"What, though, is most important?"

“People go, yes, they look for God, but they also look for health, for healing – and they threw themselves upon Him to touch Him, that some power might go out of Him and heal them.”

 “Jesus saves! .... these healings, these words that reach the heart, are the sign and the beginning of  salvation – the path of salvation for many who begin to go to hear Jesus or to ask for a healing and then come back to Him and feel salvation.... What, though, is most important?  That Jesus heals?  No, that is not the most important thing.  That He teaches us?  That is not the most important thing [either].  [The most important thing] is that He saves! He is the Savior and we are saved by him: this is the most important thing, and this is the strength of our faith."

"... [may] our Christian life may be ever more confident that we have been saved, that we have a saviour, Jesus, at the right hand of the Father, who intercedes. May the Lord, the Holy Spirit, enable us to understand these things."

~Pope Francis, 1/22/14 Homily on Mark 3:1-12 

(healing of the man with a withered hand) 

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed:

save me, and I shall be saved,

for you are my praise.

Jeremiah 17:14