If a physician asks a very sick patient, Do you want to be healed?, the patient would likely answer, Yes! Getting back to good health is probably the reason this patient visited the doctor in the first place. Yet, if the patient really wants to be healed, than he needs to follow the treatment the doctor prescribes. Healing requires making health a priority, reorienting one’s life toward that goal, and taking practical daily steps consistent with the desire to be well.
Do you want to be healed? Jesus once asked a man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years this question. He asks the same question to each one of us. Do you want your soul to be healed so that you can live according to your full potential and fulfill your purpose in the world?
God loves us so much that He has already made our healing possible and has given us the Way to experience newness of life. The Creator humbled himself to become a creature, a human being like us, joining His Divine Nature to our human nature to heal and perfect our humanity. He suffered and died for us on the Cross in order to destroy death so that we can live forever. He raised our human nature to immortality and took it up to the heavenly heights before sending the Life-Giving Spirit into the Church. He has reopened the doors of Paradise and invited us all to enter through its gates. God has accomplished everything for our human nature, but you must make the decision to personally participate in what Christ has already made possible for you. This is your inheritance and your destiny if you choose to receive it.
Do you want to be healed? If you do, place yourself under the care of the Physician and follow His Way. Let’s now look at some of the first steps toward making this a personal reality.
Read: John 5
Text copyright © 2017 by Fr. Symeon D. S. Kees