Jesus calls each one of us to be whole. But what does "whole" mean? How are "whole" and "soul" related?

No matter that the much touted "health-care reform" package of a few years ago never made it out of Congress. We are still living in the middle of a tremendous health-care revolution.

Health insurance might still be a quagmire, Medicaid still inadequate, but the way we think about our health has changed radically in the past two decades. Most of us now realize that we cannot be truly healthy if we segregate our lifestyle from our physical well-being. What started out as advice to eat a well-balanced, low-fat diet, get regular exercise and avoid the use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs has grown into a vast complex, a health-care industry completely independent of the white-coated world of traditional modern medicine.

Now, every aspect of our diet has come under scrutiny. Vitamins, minerals, herbal extracts, high potassium, low sodium, nonfat, cholesterol-free all have become common terms in our health vocabulary. Naturopaths, homeopaths, D.O.s, chiropractors, acupuncturists, aroma-therapists, massage technicians as well as plain old M.D.s are all frantically applying for the privilege of being our health-care provider, or better yet, our "wellness resource." The one thing all these specialists and attitudes have in common is that they now talk much more about maintaining health than they do about curing illness.

With all the good that has come out of this continuing health-care revolution, it has in some ways managed to re-stigmatize illness. The advent of genuinely scientifically based medicine at the dawn of the 20th-century had reduced illness to a collection of bothersome bacteria and other microscopic marauders. Being sick was no longer anyone's "fault"; it was no longer a sign of weakness, sin or divine displeasure. Sickness was brought on by outside invaders that broke down our body's natural defenses. We had only to find the right "magic bullet," we thought, and all ills could be cured.

Now, everything is our own fault again. Our inability to handle stress effectively clamps down our colon. A love affair with cream cheese and pepperoni pizza clogs our arteries. Curling up with a good book instead of hitting the stair-master has made our muscle tone horribly off-key and our cardiovascular system out of breath. Everything that operates at a less than perfect level is held up to us as evidence of yet another sin we have committed in our lives.

When Jesus' healing power brought the miracle of health to the hemorrhaging woman in this week's gospel text, he immediately sought her out to speak with her about her experience. Impressed by the power of her faith, Jesus proclaims, "your faith has made you well." Furthermore, Jesus adds a standard Jewish blessing "Go in peace."

But then he couples that blessing with a common Hellenistic saying. This Greek blessing is usually literally translated as "be healed of your disease." But a more colloquial rendition of this text could justifiably have Jesus reminding this woman to "take care of yourself so that you remain healthy." Jesus is not bestowing some mystical healing verse on this woman. He is urging her to stay healthy, to be whole.

Jesus is calling each one of us to "stay healthy," to "stay whole." But what does wholeness mean? To be healthy and whole means we must have body and mind and soul in sync. Wholeness means recognizing that our spiritual needs are just as critical as our physical needs. Wholeness means that our emotional needs are just as important as our intellectual needs. The woman healed of her hemorrhage "felt in her body that she was healed of her disease" (v.29). She may have registered her healing physically, but she also recognized it mentally, was emotionally overcome with "fear and trembling," and her entire spirit resonated with the need to declare "the whole truth" to Jesus (v.33). Jesus' "soulistic" (thanks to Keith Haverkamp for this phrase) healing reached into every essence of this woman's being.

Healing and wholeness came about because this woman abandoned faith in all the remedies that had been offered by a host of medical practitioners. An overriding faith in Jesus Christ finally put it all together for the woman. Jesus simply announced to her what was an already existing fact "your faith has made you well."

Even though "holistic medicine" has been steadily growing in popularity and acceptability, this doesn't mean that our culture has been able to transfer this "holistic" attitude into an experience of personal "wholeness." Instead, some people have become kind of holistic junkies trying every new remedy, exploring every suggested avenue, in their hope that the key to personal wholeness will be found in that next cure-all therapy.

The "hole" in "holistic" medicine is that it puts its faith in our own ability to balance our life our body, our spirit, our mind. While it is imperative that we do take responsibility for and control of our lifestyle, we cannot manipulate and maneuver our life force. We have only to look at our postmodern culture to see the glorious failures of our attempts to extend control beyond lifestyle into life force.

Take something as basic to human existence as eating. Despite all we now know about diet, nutrition and healthy eating, our stomachs still drive us to act in ways beyond all rationale. We have a culture that is increasingly more anorexic and more obese at the same time.

We can provide an environment conducive to healing and health. We can change our lifestyle. But only an experience of divine love and salvation as offered to us by Jesus Christ will make us truly whole. Only Jesus offers us healing that goes beyond the therapies of holistic medicine, beyond our personal search for a whole and healthy self. Jesus offers us a "soulistic" cure which binds together body, mind and spirit into a living force, a vital love.

In the hit movie Phenomenon, a simple man experiences a radical physical, mental and spiritual transformation after being struck by a strange white light. His mental powers become remarkable, dazzling all those he meets. But the man himself ultimately claims that the most significant change he has experienced is spiritual. Watching a brisk wind forcing tall trees to dip and whip, this man sums up the greatest truth that his boosted powers have been able to reveal to him. He acknowledges that the unseen power of the wind is more powerful, more transformative, more real, than any of the more physically present objects it encounters and affects. Spiritual forces, this man perceives, though not always visible, are infinitely stronger and control the movement of our world far more than all the physical forces of the material world.

Take the story of Mary Verghese. Mary Verghese was a brilliant young Indian surgeon. Crippled as a result of a car accident, she was able to feel and move only her arms and her head. But she believed God could still use her, and she became interested in lepers. In the words of John Lane, "She realized she could transform their wasted stumps into something like hands and feet. Mary Verghese underwent major surgery herself so that she could be made to sit upright in a wheelchair. Today, in her operating room at Vellore, she reconstructs hands and feet and faces the type of surgery that can be performed from a wheelchair, a type of surgery she would never have done if she had not been deprived of her normal strength. What for many would be catastrophe, for Mary Verghese became opportunity." (John E. Lane, Expository Times 96 [Fifth Sunday in Lent, 19], 145-146).