Attend to Your Own Sickness for Healing

"Our Faith prohibits us to be spies of the sins of others and stresses that we be merciless judges of our own sins. The sick person in the hospital is concerned with his own particular malady so that he has neither the will nor the time to question others who are ill or to mock their illness. Are we not all in this world as patients in a hospital? Does not our own common sense underline that we look at our own illness and not at another's illness? Let no one think that they will be cured of their illness in the other world. This world is merely a hospital and a place for healing and, in that world, there is no hospital; there is only a mansion or only a prison." 

- St. Nicholai of Ziche, The Prologue from Ochrid, April 22nd.

The Significance of Sunday for Healing

(The following passage refers to the account of Christ's appearances to his disciples after His Resurrection as recorded in The Gospel of St. John 20.19-29).

"You will see that it was Sunday when the disciples assembled and the Lord came to them.  On Sunday He approached them for the first time as they were gathered together, and eight days later, when Sunday came round again, He appeared to their assembly.  Christ's Church continually reflects these gatherings by holding its meetings mostly on Sunday, and we come among you and preach what pertains to salvation and lead you towards piety and a godly way of life.
     Let no one out of laziness or continuous worldly occupations miss these holy Sunday gatherings, which God Himself handed down to us, lest he be justly abandoned by God and suffer like Thomas, who did not come at the right time.  If you are detained and do not attend on one occasion, make up for it the next time, bringing yourself to Christ's Church.  Otherwise you may remain uncured, suffering from unbelief in your soul because of deeds or words, and failing to approach Christ's surgery to receive, like divine Thomas, holy healing.  There exists not only thoughts and words of faith but also deeds and acts of faith - 'Shew me', it says, 'thy faith by thy works' (cf. Jas. 2:18) - and if someone abandons these and is completely distanced from the Church of Christ and given over wholly to worthless pursuits, his faith is dead, or non-existent, and he himself has become dead through sin." 

St. Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, edited and translated by Christopher Veniamin, homily 17, "Explaining the Mystery of the Sabbath and of the Lord's Day and Referring to the Gospel of New Sunday" (Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009), 141.

"On Healing" by Met. ANTHONY of Sourozh

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Again and again we hear in the Gospel the story of men or women who were healed of their illnesses, and it seems so simple in the Gospel: there is a need, and God meets it. Why is it then — we ask ourselves — that it does not happen to each of us? Each of us is in need of physical healing and of the healing of our soul. And yet, only a few are healed — why? What we miss in the reading of the Gospel is that Christ did not heal people indiscriminately. One person in a crowd was healed; many who were also sick in body or soul, were not. That comes from the fact that, in order to receive the grace of God, so that it acts in us unto the healing of soul or body, or both, we must be open to God — not to the healing, but to God.

Illness is something which we so often wish to banish from our experience, not only because it hampers our life, not only because it is accompanied by pain, but also — I suspect even more — because it reminds us of our frailty, it speaks to us of our mortality. Our body at this moment says to us: You have no power to restore me to health, you can do nothing, I may die on you, I may decay and it will be the end of your earthly life. Isn't that the main reason why we fight for health, we pray for health? And yet, if that is the way in which we ask God to heal us, to restore us to wholeness, we are only asking to be allowed to forget that we are mortal. Instead of being reminded, indeed quickened by this thought, realising that days pass, that time grows short, and that we must — if we want to attain the full stature to which we are called on earth — we must make haste to shake off all that within us is the power of death. Illness and death are not only conditioned by exterior reasons; there are within us resentments, bitterness, hatred, greed — so many other things which kill the quickness of the spirit and prevent us from living now, already now, in eternal life — that eternal life which is just 'Life' in the true sense of the word, life in its fullness.

What can we do then? We must ask ourselves attentive questions, and when we come to God asking Him to heal us, we must first prepare ourselves to be healed. To be healed means not just to be made whole with a view to going back to the kind of life which we had before, it means being made whole in order to start a new life, as though we had become aware that we had died in the healing act of God, aware that all that was the old man in us, this body of corruption of which St. Paul speaks, must go in order for the new man to live. We must be prepared to become that new man through the death of the past in order to start anew like Lazarus who was called out of the grave, not to go back simply to what had been his life before, but having experienced something which is beyond utterance, to re-enter life on new terms. And for us, these terms are Christ, as Paul puts it, 'For me to live — is Christ'.

Are we capable of receiving healing? Are we willing to take upon ourselves the responsibility of being made new in order to enter, again and again, into the world in which we live, with a message of newness — to be light, to be salt, to be joy, to be hope and faith and love, to be surrendered to God.

Let us reflect on it, because we all are sick in one way or another; we all are frail, all are weak, all are incapable of living to the full, even the life which is offered us on earth. Let us reflect on it, and become capable of opening ourselves to God in such a way that He may work His miracle of healing, make us new — but in order for us to bring our newness, indeed God's newness, into the world in which we live. Amen.  
This homily, preach on 7/23/1990 is found on the Metropolitan Anthony Library website.  The photo is from the same source.

Ancient Christian Wisdom & Cognitive Therapy

Fr. Alexis (Trader) of the Karakallou Monastery on Mount Athos has written a book entitled, Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Becks Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of the Minds, available at Amazon.com.  Secular psychology and Orthodox theology are ultimately incompatible. (You may read a previous article on "Theology and the Limitations of Psychology.")  Nevertheless, one should not be surprised when concepts or practical techniques developed within the realm secular psychology reflect the insights of the Fathers that have been passed down within the Orthodox Church over the past two thousand years.  

The introduction to the text, "Speech and Reason: Timeless Truth and Secular Echos," has been posted on the Orthodox Christian Information Center website. The books 9th chapter, "Cultivating the Garden of the Heart: Patristic Counsel and Cognitive Techniques for Schema Reconstruction," is available as a pdf document.

Fr. Alexis has written a four-part article regarding his book.  These may be found on four different blogs.  The first part appears on Mystagogy.  The second part appears on Second Terrace.  The third part  appears on the voice of stefan.  The fourth part appears on biblicalia.

Learning Patience through Difficulty

St. Paul the Apostle wrote, “And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us." (St. Paul's Letter to the Romans 5.3-5, NKJV)

 St. John Chrysostom's commentary:

  "And what he says is not 'you should glory,' but we glory, giving them encouragement in his own person. Next since what he had said had an appearance of being strange and paradoxical, if a person who is struggling in famine, and is in chains and torments, and insulted, and abused, ought to glory, he next goes on to confirm it. And (what is more), he says they are worthy of being gloried in, not only for the sake of those things to come, but for the things present in themselves. For tribulations are in their own selves a goodly thing. 

How so? It is because they anoint us unto patient abiding. Wherefore after saying we glory in tribulations, he has added the reason, in these words, 'Knowing that tribulation worketh patience.' Notice again the argumentative spirit of Paul, how he gives their argument an opposite turn. For since it was tribulations above all that made them give up the hopes of things to come, and which cast them into despondency, he says that these are the very reasons for confidingness, and for not desponding about the things to come, for 'tribulation,' he says, 'worketh patience.'

St. John Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans, NPNF:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf111.txt

Icon of St. John Chrystostom - public domain.

More on the Physicians of the Church

Visit the Full of Grace and Truth blog for a post including information on many of the Physicians of the Church.  The post provides an impressive list of Saints who practiced the healing arts according to the Orthodox Christian Faith and in the context of the ancient Church.  You can also look under the Holy Unmercenaries label on the same site for valuable information.  The Saints serve as role models for those in the medical field who desire to care for their patients with love and prayer and contribute to the healing of the whole person, body and soul.

St. John Chrysostom: When You Suffer, Do Not Blaspheme, but Give Thanks

"Some people, if they stumble at all, or are slandered by anyone, or fall ill with a chronic disease, gout or headache or any such ailment, at once begin to blaspheme.  They submit to the pain of the disease, but deprive themselves of the benefit.  What are you doing, man, blaspheming your benefactor, savior, protector, and guardian?  Or do you not see that you are falling down a cliff and casting yourself into the pit of final destruction?  You do not make your suffering lighter, do you, if you blaspheme?  Indeed, you aggravate it, and make your distress more grievous.  For the devil brings a multitude of misfortunes for this purpose, to lead you down into that pit.  If he sees you blaspheming he will readily increase the suffering and make it greater, so that when you are pricked you may give up once again; but is he sees you enduring bravely, and giving thanks the more to God, the more the suffering grows worse, he raises the siege at once, knowing that it will be useless to besiege you any more.  A dog sitting by the table, if it sees the person who is eating continually throwing it scraps of food from the table, stays persistently; but if stopping at the table once or twice it goes away without getting anything, it stays away thereafter, thinking that the siege is useless.  In the same way the devil continually gapes at us; if you throw to him, as to a dog, some blasphemous word, he will take it and attack you again; but if you persevere in thanksgiving, you have choked him with hunger, you have chased him away and thrown him back from you.  But, you say, you cannot keep silent when you are pricked by distress.  I certainly do not forbid you to make a sound, but give thanks instead of blasphemy, worship instead of despair.  Confess to the Lord, cry out loudly in prayer, cry out loudly glorifying God.  In this way your suffering will be lightened, because the devil will pull back from your thanksgiving and God's help will be at your side.  If you blaspheme, you have driven away God's assistance, made the devil more vehement against you, and involved yourself even more in suffering; but if you give thanks, you have driven away the plots of the evil demon, and you have drown the care of God your protector to yourself."

St. John Chrysostom, "Third Sermon on Lazarus and the Rich Man," On Wealth and Poverty, trans. by Catharine P. Roth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), 69-70.