WHAT IS HEALTH:
"HARMONY AND BALANCE AT THE PHYSICAL, MENTAL, SPIRITUAL AND SOCIAL LEVEL..."
"In our society there is a risk of making health an idol to which every other value is subservient. The Christian vision of the human being opposes a notion of health reduced to pure, exuberant vitality and satisfaction with one's own physical fitness, far removed from any real consideration of suffering. This view, ignoring the person's spiritual and social dimensions, ends by jeopardizing his true good. Precisely because health is not limited to biological perfection, life lived in suffering also offers room for growth and self-fulfillment, and opens the way to discovering new values.
"This vision of health, based on an anthropology that respects the whole person, far from being identified with the mere absence of illness, strives to achieve a fuller harmony and healthy balance on the physical, psychological, spiritual and social level. In this perspective, the person himself is called to mobilize all his available energies to fulfill his own vocation and for the good of others." (Message of Pope JohnPaul for the World Day of the Sick for the year 2000)
