The Sick and their Loved Ones

FROM AUGUST UNTIL December of this year, our parish's Family Rosary Crusade and Apostleship of Prayer will go on prayer visits to selected parishioners who are ill.  While prayer visits are a vital part of the two organizations’ apostolic work, the activity is being pursued in response to the call of the parish for a year-round outreach by its ministries and organizations. 

            Praying for and visiting the sick are powerful acts of faith.   A sick person is not only in a most vulnerable state physically, mentally, and emotionally, his spirituality is also tested to the hilt by the devil who finds a mind and body weakened by illness fair game.  As we pray, we call on God to come to the succor of the frail and the feeble, to empower them with His presence, His hope, and His love.  As we pray for acceptance of one’s illness and for complete submission to His will, with equal zeal we also implore the power of the greatest healer.

            But our prayers are not only meant for the sick, but for the loved ones who care for them as well.  They are just as vulnerable as their wards.  The spiritual strength required in caring for a sick relative needs to be sustained for the devil delights in chiseling bits of it hoping it cracks and crumbles in time.  The devil gloats in the financial expenses that over-burden the family, the stress that tires the body, the confusion that engulfs the mind so distracted by the uncertainty of the illness’ extent and outcome.  Indeed, intimidations are as vast as the devil’s ability for wanton cunning.

            My father was bedridden for almost two years after a stroke.  Brain surgery only proved a palliative that prolonged his and our family’s agony; for while he came off it alive, it was helpless in restoring his memory and speech.  All that remained was a man who had to be taken care of like a child; a child who often would just stare right through us in failed recognition.  

            We could easily have succumbed to despair.  We could easily have given in to the devil’s designs and blamed God for our ordeal.   There was hardly any reason for my mother, my sister, and me to expect my father’s recovery through some miraculous turn of events.  And while there were the expenses and the anxieties, these paled to the pain in my heart each time I kissed my father’s cheeks and softly caressed his forehead.

But through it all, we prevailed.  Yes, as a family we did entreat our Lord for his guiding hand, but the prayers and home visits from friends and good souls had an overwhelming yet calming effect on us.  Somehow, regardless of how things were, the message that God would never abandon us even for a second, especially at the lowest and saddest moments of our lives, never sounded more clear and true.

            This experience makes for my fierce belief in the power of intercessory prayers for and of visits of the sick.  We may never know how and when God would eventually respond to our actions, but surely He will as He takes kindly to them.  And He takes them as cues to make a positive difference in the lives of those for whom we pray.

           So, have you prayed for or visited someone who's sick lately?  And don't forget, pray for and give some comforting words to their loved ones too.  


(This article also appeared in my column The Wandering View, in the St. Paul of the Cross's Weekly Parish Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 45, Sept. 11, 2011.)