Healing vs. Curing

Whatever house I enter, I shall come to heal.

The Hippocratic Oath Cited in Prayers for Healing

The noble words of this Oath are generally agreed on and accepted, if not adhered to, by every modern physician. This snippet, taken from the original Greek version, states clearly the intention of the home or house visit, and the clear purpose for attending to any sick, ill, or infirmed person who lives there…

The intention to heal, not just cure, and that difference has a more soulful dimension to it…

It is not limited to the act of prescribing and administering chemical and mechanical treatments, nor can it be reduced to being an engineer with a prescription pad! As I see it, the intention of healing includes seeing and responding to the whole person: As a body/mind/spirit unity whose health and well-being is synergistic and interrelated.

Accordingly, the approach to holistic treatment is to offer them an encouraging sense of cooperation in their healing process. It is entering into a covenant of cooperative work that has, as its intention, wellness, or at the least a modicum of hope and safety from the diseases and ills that brought the physician to their door!

From this phrase in the Oath, I am quickly reminded of the instructional parable in Luke 10, where Jesus sends out his 70 disciples with the intention of providing a spiritual or nonmedical approach to healing, metanoia, and transformation!

“After this, the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go…. Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.

Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”

The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’

Without getting into a protracted discussion of the differences between curing and healing, and trying to avoid the theological dimension of healing demons, what strikes me is the need for having and holding clear, noble, altruistic intentions.

Just as I despair for those who enter the fields of medicine for its financial incentives, or politics for power, or ministry for ungrounded idealism, I affirm the personal and professional need for having clear intentions in any or all of our human interactions.

In my own way, or approach to being a minister, priest, and spiritual director, being aware of boundaries and then my personal motives, is a crucial ongoing assessment. Knowing, with any degree of confidence or genuine compassion that I will be there, that I will be truly aware, awake, and present; That I come into that room possessing a genuine desire to act alchemically; to be an active listener, or be a change agent or if the situation warrants it; To be in ministry is to be a source of consolation, or inspiration based on the person’s receptivity, while honoring their expressed needs.