The father of a sick boy asked the Lord to heal his son saying “My son is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech”, which means that it is a spirit that made him tongue-tied and have other symptoms that indicate epilepsy. The father asks for healing “if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us”. His faith in Jesus is not clear; however, he did hear that the Nazarene is a wonder maker, so he said why not ask him for a miracle. Christ faces this troubled soul. He encounters this man through his doubt so he tells him: “Everything is possible for one who believes”. The Lord goes down to him perhaps he is moved, perhaps he believes. This man cries as if he saw in Jesus’ question to him an invitation to a faith that’s shaky for him.
At this point, the man says: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief”, and in better words this means: Strengthen my desire to believe and my wish for my son to be healed.
When the disciples asked the Master: “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” he said that “an evil spirit of this kind can come out only by prayer and fasting”. Perhaps the Church wanted to read this section from Mark in this Lenten season because the text has combined between praying and fasting, the two pillars of this Lenten period.
Fasting indicates that emptying our stomachs from food is a will to fill our internal personality from the Word of God, and from this aspect, fasting and praying are one. Praying, here, doesn’t mean a collection of prayers organized in daily rituals, but means a communion with God, a unity with him in a way that if you asked for the healing of a patient for example, God would do this healing through you. You and your Lord would be doing the same job.
Back then, the disciples didn’t have this ability because the Holy Spirit didn’t descend on them yet and didn’t fill them with his grace that we see in them in the book of Acts. Disease was often a fall of the entity, a kind of falling behind, a crisis… while safety was what God wants, it was often a rising and a facilitator of our journey towards God and a sign of spiritual perfection. This is why God wants it and prepares for it through those who deserve to have it from God. He prepares for it through the faith of the healed and the in-need for safety. This is why God put the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick which expresses the tenderness of the Lord and an invitation to thank and praise him.
God is found in the believer, and this believer can Give God for any person that needs him. In the same way that you push a person into repentance towards the God that you repent to, you can also ask the mighty God in you to become on the sick person so that he rises from his collapse and sticks to his Lord healthily.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “شفاء الإيمان” –Raiati no14- 03.04.2011
