BREAST
CANCER HEALING

Topics: Healing; Help from God; Miracles; Power; Supernatural Occurrences

References: Psalm 103:3; Matthew 8:17; John 11:38–44; James 5:13–16

Innocentia, a highly regarded, devout woman Augustine knew in Carthage, discovered that she had breast cancer. A physician told her the disease was incurable. She could opt for amputation and possibly prolong her life a little, or she could follow the advice of Hippocrates and do nothing. Either way, death was not far away.

Dismayed, she turned for help to God in prayer, Augustine reports. In a dream, she was told to wait at the baptistry for the first woman who came out after being baptized and to ask this woman to make the sign of the cross over the cancerous breast.

Innocentia did as she was told and was completely cured. When she told her doctor what had happened, he responded with a contemptuous tone, “I thought you would reveal some great discovery to me!”

Seeing her horrified look, he backpedaled, saying, “What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer? He raised a man who had been dead for four days.”

—Bruce Shelley, “Miracles Ended Long Ago—or Did They?” Christian History (Summer 2000)