You ask for prayer for your health, and this is a petition that seems entirely natural, for we all feel the frailty of our bodies. But I must ask you to consider something deeper. For if we are to plead for wellness, we must first understand where true sickness lies. When Christ touched the woman with the fever, He did not simply cool her burning; He gave her back perfect health all at once, a thing no physician's art can do, for even after a fever departs, the body remains weak for a long time. So while you seek your bodily health, do you not also see that many diseases of the body are the natural offspring not of circumstance, but of our own will? I ask you, if a physician told you that your sickness came from a certain harmful food, would you not flee from it? Then know that gluttony, luxury, and the love of fleeting things wear away the strength of the body more violently than any river erodes its banks. These are not just passing ailments; they are the parents of gout, apoplexy, and lingering fevers. The mother of health is a simple and sparing table, and when we indulge the flesh, we fill ourselves with the very causes of our debility.
But let us go further, for what profit is it if the body is sound but the soul lies in a raging fever of sin? The physical ailment you feel might be an ordinary one, yet the manner of its healing can still display God’s power. But do you not suffer from a dullness of hearing, a sluggishness towards the word of God? This is the greater sickness. You ask me to keep your wellness in prayer, but I tell you that nothing renders us so healthy in soul and body as to be spiritual and to walk by the Spirit. It all depends not on health or sickness, but on our own soul. If it is solid and well-instructed in virtue, all things will be easy. Why do we cast ourselves into a storm and then cry out for calm? We are citizens of heaven, where there is no turning and prizes do not change. But here, our wills are often like water, cold, weak, and unsettled, rushing down the steep slopes of worldly care. Bring this weak will to the Lord, that He may change it into something sturdy, into wine that gladdens your own heart and no longer leaves you washy and without substance. This is the health for which I urge you to pray most fervently, not merely a respite from bodily pain, but a thorough conversion of the soul that brings with it the true and lasting medicine. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.