62. Госпиталь или лазарет

What a hospital is to the sick, the Holy Church is to Christians who are spiritually sick. Patients enter the hospital through the doors. The spiritually ill enter the Holy Church by faith and holy Baptism. Patients enter the hospital in order to be cured of illness and become healthy. The spiritually sick enter the Holy Church in order to be cured of mental illness and to be saved. There is a doctor in the hospital who visits, looks at and treats patients. In the Church, the holy Physician is Christ, Who visits and heals Christians who are spiritually sick. In the hospital, the doctor prohibits the sick from everything that interferes with the treatment given to the sick. In the Holy Church, Christ commands Christians to abstain from everything that hinders their spiritual healing and eternal salvation. In the hospital, patients who want to be healed listen to the doctor and are healed. Likewise, Christians, if they want to be healed and saved, must listen to Christ the Doctor and avoid everything that He forbids. In the hospital, those patients who do not listen to the doctor and do not abstain from doing what he forbids them are not healed and do not receive health. So those Christians remain unfocused and deprived of salvation, who do not listen to Christ and live according to their own whims, and not according to the rule of His teaching. In the hospital, patients declare their illnesses to the doctor: “This is why I am sick.” Likewise, Christians should declare their illnesses to Christ, the Heavenly Physician, and ask Him for healing. “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:12). In the hospital it happens that not all patients are healed. There are incurable diseases, and a person cannot do everything he wants. In the Church the saint is different. There is no mental illness that Christ would not want and could not heal, if only the sick person himself wanted it and earnestly desired, asked, and sought from Christ. All things are possible for Him, to whose word and command all things obey, whose desire and word are deeds, by whose command the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the dumb speak, the paralytic and those lying on their beds rise (See Matt. 11:5). Just know, Christian, and admit your weakness, and humbly ask the Doctor for this healing, and wait without a doubt - and you will certainly receive it. Just beware of what hinders His saving healing. In the hospital, patients who want to be healed surrender themselves to the will of the doctor to do with them as he wants. Likewise, Christians, if they truly want to be healed, must entrust and entrust themselves to the wise and faithful Doctor, Jesus Christ, so that he can do with them what he wants. Bitter or sweet provides medicine - everything must be taken for good. For Jesus Christ is a wise, faithful, and humane Doctor, and really wants to heal our souls, and thus save. For this he came into the world, suffered, and died for us. He healed corruptible and mortal bodies, as His Gospel preaches. Will he not heal immortal souls? Let us entrust ourselves only to Him - may He heal us as He wants. And we will try to abstain from everything that He forbids us and hinders His saving healing. What is the benefit of a medicine to a patient if he does it of his own free will and not according to the will of the doctor? Think about this, Christian, if you want to be healed and thus saved. We are all sick and we all need a Doctor for healing. But not everyone recognizes and recognizes their illnesses. The beginning of healing is to recognize your weakness. Many are not healed because they do not recognize their weakness. And they don’t know, because they don’t try to know. And so, without recognizing and recognizing their weakness, they do not seek healing. A person sees bodily weakness and seeks healing. Oh, with what zeal I would seek the healing of my soul when I saw her serious illness! But the trouble is that both the soul itself and its weakness are not visible, and are seen only by those who examine its condition with all diligence. Consider, man, and recognize the various weaknesses of your soul - so that you may seek its healing from the Heavenly Physician Christ. The more you consider and understand her weakness, the more zeal and desire you will seek for her healing. An unhealed bodily illness threatens temporary death. Unhealed mental illness threatens with eternal death. Stop looking and looking for what is outside of you and for the most part brings harm rather than benefit. Consider and find out what is going on in your soul, how many and what diseases torment it and lead to death. You entered the holy hospital of the Church, to seek the healing of your soul from Christ the Savior, and so to be saved forever, and not to seek honor, glory and wealth, not to organize banquets, not to go on visits and receive guests, and not to chase after other vanity. People come to the infirmary to be treated, not to fulfill their whims. Poor Christian! Recognize your error, and turn to Christ from vanity, and try to recognize the weakness of your soul, and acknowledge it before Christ, so that you may be healed by Him. “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:12). “I said: “Lord! Have mercy on me, heal my soul, for I have sinned before You.” My wounds stank and rotten because of my madness” (Ps. 40:5, 37:6). It happens that a weak person seeks healing from many doctors, but does not receive it, as we read in the Gospel about a woman suffering from bleeding (Mark 5:25–26). Likewise, a poor Christian, seeing his terrible spiritual weakness, seeks help for himself from here and there, but does not receive it. He reads many books with considerable difficulty, but cannot recover from them. Dear Christian! No matter how hard you try and wherever you turn, you will not receive healing anywhere except Christ. Without a doubt, it is useful and necessary to read Christian books, and reflect on them, and learn from them. They enlighten the mind, give reason, move to repentance, and encourage prayer. But all of them, as we see, point to Christ and send us to Christ, and guide us so that we seek healing and salvation from Him. He alone, as the ever-present Light, enlightens the blind, and, as a Physician, heals the weak, and, as Life, revives the dead, and, as the Almighty, raises the paralytic and corrects the lame. That poor woman, who suffered from bleeding, when she could not receive healing from any doctors, but came into an even worse state, heard about Jesus, about whom rumors spread everywhere that he allows everyone to come to Him, and heals all kinds of diseases not with herbs, but with His word and power. And I thought like this: “I will also go to that Great Wonderworker and Physician, and because of the shame of my weakness, I will not appear before His face, I will not declare my stingy weakness, but I will come up from behind and touch His vestments, and so I will be healed.” And with such faith, “she came up from behind among the people and touched His clothes, for she said: “If I touch His clothes, I will get well.” And immediately her source of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her illness” (Mark 5:27-29). See, Christian, the faith of the poor woman! You see the power, action and fruit of her faith! This woman teaches us where and how we should seek healing for our spiritual infirmities - that is, from Christ by faith. She said to herself: “If I even touch His clothes, I will get well.” This is the property of faith! And I got what I hoped for. Where there is true faith, there is hope. Let's take this woman as an example. And we will approach Christ with faith and hope, and, although silently, we will fall before His All-Seeing Eye. And when we pray, we will pray with faith and hope. And when we approach His holy and life-giving Mysteries, let us approach with faith and hope of healing and renewal, remembering and imitating that woman who suffered from bleeding. In this way, our spiritual weakness will be healed, and the source of our destructive passions that torment our soul will dry up. A sign that mental infirmity has begun to be healed is when harmful passions begin to pacify and subside, when less pride, self-love, love of money, hatred, envy, anger, rage, stinginess, love of glory, impurity and other evils appear in a person, as a sign of a body that has begun to heal - when it begins to free itself from harmful juices. Like harmful juices in the body, sinful passions are in the soul. Harmful juices torment the body and kill. Sinful passions torment the soul and lead to eternal death. The body becomes healthy when it is healed of evil and harmful juices. This is how the soul becomes healthy when it is freed from evil and sinful passions. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David, my daughter (my soul) is cruelly raging... Lord! Help me” (Matthew 15:22, 25). The great demon is sin, which lives in the soul and torments the soul. He doesn't give her any peace. Now he breaks and inclines to one thing, then to another, then to a third ungodly and destructive deed. "God! Help me! God! But dogs also eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” May I, the unworthy one, also hear: “Let it be done to you as you wish,” as the Canaanite woman heard (Matthew 15:27–28). You might be interested in: