Within my lifetime I have seen a shift in medical attitudes about rest and recovery. It used to be medical professionals would practically chain one to the bed after illness or surgery or childbirth, but now (within reason one hopes) the medical teams pressure the individual to get up on that new hip, walk around after the gallbladder surgery, push the new mother out the door. Some of it is due to good medical practice, some of it is due to the almighty dollar cutting short care, but the fact of the matter remains you don't get to stay in bed that long anymore.
Our Lord wasn't much for long convalescences either. In the Gospel selection for Mass today (St. Mk. 5.21-43) Jesus tells the woman with the haemorrhagic flow who had touched His garment's hem that she was healed and to begin her life immediately. The daughter of the synagogue leader Jairus had been dead and Jesus told her to get up (and get some food).
Apparently even being dead didn't earn one a few hours in bed.
The fact of the matter is that unlike today's modern medical miracles, the healing bestowed by the Word of God, through whom all things were created (St. Jn. 1.3), is complete, full, and restorative. So complete in fact that it includes the rest required to rebuild one's strength. The power of God is made manifest and it is wonderful to behold.
But wait, there's more...
When we turn from our sins to God, when we accept His grace to be justified, to be conformed to His image, when we are reborn in our baptism into Our Lord Jesus' death and resurrection, we encounter a healing so profound for our spirits that it is complete. That is not to say the hard work is done, we still have to put to death the old nature and train ourselves in our new nature, but as the story today shows, we don't just sit on our new regeneration but we need to "Go, your faith has made you well," or "Arise!" God has made us well not to lay about and contemplate the miracle that we're no longer going to die eternally, but so that we get up out of our sickbeds, off our morgue slabs, and actually engage in the work of the Kingdom of God. There are acts of mercy to perform all around us, and the time is short.
After all, God isn't much for long recuperative lay-abouts.
Jesus Healing the Woman with the Issue of Blood, San Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, 5th Century (Photo by Nick Thompson, April 22, 2010)
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