Читать книгу Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing, Second Edition - Fr. Dwight Longenecker - Страница 9

Introduction

Jesus the Healer

Jesus Christ came to heal. He announced it himself when he stood up to read the lesson as he began his ministry in the synagogue in his hometown.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me to preach good

news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Luke 4:16–19

Jesus proved it throughout his ministry. Wherever he went, he healed people and set them free.

Jesus wasn’t the only healer the world has seen. There have always been wonderworkers. There have always been men and women who have a natural gift to understand people and help them get better. There have always been doctors and wise people who have exercised healing gifts. There have also been shamans and showmen who would “heal” people through the power of suggestion and hypnosis. Others have healed through the power of demons, and their healing has always come at a price.

Jesus’ healing power is different from all of these. The healing power of Jesus is unique. Jesus is the only one who heals by going to the root of illness and disease. Jesus understands that the root cause of all disease and distress is sin. As soon as we hear the word “sin,” the red flag of guilt flies, and we get defensive. We don’t need to be ashamed of the word “sin.” Sin is simply the word we use for what has gone wrong with humanity. Sin is the twist in our godlike nature. It’s the glitch in the system. It’s the blemish on the faces of the beautiful sons and daughters of God that we were all created to be.

There’s no point trying to deny the fact of sin. Sin is as ancient as the Garden of Eden and as fresh as today’s headlines. Sin is a fact of life. It’s the one Christian belief that no one can deny, because we all experience it firsthand every day.

Sin’s Curse

Sin includes all of the things we do that we are ashamed of — but sin is bigger and simpler than that. The Bible puts it simply when it says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). This is the basic definition of sin: We were created to share in the fullness of God’s power, beauty, and glory, but we don’t. We miss the mark. We are not all we can be — and left on our own, our condition gets worse, not better.

Missing the fullness of God’s glory is bad enough, but the side effect of sin is that it causes pain and suffering. When there is something missing, we feel hunger, longing, and grief. When our lives go haywire because of sin, pain is the result; and when things continue to go wrong with no remedy, an inner illness develops. Eventually, we become numb to sin — and as we become numb to sin, we also become numb to the goodness of life. The joyful, hopeful, and youthful part of us starts to die. We become confused, the emptiness of our lives leads to despair, and eventually this inner illness causes spiritual death. That’s why the Bible puts it quite simply when it says that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

It’s easy to blame ourselves for the sin that causes illness, disease, and death, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. We suffer from the wrong things we do, but we’re caught up in more than just the individual sins we ourselves commit. We live with other people who are also sinful, and we live in a world that is shot through with evil — like a nasty virus. All of us are caught in a sticky spider’s web of sin — and the more we struggle, the more entangled we become.

All of us suffer from four categories of sin.

The simplest sins are the things we do wrong. All of us miss the mark. We do things that seem pleasurable or good, but these actions injure ourselves or others in some way — even if we can’t see it.

The second type of sin is the good things we have left undone. We all have fantastic potential that we have failed to realize. We’re naturally lazy, and we avoid the effort of doing positive good, and this absence of good is a very insidious kind of evil.

Many people are totally unaware of the third type of sin. This is the bad things that are done to us. Other people do us harm — sometimes intentionally, but very often unintentionally. These sins wound us deeply and cause our inner sin-illness to get worse.

Finally, we all suffer what might be called general sin. We get infected, harmed, depressed, and weighed down by the everyday sin that is all around us and shot through this wicked world.

Worst of all, there is nothing we can do about this curse on our own. We can try very hard to be good, but that doesn’t put right the inner wound. In the face of the sin problem, being good is like putting a Band-Aid on your belly to cure cancer. The illness of sin is deep and terminal, and it needs a cure far deeper and more costly than we can provide ourselves.

God’s Cure

God saw mankind’s sinful condition and provided the cure. Two thousand years ago, a baby girl was conceived by the union of a devout Jewish couple named Joachim and Anne. As she was conceived, God touched her life and preserved her from the stain of original sin. The little girl was named Mary. By a miracle, Mary was brought into the world in the same pure condition as the first woman, Eve. Mary didn’t suffer from sin’s curse. This privilege was won for her by the terrible death her Son would eventually go through.

One of the effects of our sinful condition is that we are naturally biased toward the wrong choice. We are drawn toward sin more strongly than we are drawn toward the good. Because Mary was unsoiled by original sin, she did not have this inclination toward evil. She was able to see clearly and choose freely. She was able to say “yes” or “no” to God with a totally free choice. When the angel Gabriel brought God’s message to her, she said “yes” to God, and God’s Son was conceived in her womb. This miraculous conception was God’s way of coming into the world to deal with the curse of sin once and for all.

The whole point of Jesus coming into the world was to solve the sin problem. Jesus was the antidote to sin’s poison. He was the cure to sin’s sickness and the warrior who defeated the dark Lord of hell. It was natural, therefore, for him to confront the symptoms of sin in his ministry. That’s why he healed people, and that’s why his healing was different from any others the world had ever seen — because he not only healed their physical illnesses, but in every case the healing was also linked with the forgiveness of sins.

When Mary’s Son died on the cross, he took on the final battle with humanity’s sin. Sin rose up and killed the one who was sinless. In this sacrifice, Jesus Christ took on himself the cancer of sin, and he suffered its result. But the Evil One overestimated himself. He forgot that evil cannot extinguish the good. What is essentially empty, negative, and false cannot overcome all that is abundant, positive, and true. The darkness cannot put out the light. It is simply impossible for evil to defeat goodness. That’s why Jesus rose from the dead: because you cannot kill the one who is Life itself.

Life Heals

Jesus’ victory over death planted a seed of new life in the hard soil of this broken world. From that point his healing was available for the whole of creation. The love and power of Christ healed people, and Jesus wants to heal us today.

His love can penetrate our lives and touch the wounds in our lives that are in areas so deep we don’t even know about them. Do you remember the woman who crept up in the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak? She was forgiven and healed of a deep inner illness (see Mt 9:20–22). This is what Jesus can do for us. We can approach and touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak, too. Just as he turned and looked on her with compassion and knew all her problems in an instant, so he can turn and look on us with that same compassion and healing love.

How do we get in touch with the healing love of Christ? It’s not easy. The way to Christ is full of obstacles. We can’t see him clearly because of our misunderstandings. Sin blocks the way. We want his love and healing, but we are also afraid of what this might entail. We want him to heal us, but we’re not sure we are ready for the total transformation that his healing will bring us. We’re afraid of the total commitment he demands. Other duties crowd our lives; other interests distract us from his love. We’re full of doubt, fear, anxiety — and we lack the faith and trust required to really reach out and touch him.

We can approach Jesus’ healing power in various ways. First, we need to approach Jesus through the sacraments of the Church. If we want his healing, we first need to receive him regularly through Communion. If we want this to be a complete meeting with Christ, we also have to meet him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There Jesus meets us and deals with the sin that blocks us from the fullness of his healing love.

Jesus also wants to meet us in the more intimate and personal aspects of our lives. He invites us to walk with him, and to meet him face-to-face. The best way to do this is by meditating on his life. When I say “meditate,” I don’t mean the type of meditation practiced by Eastern religions. That type of meditation involves emptying your mind. Christian meditation is different. Instead of emptying our mind, we fill it with the life of Christ. We do this by meditating on the Gospel, and the best way to do this is through the Rosary.

A Mother’s Prayer

A mother’s prayer is an especially intimate one. From the fullness of her love for her children she is able to pray precisely for their needs. A mother’s love for her children is simple, deep, and unconditional. She loves her children simply because they are her children. She can’t help it. Loving and knowing them so deeply is all part of being a mother. Because of this, a mother’s prayer is especially intimate, simple, deep, and unconditional. A mother prays simply by lifting the child up to God as a daily offering. “Here he is, dear God,” the mother prays. “Do with him what you will. Heal him, love him, use him, and bring him to the fullness of your glory.”

The Rosary is a simple way to put ourselves into the life of Christ, with Mary his mother. With the Rosary, we go through every stage of Jesus’ life. With Mary, we go with him and make contact with his saving love. The Gospels say that Mary saw all that was happening in her life and in her Son’s life, and that she pondered these things in her heart (see Lk 2:51). As we pray the Rosary, we “ponder these things” in our heart with Mary. As we do so, we go with her to meet Jesus, and through her prayers for us we experience his healing love in a powerful way.

Finally, our meditations bring us to the foot of the cross with Mary. From the cross, Jesus says to us, “Here is your mother” (see Jn 19:27). Because Mary is the perfect woman, she must also be the perfect mother. If she is the perfect mother, then her mother’s prayer must also be the fullest and most whole and wonderful there is.

Mary is like the mother who goes with her injured child as they enter the hospital to be healed. Mary is like the loving sister or aunt who sits by the bedside as we endure a long illness. She is like one of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity who care for the dying until the surgeon can come. She doesn’t heal us. Jesus does. She is there as the vitally important sister, mother, nun, nurse, and friend. Her prayers are those of a mother for her children.

How I Met Mary

I first discovered the healing power of the Rosary when I was an Anglican minister. As a young man, sin played havoc with my life. I went through some dark times and spent time in counseling. My counselor was a wise old priest who advised me to start praying the Rosary. I discovered that the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary took me into the first stages of Jesus’ life and childhood. As I prayed through those stages, something mysterious happened. God’s love began to seep into the early stages of my own life, and I began to experience healing from the deep hurts I had received in the very earliest foundation experiences of my life.

What I went through wasn’t easy. God had to take me apart and put me back together again. Jesus was doing some serious spiritual surgery, and I was in spiritual intensive care. In the midst of it, I felt an abiding presence of love and concern by my side. I felt this as a feminine presence. Because I was from a Protestant background, I didn’t know who or what this was. It was only later when I told my priest counselor that he smiled and said, “Our Lady’s prayers for you have been so powerful!”

“Of course!” I thought. “The presence through all this was that of a mother. That’s what it felt like!” Suddenly the floodgates opened, and the emotions I had been holding back gushed out in a fountain of healing. Only then did I begin to realize and accept the ministry of Jesus’ mother in my life, and since then my devotion and love for her activity in the divine plan has grown through every aspect of my life of faith.

The Rosary has become an important part of my prayer life because it works. Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Lk 1:46), and that is exactly what she does through the Rosary. She used the word “magnify” to mean “praise” or “exalt,” but she “magnifies” the Lord in another way, too. “Magnify” means “to make larger,” and that’s what Mary does in our lives: She makes Jesus larger and more real to us than we could ever imagine.

Every Step along the Way

Through the Rosary, we go through every stage of Jesus’ earthly life. Through the power of meditation, the Holy Spirit actually uses our minds to take us into the saving events of Jesus’ life. Because he was sinless, Jesus’ life was all that a human life should be. It was full, complete, and whole. It was mature, healthy, fulfilled, and balanced. Because he was God in human form, Jesus was radiantly alive, totally free — and abundantly, overwhelmingly human.

Because of this, when we enter into the stages of his life through the Rosary, we experience a life that is totally and abundantly whole. We experience life in its fullness, and we participate in the health, wholeness, and goodness of being fully alive and free. By entering into the wholeness of each stage of Jesus’ life, we begin to share in his wholeness and health. As this happens, we are healed and made whole at a very deep level of our being. Pope Saint John Paul the Great said about the Rosary: “The Rosary does indeed ‘mark the rhythm of human life,’ bringing it into harmony with the ‘rhythm’ of God’s own life” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, n. 25).

Long before I had read Pope Saint John Paul II’s words, I had discovered this simple principle through my own experience of the Healing Rosary. I discovered the truth that as the meditations take us through every stage of Jesus’ life, so they take us through every stage of our own lives. As we remember, with Jesus and Mary, the stages of our own life, all that was broken, faulty, or wounded at those stages of our lives can be healed.

By praying the Rosary in this way, we can gently pry open the dark cupboards of our hurt memories, fears, and sins. Once the injuries, sins, and painful memories from each stage are accessed, Christ’s healing can begin. As Pope John Paul II teaches: “It becomes natural [through the Rosary] to bring … all the problems, anxieties, labors and endeavors which go to make up our lives. … To pray the Rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ and his Mother” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, n. 25).

As we do this, we are praying not only for ourselves, but for our families, our nation, and our world. If each of us, as individuals, goes through progressive stages of growth, so do groups of people. Pope John Paul the Great said, “At the same time our heart can embrace in the decades of the Rosary all the events that make up the lives of individuals, families, nations, the Church, and all mankind” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, n. 2). Many popes and countless Christians have testified to the healing power of the Rosary. Why not join with them and begin to use the Rosary again in a new way?

A Word of Warning

I should give you a word of warning at this stage. From the very start, this book will take you to the depths. Jesus calls us to cast out into the deep (see Lk 5:4). However, if you are in a fragile or especially vulnerable emotional condition, tread carefully. Pray first for guidance, and embark on this healing journey only if you feel courageous enough to confront some aspects of life that may be disturbing. If you are in a vulnerable or fragile state, it is good to have the support of a wise and spiritual friend with whom to discuss what you discover. However, do not allow my word of warning to become an excuse for remaining where you are! God wants to heal you, but the time must be his time — and you must know when that is.

When you are ready, this book will help you to pray the Rosary for your own healing and for the healing of your family, your community, and your world. This is a practical book. It is not just theory. It works. Don’t just read this book and put it away. Use it, tell others about it, and spread the word. If you have the courage to approach him and reach out to touch the hem of his cloak, Jesus really will turn, touch your life, forgive you, and heal you. The healing may take time. It may be painful — and the road to recovery may be long and hard — but Mary will be there at every step to help you discover a new life in Christ that will be radiant, abundant, and free.

How to Use This Book

• The first section of the book reminds you how to pray the Rosary. Even if you know how to pray the Rosary, skim through this section because it includes some special pointers for using the Rosary for healing.

• The main part of the book takes you through all twenty mysteries of the Rosary.

• The title of each mystery is matched with a stage of our lives.

• The section on each mystery begins with a Scripture reference that reminds us of that stage.

• On the opposite page there is an illustration of the event to help you visualize your meditation.

• Next, there is a short meditation on the event itself.

• This leads to an explanation of how that event in Jesus’ life matches our own life, and how we can open that area of our life to God’s healing love.

• A real-life illustration of this healing follows.

• Next, there is a prayerful reflection on how you can apply all this to your own life.

• Then say a decade of Hail Marys.

• The section closes with a brief prayer that can be said with the bead between decades. This prayer may be said after the Our Father and before the beginning of the next decade.