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Jesus' healings and Passion: parallels and reflections

 While reflecting on the Sorrowful Mysteries, and from a small comment in Stratford Caldecott's reflection on the mystery of the Crown of Thorns, it occured to me that all of Jesus' healing miracles have their infernal reflection in the Passion. This should come as no surprise as the prophet declared that he would bear all our infirmities (Isaiah 53:4) as the Suffering Servant, but I figured it was worth a focused exploration. Not all of them have a one-to-one injury

Jesus who healed the blind (Mk 8:22; 10:46; Jn 9) is himself blindfolded by the Temple guards (Mark 14:65; Luke 22:64) who beat him and ask him to identify who struck him.

Several times he cures lepers/those with skin disease, while his skin was torn from his flesh at his flagellation at the pillar (Mk 15;15; John 19:1); 

For those healed from paralysis, Jesus is paralized by crucifixion; and while after the healing, he commands those healed to "take up your mat," Before his paralysis, Jesus takes up his Cross; 



Similarly, alleviating a woman crippled by a spirit, bent over and unable to stand (Luke 13:10), Jesus was himself bent under the weight of the cross as he carried it to Golgotha.


The healing of the withered hand is reflected in the Jesus' hands nailed to the cross (Jesus' gnarled hands in the Isenheim altarpiece Crucifixion come to mind).

Like the blindfolding, a metaphorical reflection of healing the deaf mute, Jesus intentionally remains silent before Pilate and Herod in the face of accusations and deaf to Herod's desire for flashy miracles.

When on the way to heal the daughter of Jairus, Jesus heals the flow of blood of a woman from her womb; from his pierced heart, the womb from which the Church is born, blood and water flowed, in addition to the sweating of blood in Gethsemane; 

And of course, in the light of raising the Daughter of Jairus, the young man, and calling Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus himself died for our sins upon the cross and was laid in the tomb in the garden. 

There are others, of course, one could include the many exorcisms when Jesus frees people oppressed by evil, in that Jesus became sin for us (see 2 Cor 5:21) and is himself oppressed by whatever feeling of loss he knew when he called out "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me!?"



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