You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. Ezekiel 34:3-4
“Sick people necessarily take less food so as not to aggravate their condition. During convalescence they are to receive such care as will quickly restore their health, even if they come from the lowest level of poverty in the world. Recent illness has afflicted them with the same frailty which the wealthy possess from their previous manner of life. When sick people have fully recovered, they should return to their happier ways, which are all the more fitting for God’s servants to the extent that they have fewer needs. Food formerly necessary to remedy their illness should not become a pleasure which enslaves them. They should consider themselves richer since they are now more robust in putting up with privations. For it is better to need less than to have more.”
Augustine of Hippo in The Rule of St. Augustine 3.5. The text of the rule is adapted from George Lawless’ translation in Augustine of Hippo and His Monastic Rule (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), included in Constitutions of the Order of Preachers (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 2012).
This timely section of the Rule of St. Augustine sets out the care of sick people. On my break which ends today, one of the matters I have been praying about is the role of those who are healthy during the current COVID crisis toward those who are sick.
We must not miss the message here. Augustine wants those who are healthy not to become enslaved by the pleasure of food but give thanks for their good health and share the abundance they have with those who suffer. Notice the reason why.
“It is better to need less than to have more.” Soak in that idea for awhile.
When we need less we show that we are finding meaning not in pleasures, possessions, or power, but in the person of Christ. When we need less we show that we are not dependent on things but on God who supplies them for enjoyment and sharing.
With this counsel, Augustine is not trying to rob the healthy but to restore the sick. Will we?
God, show us what this looks like for each of us, and for the sick around us. Amen.
Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, Patsy Hoag, my wife, Jenni Hoag, and all the other mother’s out there who have sacrificed to serve their children both at times of sickness as well as health.