Half-Hours With The Saints and Servants of God/Part 1: 11. On God's Mercy in our Illnesses
11.— On the Mercy of God as manifested in our Illnesses.
" My son, in thy sickness forget not thyself, but pray to the Lord, and He shall heal thee." — Eccles. xxxviii. 9.
[Father Spinola, saint and martyr, was one of the band of missionaries who suffered martyrdom in Japan on the 2d of September 1622. Urban VIII. placed these martyrs on the list of Saints, and our Holy Mother the Church celebrates their triumph on February 5.
Father Spinola, a noble Genoese, entered the order of the Society of Jesus at Nole at the time when his uncle, Cardinal Spinola, was Bishop of that diocese. So ardent was his desire to shed his blood for the faith of his Divine Master, that he entreated to be allowed to join the band of missionaries who were ready to go to Japan. To his joy, his request was granted, and he, in company with Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans, reached Japan in 1602.
They, with an indefatigable zeal, worked for the salvation of souls and converted a large number of heathens. The Japanese authorities sent Father Spinola and others to a miserable dungeon, and it was during his incarceration, that Father Spinola managed to send the following letter to one of his relatives in Europe.
In the year 1622 the saintly Father was condemned to be burned alive. When the cords which attached his poor weak frame to the stake, were consumed, he fell on the burning embers, and his soul, now free from its prison-house of flesh, flew up to heaven surrounded by the flames of divine love.
How sweet to suffer for Jesus Christ! I cannot find words energetic enough to tell you what I feel, more especially since I have been confined in prison, where we are forced to observe a continual fast. The strength of my body has left me, but the joy of my heart increases in proportion to the prospect of a speedy death.
What a happiness it will be if I am permitted to sing next Easter Sunday the Hcec dies in heaven!
Had you tasted the sweet delight which God has poured into our souls, you would indeed despise the good things this world affords. Since I have been in prison for His sake, I feel that I am a disciple of Jesus. I now find myself fully compensated for the pangs of hunger, by the consoling sweetness which filled my soul; and were I to be immured in prison for years, the time would appear to me to be short, so much do I desire to- suffer for Him who rewards me so liberally for my pains.
Among other illnesses, I have had a fever raging within me which lasted a hundred days, without the possibility of being relieved. During all this time my joy has been so great, that I find it useless to describe it in words.
When we are in good health there are two things which usually go far to stifle every sense of the fear of God, and these are the hope of a long life and the forgetfulness of eternity.
So long as the sinner is strong and well, the thought of death never enters into his mind; or, if it should, it makes but little impression upon him, because he looks upon it as an event very far off.
Then comes the judgment (which awaits until that fearful moment), and even the thought of this does ndt affect him, for he lives as if he never had to give an account of his misdeeds; but when he finds himself stretched on a bed of sickness, weak, languid, exhausted with pain and overcome with grief, it is then that he recollects that he is mortal; and, seeing himself so near that fearful passage which he had not before thought of, he cannot but be much alarmed at finding that he is compelled to ponder on the danger he is in, and of the necessity of preparing for the salvation of his soul.
This, then, is the short road by which the Divine Mercy leads worldlings and draws them back to His service.
That libertine would have gone on carelessly for ten years more, had not God in His mercy sent him a malignant fever, which has frightened him and made him return to his duty.
Doctors are accustomed to wound one part of the body in order to cure another part; they open a vein in a sound arm to relieve a feverish brain; they make use of the cupping-glass to remove inflammation; they keep a wound open in order to be able to close another; and, as St Jerome says, the secret of their science consists in restoring health through pain. Ars medicorum est, per do lore, reddere sanitatem.
The Son of God, who is the Physician of souls, follows the same method to cure sinners. He smites the flesh to cure the mind, and from illnesses, which are the forerunners of the death of the body, He frames a good provision for the life of the soul.
All the holy Fathers teach us that illness is the school of Christian wisdom, the dawning of virtue whereby the mind is invigorated, and the grand means of grace, which redoubles its strength, through the weakness of the body. When I am weak, says St. Paul, it is then that I am strong. I am never more vigorous in mind than when my body is exhausted with illness and wearied with weakness. More than this, illness may be said to be victorious over vice, through the triumph of grace over the passions of the soul, and a triumph of the soul over the appetites of the flesh.
It is then that the sensualist thinks more of his health than of his pleasures; it is then that the miser dreams not of his riches, but sighs for the treasure of health; then that the ambitious man throws aside his vanity and builds no more castles in the air. The gormandiser sobers down at the sight of death, the envious and vindictive proclaim a truce; for the pains of the body soften the bitterness of the mind.
Is it not, then, a wonderful blessing that Almighty God should allow the infirmities of the body to arrest the impetuosity of our passions?
That illness has been your salvation. You have suffered, but your life has not been in danger. This is what the Lord has said, " I will strike him, and I will cure him."
He has struck you, your illness has awakened your faith, and that has been your cure.