Fr Jack SJ MD: I Did Not Sign Up for This: Homily for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 9:36-10:8

Jesus sent His apostles on mission with power over unclean spirits and the mandate to ‘cure every disease and every illness.’ It is a powerful mandate that includes an important distinction. While giving the apostle the instruction to cure disease AND illness might strike some as redundant, the distinction is important to understanding the mission of the Church. Disease and illness are not the same thing or synonymous. Few are able to cure disease all have the mandate to treat illness.

Disease is a biomedical affliction with pathological changes in an organ or organ system at the macroscopic, microscopic, or submicroscopic levels. A disease affects only the patient. The illness, on the other hand, is a sociocultural perspective that includes how the individual and others perceive and experience certain states that are disvalued or feared, states caused by disease. Illness affects not only the individual but the family, the community, and at times all of society, in ever widening circles.

The historical dichotomy is apparent in scripture if we consider leprosy. Leprosy as described in both Old and New Testaments never had anything to do with what is now known as Hansen’s disease. Leprosy was a catch-all term for visible lesions including vitiligo, psoriasis, and other scaly blemishes. Jesus cured the disease but more significantly He cured the illness and returned the sufferers to themselves and to society. There are modern illustrations of the difference between disease and illness

AIDS was first described in June 1981. By 1990 almost 101,000 had died of AIDS in the U.S. with 1/3 of those deaths reported in 1990. The toll of the illness on family, friends, community, and society was, is, and will remain beyond accounting. Ironically, one of the centers of medical care in the first decade of AIDS was St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York’s Greenwich Village, a hospital built and founded by the Daughter’s of Charity. It is ironic because the congregation’s old habit, with its distinctive coronet, is now being blasphemously mocked by the evil spirits infecting a pathetic group of men in Los Angeles, a group whose name is beneath the dignity of repeating. It is a blasphemy supported by the Dodgers baseball organization. How soon they forget the deeds of the courageous women religious of all orders and congregations throughout history.

We had a refresher course in the difference between disease and illness thanks to covid which, as of 31 May 2023, caused one hundred three and a half million cases and one million one hundred twenty seven thousand deaths in the U.S. Of those deaths almost 853,000, fully three quarters of the total, were in the elderly sixty-five and above. Many of those elderly, as well as patients hospitalized for other reasons such as broken hips, were forced to suffer and die in anguished solitude, perceiving abandonment by their families and friends and bereft of the sacraments through a combination of government fiat, irrational fears of hospital and nursing home administrators, lack of compassion, and generalized stupidity. As with AIDS the impact of covid can never be estimated. The suffering caused by the illnesses associated with both diseases will reverberate for decades.

How did the twelve apostles perceive Jesus’ mandate to cure disease and illness? How did they feel when it was given to them? How did they feel when the going got rough or when they realized the risks? Ideally they did not respond in the same way as a young physician who wrote an op-ed column in response to covid titled, “I Didn’t Sign Up For This,” an extended whine about having to work under the conditions and risks of covid. It might be best for this young doc to hang up the stethoscope now and seek a different line of work.

Mandate derives from the Latin mandatum, itself composed of two roots: manus (hand) and dare (to put) meaning ‘to put into one’s hands.’ The foot washing of Holy Thursday is referred to as the mandatum from Jesus’ words at the Last Supper “I have given you an example, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

The histories of AIDS and covid as diseases AND illnesses have a shameful element in common. That shame was, and is, the refusal of too many with training and ability to treat patients because of the diagnosis. The stories of refusing to allow patients with AIDS to even enter a medical office were many during the early years. More recently Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist in New York published a column on Medscape titled, “It’s Okay for Docs to Refuse to Treat Unvaccinated Patients.” The good news is that Caplan is not a physician. He cannot treat patients. The over 700 responses to his column were overwhelmingly negative, angry, or both. It is never OK to cherry pick who or what will be treated based on diagnosis or social opinion. I suspect had Caplan written that it was OK to refuse puberty blockers for so-called transexual children he would have been fired right quick.

It is not easy to treat diseases. Sometimes the best we can do is keep it at bay for a little while. Treating the illnesses of modern times is even more difficult. That is a separate homily. But, we have all been given the same mandate as that given to the apostles. That is to treat illnesses and proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven through our words and the example of our lives.

______________________________________________

The photos below are from the Church of St. Martin d'Ainay in Lyon, France. Alas, I was not told about this gem until very late in my stay there. I think its 11th century. I would have shot more but there was a liturgy of some sort, possibly a baptism, happening and I did not want to intrude.