Are You Looking for Healing?

There are so many ways we need healing.  Our bodies are a mess, our minds are in chaos, our souls are in tumult.  As Saint Paul put it: "For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do." (Romans 7:15)

So we look for healing.  We go to doctors, try to fix ourselves by eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones, and by taking a cornucopia of vitamins and medications and whatnot.  We go to therapy and psychologists and read self-help books and obsess over wounds from our past and ways we have been victimized.  We may even go to every retreat and healing prayer service and beg God to heal us.  When none of these paths work, it is easy to grow discouraged.

Now I would never denigrate the necessary taking care of oneself body, mind, and soul.  I would never deny the goods offered in the practice of medicine, psychology, and healing prayer.

Yet sometimes we need to look deeper.  Sometimes we need to question our motives.

I am reminded again and again how the devil's tactics turn us back towards ourselves.  The devil wants us to look at what we are doing, whether it is our virtues or our sins, and not at what God is doing.

Healing can become as much a part of those battle tactics as anything else.  We can get so focused on trying to achieve healing that we forget the purpose of it all.  After all, we are called to know, love, and serve God in this life and to be happy with Him in the next.  How important is it that we receive the healing we desire in order to be able to do that?  We can certainly fulfill this vocation to the fullness of our capacity regardless of how much healing we receive.

Now you can argue that it would be easier to love and serve God if you were healed.  However, if it were easier, would you grow as great in virtue?  Also, if healing increases your capacity to love and serve Him, then there is the old truth: the greater the capacity, the greater the responsibility.  Do you really want that much responsibility?

You can also argue that your lack of healing causes you to act in unhelpful patterns or even to sin.  Now clearly I would not argue that these are goods, but what if God allows these evils that you see in order to prevent you from giving into worse sins?

Certainly God wants you to be healed.  He wants it more than you do yourself, for He loves you more than you love yourself.

Therefore, if He has not yet healed you, there must be a reason—perhaps many reasons.  Or perhaps He simply is healing you, but not in the way that you expect.

Or perhaps your focus on healing may even be part of what is preventing Him from healing you.

So today I want to propose to you a question to ponder, a question that I hope you may allow to shake you to your core: what if you stopped looking for healing and looked for Christ instead?

"Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)

What if you forgot about trying to heal yourself and sought Christ instead?

It is a radical question not because it means throwing health practices out of the window, but rather because it means shifting your mind, referred to in the Greek as metanoia, or in English as conversion.  You could abandon every doctor and medication and healthy practice in your life and still be looking for healing and not for Christ.  Or you could carry on with each good duty to care for yourself body, mind, and soul and there look for the presence of Christ, who is with you.  That would be a true transformation—a true conversion.

So again I ask you: what might happen if you turned your mind from seeking healing to seeking Christ?

Give Me This Water

An image came to me today as I was praying, arising subconsciously perhaps from the Gospel of the Samaritan woman asking Jesus to give her the living water of which He spoke.  It seemed a fitting image to share with you.

The image was of a small child holding out a thimble, asking God to pour all the waters of the sea into it.  It seemed as if the child was oblivious to the fact that such a feat was impossible.  It did not seem to matter to the child how tiny was the thimble to try to hold so great a quantity of water.

Perhaps you have seen the analogy already: the thimble as our souls and the waters of the sea as God's ocean of grace and mercy.

Let us take it a step further then.  How do you hold out your thimble?

Few of us dare hold it out as boldly as that little child.  More often we hold it out tentatively, saying to God: "I know my little tiny thimble can't possibly hold all the waters of the ocean and I don't deserve too much grace anyway and I don't want to ask You for too much or what isn't Your will, so just fill my thimble halfway, or just a little bit, or maybe even just a drop.  That's all I really need.  I'll be content with that."

It doesn't make nearly so lovely an image, does it?

I wonder what might happen if we came to God more like the former image—coming to Him like little children—and asking Him to pour into it all the waters of the sea.  Would He pour until it was overflowing and the waters burst up like a little fountain and ran down the sides of the thimble and over our hands and arms and onto the stones below?  Would we then watch as the trickles ran through the cracks of the stones, running on and on we know not where as we laughed with delight?

Or would we complain that the water was cold when it fell on our arms?  Would we feel guilty that we had spilled it?  Would we cry watching the water run away because our thimble could not hold enough?

Yet what if instead we looked up and saw Christ looking back at us, smiling, His eyes so full of tender love?  Then I think we would have the courage to hold up our thimble and ask Him to pour into it the entire sea.

Mirror of the Soul

Sometimes it is far too easy to question the purpose of being an artist.  Why put hours upon hours upon hours into creating some flawed piece of writing or theatre when there are so many people starving to death across the world?  Why should I expect spending years of my life on a novel about pirates to be worth anything if I could have spent that time helping the poverty-stricken?  Why would people come to see a play I've written and produced when those in other countries are dying from martyrdom or disease?

Blessed Albert Chmielowski struggled mightily with a similar question.  He ultimately decided in favor of poverty, living with the poor in order to show them that they were loved.

Karol Wojtyla found inspiration in Blessed Albert's decision for his own journey from the arts to the priesthood and even enshrined the memory of that holy brother in a beautiful play titled Our God's Brother.  His decision led him down the path to become the much-loved Pope John Paul II.

With such mighty giants striding before, is there not great precedent for abandoning the arts for a greater call?

Yet the Church has ever encouraged the arts throughout the centuries.  If there is reason for the Church's support of art then it must be more than mere frivolity.  It must have an essential purpose—a teleological reason for existing.

It may seem odd to turn to a man who proclaimed himself an atheist for many years and whose later belief in God—if belief it was—seemed a peculiar cross between his Protestant upbringing and a study of Eastern religions, but truth is often found in strange places.  One may see the light and speak the truth without yet knowing it fully.  Without further ado, a quote from the well-known playwright:

"You use a glass mirror to see your face;

you use works of art to see your soul."

~George Bernard Shaw

There Shaw succinctly describes the reason we need art.  If we are to come to know ourselves in order that we may come to know God—the very reason for our existence—we must find somewhere a mirror to reflect back to us our very souls.  For there is found the image of God.

The artist then must delve deep, deep, deep into the darkest depths of the human heart.  If he would produce that glass that tells no lies, then he must fear nothing as he searches out the wounds of his own heart, sweeping out all the pains and evils into the light of day, hiding nothing in his creative effort.  No coward would face the discomfort of unveiling the reality hidden there.  Only a brave soul can stand face to face with the Truth.