World Day of the Sick – 11th February 2010
“The Church in the Service of Love for the Suffering”
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
…With all my heart I hope that this anniversary will be an occasion for a more generous apostolic impetus to the service of the sick and those who care for them… because it is written into the furrow of the very salvific mission of Christ. He, divine Physician, “went about doing good and curing all who had fallen into the power of the devil” (Acts 10:38). In the mystery of his passion, death and resurrection, human suffering attained meaning and fullness of light…The Lord Jesus at the Last Supper, before returning to the Father, bent down to wash the feet of the Apostles, anticipating the supreme act of love of the Cross. By this gesture he invited his disciples to enter into the same logic of love that should be given in particular to the least and those most in need (cf. Jn 13:12-17)… He exhorts us to bend down before the wounds of the body and of the spirit of so many of our brothers and sisters that we encounter on the roads of the world; he helps us to understand that with the grace of God received and lived in daily life, the experience of illness and suffering can become a school of hope. In truth, as I stated in my encyclical Spe salvi, “It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by the capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love” (n. 37).
The Ecumenical Second Vatican Council referred to the important task of the Church of caring for human suffering… the Church encompasses with love all who are afflicted with human suffering and in the poor and afflicted sees the image of its poor and suffering Founder. It does all it can to relieve their need and in them it strives to serve Christ” (n. 8).
…I would like here to take up the Message to the Poor, the Sick and the Suffering which the fathers of the Second Vatican Council addressed to the world at the end of that Council: “All of you who feel heavily the weight of the cross”, they said, “you who weep…you the unknown victims of suffering, take courage. You are the preferred children of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of hope, happiness and life. You are the brothers of the suffering Christ, and with Him, if you wish, you are saving the world” (Ench. Vat., I, n. 523*, [p. 313]). From my heart I thank those who every day “serve the sick and suffering” so that the “apostolate of mercy may ever more effectively respond to people’s needs” (John Paul II, Apost. Const. Pastor Bonus, art. 152).
… With these feelings I implore upon the sick, and also on those who take care of them, the maternal protection of Mary Salus infirmorum, and on them all, from my heart, I bestow my Apostolic Blessing,
Benedict XVI (22/11/2009)
