Lenten Campaign 2025
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There exist numerous home remedies for the most common illnesses, but there is one sickness that can not be healed through our own efforts.
That sickness is the life of sin we are currently in and the many times we walk away from God.
No matter how hard we may try to achieve inner healing through our own mental experiments, only God can heal us and bring us lasting peace through the forgiveness of sins.
What we need to do is to fly to the Divine Physician and to show him all of our ailments.
Spiritual healing
Pope Benedict XVI reflected on this spiritual truth during an Angelus message on the Fourth Sunday of Lent in 2012.
St Augustine comments: “So far, then, as it lies with the physician, he has come to heal the sick. He that will not observe the orders of the physician destroys himself. He has come a Savior to the world... You will not be saved by him; you shall be judged of yourself”.
In this quote, St. Augustine is explaining how Jesus, the Divine Physician, wants to heal us, but he can only heal us if we want healing.
Pope Benedict XVI continues his reflection by expanding on this reality, linking it to the sacrament of confession:
Therefore, if the merciful love of God — who went so far as to give his only Son to redeem our life — is infinite, we have a great responsibility: each one of us, in fact, must recognize that he is sick in order to be healed. Each one must confess his sin so that God’s forgiveness, already granted on the Cross, may have an effect in his heart and in his life.
He further explains how, "it is only by opening oneself to the light and only by sincerely confessing one’s sins to God that one finds true peace and true joy. It is therefore important to receive the Sacrament of Penance regularly, especially during Lent, in order to receive the Lord’s forgiveness and to intensify our process of conversion."
Sometimes it can be more convenient to ignore our sins and to hide them from God, or even from ourselves. We bury them deep within our soul, not letting them be exposed to the light of Christ.
However, if we do that, we will never experience healing. This happens whenever we go to the doctor and don't tell him something that is ailing us.
Our doctor can't heal something that he doesn't know about. While its true that the Divine Physician knows everything, he wants us to recognize our spiritual sickness and to bring it to him of our own free will.
God wants to heal us and to bring us back to spiritual health. What we need to do is to let him and we can do that by going to confession and opening ourselves up to the healing power of mercy that Jesus grants through the ministry of the priest.
