Medicinal roots of the tree of life

by PETER NEWMAN

Fresco of the Tree of Life (ca.1340) in the refectory of the convent of Santa Croce, Florence, by Taddeo Gaddi (1290–1366).

“Who will cure my soul if not Thou, O Christ, the only Physician of souls! Where will I find a remedy for the disease of my soul, if not with Thee, O Fountain of healing! Thou Who didst cure the ailing woman, cure also my soul from the ruin of sin.” (St Ephrem, Deacon and Doctor of the Church)

There is scarcely a saint whose heroic imitation of Our Lord Jesus Christ has not been practised, at one time or another, in the care of the sick. Meditating on Christ’s words, “They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill”; and those of St Paul, “if one member suffer any thing, all the members suffer with it”,1 it is easy to see why the compassion of the saints – and even that of pure spirits – has seldom limited itself to purely spiritual works of mercy. Physical sickness, infirmity and corruptibility – consequences of original sin, of which they are the image – were the special object of Our Lord’s public life; occasions on which He manifested His divine authority and charity, which “if they were written every one, the world itself… would not be able to contain the books that should be written.” What is true of the earthly ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ is all the more true of His Mystical Body. Let us consider the inexhaustible bounty of God – in His angels and in His saints – wherewith He has lavished His benefits throughout the history of His Church; from the uprooting of the Tree of Life, after the sin of our first parents, to its restoration on Calvary until the end of the world. As it is impossible “to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us”,2 let us briefly consider how this mystery was sown in the earth of the Old Testament and how its roots fed its first flowering in the early Church.

The Holy Ghost inspired the Psalmist, making his prayer the model of prayer for the Church; the Psalms are, so to speak, the tonic of the Mystical Body of Christ; the Royal Prophet, chosen to interpret the deepest sentiments, not only of the Head, but of all the members, calls the latter to acknowledge their need to be healed, both physically: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak: heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled”; and spiritually: “O Lord, be thou merciful to me: heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee.”3

The priests of the old law were required to have a certain degree of medical knowledge, since part of their office was to diagnose leprosy and other

diseases, for ritual purposes as well as for the common welfare of the people: “The priest shall view him, and shall judge that the leprosy which he has is very clean: because it is all turned into whiteness, and therefore the man shall be clean.” The Church discerns here a figure of the sacrament of Confession. Much later, the Wise Man would exhort all the faithful to “Honour the physician for the need thou hast of him: for the most High hath created him… For there is a time when thou must fall into their hands… He that sinneth in the sight of his Maker, shall fall into the hands of the physician.”4

It is recorded in the Book of Numbers that, by his prayers, Moses obtained the cure of his sister Miriam, struck with leprosy for having murmured against God; soon after, when Israel was scourged by a plague of venomous snakes for the same fault, his intercession prevailed in obtaining a profusion of the same mercy by extraordinary means: “And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to him: Make a brazen serpent, and set it up for a sign: whosoever being struck shall look on it, shall live.”5 Thus appeared one of the earliest and most striking figures of Christ in the Old Testament.

When Hezakiah came to the throne of Judah, his zeal for the true cult of the temple, and absolute abhorrence of idolatry, drove him to the drastic measure of having the brazen serpent broken to pieces.

People writhe in pain among the fiery serpents as Moses produces the brazen serpent. Line engraving after F. Fenzoni (1562–1645). Wellcome Collection, London. Soon after, when Hezakiah found himself gravely ill and given up to death – a plausible indication of his culpability – the prophet Isaiah was sent to tell him, “Thus saith the Lord the God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, and I have seen thy tears: and behold I have healed thee… And I will add to thy days fifteen years.”6 The king’s apparent iconoclasm may not have been overzealous. An eerie likeness of the brazen serpent, to which some of Hezakiah’s subjects had offered incense, was soon to resurface among the pagans in the form of the rod of Asclepius. The false cult of the god of medicine – which also honoured his children and helpers – was the last in history to be initiated into the Greek pantheon. Like the Athenians’ altar to the unknown god, from which St Paul would profit in his discourse on the Areopagus (Acts: 17), the cult of Asclepius is only one of a myriad of cyphers in the gentile’s search for the Author of Life, Who was not to be found outside the light of revelation, nor yet to be known but through the pages of holy scripture: “the leaves of the tree… for the healing of the nations”. At any rate, the cult of Asclepius would remain so engraved in Hellenic-Roman culture that, one century after Calvary, when pagan Rome swooned, “drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus”,7 two consecutive successors of St Peter – St Telesphore and St Hyginus – who consummated their pontificates with the crown of martyrdom, were themselves named after two of Asclepius’ children.

Our Lord Himself, early in His public life, would reveal to Nicodemus, in the obscurity of night, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him, may not perish; but may have life everlasting.” During His first discourse “in his own country”,8 Jesus also proposed the figures of Elias resurrecting the son of the Phoenician widow, and of Elisius curing Naaman, the chief general of the king of Syria;9 two occasions on which it pleased the God of Israel to manifest his omnipotent mercy to the gentiles; to the poorest as well as to the most powerful. It is not without a certain sublime irony that, after the many years of Our Lord’s hidden life

at Nazareth, as He stood before His former neighbours and relations, “he said to them: Doubtless you will say to me this similitude: Physician, heal thyself”. For whom had the Son of God taken flesh if not for the members of His own Mystical Body? Why had He chosen a ministry of healing if not to announce the restoration of the Tree of Life – hidden, not only from Israel, but from the whole of humanity? How would He “reconcile both to God in one body” if not by making Himself “unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness”?10 Where would He reveal Himself to be the true Tree of Life, if not on the Cross, which the brazen serpent could only foreshadow?

In regard to the subject at hand, the richness of the gospel – and of the person – of St Luke is too profound for any justice to be done to it here. His descriptions of the diseases that Jesus cured correspond so precisely to the medical knowledge and nomenclature of the time as to permit little doubt as to the authenticity of his gospel or to the fact that the “Evangelist of the gentiles” was himself a physician. The intrinsic evidence for this is overwhelming, with medical terms slipping into his gospel even where unexpected, such as in Our Lord’s comparison of “the eye of a needle” (Luke 18:25), which St Luke renders velónis: the Greek term for a surgical needle. It seems that, even when himself an instrument of the Holy Ghost, St Luke still has medicine on his mind. As for the extrinsic evidence, we need not look further than the testimony of the Apostle of the gentiles, who writes to the Colossians, “Luke, the most dear physician, saluteth you”. St Paul also writes to St Timothy, in what would be his last Epistle before his martyrdom, “Only Luke is with me”,11 revealing that St Luke, ever true to his métier, to his mentor and to his divine model and master, cared for St Paul even to the threshold of heaven; easing the wounds of his long and turbulent ministry, felt so sorely in his final captivity.

And who can read the first two chapters of St Luke without emotion, especially in this month of the Annunciation? (See page 67 the Sermon of Saint Bernard). Not only do we read here his

Madonna Advocata

own perspective on the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, but also that of the Virgin Mother of God, who “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart”.12 Tradition teaches us – and the distinctive Hebrew character of the text confirms – that the doctor of Antioch based his account on the direct testimony of the Virgin Mother of God. Through Mary, the Holy Ghost bestowed upon St Luke the most intimate revelation of the conception, the life in the womb and the birth of Jesus, as well as of St John the Baptist. And it must not be overlooked that Our Holy Mother’s response to the message of the Archangel Gabriel – a response which made God man and changed the eternal destiny of the human race – also included her prompt despatch on an errand of mercy, to care for her cousin St Elizabeth, “her that is called barren”, in the final stages of her miraculous pregnancy. Here we see the incomparable union of Our Lady with the Most Holy Trinity, both in will and action, recapitulated continuously in this corporal work of mercy, which brought about the sanctification of St John the Baptist in the womb of St Elizabeth, her being filled

with Holy Ghost; the glorification of the unborn Son of God and of His Holy Mother in the continuation of the Ave Maria; and, in response, Our Lady’s Magnificat. All of the three canticles of the New Testament are recorded exclusively in these chapters, which, along with the perfection of St Luke’s Greek prose, highlight his distinction, not only as a physician, but as an artist. Such a universe of blessings in so short a passage of holy scripture is a foretaste of the endless graces which Our Lord would accord to corporal works of mercy in the Christian era; proving that “his mercy is from generation unto generations, to them that fear him.”13

There is another thread of the legacy of St Luke’s profession and artistic genius, which has endured well past the bloody Roman persecution and even to the present day. The Maria Advocata, also known as Santa Maria in Tempulo or simply “the Madonna of Saint Luke” is a miraculous icon of Our Lady, attributed to the patron of physicians and housed today at the Monastery of Santa Maria del Rosario in Rome. One of the greatest treasures of Christian art, St Luke’s original portrait of Our Lady is almost certainly the basis of all Hodegetriae (icons in which Mary is “pointing the way” to her Son). After Pope Pelagius II died of the plague in February 590, the Chair of Peter remained vacant for over six months, during which the same plague devastated Rome. Finally, a chronic invalid was elected to navigate the barque of the Church through this new storm and he immediately began preaching penance with supernatural energy. While he was carrying the Maria Advocata in a solemn procession through the city, St Michael the Archangel appeared above the Mausoleum of Hadrian – now the Castel Sant’Angelo – where he was seen sheathing his sword as a sign that Rome’s works of penance had prevailed in obtaining a judgment of mercy from the divine justice. Soon after, the plague ceased. St Gregory the Great, the last of the four great Doctors of the Roman Church,14 would go on to rule for fourteen years, during which he would codify the liturgy for ages to come, record the history of the Church and of her saints, and despatch the sons of Saint Benedict, charged with the conversion of Britain to the Catholic faith.

The great catechist Canon Marcel describes medicine as “an art full of responsibilities, demanding competent knowledge, proportionate attention to the seriousness of conditions, the observation not only of justice but of charity.” He adds that “Doctors and surgeons must warn their patients of the graveness of their condition, so that they may be advised of their temporal and spiritual interests.”15 St Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, makes explicit that the end of the old law was to inspire the people of Israel with a horror of sin, a profound understanding of their need to be healed and an unshakable faith in God’s promise to send “the Doctor of souls”. Among his final counsels, St Paul exhorts the Hebrews: “And hospitality do not forget; for by this some, being not aware of it, have entertained angels.”

The Archangel Raphael announced to Old Tobias, whose charity and zeal for corporal mercy had left him blinded, “Be of good courage, thy cure from God is at hand”. Here, the angelic patron of physicians reassures, not only a man of faith, but all the faithful, of the long-suffering by which they would possess their souls; the time was coming when the Son of God would say, “I will come and heal him”.16 However, we must not forget St Paul’s exhortation to “hospitality”, nor the spiritual value of visiting the sick; the reality of which we do well to remember, saying with the Angelic Doctor, “I approach as one who is sick to the Physician of life.”17

ENDNOTES:

1. Mt 9:12; 1 Cor 12:26. 2. Jn 21:25; Luke 1:1. 3. Ps 6:3; 40:5. 4. Lev 13:13; Ecc 38:1,13,15. 5. Nb 12:13; 21:7,8. 6. 4 Kg 18:4; 20:5,6. 7. Ap 22:2; 17:6. 8. Jn 3:14–15; Lk 4:24–27. 9. 3 Kg 17; 4 Kg 5. 10. Eph 2:16; 1 Cor 1:23. 11. Col 4:14; 2 Tim 4:11. 12. Lk 2:19;51. 13. Lk 1:36,50. 14. The four doctors of the Roman Church are St Ambrose (c 339–397), St Jerome (c 342–420), St Augustine (354–430) and St Gregory the Great (540–604). 15. L.-E. Marcel, Dictionnaire de culture religieuse et catéchistique (Besançon, 1938) p 421. 16. Tob 5:13; Mt 8:7. 17. Heb 13:2; the prayer of St Thomas Aquinas before Holy Communion.

Professor Jérôme Lejeune, the French geneticist, who was elected president of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children in 1987, is pictured at SPUC’s 1983 conference in Manchester with, from left to right, John Smeaton, SPUC General Secretary (1978–1996) and SPUC CEO (1996–2021), Phyllis Bowman, SPUC founder member (1967) and SPUC National Director (1978–1996).