FOR THOSE WHO ARE SICK 77. PREFACE - Illness belongs to the tests and vicissitudes of earthly life. It is inherent in the grossness of our material nature and in the inferiority of the world we inhabit. Passions and excesses of all kinds create unhealthy conditions in our organism, which are sometimes transmitted by heredity. In worlds that are more advanced in both physical and moral aspects, the human organism, being more purified and less material, is no longer subject to the same infirmities and the body is not secretly undermined by the corrosives of passions (See chapter 3, item 9). In this manner we must resign ourselves to the consequences of the ambient in which our inferiority places us, until we deserve to pass on to a better one. However, while we are waiting this does not prevent us from doing whatever we can to improve our present situation. But if despite our best efforts we do not manage this, then Spiritism teaches us to support our passing miseries with resignation.
If God had not wished that in certain cases bodily sufferings be dissipated and softened, He would not have put the possibility of cure within our reach. His solicitude in this respect, being in conformity with the instinct of self-preservation, indicates that it is our duty to seek these means and apply them.
Apart from ordinary medication elaborated by Science, magnetism allows us to know the power of fluidic action, and Spiritism reveals another powerful force in the mediumship of healing and the influence of prayer (See below PREFACE 81, the note about the mediumship of healing).
78. PRAYER (To be said by the sick person):
Lord, You are all justice. The illness You saw fit to send me must be deserved, because You never impose suffering without just cause. Therefore I entrust my cure to Your infinite mercy. If it pleases You to restore my health, may Your Name be blessed! If on the contrary it is necessary for me to suffer more, may You be blessed just the same. I submit without complaint to Your wise purpose, since what You do can only be for the good of Your creatures.
Dear God, let this infirmity be a timely warning to me, which will cause me to meditate upon myself. I accept it as an expiation for my past and as a test of my faith and submission to Your blessed will (See prayer No. 40).
79. PRAYER (For the sick person):
Dear God, Your designs are impenetrable and in Your wisdom You have sent this affliction to X... I implore You, Lord, to cast a glance of compassion over his sufferings and if You see fit, to terminate them.
Good Spirits, you who are ministers of the Almighty, I beseech you to second my request to alleviate his sufferings; direct my thought so that a balsam may be poured over his body and consolation poured into his soul.
Inspire him with patience and submission to God's Will. Give him enough strength to support the pain with Christian resignation, so that the fruits of this test may not be lost (See prayer No. 57).
80. PRAYER (To be said by the Healer):
Dear God, if it pleases You to use me as an instrument, although I am unworthy, may I cure this infirmity if You so desire, because I have faith in You. But I know I can do nothing alone. Permit the good Spirits to concentrate their beneficial fluids in me, so that I may transmit them to the sick person and free me from all thought of pride and selfishness, which might alter their pureness.
