Prayer and Illness

Throughout the Gospels Christ reminded his followers to pray for things they needed, and to also use prayer as a way to worship God. But can prayer really aid in the cure of illness and disease? Does religion or spirituality play a role in recovery?

This is a difficult question to answer, and we may not be able to rely on science and facts alone. At the visit to the San Giovanni Hospital in Rome we learned that when an Italian person stays in the hospital usually the whole family comes too. And in a nation where over 90% of the population is Catholic, prayers are bound to come in the hospital room too. I think intercessory prayers can and do help people; the Church (and Christ) would not tell us to pray if there were nothing behind it. All over the world there have been cases of miraculous healings and visitations from various saints. One example is in Lourdes, France where people go to climb in the water and pray, and to hope that they will be healed. In different churches throughout Rome there are some icons and relics that are said to be able to aid in healing and pilgrims have come to touch these things and pray near them. But in the instances of the Italian families (and others too) I think that the support of family and friends is also a big factor in recovery. In some cases the family and friends may be the ones to push the patient towards recovery; reminding them to take their medicines or do their therapy. Or they may just be what the patient needs to feel better.      

This might cause people to wonder why, if God would just cure them through prayers, he would allow them to get sick in the first place. Then this would lead one to ask if illness was predetermined or not; does God choose to give certain people diseases? I would answer, no. God did create the universe and in some way established the evolutionary process. Diseases that result from gene mutations are a product of this process; they don’t necessarily have to be a single act of God. We can say he allows these things to happen for reasons that we may not understand, but I have a hard time concluding that he specifically picks people out and gives them diseases. I think that diseases are the products of evolution and the broken world we live in. I don’t think God handpicks people to be sick, but I believe that prayer can help. I do not believe that we can know everything strictly from faith or strictly from science, I think a marriage of the two is necessary and best helps us to understand the most difficult questions that we can ask ourselves. Gaudium et Spes also reminds us that science and faith go hand and hand because the truth cannot contradict the truth. In summary I believe that there can be instances of divine intervention in some cases, but I also believe that we should first rule out other explanations all the while being open to the possibility that more than just science could be at work.