You see, my brethren, that what I desire to impress upon your minds is that, in all sickness, from whatever cause, the will of God is to be acknowledged. It is not every Christian, I regret to say, who does so look upon it. Too often you will find it regarded as a grievous misfortune, having no good reason why it should be, and without any compensation for the loss of worldly enjoyment and advantages which it necessarily entails; and, even if they do agree that God has sent it, then it is because God is angry with them. He is taking vengeance upon them. There appears to be no other possible reason that can be given for it.
As I said before, we are afflicted with sickness not only as a chastisement for sin, but sometimes also in mercy, as an act of loving-kindness and forethought on the part of God; and again very frequently, as in the case of holy Job, as an opportunity to try our faith, to enable us to show our constancy and love to God, and is therefore to be looked upon as a mark of predilection, and a positive blessing and grace.
Certainly, sickness is sometimes sent as a punishment for sin. It comes as a natural and just consequence of sinful excesses. Look at the drunkard and the debauchee. They have gone on for awhile in seeming impunity, but every debauch was a blow struck upon the citadel of life and health. Soon it is shattered, and totters and falls into ruin. Go into the streets, and you may meet them, with haggard faces and trembling limbs. Go to the hospitals and the insane asylums, and see those wrecks of humanity, almost soulless men and women, drivelling idiots, and sickening masses of corruption. Go to many a sick bedside, in palace or in hovel, in this great city, and you may see how sin is punished by an outraged God. And, though you yourself could not trace the fever that blighted you for many long weeks to any natural cause, you know that you deserved it all. Your alarmed conscience did not fail to tell you that there were crimes of your life that demanded retribution. Your overweening pride, your ungovernable anger, has been humbled in the dust. Your days are shortened because of your disobedience and cruelty to your parents. The money you have stolen and would not restore has been wrested from you by the heavy charges of your illness. Your disorderly appetites and lusts are now punished with compulsory and exhausting fasts from all food. "He hath struck you as being wicked, in open sight; who as it were on purpose hath revolted from Him, and would not understand His ways: so that you have caused the cry of the needy to come up before Him, and He has heard the voice of the poor." [Footnote 109]
[Footnote 109: Job xxxiv. 26, 28.]
You thought in your sin that you were stronger than God. Now He has rebuked you by sorrow on the sick bed, and has made all your bones to wither. Bread is become abominable to you, and to your soul the meat which before you desired. You have trampled on God's holy law; you would not go to Mass to worship Him. Now, though you would gladly go any distance, and suffer any pain to be present at it, you are denied that joy and consolation. You are as one upon whom the church doors are closed, for whom the altar is thrown down, and the priest departed. "In whatsoever a man sins," says the Holy Scripture, "in that also shall he be punished."
Sickness has come upon you. Why? In mercy, God sees how indifferent you have become to Him. He sees how your soul has become absorbed in worldly things. Your heart is following after strange gods, and your footsteps are leading down to hell. As Eliu said to Job, "Your guardian angel has spoken to God for you, and said, Deliver him, that he may not go down to corruption." and God in mercy has heard his prayers, and your way is stopped. It is because God loves you, and would save you, that this has come upon you. In the days of pain, and during the long, feverish nights, you will remember God. In your anguish you will turn to Him for comfort, and in your fear you will put your trust in Him. This world has had too much of your heart. On a sick bed you will be able to judge how much it is worth. You will condemn the vanity of your life. The past will be repented of. New resolutions will be made. You will come back to health with a refreshed and chastened spirit. What the friend of Job said to him, you will say of yourself: "My flesh is consumed with punishments, that I may return to the days of my youth. I will pray to God, and He will be gracious to me: and I shall see His face with joy. When I look upon men, I shall say, I have sinned, and indeed I have offended, and I have not received what I deserved, hath delivered my soul from going into destruction, that it may live and see the light." [Footnote 110]
[Footnote 110: Job xxxiii. 25-28.]