The leg that pains you is a harsh teacher, yet from God it comes, that you might learn what the rich, in their ease, so readily forget. You are perplexed at what afflicts your whole left limb, but consider: is not the soul often lamed more grievously, while we lavish care on the body alone? That leg, which now troubles you, may be the very means of your salvation if you receive it rightly. For when the body is humbled, the spirit may at last stand upright.
You ask for healing in the name of Jesus Christ, and well you should pray. Yet look to your life, lest while you seek bodily soundness, your soul remain maimed with love of money or contempt for the needy. For you hear men say, “Such an one lends out so many pieces of gold, and yet begs,” and they harden their hearts against the poor. But this is a pretense and a charge against themselves. If a man has means and pretends poverty, it is your cruelty that drives him to it, for he knows he deals with wild beasts rather than men. Do not be that judge who excuses his inhumanity by suspecting impostors where true misery exists.
And what excuse do many make? “I have children, and I am afraid of hunger, afraid I myself might stand in need and be ashamed to beg.” So to shield yourself from imagined want, you let others perish in real hunger? Do you know what a dreadful thing it is to beg, to be crippled and destitute? It were better to die than to beg, yet your fear of such shame becomes a snare. That aching leg is a messenger to remind you: the body is but grass. He who fears bodily hunger more than the starvation of his brother’s soul invites a worse judgment.
Turn, then, from these crooked reasonings. Earnest prayer must be joined to earnest alms. Inquire for holy men, those in the desert who cannot beg but live for God alone. Take a journey, endure the hardship, and give with your own hand that ailing leg. When you tend the wounds of the maimed, when you support the lamed of leg, you do it for Christ. Do you see their solitude and poverty? In going to bestow money, you may well give your whole soul and become estranged from the world’s vanity. Then, with the poor, you share one table, one mind, one love. Among them there is no haughtiness; they are little and great only in virtue, and no one despises another. One leads the blind, another bears him that is lamed. In such company, your own lameness becomes not a curse but a fellowship of the suffering body of Christ.
Pray, therefore, with tears. Let the pain in your leg drive you not to despair but to almsgiving and humility. Then, when you knock, the Bridegroom will not say, “I know you not,” but you will enter with Him, bearing oil in your lamp, and find healing that surpasses all bodily restoration.