Care of the Sick

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

Caring for the sick is something that people of our culture and society don't think twice about. It is part of who and what we are. Care institutions are an important part of our cultural landscape. We take them so much for granted that I believe that we fail to appreciate fully Jesus' outreach to the sick of his time.

The Law of Moses pointedly ostracizes the sick, cuts them off from the community by declaring them unclean. Bodily fluids were suspect. The prevailing beliefs of Jesus' contemporaries were that contagion spread through "leaking" bodily fluids. Coming into contact with pus or blood made a person unclean. So the healthy kept their distance from people who were ill or who bore an infection. So when Jesus encounters such people and actually touches them, he incurred ritual impurity. Sometimes the Gospel alludes to this, as it does today, by telling us that Jesus went off by himself after such encounters.

This attitude persisted for quite some time in the Western World. Even in monasteries and abbeys of the Middle Ages, when monks or nuns became ill, they were quarantined. Every such institution had an infirmary which was usually a separate building so that those who were sick would not infect the rest of the community. Oftentimes, this meant that they had to care for themselves. St. Clare of Assisi, who founded the Franciscan community of contemplative women known as the Poor Clares, revolutionized the care of the sick in monasteries by waiting on them herself, washing their linens, feeding them, and bandaging their wounds.

When we take this notion into consideration, we begin to understand the tremendous impact the Gospel has on the care of the sick. While it took centuries for us to change our attitudes toward the sick and their care, Jesus already demonstrates it in the way he cares for them in the Gospel.