NEUOFFENBARUNGTo sing to the Lord after overcoming sickness of the body and the soul bound with it
1. Sickness, a burning fire in the mortal flesh, yes, a mighty test of the suffering soul in faith, hope and love, comes, like all heavenly gifts, from the most loving, holy Father in heaven.
2. Which, by this means teaches and faithfully examine the wandering children in this earthly school of life, as with His own most holy hand, washes away much still deadly earthly dross.
3. So that after a – even if sometimes long-lasting – illness, the person may be cleansed from so many stuck sins, like gold ore through the fire, from slag and stones.
4. What an otherwise person in a healthy state would never want to achieve; for when one is healthy in the flesh, one does not notice to what extent the deadly cancer of the world has already penetrated the fibers of life in the most hostile way.
5. How deep into the roots of the inner spiritual life has this most miserable enemy of all life already burrowed like such a polyp with arms and a thousand proboscises?
6. But – there comes just the Lord to the certainly fleshly healthy, but spiritually declining man with His own, most holy, most powerful hand faithfully to the rescue, seizing, tearing out the evil from all the roots of life and only then the complaining man notices to what extent the cancer has already driven it’s roots into the inner life.
7. For all those places then burn and piteously ache in the carnal being of man, in which formerly were the deadly roots of the enemy of life.
8. But the most holy Father of life never pays attention to the flesh of man, whether it burns and drips with bloody sweat out of anxiety and fear of earthly death.
9. If He has only saved the life of the spirit, of the soul, what lies there at the flesh, on this even rotten clothing of the soul of the spirit!
10. Is it right according to the most holy will of the Father, then it will easily recover again. And is it not right according to the most holy and wise will of the most holy Master of life, then it will well surely be best that He, in a Fatherly way, most lovingly tears away the cancer together with the rotten and shallow dwelling.
11. Thus He Himself, the greatest, the most holy sufferer showed on the Mount of Olives, when kneeling and praying to the eternal love in the Father in the bloody sweat of fear, He asked: "If You Father, You eternal love want it, oh then take the cup You from me! But not my, but always Your holy will be done."
12. Here the eternal holy Master of life showed Himself, how we should always behave towards the life of the flesh, when suffering creeps it, if we want to preserve the life of the soul, of the spirit.
13. But is such a most holy pattern set for us, we can always rejoice and sing from our childlike, most refreshed heart:
14. "Oh most holy, most loving Father of angels and humans, You eternal Master of life, You gave us life; the body only as a temporal shell of the spirit and tool of the soul.
15. You send us joys and sufferings according to Your pleasure, according to Your all-wisest holiest will; so then Your most holy will be done also at all times! You yourself have taught us to live through words and deeds, and so we then also want to live and always praise and extol you in joys and sorrows; because You are indeed the only Giver of always good gifts. Glory and praise to You forever! Amen.