My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

As in past years, Pope Benedict XVI again proclaimed Feb. 11, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, as the World Day of the Sick. This remembrance affords us the opportunity each year to reflect on the meaning of human suffering and to pray for the sick, as well as for all health care professionals who care for the sick.

I come from a family of pharmacists. My grandfather started Paprocki Pharmacy in 1919. His brother had a drug store. My dad took over the family pharmacy when his father died in 1947. My dad’s brother also had his own drug store, I have two brothers in the pharmacy business and one of my nieces is now a registered pharmacist. I started my career in health care when I was in sixth grade, working behind the candy counter in our family pharmacy. I worked part-time in our drug store throughout my years in the seminary. I also had summer jobs at a wholesale drug company and at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. While I was in the seminary I did internships as a hospital chaplain at Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village and at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas. My graduate thesis in theology was in medical ethics. When I was auxiliary bishop of Chicago, I served as the cardinal’s liaison for Health and Hospital Affairs and I currently serve as a member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Task Force on Health Care, so I have more than a passing interest in the subject of health care.

Of course, all of us have been sick at one time or another, some more seriously than others, so we all have had occasion to think about sickness, to suffer through it, and wonder why a loving God allows the pain and suffering of sickness and disease.

In the Bible, the Book of Job in the Old Testament is a masterful treatise on the search for the meaning of human suffering. That search always seems to start with looking for a culprit, someone or something to blame for our misfortune. The blame game usually starts with seeing sickness as a punishment for sin. What was so confounding for Job was that he was a good and righteous man. His sickness and misfortune at losing everything and everyone that was dear to him clearly was not a punishment, yet God allowed Satan to inflict evil on Job for reasons known only to God.

Similarly, in the New Testament, the story of the man born blind in the Gospel of St. John starts with the disciples asking Jesus if the man’s blindness was due to his own sins or the sins of his parents. Jesus answers that it was neither for the man’s sins nor his parents’ sins that the man was born blind, but “that the works of God might be made visible through him.”

What does this mean?

It is true as a general principle that sickness and suffering are the consequence of original sin, the human rebellion against God as described in the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis, the effects with which we must all live. But it is a mistake to look to specific, actual sins as the reason for sickness and suffering. The explanation that the man was born blind “so that the works of God might be made visible through him” can be understood on a number of levels.

On one level, the works of God are revealed in the miracle that Jesus performs to cure the man’s blindness. This has a great significance for health care professionals. To the extent that our medical care for the sick helps to restore people to good health, the works of God are revealed. But even when good health is not restored, when people suffer from terminal illnesses and die, the works of God are revealed in the compassion and merciful love shown by those who care for the sick, by which they imitate and reflect the love of Jesus.

On another level, though, the works of God were being revealed in the man born blind even before Jesus gave him physical sight. This was apparently because the blind man had been living in such a way that God’s goodness could be seen in him.

Unlike other accounts of miracles where people asked Jesus to heal them or their loved ones, the man born blind makes no such request of Jesus. It is Jesus who takes the initiative to heal him. Perhaps this suggests that the blind man put spiritual insight above the physical ability to see. This would explain the statement of Jesus that he came into the world “so that those who do not see might see.” Jesus has not restored physical sight to everyone who has ever been blind, but his grace does enable people to see him with the eyes of faith as our Lord and Savior.

Thus, in his message for this year’s World Day of the Sick, Pope Benedict said, “Dear sick and suffering, it is precisely through the wounds of Christ that we are able to see, with eyes of hope, all the evils that afflict humanity. In rising again, the Lord did not remove suffering and evil from the world, but he defeated them at their root. He opposed the arrogance of Evil with the omnipotence of his Love. He has shown us, therefore, that the way of peace and joy is Love: ‘Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’ (Jn 13:34). Christ, victor over death, is alive in our midst. And while with St. Thomas we also say ‘My Lord and my God!,’ let us follow our Master in readiness to spend our lives for our brothers and sisters (cf. 1 Jn 3:16), becoming messengers of a joy that does not fear pain, the joy of the Resurrection.”

May God give us this grace. Amen.