“The body shouts what many times the soul suffers in silence,” says Fr. Leonardo Di Carlo, priest and Argentine doctor, reflecting on a problem present in today’s society: the disconnection between the physical and the spiritual, and the false illusion that “man to be happy does not need God.”
In dialogue with ACI Press, the priest deepened about the relationship between disease, suffering, faith and spirituality, highlighting the importance of an integral vision of the human being.
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According to Fr. Di Carlo, we live in an era where the idea that “man to be happy does not need God” predominates, a conception that is insufficient when people face suffering.
As a result of the growth of individuality, the fantasy of freedom and self -sufficiency, many times, when experiencing the disease in the body, people “do not finish finding the response of why this happens to them or why even death comes in a surprising way without having been able to do something to delay or reverse it.”
“Today, the concern that as a priest and doctor I have, is that many people in the face of the reality of pain and suffering, instead of going to God, come to only human resources that are limited, that are palliative, which are insufficient,” he says.
When the disease hits, many people look for answers only in the human, finding palliative but not definitive solutions, because “the deep peace of the heart can only be given God,” he says.
Given this scenario, the priest raises, the great challenge of the Church is “to be able to announce from mercy, from the hug it contains and that makes us similar to a good Samaritan.”
It also highlights the need to “show that in the face of pain and suffering, the help of faith, the help of spirituality, the help of the encounter with ‘someone’ with capital letters that can give me a relief not only limited to the physical, but integral, is today a good answer”.
“The invitation for many who live this experience of pain today, of suffering, is that they can approach faith, prayer.”
“Many times our body gets sick because we do not give permission to the body for rest, for relief, and thus the body shouts what many times the soul suffers silently”; P. Di Carlo laments.
In everyday life, his experience tells him that there are “body diseases, disease diseases, soul diseases, which are very related, are often very closely linked.”
Therefore, he considers that “faith today is a great contribution, not only to ensure a better health result, but also to be able to prevent many realities that today are an expression of an imbalance in how we carry out our life”, and take a path in which pessimism and dejection do not win prominence.
“For those of us who circumstantially do not have to suffer something physical, faith is an aid to take care of this great treasure that is our body, which is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” he said, “and for those who are touching them to live a moment of pain, of disease, suffering, faith helps us to transit this path without falling into despair.”
On the other hand, “if I have to be the one who helps someone who is suffering, also to know that the presence of Christ is decisive so that this path is redeemer and that it helps that person to meet God.”
Asked about the phenomena of mass healing, the priest distinguished between a legitimate search for health and a reductionist vision of faith, where “it seems that if health does not arrive, it has failed.”
“Many people feel that this cure did not arrive because one has not deserved it or has not done enough, or even that this healing does not come because personal or family mistakes of another time are being paid. I think that having a look like this is to reduce the concept of what we are as human beings, and reduce the place of God, which seems that with some it is very generous returning health and with others it appears as absent and silent, even distant,” he warned.
“The message has to be clear, and in the face of weakness, the fragility that causes a disease we approach the Lord because he himself recommended: ‘come to me those who are afflicted and overwhelmed, and I will relieve them.”
In that sense, he explained that the relief that Christ offers is not always synonymous with immediate healing, and recalled the teaching of Saint John Paul II in the Savical Piss: “The disease can be a door for the encounter with God.”
“Those of us who have faith, and a solid faith, we have to look at Christ in moments of fragility, but not simply from the reductivism of wanting to heal me or that that person I want is healed quickly, but to try to have a life that is an expression of a fuller change and that allows us to have a look that not only focuses on what God can give me because I need it, because I want it, because it seems to me that it is the appropriate way for my life to continue.”
“Sometimes we face the mystery that our prayers bear the fruit we want, but sometimes it seems that no. In all cases this shows that we are facing a great mystery that is pain and suffering, and a great mystery of the work of God, that even during the suffering of a disease is talking to us and is helping us to grow integrally as human beings,” he summarized.
Finally, when referring to the health of Pope Francis, he put hope in his recovery, valuing his resistance and commitment. Within that framework, he stressed that, despite his illness, Francisco has continued to make decisions for the good of the Church and the world, a testimony of strength that inspires many believers.
Julieta Villar
I am a journalist, a graduate in Communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non -governmental organizations. Since 2016 I dedicate myself to Catholic journalism, first in the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as a correspondent for ACI Press for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.