CHAPTER 2: How he was lamed by a disease of the knee andimmediately cured by an angel
CHAPTER 2
How he was lamed by a disease of the knee and
immediately cured by an angel
IT is a true saying that ‘unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance’ – that is, whoever has his mind set on virtue shall be greatly endowed with virtues from above. The child Cuthbert, as a reward for carefully storing up in his heart the advice given him by human means, was privileged to see and talk with an angel. His knee suddenly began to hurt and a great tumour swelled up, causing the muscles of the knee-cap to contract. At first he could manage to hop with his foot off the ground, but the swelling got so much worse that he could hardly walk at all. One day the servants carried him outside to lie in the fresh air. Looking up he caught sight of a horseman approaching from afar, dressed in white, with noble looks, on a steed of unparalleled beauty. He rode up, saluted him courteously, and asked, almost jokingly, if he would mind ministering to a guest such as him. Cuthbert replied: ‘I am only too ready to devote myself to showing you hospitality, but I am pinned down, for my sins, by this weakness of the leg. I have been troubled with it for a long time now and there is no doctor anywhere with skill enough to cure it.’
The horseman alighted, looked hard at the knee, and said: ‘Boil some wheaten flour in milk and bathe the tumour with it hot, and you will be healed.’
He mounted and rode off. Cuthbert did as he was bidden and within a few days was well again. Then he knew that it was an angel that had given him the remedy, sent by. the same power who had deigned to send the Archangel Raphael to cure Tobias’s eyes. If anyone thinks it strange for an angel to appear on horseback, let him read the history of the Maccabees, where angels on horseback come to defend both Judas Maccabeus and the Temple itself.