You ask for healing, strength, and peace for your son, and rightly you call upon the Father in the name of Jesus. Grace and peace flow from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who has made us, once His enemies, to be sons. Yet know that the peace He gives is not always the peace the world expects. The Lord Himself said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” There is a peace that is evil, the peace of robbers agreeing together, the peace of the diseased limb that the physician must cut off for the whole body to live. True peace, the peace that reconciles earth to heaven, is born of grace and brings with it the sword that severs sin. If your son is entangled in any sickness of soul, the healing may come through the cutting away of what is corrupt, not by pleasant agreement with his desires, but by a merciful severance that restores spiritual health. Let your prayer, then, be not merely for ease of body and mind, but that whatever in him wars against God be put to death, so that the true peace of Christ may reign.
Take courage, for many who have long seemed deaf to the word are suddenly transformed. As a tree withstands many strokes yet falls by a single, final blow, so the soul that has heard repeatedly without visible fruit may at last, by one more word or one more trial, be brought to full conversion. If your son remains insensible, do not cease your prayers or your holy admonitions. The fact that you yearn for his healing and bring him before God is itself a sign that grace is at work. Even at the very gates of despair, recovery is possible, and strength can be renewed. The Lord who kept silence before His accusers, entrusting judgment to the Father, knows the hour and the manner of deliverance. Trust His timing.
And while you wait, guard your own faith with the strictest care. Let no one persuade you to turn aside to amulets, incantations, or any so‑called remedies that borrow from the darkness. Even if those who sell them say they call upon God, the thing is idolatry. There is no remedy but the cross. A mother who, when her child is sick, refuses all superstitious protections and clings only to the sign of the cross, sacrificing her child, as it were, to the will of God, is counted as a martyr. If you would see your son healed, be first a martyr in resolve: say, “The cross is my only weapon, my only medicine; I know no other.” Not by mystical fancies, but by holding fast to the clear word of God, do we obtain true piety.
Know, too, that every believer has an angel who beholds the face of the Father. Yet the demon also prowls. Therefore when you ask for peace, ask for the peace that the Church gives with the words “Peace be unto all,” the peace that is the mother of all good things. This peace is not a truce with sin, but the reconciliation that comes from the Son of God, who is not merely a king of Israel, as Nathanael thought, but very God, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. So confess Him rightly: Jesus is the Son of God in truth, and in His name alone is there salvation, strength, and lasting peace.
Hear His commandment, for He said, “He that heareth these sayings loveth Me;” and he that loveth Me loveth the Father also. The proof of love is obedience. If your son is to be healed spiritually, he must learn to keep the words of Christ, and you must teach him by your own faithful endurance. Continue ceaselessly in prayer, bringing him before the throne of grace, and let your life be a witness that the only healing balm is the gospel. May the grace that brought you from enmity to sonship keep you firm, and may the peace that passes understanding guard your heart and your son’s, until the day when every wound is bound up and every tear is wiped away by the hand of Him who is our true Physician and our everlasting Peace.