Healing (Beggars)

Bishop K.C. Pillai

In the Eastern philosophy, either Hindu, Mohammedan or Jewish, if a man is incurable and the doctors have given up on him, then he becomes a beggar, seeking not money, but healing. Healing (Beggars) Let me share with you an Oriental custom in regard to healing. This is concerning the many beggars which you see in certain places when you go to Palestine, Egypt or India. Americans think that all these beggars are poor people and that is the reason they are begging. But this is not so. In the Eastern philosophy, either Hindu, Mohammedan or Jewish, if a man is incurable and the doctors have given up on him, then he becomes a beggar, seeking not money, but healing. When you act as a beggar, then you have no more self respect. You lose all your social standing; you become very humble, when you act as a beggar. Then God, through His mercy, may give you healing someway, sometime, through some holy man. That is the teaching we have in the East. The three places where the beggars go are the highway side, the temple gate, or the banks of holy rivers. Thousands of people go past these three places daily, and they pray that in one of these places there might be a holy man passing whose shadow might fall on them, or that he might say a word or touch them and heal them of their incurable disease. An example of a beggar by the highway side is the story of blind Bartimaeus, found in Mark 10:46-52. Mark 10:46 And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging . . . . The fact that blind Bertimaeus was sitting on the highway side begging, shows me that he was not begging for money. The real beggars of the East that beg for food, come to the door. They tap on the floor by the door, and the woman of the house comes out and gives them something to eat. But the beggars who line the highway side, and who sit at the temple gates, are generally seeking healing. What are