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The Healthy Do Not Need a Physician

This Rock Volume 20, Number 1   January 2009     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   Why Wheat Bread? By David P. Lang   Gnosticism at the Heart of the Problem   A Little Is Enough   Further Reading   Both Pharisee and Publican Call the Church Home By Jeffrey A. Mirus   Do Not Destroy Him for Whom Christ Died   The Healthy Do Not Need a Physician   Hitler’s Mufti By Matthew E. Bunson   Child Murderer   Further Reading   Is Ecumenism a Heresy? By Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S.   The "Subsists In" Controversy   Damascus Road The Endless Gift By Mary L.   By the Book No Rocks Required By Tim Staples   Eyes to See We Have Seen the Light By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told The Syllabus, the Controversy, and the Context By Robert P. Lockwood   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

Acknowledge yourself feeble, acknowledge yourself man, acknowledge yourself a sinner; acknowledge that it is he that justifies, acknowledge that you are full of stains. Let the stain of your heart appear in your confession, and you shall belong to Christ’s flock. For the confession of sins invites the physician’s healing; as in sickness, he that says, I am well, seeks not the physician. Did not the Pharisee and the Publican go up to the temple? The one boasted of his sound estate, the other showed his wounds to the Physician. For the Pharisee said, I thank you, O God, that I am not as this publican. He gloried over the other. So then if that publican had been whole, the Pharisee would have grudged it him; for that he would not have had any one over whom to extol himself. In what state then had he come, who had this envious spirit? Surely he was not whole; and whereas he called himself whole, he went not down cured. But the other casting his eyes down to the ground, and not daring to lift them up unto heaven, smote his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. And what says the Lord? Verily I say unto you, that the publican went down from the temple justified rather than the Pharisee.
—St. Augustine, Sermon 87 on the New Testament