To The Sick in the House of Mercy (11 September 1983)

On Sunday, 11 September 1983, the Holy Father visited the sick in the “House of Mercy,” in Vienna. He encouraged them to accept the cross they must bear. To the elderly in particular he said, “We need your experience and your advice. We need your experience of faith and your example. You must not isolate yourselves.”

Dear Patients!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in need of assistance here in the "House of Mercy" and elsewhere, in hospitals, in nursing homes and in every home in Austria!

1. This hour of my visit to Austria is entirely dedicated to you. I want to be with you — as a messenger of Christ who wants to make you happy, but also as one who was himself, for a few weeks, your companion in misfortune. By God's will, medical art and specialized assistance restored my health. So today I stand before you, sane but not like a stranger. Let us unite our efforts: we must not allow a separation to be created between us, those who are healthy and those who are sick!

Perhaps on certain occasions you are afraid of being a burden to us. Perhaps this has been said to you or made to feel. In this case I would like to ask your forgiveness. Without a doubt, you need us, our help and assistance, our hands and our hearts. But in the same way, we need you . You must accept so many gifts. But you also give a lot to us.

Your condition as patients makes us aware of how fragile human life is, how precarious and limited it is: it makes us aware of the fact that you cannot do everything you want and that you cannot complete everything what started.

Naturally, you are happy with how much beauty you have lived and how much good you have done. For this you must be grateful. But now you see everything in a different light and something is evaluated by you differently. Now you know better what is really important in life and this wisdom, this judgment matured in life and purified by pain, you can transmit it to us — with what you say, with what you are experiencing and with the way you support it. The Pope thanks you for this "preaching" made by you, for your suffering borne with patience. It cannot be replaced by any pulpit, by any school, by any speech. Rooms for the sick serve a people no less than school and university classrooms.

At the center of your current life is the Cross. Many avoid it. But whoever wants to avoid the Cross does not find true joy. Young people cannot become strong and adults cannot remain faithful if they do not learn to accept a cross. To you, my dear patients, it was imposed. Nobody asked you if you wanted it. Teach us, healthy people, to accept it in time and to bear it with courage, each in our own way. She is always a part of the Cross of Christ. Like Simon of Cyrene, we can carry it along with Him for a short journey.

2. And now I turn my gaze above all to you, bowed by the weight of the years and who suffer because of the misfortunes and limitations of old age. You too need our help and yet it is you who make us a gift. On your work, on your efficiency, on what you have, so to speak, "invested" for us, we continue to build. We need your experience and your advice. We need your experience of faith and your example. You must not isolate yourselves. You must not remain outside our doors, our homes and the doors of the world. You are part of us! A society that distances itself from its elders would not only deny its own existence, but would alienate itself from its own future. Neither the elderly nor the sick should be marginalized. Their presence is important. We are all indebted to them. At this time I would like to thank all of you who, in humanity's multiple moments of need, offer your suffering and your prayers in sacrifice. Naturally, the healthy must also pray, but your prayer has a particular value. You can ask for rivers of blessings from Heaven and pour them on your acquaintances, on your homeland and on all men who need God's help. Here, on earth, man cannot praise or worship God in a better way than with a heart that even in suffering believes in His wisdom and His love. Suffering endured with patience becomes in some way itself a prayer, a rich source of grace. Therefore I would like to ask all of you to transform your rooms into chapels, contemplate the image of the Crucified Lord and pray for us, offer your suffering as a sacrifice for us - also in favor of the activity of the Successor of Peter, who trusts in a particular way in your spiritual help and blesses you with all his heart.

3. During our meeting today, my thoughts turn in particular to all those among you, who have been so tested since childhood that their physical and spiritual faculties have not even been able to develop. if . I think of men who, due to an incident or an insidious evil, are seriously disabled . I think of that form of aging because of which the world and the people around us lose their consistency, of the elderly, therefore, who can no longer transmit to us the wisdom of their lives and no longer understand the service of love. When we look at these people, from whom such important things are taken away, we ask ourselves: "What does human dignity truly consist of?"

The nobility of man consists in the fact that God called him to life, affirmed and accepted him, and that he will find his full fulfillment in Him. Given this, isn't all human life ultimately fragmentary and inadequate, since every work must always be completed by God? Over the healthy and sick, vigorous and tired, active and disabled, spiritually alive and not, there is God's paternal "yes" and makes each of your days a part of the path to full fulfillment — and therefore worthy of being lived. .

Dear Austrians, I wish the Lord could tell you something about your attitude towards the sick and disabled with whom you live, and in whom deep down you find Himself: "I was a burden and you carried Me; it was useless and you valued Me; I was disfigured and you recognized My dignity; I was sick from birth and you said yes to Me" (cf. Mt. 25, 35 et seq.).

4. The sick and elderly, the disabled and those in need of assistance show us in a particular way how much we need each other and how deeply we belong to each other. They awaken to the end our solidarity and our love for our neighbors . When patients are no longer able to recognize the help given to them and to reciprocate with gratitude, it then becomes evident how disinterested and full of sacrifices such servile love must be. Illness and suffering are always a difficult trial. But even though it may seem contradictory, a world without sick people would be poorer. Because it would be poorer in humanity lived in favor of others, poorer in disinterested love and even, sometimes; less heroic. At this time, therefore, together with the sick and men in need of assistance here in Austria, I thank with all my heart the doctors, nurses and assistants who provide service, with fidelity and passion, in this "House of Mercy" and in other places in the country. I thank everyone, those who, here or in other hospitals, in nursing homes and in families, make their contribution with personal and selfless efforts to alleviate suffering, to cure illnesses and for elderly people to recover courage and confidence.

A sincere word of encouragement I address to you, mothers and fathers, who altruistically take care of your child and love him, perhaps deficient from the beginning, often in an environment where there is no understanding of all those who constitute for the parents themselves a affectionate support and those who also accept limitations to gratefully return at least part of that disinterested love that they in turn previously received.

My gratitude is not just an omen. You have at the same time the promise of Jesus Christ who came to serve and to heal wounds. "Whenever you did this to one of the least of these His brothers, you did it to Himself" (cf. Mt. 25, 40). He is your reward. He is — if you open yourself to this message — the silent joy in your work.

At the same time, Christ is also the consolation in your suffering, dear Brothers and Sisters, sick and in need of assistance. He, who is with His messengers of love in the service they provide, is also with you in your time of need. You were made in his image and likeness. He himself, who healed those who suffer, also suffered. He himself suffered the last abandonment so that we would never be abandoned. He, Christ our Lord and Savior, be with you always and bless you: to all in his great mercy is love!

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana