The Healthy and the Sick

Admonition 13. The healthy and the sick are to be admonished differently. The healthy are to be admonished to use the health of the body for the health of the soul. Otherwise, if they turn the grace of the soundness granted them to the service of wickedness, they may be made worse by the gift, and afterward deserve the more severe punishments, because they are not afraid now to misuse the more generous gifts of God. The healthy are to be admonished not to despise the opportunity of winning health forever. For it is written, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” They are to be admonished that, if they will not please God when they can, they may not be able to when, too late, they would like to. [b]

That is why Wisdom afterward deserts those whom she called before, when they had refused her too long. She says, “I have called, and you refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no one paid attention; you have set all my counsel at nothing, and would have none of my reproof. I too will laugh at your destruction, and will mock when what you feared comes.” And again, “Then they will call on me, and I will not listen; they will rise early, and will not find me.” And so, when health of body, received for the purpose of doing good, is despised, it is felt after it is lost how precious the gift was. At the last it is sought without fruit, after it was enjoyed without profit when it was granted at the fitting time. That is why it is well said through Solomon, “Do not give your honor to aliens, and your years to the cruel; lest strangers be filled with your wealth, and your labors be in the house of a stranger, and you groan at the last, when your flesh and your body are consumed.”

For who are aliens to us but the evil spirits, who are cut off from the lot of the heavenly homeland? And what is our honor, but that, though made in bodies of clay, we are still created after the image and likeness of our Maker? Or who else is the cruel one but that apostate angel, who struck himself with the pain of death through pride, and who, though lost himself, has not held back from bringing death on the human race? So the one who gives his honor to aliens is the person who, though made after the image and likeness of God, devotes the seasons of his life to the pleasures of evil spirits. He also hands over his years to the cruel one, when he spends the span of life granted him according to the will of the adversary whose rule is evil.

And in the same place it is well added, “Lest strangers be filled with your wealth, and your labors be in the house of a stranger.” For whoever labors, through the healthy body he has received or the wisdom of mind granted to him, not in practicing virtues but in committing vices, by no means fills his own house with his wealth, but the dwellings of strangers. That is, he multiplies the deeds of unclean spirits. Indeed, he so acts in his self-indulgence or his pride as even to increase the number of the lost by adding himself to them. Further, it is well added, “And you groan at the last, when your flesh and your body are consumed.” For very often the health of the flesh that has been received is spent on vices. But when it is suddenly withdrawn, when the flesh is worn down with afflictions, when the soul is already being pressed to depart, then the lost health, long enjoyed for evil, is sought again as though for living well. And then people groan that they would not serve God, when they are wholly unable to make up the losses of their negligence by serving him. That is why it is said in another place, “When he slew them, then they sought him.”

But the sick, on the other hand, are to be admonished to feel that they are sons of God, in that the scourge of discipline chastises them. For unless he meant to give them an inheritance after correction, he would not take care to train them by afflictions. That is why the Lord says to John by the angel, “Those whom I love I rebuke and chasten.” That is why it is written again, “My son, do not despise the discipline of the Lord, nor lose heart when you are rebuked by him. For the Lord chastens the one he loves, and scourges every son whom he receives.” That is why the psalmist says, “Many are the tribulations of the righteous, and out of them all the Lord has delivered them.” That is why the blessed Job too, crying out in his sorrow, says, “If I am righteous, I will not lift up my head, being filled with affliction and misery.” [g]

The sick are to be told that, if they believe the heavenly homeland to be their own, they must endure labors in this world as in a foreign land. That is why the stones were hammered outside, so that they could be laid in the building of the temple of the Lord without the sound of a hammer. That is, we are hammered now with scourges outside, so that afterward we may be set in our places within God’s temple without any stroke of discipline. In this way the blows may now cut away whatever is superfluous in us, and then the harmony of love alone may bind us together in the building. The sick are to be admonished to consider what severe scourges of discipline chastise our sons according to the flesh so that they may obtain earthly inheritances. What pain of divine correction, then, is hard for us, when by it we both obtain an inheritance that can never be lost and escape punishments that will last forever? That is why Paul says, “We have had fathers of our flesh to train us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? And they indeed trained us for a few days according to their own will; but he does it for our profit, so that we may receive his holiness.”

The sick are to be admonished to consider how great a health of the heart there is in bodily affliction. It calls the mind back to a knowledge of itself, and renews the memory of weakness that health very often throws away. So the spirit, which is carried out of itself into self-exaltation, is reminded by the stricken flesh it suffers from of the condition to which it is subject. This is rightly signified to Balaam, if only he had been willing to follow the voice of God obediently, in the very hindering of his journey. For Balaam is on his way to reach his purpose, but the animal under him thwarts his desire. The donkey, stopped by what forbids it, sees an angel that the human mind does not see. For very often the flesh, slowed by afflictions, shows the mind, by the scourge it endures, the God whom the mind itself, which has the flesh under it, did not see. It does this in such a way as to hinder the eagerness of the spirit, which longs to get ahead in this world as though it were traveling on a journey, until it makes known to the spirit the invisible one who stands in its way. That is why it is well said through Peter, “He had the mute beast of burden as a rebuke for his madness, which, speaking with a man’s voice, forbade the folly of the prophet.” For a man is indeed rebuked as mad by a mute beast of burden when a mind puffed up with pride is reminded by the afflicted flesh of the good of humility that it ought to keep. But Balaam did not obtain the benefit of this rebuke, because, going to curse, he changed his voice but not his mind. [m]

The sick are to be admonished to consider how great a blessing bodily affliction is. It both washes away the sins that have been committed and restrains those that might have been committed, and it inflicts on the troubled mind wounds of penitence that come from the stripes outside. That is why it is written, “The bruise of a wound cleanses away evil, and stripes in the secret parts of the belly.” For the bruise of a wound cleanses away evil, because the pain of scourges cleanses iniquities, whether only planned or carried out. And by the word “belly” the mind is usually meant. That the mind is called the belly is taught by the saying in which it is written, “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, which searches all the secret parts of the belly.” As if to say: when the light of divine inspiration comes into a person’s mind, it shows the mind to itself by lighting it up; whereas before the coming of the Holy Spirit the mind could both entertain bad thoughts and not know how to weigh them. So the bruise of a wound cleanses away evil, and stripes in the secret parts of the belly, because when we are struck outwardly, we are called back, silent and afflicted, to the memory of our sins. We bring back before our eyes all the evil we have done in the past, and through what we suffer outwardly we grieve inwardly all the more for what we have done. So it comes about that, in the midst of the open wounds of the body, the hidden stripe in the belly cleanses us more fully, because a hidden wound of sorrow heals the iniquities of evil-doing.

The sick are to be admonished, so that they may keep the virtue of patience, to consider without ceasing how great the evils were that our Redeemer endured from those he had created. He bore so many vile insults and reproaches. While daily snatching the souls of captives from the hand of the old enemy, he took blows on the face from men who insulted him. While washing us with the water of salvation, he did not hide his face from the spitting of the faithless. While delivering us from eternal punishments by pleading for us, he bore scourges in silence. While giving us everlasting honors among the choirs of angels, he endured blows of the fist. While saving us from the prickings of our sins, he did not refuse to submit his head to thorns. While making us drunk with eternal sweetness, he accepted the bitterness of gall in his thirst. He who for our sake worshiped the Father, though equal to him in Godhead, held his peace when he was worshiped in mockery. While preparing life for the dead, he who was himself the life went even to death. Why, then, is it thought hard that man should endure scourges from God for doing evil, if God underwent such great evils for doing good? Or who with a sound understanding can be ungrateful for being struck himself, when even he who lived here without sin did not leave this world without a scourge? [q]