Healing. Mary Healy
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The book of Genesis records God’s establishment of the Sabbath as a day of rest (Gen 2:2–3), the day when human beings cease from work to enjoy their unique privilege of relating to God. It is also the day when God’s people remember that they were once slaves in Egypt, but the Lord set them free (Deut 5:15). The Sabbath is therefore far more than a time to rest up so as to get back to work with renewed energy. The Sabbath is a sign of our highest dignity — our covenant relationship with God — and of the freedom and joy that come from communion with him. The fact that Jesus chose to heal especially on the Sabbath signifies that he is “lord of the sabbath” (Matt 12:8; Luke 6:5) in the sense that he has come to inaugurate the new creation by which human beings are restored to the fullness of life that God intended from the beginning.
Jesus’ inaugural sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, quoted earlier (on page 27), reveals the same truth in a different way. The last line of the passage from Isaiah says the Messiah would proclaim “the acceptable year of the Lord,” or in other translations (such as the New International Version), “the year of the Lord’s favor.” As the audience would have well understood, Isaiah was referring to the jubilee year, one of the sacred celebrations decreed by God in the law of Moses (Lev 25). The jubilee was to be held every fiftieth year. During the jubilee, all debts were canceled, all slaves were set free, and all ancestral lands that had been sold off due to debt or impoverishment were returned to their original owner. The jubilee was a time of freedom, joy, and celebration. Isaiah was prophesying that the coming of the Messiah would be the ultimate jubilee — a jubilee that would never end. By saying “This passage has been fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus proclaims that in him, that never-ending jubilee of the Lord has arrived.
The Gospels thus invite us to understand Jesus’ healings in light of God’s original intention for human beings, created in his image and likeness. Sickness and disability were not part of God’s plan for creation but are outward symptoms of the damage caused by the Fall. God designed human beings with bodies meant to radiate the splendor of divine life present within them. He endowed us with not only the physical senses but also marvelous spiritual capacities to see, hear, and relate to him. Original sin caused our bodies to become corruptible and our interior faculties to be disabled, resulting in a communication block between God and humanity. Jesus’ healings of people who were deaf, blind, lame, and paralyzed are a sign of his restoration of humanity to wholeness and unbroken communion with our Creator. Although that restoration will only be complete at the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor 15:42–53), already by the grace of Christ we are able to hear God’s voice in our hearts, see him with the eyes of faith, walk in friendship with him, sing his praises, and proclaim his mighty deeds.
As St. Irenaeus wrote, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”29
The Cost of Healings
As the story of the leper suggests, Jesus’ works of healing and deliverance came at a cost. Although he healed people for free, those healings were at the cost to himself of his own bodily sacrifice. The Gospel of Matthew explains that this cost was all part of God’s plan, revealed in Scripture:
That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” (Matt 8:16–17)30
Matthew is quoting from Isaiah 53, the fourth song of the suffering Servant of the Lord. Early Christian tradition recognized this passage as the most explicit prophecy of Christ’s passion to be found in the Old Testament.31 The song speaks of the Servant bearing not only the sins of God’s people (vv. 5–6, 10, 12), but also their infirmities and diseases (v. 4).32 Matthew sees this mention of infirmities and diseases as pointing in a special way to Christ’s healings of the sick and demon-possessed.33 The Hebrew meaning of the verbs “took” and “bore” is significant. They refer to the Servant not only removing afflictions but taking them on himself. Matthew is, of course, not saying that Jesus became sick or demon-possessed, but that in a mysterious way he bore these afflictions, along with our sins, in his own body on the cross. His power to heal flows from his own vicarious suffering of sin and all its consequences.
Jesus’ healings foreshadow not only his passion; they also point to his resurrection from the dead. The Gospels hint at this link every time they use the word “raised up” or “rose” for those healed by Jesus. When Jesus cured Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, he took her by the hand and “raised her up” (Mark 1:31). He commanded the paralytic, “Rise, take up your pallet and go home,” and the man “rose” (Mark 2:11–12). He said to Jairus’ dead daughter, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” and she “got up and walked” (Mark 5:41–42). He took the epileptic boy by the hand, “raised him up,” and the boy “arose” (Mark 9:27). In each case, these are the same verbs used for Jesus’ resurrection (Mark 16:6, 9, 14; 16:9), and for the resurrection of all the dead on the last day.34
Jesus’ healings of physical afflictions, while marvelous for those who receive them, are only a pale shadow of the ultimate healing he will accomplish in the end, when our bodies are transformed to be like his glorified body and the new creation is fully revealed. As St. Paul wrote, “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Cor 15:54). “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:17; cf. Rom 8:18–19).
Jesus’ Commission to His Followers
Everywhere Jesus went, teaching, healing, and casting out demons, people saw the promises of God being fulfilled before their eyes. The kingdom of God was being manifested in their midst. The Gospels give not the slightest warrant for the idea that these signs of the arrival of the kingdom were to cease after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. Rather, Jesus commissioned his followers to continue his saving mission by doing just as he had done.
During his public ministry, Jesus sent out the twelve apostles on a kind of practice mission. He commanded them, “Preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (Matt 10:7–8). They were not to preach the kingdom in word alone, but to demonstrate it with deeds of power. They could accomplish these mighty works not by any ability of their own but by the authority he delegated to them (10:1). Luke records that Jesus later commissioned a larger group of seventy. He gave them the same charge: “Whenever you enter a town and they receive you … heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (Luke 10:8–10).
During Jesus’ earthly life the commission was only for these chosen delegates. But after his resurrection, the risen Lord extended the authority to heal and cast out demons to all believers. Among the signs that would accompany “those who believe,” i.e., Christians, he said, “in my name they will cast out demons;… they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17–18).35 He also affirmed that “they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them” — that is, they will experience divine protection from evil. Now all believers, filled with the Spirit of the risen Lord, are gifted with supernatural power for their mission to “preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).
The early Christians took Jesus’ words at face value. And the Lord vindicated their faith by doing abundant miracles through them, as the next chapter will describe.