Hunolt Sermons/Volume 12/Sermon 55

St. Sebastian is a general and wonder-working physician for all diseases, therefore there is just reason for holding him in high honor. Preached on the feast of St. Sebastian.

" Virtue went out from Him, and healed all." (Luke 6:19)

The words of my text are indeed applied by the Evangelist to Christ, Our Lord, who, while on this earth, was constantly surrounded by a crowd of sick and infirm persons, whose diseases He healed; yet the same words may with truth be used of some of the saints, as Our Lord Himself said of His servants in the Gospel of St. John: "Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in Me, the works that I do he also shall do, and greater than these shall he do." My dear brethren, among all the saints who are renowned for their power of healing, I dare say, without hesitation, that the most illustrious and greatest is he whose feast we celebrate to-day, namely, the holy martyr St. Sebastian. Not without reason has the Church appointed to be read on this day that part of the gospel which says: "All the multitude sought to touch Him; for virtue went out from Him, and healed all." All the world knows the power of St. Sebastian's inter cession in the case of pestilence, and I need dwell no longer on an explanation of it. But his power is not confined to this; he healed all. I may call him a helper and physician in all imaginable maladies, no matter what their names may be, as I now proceed to show.

St. Sebastian is a general and wonder -working physician for all diseases, therefore there is just reason for holding him in high honor. Such is the subject of this sermon, to the eternal praise of this Saint, and to encourage and increase our devotion and confidence in the confraternity dedicated to his name.

Let us ask this grace from him, and expect it through the hands of Mary and of the holy angels.

Of all the goods of this world, there is none better and more desirable, none that we seek so eagerly, none that we long for and desire more than health. Nor are we wrong in this. For of what good is it to me to be rich, and, as it were, buried in gold up to the ears, if I am sick and cannot enjoy my wealth? Of what good is it to me to be a great lord, to rule over lands and people, if I am blind, deaf, lame, deformed, and dare not show myself in public? What use can I make of the most delicate food, the most agreeable company, the most pleasant conversation, if my body is writhing in pain, if sickness gives me a disgust for every thing? No; a healthy man with his piece of dry bread is far better off, and leads a far more pleasant life, than a sick man seated at a royal table groaning under the costliest viands. In a word, in this mortal life health is more valuable than anything else.

And hence men are always so careful about their health. How cautious people are about entering a house in which there is some one suffering from a contagious disease! No one will go near the place, unless compelled by necessity, for fear of inhaling the poisoned air, and bringing away the sickness with him. How many people are afraid even to go to church, or to venture outside the door in the raw, wintry air, lest they should catch cold or catarrh! How many seek for a dispensation in Lent, that they may be allowed to eat meat, lest fish should upset their stomachs and make them ill! And it is when health begins to fail that we know what a great treasure we possessed. And then what complaints, moans, and sighs are indulged in I Nothing is heard but:

Oh, I wish I were strong again! No money is spared, no matter how hard to come at, to buy medicines in the hope of their contributing to the restoration of health. Then we learn to depend on the doctor, to desire and beg of him to come and see us, to hon or and love him, even though we may have never seen or thought of him before. Nay, we often send for a doctor to a far-off land. And how uneasy we are till he comes, how anxious for his arrival, that we may explain our case! No matter of what standing the doctor may be, noble or plebeian, if he only knows his business and can help he is the best friend we have, and if he gives us hope of a speedy recovery, although there may be no truth in what he says, we already feel consoled and rejoiced, as if every thing were right again. If the sick man finds himself somewhat .better after the medicine, oh, what confidence he has in the doc tor, what a love he feels for him! No medicine is too bitter or insipid for him to take, in spite of any natural disgust he may experience. He does not refuse to be bled, to suffer hunger, to be cut and scarified, to be cauterized even, if necessary; he is ready for all, and even thanks and pays richly the doctor who caused him the pain. Why? Because he wishes to regain his health.

And if the patient recovers fully from a grievous and dangerous illness, what honor and praise are given to the doctor whose skill brought about the happy result, although he has already been paid for his work! The patient is bound in honor never to forget the benefit as long as he lives; and whenever he mentions the doctor's name it is always with the most profound thankfulness; that, he will say, is the man who cured me and saved me from the jaws of death; to him, under God, I owe my life and health. Even those who have never been ill are wont to hold in high honor and esteem one whom they know by experience to be very successful in his cures; and the city or community that can count such a man among its inhabitants may think itself lucky. Why so, for healthy people are not in want of a doc tor? True, but any one may get sick, and if that happens people can comfort themselves with the thought that help will not be wanting them in their necessity. This is the meaning of the exhortation of the Wise Man: " Honor the physician for the need thou hast of him," for the time may come when you will be in want of his services.

Now, my dear brethren, if there were in the world a doctor who knew a sure remedy for all diseases, who could heal all the afflicted, even the most desperate cases, at once, and without putting them to any pain, what a great reputation would he not enjoy! What crowds of people would not come to him from all would be parts! And how would it be if one could address him easily in any place? How, if he consented to perform his cures without money or reward, and solely at the humble petition of those in need of his aid? Would not such a man be almost idolized? Would not every one try to be his friend? But to no purpose should we look for a man of that kind among mortals on earth; nowhere in the world is such an experienced, kind, and generous physician to be found. We must look for him in heaven. And, you think, it is God who can best cure in that manner. Truly, there is no doubt of that; but He does not do everything that He can do immediately and by Himself; His will is to make His servants illustrious before the world by endowing them with the power of working such miraculous cures.

Among all the saints who are renowned for the grace of healing, the most admirable and illustrious is St. Sebastian; he is the doctor whom I have described. Nor can I prove this in any other way than by referring to the many wonderful cures wrought by him on different occasions, just as we show the skill of a clever physician by our knowledge of his success in his profession. Come, now, all of ye on whom St. Sebastian has laid his healing hand, give testimony and show in what he has helped you! But still, why do I appeal to all whom he has assisted? It would require the whole day, nay, a whole year to hear them all; so that we must take their depositions by a thousand at a time. How many souls were numbered in the city of Rome in the year 680? How many in the year 1381 in the cities of Prague in Bohemia, Vienna in Austria, Breslau in Schleswig, Raab in Hungary? How many in the year 1466 in Paris; in the year 1500 in Milan; in the year 1000 and 1002 in almost the whole of Europe? For so many witnesses have we who, if they could rise from their graves, would acknowledge that they were then healed of or preserved from the plague by the intercession and help of St. Sebastian. In the year 826, when his relics were carried through Piacenza and brought to Soissons, in these places alone so many were healed by merely honoring the sacred remains that the number of them could not possibly be counted; so we read in his Life in the Bollandists: "But the different manners of cures operated, and their circumstances would seem incredible, unless to those who know that nothing is impossible to the divine will." The fields round about were on one side filled with the sick, and on the other with those who, having been made whole, were returning to their homes.

Let us now, my dear brethren, take one or other kind of infirmity, and let them be such as are looked on as incurable or most difficult to cure, such as Our Lord has reserved the healing of to Himself, or to a few of His saints, and which are therefore called evangelical diseases. One of these, according to the testimony of physicians, is incurable. And that is blindness from birth. " From the beginning of the world it hath not been heard that any man hath opened the eyes of one born blind," such were the words of the blind man in the Gospel of St. John when his eyes were opened by Our Lord; and he concluded that the man who restored him to sight must be from God. In former times, to be cured of an infirmity of the kind it was merely necessary to enter a church dedicated to St. Sebastian, or to honor with confidence a cloth that had touched his relics. Amongst other innumerable cases of the kind, there was a child in the neighborhood of Piacenza who was born blind; its parents had placed it for a whole night before the altar in a church; in the morning, when the procession of the relics of the Saint was passing by, accompanied by a vast crowd of people, the child heard the noise, and crawling and groping its way as well as it could, it managed to reach the shrine and to touch it. In a moment its eyes were opened, and it cried out in a loud voice: He who is in the coffin has cured me! Now I can see who have never seen in my life before! After this child came five blind men and women, who were also healed by the intercession of the Saint.

Deafness, Dumbness and deafness are also reckoned among the evangelical diseases; Sebastian is the physician for them, too. One in stance alone, since time does not suffer me to bring forward more, must suffice as a proof of this. A man of the common people was at the same time deaf, dumb, and lame; for three days consecutively he had sat at the grave of St. Sebastian, and commended himself to him with great confidence;. on the fourth day he suddenly recovered the use of ears, tongue, and limbs, arid praised his benefactor with public rendering of thanks. Of the pool at Bethsaida the Evangelist St. John says, that at it "lay a great multitude of sick, of blind, of lame, of withered, waiting for the moving of the water." I imagine I see a pool of the kind whenever I behold an altar or church in which relics of St. Sebastian are honored, but with this difference, that at the pool of Bethsaida only one was healed at a time after the angel had come and stirred the water, while hardly one who has confidence in him goes away from the altar of our Saint without relief. A woman who was so deformed that her chin almost touched her knees had hardly set foot in the church when, in the presence of all the people, she suddenly stood up straight, arid walked as if nothing had ever been the matter with her. Immediately afterwards the same beneficent power was experienced by a man whose legs were bent and crooked in the form of a cross; by a girl who had been a cripple in both legs from childhood; by another whose hands and feet were withered, and in the space of an hour eight persons similarly deformed were healed in an instant, and enabled to walk straight.

What happened to the woman in the gospel who was cured by touching the hem of Our Lord's garment occurred to another woman who implored the intercession of St. Sebastian. "There was a certain woman," says St. Luke, " having an issue of blood twelve years, who had bestowed all her substance on physicians, and could not be healed by any." She approached Our Lord, and touched the hem of His garment, and was at once made whole. We read in the life of St. Sebastian that a woman similarly affected for eight years unceasingly, so that she had no longer any strength left, stood at the door of the church, for she dared not enter, and there sent forth her prayers to the Saint; and be hold, within an hour she was completely cured.

We know from the gospel how the evil spirits howled and raged in the bodies of the possessed when they saw Our Lord approaching, for they knew well that He had the power to expel them.

Similar cries were heard on all sides from the demons in the bodies of possessed persons, and from evil spirits in houses, when the relics of our Saint were brought there or carried past; for the demons cannot resist that Saint, and are compelled to give way to him. Although Our Lord cured all kinds of diseases, we do not read of His having restored any insane person to the use of reason; that He did afterwards by His servant Sebastian. Amongst other cases recorded in his Life, there was a poor, wretched, unhappy woman who was totally deprived of reason, and like a dumb beast; she used to run mad and raving through the streets, and could hardly be restrained by chains and ropes. Her friends, sadly troubled about her miserable condition, brought her by force to the church of St. Sebastian, and begged and prayed of him to take pity on her. Nor were their prayers in vain. Not only did she recover the use of reason, but ever after was remark able for her sound sense and prudence.

I must cut my sermon short, and say nothing of the lepers, of those suffering from different other diseases, of the sick whose bodies were already half putrid and dead, who, with little trouble to themselves, were cured by St. Sebastian. Of those whom I have mentioned, not one, but twenty at a time were healed, as it were, at the same moment; so that in one day, at the same place, sometimes twenty-two, sometimes more blind, deaf, dumb, lame, possessed, paralytic, and lepers were made whole; in one evening, as the Emperor Louis saw with his own eyes at Soissons, eighteen were counted who recovered their sight; and one thousand one hundred and seventeen miraculous cures were reckoned to have occurred in that town alone through the intercession of our Saint. Do not imagine, my dear brethren, that I am saying this without due authority; if you doubt my words you can read all about it for yourselves in the Bollandists Life of the Saint. There you will find far more examples and in greater detail than time will suffer me to dwell on to-day. And who can count all the wonderful cures performed by this heavenly physician in latter times down to the present day? For, as I have of ten said, there is hardly a town in Christendom in which there is not to be found an altar or an image of this Saint set up as a token of gratitude for help already received, or as a sign of his present protection against sickness. St. Ambrose, in his day, experienced another sort of cure worked by this Saint, namely, the being preserved from a sudden and unprovided death. When ever a thunder-storm came on, or severe weather threatened. St. Thomas of Aquin used to go down on his knees, and say: "Through the merits of St. Sebastian, deliver us, Lord!" What I should now think and say I know not, unless to cry out to Thee, God, in wonder and admiration, with Thy Prophet David: "God is wonderful in His saints." If there were no other proof of the Catholic faith but that given by the miracles of St. Sebastian, they alone would be enough to convince me that that religion comes from God, and therefore cannot be false.

See now, my dear brethren, and you especially, sodalists of this confraternity, what a great, excellent, useful, salutary, and wonderful holy patron you honor on this altar! Mark with what good reason the members of the sodality assemble here every Wednesday to hear holy Mass in honor of their protector, and learn, too, why you should in future come in still greater numbers and with greater zeal to do him honor. There are still diseases and sicknesses enough for which we require help. There are at all events dangerous diseases still, which should induce us to hold in high honor such an excellent physician. But, you think perhaps, in former times St. Sebastian used to work cures of the kind; now we hear little of them. What! Are we to believe that the power of this Saint has decreased? He who healed so many thousands of all classes, who saved so many cities and countries from ruin is he now unable to help those who in similar difficulties implore his aid? No! What the Prophet Isaias said of the Lord I may now say of St. Sebastian: " The hand of the Lord is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither is His ear heavy, that it cannot hear." We do not nowadays see so many striking miracles; that I grant, and may I venture to assign the reason for it, as it seems to me? Either the devotion and honor we show this Saint has grown cold, or we have not as much confidence in him as people had in olden times; and it is to this confidence especially that the Lord has promised His extraordinary help. If you desire any favors, He says, " believe that you shall receive, and they shall come unto you." " Thy faith hath made thee whole," was Our Lord's usual expression when He healed the sick. If we had a strong faith, a lively confidence, we also should be heard, provided that good health and strength were not prejudicial to our salvation.

And is it not a great blessing that city and country have been preserved so long from pestilence? The ancient Romans, as Giraldus writes, used every year to hold a solemn feast on the Quirinal hill to obtain good health; and here we must remark that they never implored the help of their false gods during a pestilence, but only when it began to decrease or had fully ceased. I will not stop to examine what their motive was in this. This we all know from the true gospel, that Our Lord warns us: "Make unto you friends." When? At what time? When we are actually in need of them? No, long before; " that when you shall fail they may receive you." He deserves neither friend ship nor help who puts off appealing for it until he is forced by necessity.

I at all events would not advise any one to think little of devotion to St. Sebastian, either because he is not now in want of that Saint's help, or because he has seen no miracle worked by him. I will show this by an example: About the year 826, in the neighborhood of Soissons, there was a peasant who, as we read in the Bollandists, yoked his oxen on a day held sacred in an example. honor of St. Sebastian by the people, and went into the field to work. One of his neighbors met him, and said: Where are you going? Do you not know that this is a holy day? Go back at once, and go to church with the others to honor St. Sebastian on his feast day. What! replied the peasant; we are not obliged to keep the feast; I must earn my bread by my work; I owe the Saint nothing; he has never done good or evil to me; and he went on with his oxen. But it was not long before he repented! That same night, as he was about to fall asleep, he was seized with such a violent pain that every member of his body seemed to be torn asunder; his limbs were drawn up in agony, and his whole body racked with pain; and as a punishment of his irreverence his mouth was drawn together in the form of a cross, so that he was a lamentable sight to witness. In this miserable condition he lay for three days, doing nothing but shouting and crying for mercy, and acknowledging his guilt. On the third night, while he was still howling, he saw a beautiful man, surrounded with light, standing before him, who asked him the cause of his sufferings, and whether he was minded to amend in future. Oh, yes! replied the wretched man; for the remainder of my life I will honor St. Sebastian, and never profane his feast day again. Get up, then, said the other, and go at once to the church, thank the Saint for having restored you to health, and tell the people publicly what has happened to you. At these words the man's body, that had been rolled together like a ball, was straightened out again and resumed its former appearance; full of health and strength, he ran to the church and told the people what had happened him, and exhorted them to hold that great Saint in special honor. Thus does the admirable servant of God know how to punish those who despise him! And thus, too, does that compassionate physician know how to heal when the fault is repented of, and to turn sorrow into joy!

Let us learn from this, my dear brethren, how God wishes us to honor and esteem this holy friend of His, and at the same time to continue with renewed zeal the devotion we show him in this confraternity, attending its meetings regularly every week, and endeavoring to spread it more and more. If we are now healthy, and do not want the Saint's help, we have still reason enough for honoring him, and making a friend of him, for the time may come when it will please God to chastise us with a private or public calamity. And if we have no other request to make of him, let us at least beg of him to preserve us from the worst of all maladies, namely, from sin, the malady of the soul. And this is what we beg of thee, great and wonderful Saint, and what we, assembled before thy altar, shall beg of thee every week; take, as thou hast hitherto done take this city and land of ours under thy powerful protection, but especially obtain from the Almighty, by thy intercession, that the souls of the inhabitants may be kept in the state of sanctifying grace; that we may always, till the end of our lives, serve uprightly, with pure hearts, the God who has done so many wonderful things by thee, that we may carefully avoid all sin and vice, and so one day be worthy to praise Him with thee in eternity. Amen.