Message for the Sick

O caregivers who look after innocent sick children and the elderly who are as sensitive as children! In your hands lies the opportunity for a great trade for the Hereafter. Do not let this trade slip from your hands; gain its profit with enthusiasm and diligence.

The illnesses of innocent children serve as training and discipline for their delicate bodies, and as an inoculation and divine upbringing that enables them to build resistance against future worldly hardships. Alongside these and similar wisdoms that illnesses bring for the worldly life of a child, they also serve as a source of development for his spiritual life and spiritual purification—something that, in the case of adults, would serve as expiation for sins. They also serve as inoculations that raise the child spiritually in his future life or in the Hereafter. It has been established by the muhaqqiqīn that the thawāb arising from such illnesses is recorded in the parents’ book of deeds, especially that of the mother who, because of her shafqa, prefers her child’s health to her own.

As for caring for the elderly, it brings abundant thawāb. Moreover, it is established through reliable hadiths that receiving the prayers of blessing of the elderly—especially those of one’s father and mother—bringing joy to their hearts, and serving them with loyalty are means of happiness both in this world and in the Hereafter. Many historical examples bear witness to this. Just as a child who is fully devoted to his elderly father and mother will receive the same treatment from his own children, so too it is established through many experiences that a wretched child who hurts his parents will suffer many misfortunes in this world, in addition to the punishment of the Hereafter.

Indeed, since true brotherhood exists among believers through the mystery of īmān, they should not only care for the elderly within their own families. Rather, whenever they encounter needy and honourable elderly believers, they should serve them with heart and soul, as required by Islam.

The Twenty-Fifth Remedy

O sick brothers! If you desire a truly beneficial, sacred, and delightful cure for every ailment, then strengthen your īmān. That is, through repentance, seeking forgiveness, prayer, and awareness of your servanthood, you should make use of your īmān as a sacred remedy and benefit from the medicine that comes from īmān.

Indeed, because of the love that heedless people have for this world and their attachment to it, they possess, as it were, a spiritually sick body as vast as the world itself.

Indeed, as we have proven irrefutably in many treatises, īmān provides a remedy against those immense blows of destruction and separation, instantly heals your deeply wounded spiritual body, frees it from its wounds, and gives it true healing. In order not to weary you, I will keep this brief.

As for the medicine of īmān, its effect is seen when the divine commands are observed as much as possible. Heedlessness, dissipation, base desires, and unlawful pleasures, however, weaken its effect. Since illness drives away heedlessness, removes appetites, and blocks the path to unlawful pleasures, you should benefit from it. Moreover, you should take the sacred medicines and lights of true īmān through repentance, seeking forgiveness, supplication, and invocation.