Often our Blessed Lord Jesus is called a “healer.” Amen, he is. But what does it mean to heal? What is healing? How is Jesus the Healer?
Us modern Western people living in the age of science are focused on the secondary and instrumental causes of things. We get sick; we don’t go to Temple, but to Pharmacy. We feel relieved and we say “the Tylenol helped me.” It is true! God, the primary cause, helped me through the instrument of Tylenol. Sadly, in my wonderland of modern science and access to resources in the affluent United States, I neglect the primary cause.
John J. Pilch, professor of Biblical studies at Georgetown University, says we modern people look for therapies which are aetiological, i.e., we look for the scientific causes of medical ailments such as germs and viruses. The Modern Western way is therefore to seek a CURE, i.e., a therapy that effectively assumes control over a process either biological and/or psychological (= a DISEASE).
However the ancient Mediterranean cultures—of which the first century Christians and Jews were part—were very different in many ways than us, Pilch explains. They were not scientifically oriented; the ancients were so focused on the primary cause of all things, God or “the gods,” that they didn’t bother much with the secondary causes. And if they did think about causes, they were personal, because to these ancients everything that happens has a personal cause. The question for them was “who did it?” not “what happened?” As Pilch illustrates, “When a human being is not readily available to blame, then a capricious spirit must be the agent of the misfortune” (The Cultural Dictionary of the Bible, p. 161).
Ancient Christians and Jews did not make clear distinctions between natural disasters, demonic possession, and human illness. Take the Synoptic “Healing of Peter’s Mother-in-law” story. Whereas in Matthew (see 8:14-17) and Mark (see 1:29-31), Peter’s mother-in-law is bedridden until Jesus holds her hand which causes the fever to leave, in Luke’s version (4:38-39) the demon named “Fever” apparently afflicts the woman. Pilch explains, “This is implied by Jesus ‘rebuking’ the fever. Luke uses the very same word in Greek to describe Jesus’ rebuke to demons (4:35), to the windstorm (8:24), and to an unclean spirit (9:42)” (Pilch, pp. 161-162). These were things see
n by ancient Mediterranean peoples as utterly beyond human control.
Therefore these ancient Mediterranean peoples did not seek the medical CURE in their therapies. Rather they concentrated on the SYMPTOMS, and attempted to manage them or alleviate them. According to Pilch, this process is called HEALING, a therapy that interprets a disease or troubling medical condition and transforms it into the meaningful cultural construction called “ILLNESS.” Through this process of HEALING the psychological, sensorial, and experiential symptoms of the medical circumstances get reduced—or even eliminated—and the sufferer finds peace, freedom and, inevitably, NEW MEANING.
When in the Fourth Gospel the disciples ask Jesus about who exactly were the culprits as to why the man born blind suffered his sad condition, Jesus replied that his blindness was neither the result of his sin nor his parents’ (see John 9:1-41). And in the Gospel stories concerning demonic possession the bad spirit is not so much the cause of the sufferer’s condition, but just another symptom, the misfortune being manifested. Jesus the healer, the liberator, is not scientifically-oriented. As he is presented in the Gospels he seems to lack a aetiological concerns.
So to recap, Modern Western people are scientifically-oriented. We focus on the secondary or instrumental cause at the expense of the primary cause (God). We seek medical CURES for DISEASES. The Ancient Mediterranean was not scientifically-oriented, but looked at the appearances (phenomena) of things. He or she focused on the primary cause (God or “the divine”) to the expense of secondary, instrumental causes. He or she sought HEALING for ILNESSES.
This is in no way to suggest that the ancient Jew or Christian was gullible or stupid! As Antho
ny Rizzi admonishes us in his The Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century (p. 1), an ancient “Christian took the Bible as true on faith, but he was conscious that it was faith,” whereas we modern Western people identify with the conclusions of the science (say of the earth’s motion or shape) in a dangerous blind belief, unaware that we are taking the word of an expert and do not, ourselves, genuinely know to certitude. This is dangerous—while being humble, aware that you have not done the various experiments, trusting the word of an expert in a specific science is wise, it is nonetheless most foolish to be unaware that you are merely trusting the word of the expert and in hubris think your modern so-called “knowledge” is superior to that of those pre-scientific peoples who lived before you!
But returning to our discussion on healing and cures, Jesus is a healer. He restores purposefulness and meaninging of life to those who suffer.
Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 1503
Christ's compassion toward the sick and his healings of almost every kind of infirmity are a resplendent sign that "God has visited his people."
But does Jesus go beyond healing?
Yes, Jesus comes to cure us also. He is SAVIOR. To be saved is to be made WHOLE. Jesus came to cure us, to heal us completely, to make us whole and well, that is, to save us.
But from what did Jesus come to cure and save us? He did not come to save us from medical conditions—we can safely assume that everyone Jesus healed via miracles, including those he reanimated, later died. What about social evils? I think we like the idea of Jesus the rescuer, the genie who flies in like Superman granting wishes, ready to whisper the Powerball numbers in our ears, to empower the Miami Heat to sweep the Finals (if you are a sad Miami sports fan, perhaps the saddest of all sports fans), to halt those tsunamis and earthquakes, to make our cancer and AIDS vanish, to give us good credit scores, etc. But the real Jesus is better than this mental idol, this comprehensible god and messiah. Like St. John Chrysostom says, “a comprehended god is no god.”
The real Jesus, true God and true man, came to cure us not from social injustice and political bondage, not from environmental disaster and economic collapse, not from disease and pain, which are all symptoms, but their root—sin. Jesus, the cure of sin, came to save us from sin and selfishness, the font of all suffering.
Matthew 1:21—
“…he will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
Did Jesus—Yeshua or Yah Saves—come to save us from pain and disease and physical torments? Jesus came to free us from sin:
Matthew 9:5—
“Which is easier, 
to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise and walk'?”
First Jesus forgives the paralytic, calling him CHILD (see Matthew 9:2). THEN the miracle comes.
Forgiving sin is primary for Jesus the Savior. Forgiveness comes first. “Everything else follows,” Father Anthony de Mello writes (Seek God Everywhere: Reflections on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, p. 21). And what is sin to Jesus? Is it wrong acts and deeds? Is it failure to adhere to laws and neglecting to live up to obligations? Is it forgetting to say the right prayers? Are these the root of all suffering? No. Then to find what exactly Jesus means by “sin” we must dig deeper still.
Our Blessed Lord came to save us from the radical horror that is sin—meaning our refusal, our NO to growth, our NO to commit ourselves, our NO to become sensitive and concerned, our NO to risk, our NO to drop our mental idols through which we distort the world, and our NO to love.
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