FIRST REMEDY

Unhappy sick person! Do not be anxious, have patience! Your illness is not a malady for you; it is a sort of cure. For life departs like capital; if it yields no fruits, it is wasted; and if  it passes in ease and heedlessness, it passes swiftly. Illness makes that capital of yours yield huge profits. Moreover, it does not allow your life to pass quickly, it restrains it and lengthens it, so that it will depart after yielding its fruits. An indication that your life is lengthened through illness is the following much repeated proverb: “The times of calamit y are long, the times of happiness, most brief.”

SECOND REMEDY

O ill person who lacks patience! Be patient, indeed, offer thanks! Your illness may  transform each of the minutes of  your life  into  the  equivalent  of an hour’s worship. For worship is of two kinds. One is positive like the well-known worship of supplication and the five daily prayers. The other are negative forms of worship like illness and calamities. By means of these, those afflicted realize their impotence and weakness; they beseech their All-Compassionate Creator and take refuge in Him; they manifest  worship  which  is  sincere  and  without hyprocrisy.  Yes,  there is  a sound narration stating that a life passed in illness is counted as worship for the believer – on

condition he does not complain about God.2  It is even established by sound narrations

and by those who uncover the realities of creation that one minute’s illness of some people who are completely patient and thankful becomes the equivalent of an hour’s worship and a  minute’s illness of certain perfected men the equivalent of a day’s worship. So you should not complain about an illness which as though transforms one minute of your life into a thousand minutes and gains for you long life; you should offer thanks.

THIRD REMEDY

Impatient sick person! The fact that those who come to this world continuously depart,  and  the  young  grow  old,  and  man  perpetually  revolves  amid  death  and separation testifies  that he did not come to this world to enjoy himself and receive pleasure.

Moreover, while man is the most perfect, the most elevated, of living beings and the best endowed in regard to members and faculties, he dwells on past pleasures and future pains, and so passes a grievous, troublesome life, lower than the animals. This means that man did not come to this world to live in a fine manner and pass his life in ease and pleasure. Rather, he possesses vast capital, and he came here to work and do trade for an eternal, everlasting life.

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2   al-Albani, Sahih Jami‘ al-Saghir, 256. See also, al-Suyuti, al-Fath al-Kabir, ii, 148.