By Fr. Dwight Longenecker - In the ancient world it was commonplace to regard sickness as a punishment or a curse. If you were sick you must have done something to deserve it or someone must have cursed you. People did not understand the pathology of different diseases so, with a superstitious mindset they blamed the person who was sick, or if that person didn’t seem to be a bad individual they blamed his parents, they blamed the gods… While we look on such ideas now as silly superstition, in some ways it’s not that far off.