The Roman Catholic Church has launched the 31st National Day of the Sick in the Techiman Municipality of the Bono East Region.
The church uses the day, which falls on February 11 every year, to pray for the sick and honour deserving health workers in the country to reflect the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.
This year’s celebration is on the theme: “Take care of him: Compassion is a synodal exercise of healing.”
As part of the activities, the church visited, interacted and shared the gospel of Christ with some patients and sprinkled holy water on them at the Techiman Holy Family Hospital.
A message read on behalf of Pope Francis, said “illness is part of our human condition, but it can become inhumane when the sick experience isolation, abandonment and unaccompanied.”.
It said as the church journeyed along the synodal path, all members ought to be encouraged to reflect on the fact that” it is especially through the experience of vulnerability and illness that we can learn to walk together according to the style of God which is closeness, compassion, and tenderness”.
“Far from excluding us from God’s people, they bring us to the centre of the Lord’s attention, for he is our Father and does not want to lose even one of his children along the way. Let us learn from him, then, how to be a community that truly walks together, capable of resisting the throwaway culture”, it stated.
It inspired Christians everywhere to endeavour to read and mediate the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’, which illustrated how Christians could move from the “dark clouds” of a closed world to “envisaging and engendering an open world”.
“This is truly a profound link between the parable of Jesus and the many ways in which fraternity is denied in today’s world”, the message added.
It noted that “it is no longer easy to distinguish the assaults on human life and the dignity that arise from natural causes, and that of those caused by injustice and violence”.
“’Brothers and sisters, we are rarely prepared for illness. Oftentimes, we fail even to admit that we are getting older. Our vulnerability frightens us and the pervasive culture of efficiency pushes us to sweep it under the carpet, leaving no room for our human frailty”, it added.
“On February 11, 2023, let us turn our thoughts to the Shrine of Lourdes, a prophetic lesson entrusted to the Church for our modern times. It is not only what functions well or those who are productive that matters.
Sick people are at the centre of God’s people, and the Church advances together with them as a sign of a humanity in which everyone is precious and no one should be discarded or left behind”, the Pope’s message added.
