(January 03, 2012) Pope Benedict XVI is focussing on the sacraments of Reconciliation
and the Anointing of the Sick in his message for the Catholic Church’s 20th
World Day of the Sick which will be celebrated on Feb. 11, the feast of the Our Day
of Lourdes. The Vatican on Tuesday released the Pope’s message for this year’s observance
on the theme: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” taken from the Gospel episode
of the healing of the ten lepers. The Pope said he wanted to emphasize on the two
“sacraments of healing”, “which have their natural completion in Eucharistic Communion.”
Going beyond mere physical healing, reacquired health, he said, is a sign of the salvation
that God gives us through Christ. The tandem of physical health and renewal after
lacerations of the soul thus helps us to understand better the “sacraments of healing”.
“In the sacrament of Penance, in the “medicine of confession”,” the Holy Father wrote,
“the experience of sin does not degenerate into despair but encounters the Love that
forgives and transforms….” A time of suffering, in which one could be tempted to
abandon oneself to discouragement and hopelessness, can thus be transformed into a
time of grace, the Pope pointed out. The Anointing of the Sick, on the one hand is
a sign of God’s tenderness towards those who are suffering, and on the other it brings
spiritual advantage to priests and the whole Christian community as well, in the awareness
that what is done to the least, is done to Jesus himself. The Pope urged that together
with sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick, special attention be
given to guarantee the possibility of frequent Holy Communion to those who for reasons
of health or age, cannot go to a place of worship. Pope Benedict also recalled that
“in the generous and loving welcoming of every human life, above all of weak and sick
life, a Christian expresses an important aspect of his or her Gospel witness, following
the example of Christ, who bent down before the material and spiritual sufferings
of man in order to heal them.”