkly in 2 Cor. 11:23-7, is merely a prelude to the deeper pain he mentions in relation to his undying concern for the sufferings of the infant Christian congregations he had helped to establish, and which is mentioned in the last verses of that chapter: he shares the weakness of the frail, the indignation of those who are made to stumble, and the fear of those who are persecuted. In this last consideration we remember the fugitives from totalitarian tyranny in our own time. Those who shielded them even to their own death are inscribed among the saints of humanity. By their wounds we are healed in eternity, as prophesied in Isaiah 53 - the wounds of those who learnt to forgive their persecutors even as they were hounded to death are in this respect added to those of their protectors who died in fidelity to the truth.
All this means in effect that pain has its own deeper understanding to contribute, and we will not be released from its bondage until we have assimilated its full message; we are to grow into nothing less than the full stature of Christ, not merely on a private, individualistic level but, more pertinently, in communion with all humanity. And the end of that growth is a raising of all life to the full knowledge of God. Until the last trace of egoistic isolation has been removed from us, we will neither be healed nor bring healing to others. The saints of the world have accepted suffering vicariously in order to share the otherwise intolerable burdens that continue to afflict individual men and women. This sharing of pain is not a willed, exhibitionistic gesture, but an intuitive response to the demands of love. As Jesus taught us, there is no greater love than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13), and the saint, in spontaneous imitation of Christ (whether or not he calls himself a Christian), accepts all mankind - indeed the whole of creation - as his friend.
None of us is to survive in his present form; death is indeed the gateway to a fuller life that brings us closer to the knowledge of eternity. What is important in this transitory life on earth is our growth into fuller relationship with one another. Jesus, in the somewhat enigmatic Parable of the Unjust Steward, teaches that even the unjust who work astutely to repair, however inadequately, some of the wrong they have done, may be received by friends into an eternal home in the life beyond death where money is a thing of the past (Luke 16:9). We will never know, in our present state of spiritual consciousness, the service rendered by the saintly unhealed in lifting the burden of pain from their uninstructed brethren who are spiritually blind.
As we have already noted, this service is not rendered as an ego-centred gesture of spiritual largesse; on the contrary, it is given to God in humble trust, so that even a little suffering can be alleviated by the action of psychic empathy which precedes the release of the pain of the world into God's providence. In the deepest psychic communion the pain can be exchanged, and the saint can act as a substitute, as Christ did for our sins. The suffering is given in trust and prayer to God, in whom it is transfigured in glory. The atoning reconciliation effected cosmically by Christ is confirmed and realized on a more personal level by the saints who come close to their afflicted brethren to shelter them under their mantle of care. As they present our suffering to God in humble trust, so the first steps are taken towards the transmutation of that suffering into purpose and eventually into radiant joy - the joy of the knowledge of God's eternal presence in our lives.
I am sure there is no divine satisfaction in surveying the baneful effects of sin and gluttony; on the contrary, it is God's will that we should be healed, but for this to be accomplished, we too must play our part. The saints of this world, without premeditation and in sprightly spontaneity, fulfil what St Paul calls the law of Christ, that we should help one another in carrying these heavy loads, in bearing one another's burdens (Gal. 6:2). Once the saints of humanity have helped discharge an intolerable incubus of darkness, we baser mortals are strengthened to play our part also, in so doing rising visibly closer to our own sanctification. Martyrdom is not chosen as a path towards self-exaltation; it is assumed in the slow, often halting, always unobtrusive progress of a life, often stumbling over mortal weaknesses, which is nevertheless moving unceasingly to complete service to God. And the will of God is that we should all, in our own way, come to share in his very being (2 Pet. 1:4).
"A precious thing in the Lord's sight is the death of those who die faithful to him" (Ps. 116:15); that faith is tested and purified in the fiery crucible of suffering, and to those who have passed the test is given that unsurpassable privilege of helping their brethren, whether in this life or the next. In this statement there is a double truth, a reversible privilege. Those who have passed the test have moved towards sanctification whether they are still with us in the flesh or have passed on into the life beyond mortal death. If they are still with us in this world, their witness illuminates our lives with fresh purpose, while their intercessions help the earth-bound dead to quit their hellish isolation and progress to an intermediary purgatorial state. On the other hand, if the saints of our time have died, they take their place among their fellows in the life beyond death: here they assist us on our way while helping to release their earth-bound brethren in the life they now share. Both these actions are performed by intercessory prayer. In this respect the great Communion of Saints includes us in our feeble works no less than the great ones in the after-life. All who are not against God are for him, and the test of sincerity is how much our own lives reflect the love of Christ in our attitude to the world and especially to those around us, whom Jesus would have identified as our neighbours. No ministry of healing that remains oblivious of this higher calling of mankind is worthy of its name.
This being so, the question arises whether there should be any ministry of relief and physical cure at all if suffering plays such an important part in the development of a saint's character and his ministry in the world. The answer would appear to be that God works increasingly towards the healing of his creation; what he made has fallen from its highest potentiality through its own imperfect will, a lapse augmented no doubt by the malign influence of psychic powers in the world beyond death. Of those we have already spoken in connection with deliverance from evil. But we believe that man is to rise to an even greater height of excellence when his chastened will acts in responsible co-operation with the divine will. In Dame Julian's immortal words, "Sin is behovable, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well" (Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 27). It would seem that the forgiveness of sin, when sought with true repentance and earnest intent to begin a new way of life, brings an experience of love into the heart of the sinner that changes the course of his future career. It is in this way that holiness transfigures basic virtue, so that a good man may now attain the stature of a saint.
If all this is placed in the context of the ministry of healing as the world understands it, the little cures and improvements that we bear witness to in our private lives serve to whet our appetites for a greater healing. This is to have a world-wide scope, so that the grace of God which we personally have known may now be available to all who suffer. In this greater healing some will play their part as renewed, active, healthy agents, a glorious testimony to the powers of healing in the world, ranging from the medical to the charismatic. But others, like St Paul whose experience of failure in healing prefixed this chapter, have to bear the pain of suffering and even martyrdom, so that others may begin to glimpse the first light of spiritual day. But in the end all shall be well. Christ gave of his riches so that the world's poverty might be remedied, to the end that all might share in the munificence of God. The little saints follow his example and help to shed his light according to the will of God.
There are other deeper considerations also: some people attribute a failure of healing - especially when the sufferer is born irremediably defective - to a great sin committed in a past existence, perhaps here on earth or else in some other dimension of experience. Here we can in all humility admit only ignorance. Suffice to say that there is no scientific proof of pre-existence, any more than of a life of the personality when the body perishes, and we have to come to our own conclusions about these greater mysteries of existence. But an obvious danger of attributing present distress to actions in the distant past beyond personal recall is that a judgemental attitude is likely to ensue as well as a somewhat detached, even fatalistic, approach to the suffering of others. It is all too easy to dismiss such pain as a lesson to be learnt or a necessary punishment to be endured, and then to move past on the other side of the road of life, like the priest and the Levite who ignored the plight of the man robbed and beaten on the way from Jerusalem to Jericho (Luke 10:29-37). It may well be that a permanent impediment is here to teach us a vital lesson in humility, patience and forebearance, but what is important is that the thorn in the flesh (to quote once more St Paul's experience in failure to be healed) is seen to be a means of spiritual growth and not simply a deadening incubus placed on the person as an inexorable punishment for some sin of which he is ignorant and therefore cannot truly repent. We have to learn, as St Paul did, how our power comes to full strength in weakness.
No one could accuse St Paul of a vacillating faith or a feeble resolve. Indeed his activity was probably strengthened by the handicap he was obliged to bear. We act most wisely when we do not allow ourselves to be side-tracked into absorbing speculations about the ultimate cause of an illness or an impediment. Such theoretical considerations can indeed be diverting as well as ego-enhancing, but they take us away from what is of far greater import: an understanding of what the present situation, unpleasant as it may be, is telling us about our own disposition and that of the others who are involved in the trouble. This is the way of progressive self-knowledge, and if we persist fearlessly in complete, unshuttered awareness of the moment in hand, much of the past will be revealed to us as well. This deeper revelation will come to us as we are ready to receive it. Thus, although there is probably more to a person's history than we can glimpse in our present state of spiritual immaturity, we are advised to keep our eyes in one-pointed concentration on the present moment, which also is the point of intersection of time with eternity.
There are certain physical laws which, no doubt, are reflections of the spiritual law of life. If a person loses an eye or a limb, he cannot grow a new one. Certainly modern medical practice can ameliorate the loss with variable degrees of success: some prostheses can replace amputated limbs with remarkable functional performance, but they have no feeling in them. At present nothing can replace the sight of an eye or the hearing of an ear: once these sense organs are irreparably damaged there is only blindness or deafness to anticipate. Likewise the death of a beloved friend is irreversible. Those who seek for comfort in spiritualistic communication as retarding their own spiritual growth and probably interfering with that of the loved one also. Life moves on, both here and in the realms beyond death; our memories are precious, but they must be the inspiration to new work in the time left to us here and now. If we wallow in them to the exclusion of practical endeavour for the future, they become our prison and ultimately our tomb. We have to learn to accept God's "No" to our present schemes of success in order to come to his greater "Yes" for our growth into union with him. That was the message given to St Paul after his prayers for bodily healing were left unanswered. "Hence I am well content, for Christ's sake, with weakness, contempt, persecution, hardship and frustration; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:10).
While we have the rude health and exuberant activity of youth, we should enjoy our life in all its fullness. Not to have tasted of the manifold fruits of existence that God has prepared for us is a sin rather than an act of commendable renunciation, for it implies a denial of the life we have been given. In the boundless grace of a vigorous, healthy body we are to affirm every moment of our existence, remembering the high privilege it is to be born human: we embrace an animal body with a spiritual mind, so bringing together the profligate fecundity of nature with the boundless providence of the divine. We are God's priests, and our supreme function is to consecrate ourselves and all the world to his service and glory. Each moment of aware human life is a sacrament in its own right, provided we lift it up to God.
"Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the time of trouble comes and the years draw near when you will say, "I see no purpose in them." Remember him before the sun and the light of the day give place to darkness" (Eccles. 12:1-2), or as Jesus was later to add, "While daylight lasts we must carry on the work of him who sent me; night comes, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world" (John 9:4-5). The wonder of it all is this: if we remember God with thanksgiving in the days of our active life when happiness surrounds us, he will be with us even more emphatically when the inevitable shadows of ageing and infirmity confront us as the last part of life's drama unfolds before us. Christ is indeed the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to a full knowledge of the Father except by traversing the way Jesus showed while he laboured with us. He was himself when he dined with sinners, and he was equally himself when he died between two of them on the cross. When his Father seemed furthest from him, separated from his consciousness by the miasma of human sin which he took unconditionally upon himself, he was closer both to us and to the Father than at any other time during his ministry among us.
It is our privilege to enjoy the fruits of health in order that we may be more profitable servants in the manifold activities of communal life in whatever situation we may find ourselves. And it is an even greater, if more awesome, privilege at the end of the day to be with Christ on the cross of human affliction, so that we, eternally in his company, can give an even greater support to those in need as we show the way forward. The way, which too is of Christ, leads through the darkness of mortal life to the effulgent splendour of the resurrection.