Leo Tolstoy
Translated by
Dmitry Fadeyev
A human being can fulfill his purpose equally well when he is in a state of illness as when he is in a state of health.
If a human being had no doubts about the indestructibility of his life after death, then he would view all diseases purely as things that would bring him closer to transitioning from one life to the next—a transition that is more desirable than undesirable—and he would bear the pain of disease the same way that we bear the pain of strenuous labor, which we know will end with something good. At the time of our pain we would have an explanation for what is happening to us and would be preparing ourselves for our new state.
People typically think that you can serve God and be useful to others only when you are healthy. Not true! Oftentimes, the opposite is the case. Christ had served God and the people most when he was dying on the cross, when he was forgiving those who were killing him. Everyone who is ill can do the same. And it is impossible to say which state, health or sickness, is more suited for serving God and the people.
From the time that humans began to think, they have recognized that nothing assists people’s moral life as much as the remembrance of death. What is false, however, is the direction taken by medicine: instead of focusing on relieving suffering, it aims at delivering people from death and teaches them to hope for this deliverance, to push away from themselves the thoughts of death, which thereby deprives people of the main motivation for leading a moral life.
You need more health and strength only for yourself, to serve yourself, but to serve God it is not only unnecessary, but often on the contrary.
How often it happens that when we interact with people who are ill we forget that the main thing that an ill person needs is not attempts to conceal from him the approach of his death, but, on the contrary, a call for him to become conscious of his growing, spiritual nature, which is not subject to reduction or death.
By destroying bodily strength, illnesses almost always liberate spiritual strength. And for a human being who has transferred his consciousness into the spiritual sphere, they do not deprive him of the good but, on the contrary, increase it.