The Gospels in the New Testament are chock-full of incidents showing Jesus healing physical illness as He went around preaching about the Kingdom of God. Oftentimes, we focus on the miraculous nature of these events and miss the real point Christ—whom we call the Great Physician—was actually making. And that’s understandable.
Miraculous accounts that defy the natural rules the world operates within on a daily basis catch the eye. They showcase the power of God over the creation He made and remind us that when it comes to the Almighty, nothing is impossible. Not even curing cancer. Or leprosy. Or the common cold. You get the drift. Jesus’ miracles are so captivating because they reveal that while He is truly human, He is not only human. He is the Creator robed in the flesh of His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
However, God often uses the physical world around us to point us toward a more profound spiritual reality. When Jesus healed St. Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, drove demons out of the possessed, and provided relief for those suffering from other ailments in Mark 1:29–39, He did not just make them feel better and send them on their way. He had a purpose for their suffering and for the healing that followed.
Just as the physical bodies of those Jesus healed suffered from sickness, so do our souls. We are born with original sin, an illness that is completely fatal and results in eternal damnation if left untreated. Only one Doctor can administer the cure, which also happens to be the Physician’s very own blood. Nothing else can cure this disease. No one else can restore our spiritual health. Only Jesus.
When the Lord opens the eyes of the blind, He wants us to understand our own spiritual blindness and seek Him, along with His grace and mercy, so He can restore our spiritual sight. On our own, without the power of the Holy Spirit, we cannot recognize our blindness to the sin in our hearts. Jesus must restore our sight so we can see ourselves as we truly are: sinners in need of salvation. New spiritual eyes also show us that we cannot heal ourselves and that we need our Physician to clean out the festering wounds poisoning us to death.
The fact that Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, came to earth and took on human flesh points to the physical body as critically important and possessing inherent dignity. But the soul holds far greater value, as it is the eternal part of us, destined either to spend eternity with Jesus in Heaven or to remain under His wrath in Hell. The physical and the spiritual go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Yet we can neglect the health of our souls the same way we neglect the health of our bodies.
When we clog our arteries with stacks of greasy hamburgers, fried chicken, and French fries without moderation or exercise, we invite heart disease and likely punch our ticket early. In the same way, when we skip Scripture, neglect Mass, abandon daily prayer, and refuse to obey God’s commandments—while gorging ourselves on video games, movies, inappropriate online content, and other sinful indulgences—we give ourselves the soul’s equivalent of heart disease and set ourselves up for eternal death.
Jesus’ healings in the Gospels remind us to take care of our spiritual health by diagnosing our sinfulness while pointing us to Him as the only Doctor who can cure what ails us. If your spirit feels sick, beaten down, or broken, turn to the Great Physician. He eagerly awaits the opportunity to make you well.
