Grace Notes: Question of healing

By SISTER ANNE MARIE WALSH, SOLT
Columnist
 
One of the deceptions in the modern search for healing is the subtle tendency to separate the grace for healing from the mystery of redemption won for us in Christ.  This happens through an over emphasis and dependence upon programs and formulas that often end up placing the full burden for results outside the hands of the Divine Physician. 

We have very small ideas about the true measure of damage sin does in our lives.
The damage of sin reaches our spirit, our soul, our emotions, our will, our understanding, our intellect, our relationships and our communities. It disrupts the proper object of our appetites, affections and desires. It destroys our confidence in God, in right and goodness and truth.

  The effects of sin, even the smallest sin, are so far reaching that we can’t begin to imagine what is really needed to repair the damage, what is really needed for authentic healing.  

One thing we discover quickly - it is impossible to heal ourselves or to be completely healed by others, though our mutual help goes a long way in this area. But, only the Divine Physician, who knows us, and sees the full extent of the problem and its far-reaching effects, only he, has the power to completely heal us.  And, to find this healing there is no other way than to enter into the sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus, or, the thicket of suffering as St. John of the Cross calls it.  “By his stripes we are healed.” - Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24 Not by ours or someone else’s, but his.
 
Around 35 years ago, Pope St. John Paul II, began expressing a great hope for the church at large heading into the new millennium.  He began speaking about a new springtime of Christianity, a flowering of the faith that would be greater than anything we’ve seen.  This indicates he was seeing healing of the body of Christ on a much larger scale. Sometimes we see glimpses of it culturally.  

Recently there has been a great emphasis on the violence and rioting in Minnesota, a manifestation of what St. John Paul II might refer to as a regression into barbarism.  But few have noticed that at the very same time, over 100,000 young people converged on Washington, D.C. in the annual March for Life, to witness to the sanctity of human life, with zero attacks on police, businesses or other protesters.  And, zero arrests were made.  At the same time many of these young people participated in one of the most-well attended faith conferences in the country, SEEK.
 
These are all signs of the Holy Spirit moving in healing and laying foundations for the new springtime. It is interesting how many young people describe healing elements of their experience at these conferences.  There is a realization that by merely coming with an open heart into the presence of the all holy God who loves them infinitely, great healing happens.  It’s not a program, it’s a living encounter with the person who holds all love and all healing in his hands.
 
It is true that personal healing and communal healing go hand in hand. In fact, you cannot ultimately have one without the other. But both find their end fulfilled completely only in Christ.  Turning to him is one of the great works of Lent.  
 
While healing is always needed at some level, and is in fact, according to Pope Benedict XVI, at the heart of the redemptive work, at the same time, a sole focus can distort our life as disciples if we fail to keep it in the proper context.

A sole focus in this area can lead a person into a loop of self-obsession and self-pity (more common today than you might think), into delaying obedience and postponing mission until one feels completely safe and whole.  The cross then often becomes something to avoid rather than embrace and pass through.  

And the Incarnation as medicine, as remedy, loses its potency.  Then love becomes about self-care, discipleship about emotional readiness and mercy gets turned inward to self-preservation.  The Gospel then is no longer about self-gift if we are too busy protecting ourselves to go out of ourselves to serve. 
 
While this may be therapeutic in nature, it is not Christian anthropology. 
 
Perhaps it’s time also, to stop looking at our personal wounds in the mirror of our own pain and try looking at them In Christ, in his swollen face suffused with love for us, in his broken body, in his maligned name, the unjust and false accusations made against him, the viciousness of the wrath poured out against him, all of which he endured for each and every one of us. Do we think there is any pain he does not know and cannot understand? Do we think he will withhold healing if we surrender ourselves to his care and not our own or someone else’s?

And do we think that if we allow Jesus to affect his healing in us, that he will not bring even more healing to others through us? Of course. 
 
The real fight today is between the movement of the Holy Spirit to bring about a new springtime of Christianity, and the movement among forces fighting to revert back to savagery, to a new era of barbarism as evidenced in the culture of death and the gross and destructive misuse of freedom.  All of it needs correction and healing. Where we end up will be the measure of whether our starting point is correct.  
 
Ultimately, it’s Jesus that matters. He is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the first and the last. - Rev 22:13. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of healing.

Cover photo courtesy of the St. John Paul II National Shrine

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