# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S173
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Visiting the Sick. 173

Such admonitions are all the more necessary, since among the people there not seldom prevail various prejudices against the pastor's visiting the sick. Some shrink from it because they have a bad conscience; they fear that, through being reminded of their sins and God's wrath, of death, judgment, and eternity, they would be too greatly agitated and thereby hindered in their bodily recovery — in which unbelieving physicians only further confirm them. Others regard the servant of God merely as a messenger of death, and the administering of the Sacrament as a sign of the near end, because often shameful hirelings are accustomed to visit only those at the point of death. Therefore the people should, on every occasion that offers itself, be admonished, in the event of sickness, to give notice to the pastor — even when the sick person himself should not wish it, since then such a visit is all the more necessary for him. Commonly, no such notice is given at all, because people think the pastor will surely hear of it from others, and if he does not come of his own accord, they do not wish to send for him either. The chief reason, however, is indifference toward God's Word, which heals all things. Therefore the example of those in the Gospels who brought the sick to the Lord Christ, as well as of those who had themselves brought to him, must ever again be held up. So, finally, the members of the congregation too should be admonished to visit the sick diligently and to take their spiritual and bodily distress to heart as their own, for Christ's sake, mindful of his testimony on the Last Day: I was sick and ye visited me, Matt. 25:36. And Sirach (7:39) says: Be not slow to visit the sick, for by so doing you will be loved.

We now come to the pastor's conduct in visiting the sick, and namely in the case of those who belong to his flock entrusted to him, who in the days of their health have heard God's Word from him and received the holy Sacrament — for of those who have until then despised both, or who are altogether unknown to him, there is here no discussion, any more than of the mentally ill, the possessed, etc. Above all the pastor is to call fervently upon God, that he put the right words into his mouth and lay them upon the sick person's heart, that he sincerely recognize his soul's distress, and pray, and eagerly seek and accept the help of the soul, so that this sickness too may redound to the glory of God, that the Son of God may be honored, and that this chastening too may yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness. (John 11:4. Heb. 12:11.)

The minister of Christ should diligently contemplate the image of his Lord as that of a merciful Samaritan, as Dr. Luther so charmingly depicts it in the Church Postil on the 13th Sunday after Trinity (in the shorter sermon); he should become, like St. Paul, as weak to the weak, that he might win the weak. (1 Cor. 9:22.) Let him picture to himself how he himself, or his wife, child, or friends, would lie thus sick, what he would feel and share in feeling then. Let him come to the sick with a heart free of prejudice, not with