Chrysostom
Good and Faithful Servant
No prayer offered in true faith and fervent charity goes unheard before the throne of God. Yet, in such a calamity as this, we must not only cry out for bodily healing but also for the medicine of the soul. The wounds of the flesh are visible, and the doctors labor over them rightly, but the deeper sickness lies in the despair that opened the door to the devil’s temptations. For when the soul is cast down by the loss of a worldly attachment, and sorrow has made it drunk with its own misery, it becomes an easy prey for the enemy who prowls about, offering the false comfort of wine and poisons. These are no harbor from the storm, but a sea beaten about by fiercer winds, as I have often said, where the shipwreck is not of the body only, but of the whole man.
You ask that the Holy Spirit surround him, and this is the very thing most needful, for the Spirit is not a spirit of fear or self-destruction, but of power, love, and a sound mind. The devil certainly has sought to sift him like wheat, and the blows he has suffered, both from his own hand and from the violence of others, are the thrashings of that malevolent one. Yet, behold the mystery of God’s strength, which is made perfect in our weakness. Let us not imagine that his current state is beyond the reach of divine mercy. Was not the blessed Apostle Paul himself buffeted, beaten with rods, and left for dead? He took pleasure in necessities and distresses, not because he loved the pain, but because he knew that in the utter emptying of self, the power of Christ comes to rest upon a man. Your friend, lying in that hospital bed, stripped of his dignity and strength, is in a place where the Great Physician can do His most astonishing work, if only the heart will turn.
Therefore, let your prayer be joined with a sober warning, delivered in a season of clear consciousness, for true love does not merely soothe the wound superficially. He must see that his present desolation is the bitter fruit of building his life on a foundation other than Christ. The end of a relationship, however piercing the grief, must not be allowed to fester into an excuse for surrendering the soul to the destroyer. No earthly attachment, lost or found, is worth the forfeiture of the eternal life that God offers. The road back from this precipice begins not with a mere mending of the body, but with a resolute flight from the sin that has ensnared him. As the Corinthians needed a sharp word to rouse them from their dangerous slumber, so too does he need to see that clinging to these chains is to remain in the vestibule of hell itself. Yet, let this not be spoken with the venom of condemnation, but with the urgency of one who would snatch a beloved child from the fire. The very same mercy that sought out a harlot and promised paradise to a thief on a cross is extended to him now. But he must no longer love his sickness. Pray that this great affliction, which laid him so low, will become the very goad that drives him to rise, to cast off the tattered rags of his old life, and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, finding in Him a harbor that no storm can ever shake.
You ask that the Holy Spirit surround him, and this is the very thing most needful, for the Spirit is not a spirit of fear or self-destruction, but of power, love, and a sound mind. The devil certainly has sought to sift him like wheat, and the blows he has suffered, both from his own hand and from the violence of others, are the thrashings of that malevolent one. Yet, behold the mystery of God’s strength, which is made perfect in our weakness. Let us not imagine that his current state is beyond the reach of divine mercy. Was not the blessed Apostle Paul himself buffeted, beaten with rods, and left for dead? He took pleasure in necessities and distresses, not because he loved the pain, but because he knew that in the utter emptying of self, the power of Christ comes to rest upon a man. Your friend, lying in that hospital bed, stripped of his dignity and strength, is in a place where the Great Physician can do His most astonishing work, if only the heart will turn.
Therefore, let your prayer be joined with a sober warning, delivered in a season of clear consciousness, for true love does not merely soothe the wound superficially. He must see that his present desolation is the bitter fruit of building his life on a foundation other than Christ. The end of a relationship, however piercing the grief, must not be allowed to fester into an excuse for surrendering the soul to the destroyer. No earthly attachment, lost or found, is worth the forfeiture of the eternal life that God offers. The road back from this precipice begins not with a mere mending of the body, but with a resolute flight from the sin that has ensnared him. As the Corinthians needed a sharp word to rouse them from their dangerous slumber, so too does he need to see that clinging to these chains is to remain in the vestibule of hell itself. Yet, let this not be spoken with the venom of condemnation, but with the urgency of one who would snatch a beloved child from the fire. The very same mercy that sought out a harlot and promised paradise to a thief on a cross is extended to him now. But he must no longer love his sickness. Pray that this great affliction, which laid him so low, will become the very goad that drives him to rise, to cast off the tattered rags of his old life, and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, finding in Him a harbor that no storm can ever shake.
