Peter heals the lame man; fasting as the universal clinic

Peter answered him, “What you expect to receive, I do not have; but what you do not expect to receive, I do have. You expect to receive silver; I provide you with health. For health of body is better than immeasurable wealth. I will tell you the truth: ‘Silver and gold I do not have.’ For Christ handed over to us, saying, ‘Do not acquire gold or silver or copper.’ And he gave us authority, saying, ‘Cast out demons, heal the sick, cleanse lepers. Freely you received, freely give.’ In the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk.” And taking hold of his right hand, he raised him up. The servant takes hold and raises; the master heals by a word. For a servant is not above his lord.

But now, with clinics being opened throughout the inhabited world, today I see one physician standing over them all: Christ. O what a new wonder! Different diseases, in different places of the clinics, are healed by one physician. One person, afflicted elsewhere by the wound of sin, comes forward, receives from fasting a plaster of healing, and departs. Another, reeking with the decay of fornication, from Christ, the physician of souls and bodies, receives through fasting a medicine for the stench. Another, burning with the fever of love of money, obtains from fasting herbs that cool the disease.

Fasting knows how to make barren women pregnant quickly, to turn the unfruitful womb into a fruitful field, and to give prophets as sons as the reward of abstinence from food. For what are we taught by the divine Scripture? “And Hannah was despondent,” it says, “and she wept and did not eat.” But fasting provided the prophet Samuel to the barren woman. You have seen the gifts of fasting.