Miracles do happen

Word Among Us, Oct 2003

Witnesses to God's Healing Power

The past forty to fifty years have seen some dramatic changes in the climate of the church. At least since the opening of the Second Vatican Council, it seems that the Holy Spirit has been leading ordinary people to know the power of God in a very personal and experiential way. And as a result, a variety of movements have sprung up in the church-Cursillo, the Charismatic Renewal, Marriage Encounter, the Neo-Catechumenate movement, Focolare, and Opus Dei-all of which place a strong emphasis on experiencing God personally.

Throughout the world, Catholic men and women are witnessing to a relationship with Jesus Christ. They talk about how they have come to see the Eucharist in a whole new light, as a joyful experience of intimacy with a close friend. They describe how Scripture has come to life for them and how their hearts are being filled with excitement as the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to the word of God.

They talk about how God's mercy touched them and led them to a deeper relationship with God through the Sacrament of Reconciliation and how their prayer life has been transformed from one of rote exercise to one of intense love and peace.

A Gospel to Be Experienced.

With all this talk about personal, subjective experience, some may wonder whether people are ignoring the truths of the faith in favor of spiritual experiences. It's true that doctrine is critical. Without it, we risk misinterpreting God's mind and replacing his thoughts with our thoughts. But at the same time, this renewed focus on experience highlights another, equally important point: The gospel of Jesus is meant to be experienced. Without experiences of love, joy, peace, freedom, and forgiveness, we risk reducing God and his boundless love to a mechanical method.

Healing is one specific area that has undergone a revival of sorts in recent years. More and more people are crying out to God, asking him to take away their infirmities and to heal their inner wounds. The healings that we read about in Scripture and the ones that have been documented at special places like Lourdes and Fatima now seem to be taking place all over the world. Fewer people are holding on to the idea that sickness is a sign of punishment from God. Even the notion that God wants us to endure pain and sickness as a way of suffering with Christ has been clarified to include the very real possibility of healing from God.

This month, we want to invite you to do two things: First, examine your position on healing. Do you believe that God wants to heal his people today? Don't be afraid to challenge your doubts or preconceptions. Second, we want to encourage you to implement some dimension of healing prayer in your life.

Stories of Healing. When he walked the earth two thousand years ago, Jesus went all over the Holy Land healing people's illnesses and restoring their wounded hearts. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus went throughout Galilee "healing every disease and every sickness among the people" (Matthew 4:23). Mark tells us that wherever Jesus went, people "laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed" (Mark 6:56).

It seems that healing was a regular, almost everyday part of Jesus' ministry-one of the most powerful signs that the kingdom of God had come. We at The Word Among Us are convinced that Jesus wants to do the same thing today. He wants to heal our physical ailments and he wants to heal the inner wounds that come from broken, lost, or divided relationships. Throughout our years in producing this magazine, in fact, we have been privileged to see many dramatic healings as staff members have prayed with people, whether at a parish mission, in our own homes, or at healing prayer meetings.

Once, we were praying for a man who had a broken blood vessel in his eye, causing his vision to be blurred. When we placed our hands on this fellow and prayed with him for about twenty minutes, the bleeding stopped and his eye cleared up. We were amazed as we saw God's healing power at work right in front of us.

Another time, a man who had been a chain smoker for more than twenty years asked for prayer. He had tried a number of different remedies to help him stop, but he just didn't have the strength of will necessary to cooperate with the remedies. After we prayed with him, however, his desire to smoke all but disappeared, and he was finally able to stop. While he occasionally goes into his local tobacco shop for a breath of "fresh tobacco air," he has not smoked a cigarette in the past ten years. We truly believe God healed this fellow, just as he can heal any of us.

Once, at a parish mission, a woman came to ask for prayer. She had gone through an ugly divorce a year earlier, and while she had gone to confession and got herself right with the Lord, she was still plagued with feelings of guilt and shame over her failed marriage. A couple on the mission team prayed with this woman for about an hour, and she gradually felt God's healing power come over her. As the couple prayed with this woman over the next few nights, they encouraged her to picture Jesus coming into the room and ministering to her personally. As she did, she felt a mountain of guilt dissolve from her heart. While the reality of her divorce will never go away, this woman experienced Jesus removing the pain and the sense of failure that had haunted her for so long.