If the poor, by reason of their poverty, are members of Jesus Christ, the
sick are also such by reason of their sickness. Our Saviour Himself has
told us so: _I was sick, and you visited Me_.[1] For if the great Apostle
St. Paul said that with the weak he was weak,[2] how much more the divine
Exemplar, whom he but copied?
Our Blessed Father expressed as follows his feelings of respect and honour
towards a sick person to whom he was writing. "While I think of you sick
and suffering in your bed, I regard you with special reverence, and as
worthy of being singularly honoured as a creature visited by God, clothed
in His apparel, His favoured spouse. When our Lord was on the Cross He was
proclaimed King even by His enemies, and souls who are bearing the cross
(of suffering) are declared to be queens. Do you know why the angels envy
us? Assuredly, because we can suffer for our Lord, whilst they have never
suffered anything for His sake. St. Paul, who had been raised to heaven and
had tasted the joys of Paradise, considered himself happy only because of
his infirmities, and of his bearing the Cross of our Lord."
Farther on he entreats her, as a person signed with the Cross, and a sharer
in the sufferings of Jesus Christ, to commend to God, though in an agony
of pain, an affair of much importance which concerned the glory of God. He
held that in a condition such as hers was, prayer would be more readily
heard, just as our Saviour, praying fervently on the Cross, was heard for
His reverence. The Psalmist was of the same opinion, saying that God heard
him willingly when he cried to Him in the midst of his tribulation, and
that it was in his afflictions that God was nearest to him.
Our Blessed Father believed that prayers offered by those who are in
suffering, though they be short, are more efficacious than any others. He
says: "I entreat you to be so kind as to recommend to God a good work which
I greatly desire to see accomplished, and especially to pray about it when
you are suffering most acutely: for then it is that your prayers, however
short, if they are heartfelt, will be infinitely well received. Ask God at
that time also for the virtues which you need the most."
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxv. 36.]
[Footnote 2: Cor. xi. 29.]