The Physician Who Had First to Be Healed
MASS Lætábitur justus in Dómino
LESSON 2 Tim. 2:8 – 10; 3:10 – 12
GOSPEL St Matthew 10:26 – 32
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
The Church places before us today a physician. Saint Pantaleon had studied the human body, learned the remedies of his age, and risen to distinction at the imperial court of Nicomedia. He knew how to recognise sickness in others. Yet the decisive truth of his life is that the physician himself was sick, and before he could become an instrument of healing in the hands of God, he first had to be healed.
His sickness was not of the body, but of the soul.
Pantaleon lived at the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth, in an empire which seemed to have recovered its strength after decades of political disorder. Diocletian had become emperor in the year 284. In 293 he established the Tetrarchy, dividing responsibility for the vast Roman world among two senior emperors and two junior colleagues. Nicomedia, in Bithynia, became Diocletian’s eastern capital: a wealthy city of palaces, temples, administrative offices, soldiers, imperial officials, and ambitious professional men.
It was within this glittering but dangerous world that Pantaleon pursued medicine.
According to the ancient tradition, he was the son of a wealthy pagan father, Eustorgius, and a Christian mother, Eubula. His mother instructed him in the Faith, but she died while he was still young. As his education advanced and his position at court became more secure, the Christianity of his childhood receded. He did not necessarily become a violent enemy of Christ. He simply allowed his Faith to become secondary to his profession, advancement, reputation, and social surroundings.
This is one of the most dangerous conditions of the soul because it can coexist with outward respectability. A man may be educated, capable, diligent, and admired by others while his supernatural life slowly withers. He may understand the illnesses of the body while remaining blind to the sickness within himself. He may preserve the lives of others while forgetting the end for which life itself was given.
The mercy of God pursued Pantaleon through the priest Hermolaus. The priest did not despise his medical knowledge, nor tell him that the healing arts were worthless. He taught him rather that all human knowledge must be ordered to the knowledge of God; that medicine may prolong earthly life, but only Christ can give eternal life; that the physician may close a wound, but only the Redeemer can cleanse sin; that the doctor may stand beside the sickbed, but at the hour of death every physician must surrender his patient into the hands of God.
Pantaleon discovered that the first patient entrusted to him was his own soul.
That is the beginning of every genuine conversion. We are often eager to diagnose the ailments of the Church, society, our families, and our neighbours. We can identify the errors of the age, the cowardice of rulers, the failures of pastors, and the corruption of institutions. Yet the Divine Physician begins His work at a more intimate and painful place. He places His finger upon the wound within us. He asks whether pride has distorted our judgement, whether resentment has poisoned our memory, whether habitual sin has weakened our will, whether attachment to comfort has made us timid, whether we speak endlessly of the conversion of the world while postponing our own.
The Collect of today’s Mass asks that, through the intercession of Saint Pantaleon, we may be delivered from afflictions of the body and cleansed from evil thoughts of the mind. The Church unites these petitions because man is neither a disembodied spirit nor merely a physical organism. We ask relief for the body, but purification for the mind; health for our mortal frame, but holiness for our immortal soul.
Bodily pain is a heavy cross, but an evil thought willingly entertained may be a greater danger. Illness can become the road by which a man is sanctified, while consent to sin leads him away from God. The Church therefore asks not merely that suffering be removed, but that the mind be cleansed. She knows that the deepest healing is not always the recovery of strength, but the restoration of grace.
Once Pantaleon returned to Christ, his medicine itself was transformed. His skill was no longer merely a path to advancement. It became an exercise of mercy. Tradition remembers him as treating the sick generously and placing his gifts at the service of the poor. The man who had received mercy became merciful; the soul healed by Christ became an instrument through which Christ healed others.
His later Greek name, Panteleemon, came to signify the all-merciful or all-compassionate. The name expressed what grace had made of him. He had learned that Christian mercy is not mere sentiment. It is the movement of a soul which, having received the charity of Christ, begins to love others for Christ’s sake.
This is the pattern of the Christian life. Grace is never given merely to be possessed. It is given that it may bear fruit. The man who has been forgiven must learn to forgive. The man who has been consoled must console. The man whom God has raised from sin must bend down towards those who have fallen. We cannot give grace as though it belonged to us, but we can become channels through which the mercy of Christ reaches another soul.
Then the political world surrounding Pantaleon changed with terrible suddenness.
On 23 February 303, the great Christian church standing near the imperial palace at Nicomedia was destroyed. The following day the first persecuting edict was published. Christian churches were to be demolished, sacred books surrendered and burned, assemblies forbidden, and Christians deprived of legal protection and public standing. Further edicts followed. The clergy were imprisoned, and sacrifices to the pagan gods were demanded. What began at Nicomedia spread across much of the empire and became the last great persecution of the ancient Church.
Pantaleon therefore did not suffer in some distant or obscure province. He stood near the centre of imperial power, in the very city from which the assault had been launched. He saw the empire declare that Christianity was incompatible with public order. He saw rulers who claimed to have restored peace identify the followers of the Prince of Peace as enemies of society. He saw law itself turned into an instrument of religious coercion.
His colleagues denounced him. The physician of the court was brought before the earthly authority and commanded to renounce the King of Heaven. The ruler wished to preserve so useful and accomplished a man. Pantaleon might have retained his position, his wealth, his reputation, and his life by offering the required token of conformity. Perhaps no elaborate profession of paganism was demanded. Perhaps only a little incense, a few accommodating words, some public indication that his Christianity was not to be taken too seriously.
But the Gospel proclaimed today leaves no room for such evasions: “Every one therefore that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father Who is in heaven.”
Christ does not say: whoever privately admires Me. He does not say: whoever preserves a discreet inward sympathy for Me. He says: whoever confesses Me before men.
There comes a moment when inward belief must assume an outward form. Faith must become speech, action, sacrifice, and public allegiance. Prudence determines how and when we speak, but prudence can never authorise the denial of truth. There is a silence born of charity and another born of cowardice. There is reserve born of humility and another born of fear.
Pantaleon confessed Christ because he understood that bodily life is not the highest good. This is particularly striking in a physician. His profession was dedicated to preserving life, yet he knew that life must not be preserved at the cost of apostasy. Medicine is noble because bodily life is God’s gift, but bodily life is not God. Health is a blessing, but it is not Heaven. Death is an enemy, but sin is a greater enemy, because death separates the soul from the body only for a time, whereas mortal sin separates the soul from God.
Our age is fascinated by health and terrified of death. It surrounds the body with technologies, interventions, measurements, and promises of control. Yet it often refuses to ask what health is for. It may preserve biological existence while denying the moral law which gives life its dignity. It may speak of compassion while destroying the unborn, abandoning the disabled, or hastening the death of the elderly. It may call an act merciful simply because it ends suffering, forgetting that true mercy can never contradict truth.
Saint Pantaleon reminds every physician, nurse, carer, and Christian that science is not morally self-governing. Knowledge gives power, but it does not tell us how power should be used. The fact that something can be done does not mean that it ought to be done. The healer must remain the servant of the natural law, the dignity of the human person, and the sovereignty of God. Medicine separated from truth may cease to heal and begin to wound.
The ancient tradition places Pantaleon’s martyrdom about the year 305, two years after the persecution had begun at Nicomedia. The later acts describe burning torches, molten lead, drowning, wild beasts, the wheel, and finally the sword. The precise details belong to the devotional tradition which grew around his ancient cult, but their spiritual meaning is unmistakable. The persecutor attempted to make the whole created order serve his hatred, but creation would not finally consent to the destruction of God’s servant. Fire, water, beasts, iron, and human cruelty exhausted themselves before the patience of the martyr.
Yet the greatest miracle was not that Pantaleon survived so many torments. It was that he forgave his tormentors.
A man may endure pain through natural courage, anger, pride, or sheer force of will. But to suffer without hatred, to pray for those who inflict the suffering, and to desire their salvation is not natural heroism. It is the life of Christ reproduced in one of His members. Pantaleon’s mercy was the proof that the Divine Physician had healed him completely. His enemies could wound his body, but they could not implant hatred in his soul.
Saint Paul tells us in the Epistle: “The word of God is not bound.” Paul was chained, but the Gospel remained free. Pantaleon was tortured, but Christ was not defeated. The body of the martyr could be restrained and slain, but the truth he confessed passed beyond Nicomedia, beyond the empire, and beyond the centuries.
There is a providential irony in the dates. Pantaleon died at the apparent height of pagan power, about the year 305. Yet in 311, scarcely six years later, the emperor Galerius, who had been among the principal architects of the persecution, issued an edict tolerating Christianity and asking Christians to pray for the empire. In 313, Constantine and Licinius granted broader religious liberty. The imperial system which had sought to extinguish the Church was compelled to admit its failure.
The persecutors died; the martyr’s name endured.
The palaces of Nicomedia passed away. The decrees against Christ became historical curiosities. Yet the physician condemned as an enemy of Rome was honoured throughout East and West as a great martyr and wonderworker. The emperor possessed armies, prisons, officials, and executioners. Pantaleon possessed Christ. History has shown which possession was the stronger.
The Gradual gives us the secret of his endurance: “When he shall fall, he shall not be bruised, for the Lord putteth His hand under him.” It does not say that the just man never falls. Pantaleon himself had once fallen away from the fervour of the Faith. But God placed His hand beneath him. Divine mercy did not merely preserve an innocent man; it restored a fallen one and made him a martyr.
That should give courage to every soul conscious of wasted years, neglected graces, cowardly compromises, and past infidelities. The saint’s estrangement did not prevent his sanctity once he surrendered to grace. God can take the history of our weakness and make it a monument to His mercy. The decisive question is not whether we have ever fallen, but whether we will allow the hand of God to raise us.
At the altar today, the sacrifice of the martyr is gathered into the Sacrifice of Christ. Pantaleon did not save himself by his courage. He was strengthened by the Passion of the Lord and incorporated into it. The crown placed upon his head, of which the Offertory sings, is not the reward of autonomous human achievement. It is the triumph of Christ’s grace in a soul which refused to abandon Him.
In the Communion antiphon we hear: “He that ministereth to Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there also shall My minister be.”
Pantaleon served Christ in the sick, followed Christ into suffering, and now reigns where Christ is. May he obtain for us healing according to the will of God: healing of the body when that serves our salvation; healing of our thoughts from impurity, anxiety, bitterness, and pride; healing of our wills from cowardice; healing of our memories from resentment; and, above all, healing from that divided heart which wishes to belong to Christ without sharing His Cross.
May the physician of Nicomedia teach us to place every gift, profession, skill, and possession at the service of mercy. May the martyr teach us that the soul is worth more than the body, truth more than security, and eternal life more than all the honours of the world. And when the hour comes for us to confess Christ, may we remember His words:
“Fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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