As Annie sang in the musical, "It's a hard luck life"! In one way or another, even the "lucky ones" seem to suffer. Be it ill health, disappointments or even the normal process of aging and dieing serves us with constant reminders that life on this Earth is not the final goal of our existence.
St Paul repeatedly asked to be healed of his skin disease, but the Lord declined him. It probably kept him on the course. Without it who knows what would have become of Paul. When Fr Pio was once asked why he couldn’t secure healing for his nephew, he said that was because health would have endangered his eternal soul; he would have enjoyed life too much.
In one way or another, even the seemingly most successful people suffer. Those who do not, God’s providence have abandoned already, these are the incorrigible ones, whose names are not written in the Book of Life.
BY HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED
The claim that it is not God’s will for his followers to be sick, but to have perfect health is based on Isaiah 53:4–6: 4.
“Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, While we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all.”
Except "by his stripes we are healed" is not a reference to bodily healing. This passage simply alludes to the nature of our redemption: the Savior will suffer and die. So here the word “healed” means redeemed.
BIBLE HEALINGS
The aim of Bible healings was not to wipe out disease, otherwise the mission of Jesus and the Apostles would have failed pretty miserably. Bible healings were sign gifts to hasten conversions to the new Church. The mission of the Holy Spirit is no different; its mission is not to benefit the body, but the soul. The Holy Spirit gives himself to us not for wiping out disease; but to make us, in sickness OR in health, into the image of Christ. And herein is the BIG LIE of charismania: its objective is always the present; its aim is to serve the corruptible body and not the eternal soul.
The Holy Spirit will not perform on cue to bequest sign gifts to an already converted crowd. For sure God heals in every age through natural means and even in response to prayer, but not through certain "gifted" individuals who go from place to place claiming to be God’s instruments of healing people.
