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Illustration: Parable of the Good Samaritan by Balthasar van Cortbemde (1647)
Pope Francis’ address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission
on Sickness and Suffering in the Bible
Consistory Hall – Thursday, 11 April 2024
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Luke 4:18-19)
I am pleased to welcome you at the end of your annual Plenary Assembly, in which you proposed to explore a very existential theme: sickness and suffering in the Bible.
It is a theme that concerns every human being, in so far as he or she is subject to infirmity, fragility, and death. In fact, our wounded nature also carries inscribed within itself the realities of limitation and finitude and suffers the contradictions of evil and pain.
The theme is very close to my heart:
Suffering and illness are adversaries to be confronted, but it is important to do so in a way that is worthy of mankind, in a human way.
Let’s say: removing them, reducing them to taboos that it is better not to talk about, perhaps because they damage that image of efficiency at all costs, useful to sell and make money, is certainly not a solution.
We all falter under the weight of these experiences, and we must help ourselves to go through them by living them in relations, without turning in on ourselves and without legitimate rebellion turning into isolation. abandonment or despair.
We also know from the testimony of so many of our brothers and sisters, that pain and infirmity, in the light of faith, can become decisive factors in a process of maturation: the crucible of suffering allows us to discern what is essential and what is not. But it is above all the example of Jesus that shows us the way. He urges us to take care of those who live in situations of infirmity, with the determination to defeat the illness at the same time.
He gently invites us to join our suffering to his offer of salvation, as a seed that bears fruit.
In a practical sense, our vision of faith has led me to propose some food for thought around two decisive words: compassion and inclusion.
1.Compassion
The first, compassion, indicates the recurrent and characteristic attitude of the Lord towards the weak and needy people He encounters.
When He sees the faces of so many people, sheep without a shepherd struggling to find their way in life (Mk 6:34 – When he landed He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things), Jesus is moved.
He has compassion on the hungry and exhausted crowd (Mk 8:2-3 “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have nothing to eat; 3 and if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way; and some of them have come a long way.”) and tirelessly welcomes the sick (Mk 1:32 – That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.), whose requests He hears; think of the blind people who plead with Him and the many such who ask for healing (cf. Lk 17:11-19 – 1 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. 17 Then said Jesus, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”);
He is moved with “compassion” – the Gospel says – for the widow who accompanies her only son to the tomb (cf. Lk 7:13 – As he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large crowd from the city was with her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” 14 And he came and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” 15 And the dead man sat up, and began to speak. And he gave him to his mother.). Great compassion.
This compassion manifests itself as closeness and leads Jesus to identify with the suffering: “I was sick and you visited me” (Mt 25:36). It is a Compassion that leads to closeness.
All this reveals an important aspect: Jesus does not explain suffering, but He approaches those who suffer. He does not approach pain with general encouragement and sterile consolation but welcomes misery and allows himself to be touched by it.
Sacred Scripture is enlightening in this sense: it does not leave us a handbook of good words or a recipe book of feelings, but it shows us faces, encounters, and concrete stories.
Think of Job, with the temptation of his friends to articulate religious theories linking suffering with divine punishment, but which clash with the reality of pain, witnessed by Job’s own life.
Jesus’ response is therefore crucial, it is a response of compassion that takes on and, by taking on, saves man and transfigures his pain. Yes, Christ transfigured our pain by making it his own to the core: by inhabiting it, suffering it and offering it as a gift of love.
He did not give easy answers to our “why“, but on the cross he made our great “why” his own (cf. Mk 15:34 – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
In this way, those who assimilate Sacred Scripture purify their religious images of false attitudes and learn to follow the path indicated by Jesus: to touch human suffering with one’s own hand, with humility, gentleness and seriousness, in order to bring, in the name of the incarnate God, the proximity of a saving and concrete support. To touch, not in theory, but with the hand.
2.Inclusion
And brings us to the second word: inclusion.
Even though it is not a biblical word, it expresses well a characteristic feature of Jesus’ style:
His search forthe sinner, the lost, the marginalized, the stigmatized, to welcome them into the house of the Father (Lk 15 – 3 parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the parable of the prodigal Son).
Think of the lepers: for Jesus, no-one should be excluded from God’s salvation (cf. Mk 1:40-42 – And a leper came to him begging him, and on his kneels said to him, “If you want to, you can make me clean.” Being moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.).
But inclusion also embraces another aspect: the Lord wants the whole person to be healed, in spirit, soul and body (Thess 5:23 – May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept healthy and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.). For a physical healing from evil would be of little use without a healing of the heart from sin (cf. Mk 2:17; Mt 10:28-29). There is a total healing: body, soul and spirit.
This perspective of inclusion leads us to attitudes of sharing: Christ, who went among the people doing good and healing the sick, commanded His disciples to care for the sick and bless them in His name (cf. Mt 10:8 – when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”; Lk 10:8-9 – Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you; 9 heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’), sharing with them His mission of consolation (cf. Lk 4:18-19 – subtitle above).
Therefore, through the experience of suffering and illness, we, as the Church, are called to walk together with all, in Christian and human solidarity, opening up opportunities for dialogue and hope in the name of our common frailty.
The parable of the Good Samaritan “shows us how a community can be rebuilt by men and women who identify with the vulnerability of others, who refuse to create a society of exclusion and instead act as neighbors, lifting up and rehabilitating those who have fallen for the sake of the common good”” (Encyclical Letter Fratelli tutti, 67).
Dear brothers and sisters – the sermon end to leave you with these insights.
I thank you for your service encourage you to study in depth, with critical rigor and fraternal spirit, the subjects you are studying, in order to shed the light of Scripture on sensitive issues that concern everyone.
The Word of God is a powerful antidote to any narrowness, abstraction and ideologization of the faith: read in the spirit in which it was written, it increases passion for God and man, promotes charity and revives apostolic zeal.
The Church therefore has a constant need to drink from the fountain of the Word.
I bless you and your mission to quench the thirst of the holy People of God with the fresh water of the Spirit. And I ask you, please, to pray for me. For me, not against! Thank you.
