Healing most often takes place when a part of us that we are ashamed of is able to be seen and loved and enter into communion with another person. Consider the Gospel account of the blind Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46–52). A blind beggar on the side of the road cried out: “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” Jesus heard his cry, drew close to him and looked on him with eyes of love as He asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” The beggar vulnerably exposed to Jesus his areas of greatest shame through his initial, persistent cry and his simple request, “Master, I want to see.” Exposing this shame to the gaze of Jesus was an incredible act of faith, and Jesus affirmed that it was the beggar’s faith that healed him.
This pattern of healing is repeated in other passages of the Gospel: an area of shame is vulnerably exposed, is received with love and the person’s life is transformed. In the case of the man with the withered hand, his simple act of vulnerable faith is enough so that as he stretched out his hand it was healed (Mk 3:5). In the case of the hemorrhaging woman, she seeks healing without vulnerability by trying to avoid any notice as she touches the hem of Jesus’ garment. The real healing comes, though, when Jesus sees this poor woman and she exposes her shame (she “told him the whole truth”). Then he receives her with mercy and tenderness, and she is healed (Mk 5:34).
The journey of Christian maturity in which we are aiming at “wholeness” or, we could say, “holiness,” is always a journey of conversion and healing that helps us enter more fully into communion with God and others. Holiness is always the work of God in us. Sin is the primary reality that harms (in the case of mortal sin, cuts off) our relationship with God and others. The wounds and hurts we bear from life experiences also impede us from being in relationship. Holiness is not a powerful perfection that has no need for anyone else. To the contrary we are whole, and we are holy, when we are in loving relationships rooted in the saving work of God and the grace he offers to us. Human relationships become true communions when we allow the holiness of God to enter into the dynamic. Is it any wonder that when we receive Christ in the Eucharist we call it Holy Communion? We experience healing and greater wholeness when our entire life is in communion with God, especially when even the most shameful parts of our lives can be seen and loved. Jesus Christ came to save sinners by drawing us out of our sin and shame through the Paschal Mystery. He took on all human sin—sins committed against us, and the sins we ourselves have committed—making reparation for us. Now it is possible for us to enter into a communion of love with God, and through God, with one another. Repent, believe, and be healed. This is the Gospel antidote to sin and shame in our lives!
A few months after I was baptized, when I was still a college student at Penn State University, I served as a member of the ministry team for a Search Retreat. Part of the preparation for the retreat was practicing our retreat talks with each other. In hearing the talks of my teammates, I was so struck by their ability to cry as they shared their beautiful, personal stories. I felt ashamed that I never cried, and I wondered why.
After the meeting I went to the local parish church and knelt before the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle. I asked Jesus to help me. I tried to think of the last time I cried, and then I remembered an incident almost ten years earlier. It was when I was about twelve years old: I was very afraid and sobbing, and a person in authority told me angrily to stop crying. As I knelt in prayer and recalled the incident before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, I became upset. Something shot through me in that moment and my heart seized up—why did this happen? Where was God all my life?! I cried out to Him: “Where were you?” In that moment I had a clear vision of that memory again and I saw my mother holding me in my terrified tears. In a moment of profound grace, I saw clearly that even without any real exposure to Christian faith, God had always been present in my life through my mother’s love. And I wept. For the first time in a decade.
There are several points we can draw from this. First, I had to experience the hurt before I could experience the healing. The witness of the other students, the example of wholeness that I saw in them, and their companionship and love, all enabled me to face the painful reality of my wound. Second, this experience of healing took place in front of the Blessed Sacrament. It was one of many, many powerful experiences that I have had praying in front of the Eucharist. At the same time, (and this is the third point) it was a realization that God is always mediating his love to us, often through the love of others. Even when I didn’t know his Name, I knew his love, because “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1 Jn 4:16). Fourth, this healing was not complete and instantaneous. After this initial experience of healing, through my tears, my heart has continued to open up to the gift of ongoing healing.
What steps can be taken for healing? The first is to notice the hurt. Wounds are places in us that are hard to bring into communion and so they naturally come up when we are living in community with others. Our hurts will often come out as we try to stay in relationship with others, even if we don’t want to experience them. What are the memories, behaviors, feelings, and thoughts that you try to hide from others? Sometimes they burst out. Sometimes we find ourselves working hard to prevent them from bursting out. What are we so afraid would happen if someone were to see those places in our hearts? Furthermore, the reality is that we cannot even really face the most painful wounds in our lives without the supportive love of others. We need loving relationships with others to have the strength to face the wounds. Sometimes it can be incredibly hard to stay in relationship with someone. One key remedy in those cases is to sustain our most basic but also fundamental connection point with each other—being at Sunday Mass together.
When we encounter painful areas of our lives, we can bring those to Jesus in the Eucharist. By looking at and even feeling the places of shame in our lives and holding them out to Jesus in the Eucharist, we follow the example of the blind Bartimaeus and expose ourselves to Jesus’s loving gaze. This may go together with sharing vulnerably with a parent, friend, spiritual director, confessor or other confidant who can show us Christ-like love. As places of shame in us are brought into a communion of love, we experience healing and wholeness.
Lastly, we need to keep at it. Jesus promises us, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (Jn 14:18), and again, “I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). He invites us lovingly, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). We know that Jesus desires for everyone to be healed and become holy—no exceptions (cf. 1 Tim 2:4).
Healing is a lifelong process that leads to wholeness and holiness. Wholeness comes through bringing our whole lives into communion with God. That communion is experienced through many loving relationships. That communion finds its fullness in our communion with Jesus in the Eucharist, which we call Holy Communion.
