Miracles and Pilgrimage in an Age of Secular Medicine
Jacek Mostwin, MD, DPhil, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD
The role of faith and prayer in managing illness has been eliminated from secular medicine as currently taught and practiced in most modern medical academies. When critically ill patients and their families resist recommendation for removal of life support, asking for more time as they are ”praying for a miracle”, they effectively stop the conversation. Secular medicine sees these appeals as based on superstition but does not know how to address them. Patients and families may see them as a last hope, a rock, a refuge, as if they were invoking the first verse of the 27th Psalm.
Shortly after the apparitions of Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 at Lourdes, a small town in southern France, miraculous healings were attributed to the shrine, including one proclaimed by the Empress Eugenie, wife of the French Emperor Napoleon III. Under her patronage, and over the next 40 years, the center became a place of national pilgrimage despite the secular bias of the medical profession and the government. By 1900 Lourdes had become a place of national and , subsequently after WW II, an international pilgrimage unique to the Western World. Presently, over 5 million pilgrims come each year, some hoping for cure from illness, some serving them, some carrying private intentions, some seek only mercy.
Since 1992, I have provided volunteer medical care and protection on 19 such pilgrimages as a member of the Order of Malta, a military religious order that dates back to 1048. Since 2012, I have been a member of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL), the group of 35 physicians that reviews cases regarding the explicability or inexplicability of healings attributed to the shrine. I have witnessed and participated in the structure of pilgrimages, known those who have been considered miraculously cured, and seen the faces of thousands of pilgrims.
Many of the patients who attend these pilgrimages have undergone standard treatment for complex chronic or terminal diseases. They trust their doctors and care providers, and they are grateful to them. But at Lourdes, they seek something that their doctors and care providers cannot seem to address, a closeness to divine mercy, protection and sometimes rescue. Contemporary medicine dismisses any improvement as persuasion or placebo, but it cannot address the needs that these patients seek nor do they offer any alternatives.
Pilgrimage is an ancient human practice. The cult of Asklepios, the Greek god of medicine and healing, flourished for thousands of years in antiquity, generating shrines and healing sites drawing pilgrims to its dormitories in which patients slept to receive cures or instructions for how to remedy their ailments. In later antiquity, the iconoclastic replacement of Asklepiadic shrines by Christian churches was accompanied by a gradual replacement of Asklepios as a divine healer by Jesus, who was also sometimes addressed as the divine physician.
In this presentation, we will review the structure of medical pilgrimage, the role of accompanying chaplains and physicians, the process and criteria by which CMIL reviews healings and then reflect on the questions of why patients who willingly undergo treatment in medical centers still seek mercy and divine protection in times of mortal distress, an instinct that modern medicine should no longer ignore or deny. These instincts are part of the human species and we disrespect people when we overlook them. What are they seeking that medicine is not giving them? What can we do to help provide them with such resources?
The medical shrine provides an intersection for medicine and religion that offers enormous possibilities to explore the challenge set for this conference: In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing the Spaces Between. Shrines are a portal to this space between . What can medicine learn from them? What can medicine bring home from them? How can we make medicine more human by entering this space? These are not answers that can be provided by analysis or quantitative means but by entering the space between, the place sought by pilgrims seeking divine protection in times of medical crisis that exposes our human frailties, our hopes and the harsh realities of our mortality.
Pilgrimage to a shrine offers a model for medical care that respects both religious and medical traditions, and above all, respects the longings of people who need both to survive and endure. Its lessons are universal, adaptable to many different settings and traditions beyond its denominational origins. Audience participants will be invited to share their own experience and their hopes for healing the spaces between.
Shortly after the apparitions of Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 at Lourdes, a small town in southern France, miraculous healings were attributed to the shrine, including one proclaimed by the Empress Eugenie, wife of the French Emperor Napoleon III. Under her patronage, and over the next 40 years, the center became a place of national pilgrimage despite the secular bias of the medical profession and the government. By 1900 Lourdes had become a place of national and , subsequently after WW II, an international pilgrimage unique to the Western World. Presently, over 5 million pilgrims come each year, some hoping for cure from illness, some serving them, some carrying private intentions, some seek only mercy.
Since 1992, I have provided volunteer medical care and protection on 19 such pilgrimages as a member of the Order of Malta, a military religious order that dates back to 1048. Since 2012, I have been a member of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL), the group of 35 physicians that reviews cases regarding the explicability or inexplicability of healings attributed to the shrine. I have witnessed and participated in the structure of pilgrimages, known those who have been considered miraculously cured, and seen the faces of thousands of pilgrims.
Many of the patients who attend these pilgrimages have undergone standard treatment for complex chronic or terminal diseases. They trust their doctors and care providers, and they are grateful to them. But at Lourdes, they seek something that their doctors and care providers cannot seem to address, a closeness to divine mercy, protection and sometimes rescue. Contemporary medicine dismisses any improvement as persuasion or placebo, but it cannot address the needs that these patients seek nor do they offer any alternatives.
Pilgrimage is an ancient human practice. The cult of Asklepios, the Greek god of medicine and healing, flourished for thousands of years in antiquity, generating shrines and healing sites drawing pilgrims to its dormitories in which patients slept to receive cures or instructions for how to remedy their ailments. In later antiquity, the iconoclastic replacement of Asklepiadic shrines by Christian churches was accompanied by a gradual replacement of Asklepios as a divine healer by Jesus, who was also sometimes addressed as the divine physician.
In this presentation, we will review the structure of medical pilgrimage, the role of accompanying chaplains and physicians, the process and criteria by which CMIL reviews healings and then reflect on the questions of why patients who willingly undergo treatment in medical centers still seek mercy and divine protection in times of mortal distress, an instinct that modern medicine should no longer ignore or deny. These instincts are part of the human species and we disrespect people when we overlook them. What are they seeking that medicine is not giving them? What can we do to help provide them with such resources?
The medical shrine provides an intersection for medicine and religion that offers enormous possibilities to explore the challenge set for this conference: In Pursuit of the Great Coherence: Healing the Spaces Between. Shrines are a portal to this space between . What can medicine learn from them? What can medicine bring home from them? How can we make medicine more human by entering this space? These are not answers that can be provided by analysis or quantitative means but by entering the space between, the place sought by pilgrims seeking divine protection in times of medical crisis that exposes our human frailties, our hopes and the harsh realities of our mortality.
Pilgrimage to a shrine offers a model for medical care that respects both religious and medical traditions, and above all, respects the longings of people who need both to survive and endure. Its lessons are universal, adaptable to many different settings and traditions beyond its denominational origins. Audience participants will be invited to share their own experience and their hopes for healing the spaces between.