All Manner: a memory

Matthew 4:23-24

23. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

24. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.

I have always been diseased.  Raised as a Catholic in the time of televangelists, one big question was always there, hanging all around: why won't Jesus heal me?  I never specifically asked that question in my mind or to anyone -- it was just there.  How can a child who is unable to walk not hear the stories of Jesus healing the lame and telling the paralytic to rise up and walk and not wonder?

When I was about six years old, my father took me and my sister to a healing prayer service in Manchester with Father Diorio, who was known to bring about healing.  (My mother had a serious back problem at that time and couldn't come with us.)  During the service, I imagined that God was telling the priest different peoples names -- as some televangelists claimed -- and those people would come up to the front of the church and be healed by him.  And I remember looking up at the rafters of Ste. Marie's and hoping God would say my name.  But, he didn't.  After the service, I remember sitting outside the building and my father comforting my sister as she cried in the dark.  Was she crying for my mother?  For me?  What I do remember is thinking then that there was something wrong with the way some people thought God worked.  I had heard that if you are a good person and you had enough faith, then God would heal you.  But, I was not the kind of child to think that there was something wrong with me.  I knew that I was not an extremely good child and I was sure that my faith could be stronger... but I wasn't sure that God was supposed to heal me.  I mean, I didn't think that faith was some kind of formula, some kind of magic spell to right what was wrong.  Maybe what was most important to God was not that I could walk or couldn't walk.  Maybe it was okay to be crippled.  To be diseased.  Maybe that was not a terrible wrong that needed to be righted in the eyes of God.  Not because God was mean or uncaring... but because I was beautiful just the way I was.

It took me a long time to sort through this question and to arrive at some kind of answer.  I've been through quite a journey in my search for the truth.  But, one thing that I've never doubted is the beauty of the natural world.  Life is a good.  My animosity toward Christianity first arose when I was led to believe by well-meaning people that Christians didn't think like that.  If Christians can only see me as someone "taken with divers diseases and torments" in need of faith in Jesus's healing -- then I certainly didn't want to be a Christian.  On the other hand, from a more Roman Catholic viewpoint, if Christians saw me as one of the littlest of the little ones, closer to God because of my disease -- well, I didn't much care for that way of thinking, either.  Basically, I think that the question of why is there natural suffering in the world can be answered well in two ways.  The natural world is not perfect because it is not God Godself.  And, as Robert Frost says in his poem, "We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows."

For me, now, when I think about Jesus's great mission to heal the sick, I think about the passage of Scripture when he quietly leaves the crowd waiting to be healed and the disciples find him by himself, praying.  They want him to go back and heal the people, but he tells them that he must keep moving and spreading the word of God.  This tells me that the physical state of the person is not what is most important in the eyes of God -- not what is most important to Divine purpose and eternal truth.  The sharing and spreading of knowledge and love -- knowing God and loving as God loves -- that's all that really matters.  And matter, our physical world and our physical states, is most material to that end -- whatever shape or strength in which the matter comes.