A 'BIG TOE' STORY: CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR

May, 2008

In the lobby of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, there is a huge, 10-1/2 foot-tall marble statue of Christ, standing on a three-foot pedestal. Legend has it that when the hospital was first founded by Mr. Hopkins as a thoroughly secular institution, the wealthy religious people of the city were so scandalized that several of them conspired together to commission the the sculpting of a statue of Christ as a "gift" to the new hospital. It was so big that once it arrived, it could only fit under the dome in the center of the main lobby. It was a gift that couldn't be turned down and couldn't be ignored.

Johns Hopkins is still a very secular institution, one that appears at times to worship the dome over the statue (the official symbol of its own greatness) much more than the figure that stands beneath it. The hospital's administrators are rather embarrassed by the statue to this day. They still don't know what to do with it. They now treat it as a historical piece: the administrators explain that this quaint artifact of a primitive mythological consciousness is part of an official, federally designated landmark building and therefore cannot be removed.

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But the people who come to the hospital know what it's doing there. For over a century, patients and employees have been touching the right great toe of Jesus Christ as they enter the hospital. If one looks carefully. one notices that the marble toenail has become slightly worn. Like the woman with the hemorrhage who reached out from the crown and touched the hem of the garment of Jesus (Lk. 8:43-48), thousands of the sick and those who care for them have reached out to touch Jesus in the hope of being healed.

-----from The Healer's Calling by Daniel Sulmasy, OFM, MD. Paulist Press, 1997; pp.82-83.