"The Church is a hospital, not a court of justice.
Here, the priests do not hold you responsible for your sins, but grant you forgiveness."
- St. John Chrysostom - A.D. 386 - Homily 3 Concerning Almsgiving and the Ten Virgins
Our Lord Jesus Christ refers to sin as a sickness and states that He is the physician that can heal that sickness. In many ways, sin is like cancer. It can go undetected, wreaking havoc, before we even notice it; or, it can be right on the surface of our skin. No matter how it shows up, we have to fight it or it will kill us. Furthermore, we have an enemy - Satan and his demons - who want us to die of that cancer. The enemy does his best to encourage us to feed our cancer. What do we do?
The “Great Physician” is Jesus Christ, and his hospital is the Church. It is in His Church we find both the means to be healed of our spiritual illness and fight back against Satan. Come, join us! Learn how to use these tools for the healing of your soul.
LOVE EACH OTHER
We need to love each other and build each other up. As a community we need to be there for each other, bearing one another’s burdens, all the while never expecting to be served but only seek to serve.
WORK TOGETHER
Neither the priest or any other person can solely do it all. We have to work together as a community. St. Paul makes it a point to teach us that the members of the Church have many abilities and talents.
EXTEND LOVE OUTWARDS
We need to extend this love outwards and bring the spiritual healing our Lord offers those of us in the Church to anyone and everyone we can outside our doors. We need to share the cure.