Prescriptions, Prescriptions

In His instruction on prayer in today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus gives us three prescriptions:  Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you.  The implication, it would seem, is that prayer can take the form first of a direct, personal conversation; second, of a treasure hunt or even a search and rescue mission for what was lost; and third, of encountering a barrier through which we must pass to gain entrance.

Entering the world of modern medicine, one is almost of necessity confronted with a multitude of prescriptions---not just medical counsel but actual medications.  Some of the latter are recommended as a doctor’s best guess of what might help.  Others are only symptom suppressors, which do not heal the underlying problem. Still others have side effects worse than the issue they are taken to address.  All come at a price, and the complex interaction of several taken together by a given person typically and largely remains a mystery, sometimes with life-changing consequences.

I laugh at the prospect of even beginning to detail the cocktail of prescription medicines that circulated in my body leading up to and following surgery.  I think I had seven going at one time (in multiple doses daily)---spanning an anti-biotic, (nausea-inducing) pain medication, anti-nausea medication (!), muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories, etc.  Each, of course, had its own intended purpose, but also its greater underlying complexity of interaction in my body.  Throw in some required vitamins and supplements---in addition to the chemistry project that is the ingestion of “nutrition shakes” like Boost or Ensure---and I had a full blown science experiment going on in my interior!  In conversation with the doctor and his staff, I had also mentioned a few side effects of the surgery, and they were ready with yet more prescriptions to make things better.  I also had to figure out which meds should be taken with which foods, to maximize good effects and mitigate unhelpful ones.  Lord, have mercy!

Thankfully, I am now down to a much more manageable regimen of two medications, two vitamins, and one supplement.  I am especially pleased that the type and dosages of the medications are the same as what I had been prescribed well before the surgery.  The plan is gradually to transition off all of the meds entirely in three months. 

But in the meantime, my “duet” of prescription ingestion and eating has virtually taken on the monastic form of prayer:  Five times a day I must conform my life to what has become a ritual of physical therapies for my jaw, followed by the “drug-and-dine” combo.  The discipline has helped me understand more viscerally the importance of the Church prescribing the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours five times a day for Priests and consecrated religious, and the more general necessity of every Christian to punctuate the day with prayer.  Rather than an interruption of ordinary life, prayer is its therapeutic restoration.

Returning to Christ’s three prescriptions, it is worth thinking about why the Lord counsels and provides such variety in prayer, addressed to the specificity of our needs (which we may not even know or be able to appropriate yet).  Is what we currently ask for in prayer more of a symptom suppressor, so that we can just feel good and go about our own life on our own terms?  Or are we prepared for an extended timetable of genuine therapy, perhaps one lasting for a Lenten Forty Days or even the whole course of our lifetime?  Christ the Divine Pharmacist is near us, both with his counsel and the substance of His very Person---Word and Sacrament---as His ultimate prescription.  Who would have guessed that our every malady would ultimately have a single, infinitely costly antidote, to be taken (and given) daily:  Jesus Christ, the medicine of immortality, dispensed to us for free.