FatherFernando.com Articles: "Reason's Why God Heals: Healing Ministry in the Church Today" by Fr. Peter Coughlin

Reasons Why God Heals: Healing Ministry in the Church Today No one really doubts the need for healing in their own life or in the lives of others. Today, healing is a marketable product as seen in the rising trend of health food stores, natural medicine, the use of herbs, organically grown foods, and the ever-increasing use of drugs. Society is focused on eradicating disease of all kinds. Even on television, products are marketed and healing through the Divine is offered by television evangelists. Healing is important and, indeed, even necessary, if life is to be lived free of pain, infirmity and disease.

Medical science is continually developing new methods to combat disease and there is a strong reliance on surgery and drugs to deal with the presenting problem. Every person I know has a need for healing in some way, whether of mind or body, emotions or spirit, in their relationships or life circumstances. It is my experience that many people try many different ways or means offered to find peace, balance, wholeness in their lives. And many of these same people do not recognize that they can receive healing, wholeness, peace, freedom, right balance from Jesus Christ who continues His healing ministry in the Church today. Healing is real and is attainable. A doctor can treat but only God can heal. God heals in the name of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. When we read the Bible, especially the Gospels and The Acts of the Apostles, we see Jesus as The Healer who sets people free, makes them whole, restores them to life, and hands on to His apostles and the disciples the same authority and power of the Spirit to do the same and even greater works than He did.

Jesus is the Man of the Spirit, filled to the fullest measure with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit through whom Jesus lived, died and rose again, as He carried on His ministry of healing and setting people free. So often we can tend to focus on the teaching and preaching of Jesus but that was only part of His ministry. Primarily, He was a healer who broke the devil's power: "God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and because God was with him, Jesus went about doing good and curing all who had fallen into the power of the devil" (Ac 10:38).

The Church by the power of the Holy Spirit carries on the ministry of healing through the administration of the sacraments, especially the Anointing of the Sick, and through the charisms of the Holy Spirit. Bishops share with priests the privilege and responsibility of bringing Jesus to the people. This is done by preaching, teaching and example, but also through the sacraments, moments of encounter with the Risen Jesus which are meant to focus, change, transform and renew those who receive them. Pastoral care of the people involves establishing them as sons and daughters of the Father, brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus and as companions of the Holy Spirit who carries on the mission of Jesus to renew all of creation. Through initiation into the Church as disciples of Jesus filled with the Spirit we do the same works to bring healing and wholeness, forgiveness and peace.

Called to be followers of Jesus, we are formed as disciples who exercise the charisms in ministry of service. The charisms are the passing manifestations of the Spirit in the moment to meet specific needs, to bring miracle, healing, freedom, wisdom, knowledge, discernment, blessing and encouragement, the revelation of the Lord's word, mind and heart, to a given situation or circumstance. To minister in the power of the Spirit is a normal part of Christian living. The Church is both charismatic and institutional, the one not able to exist without the other. The Spirit is alive and active within the Church or else the institution would be dead. The Spirit is the very soul of the Church enlivening and ministering through its members. The Spirit's purpose is to make holy the Church and the members of the Church as the Spirit reveals Jesus who glorifies the Father.

Healing involves loving and forgiving. Healing is wholeness of the total person and his environment, deliverance from demonic power and influence, forgiveness of sin and life from death. Healing is sharing God's abundance with the oppressed poor. Healing is growing in community, in the Kingdom of God. Healing, wholeness and holiness are touching, receiving God's mercy. It is divine love being ministered. Healing is embracing salvation, applying the merits of the cross to pain and suffering. Healing is real! It happens! God's desire is for our blessing, strengthening, wholeness and holiness. Through faith and prayer God's will is revealed and embraced, hearts are turned towards the Lord and the presence and power of the Spirit are manifested to meet us in our daily needs to be forgiven, restored and brought into right order and relationship so that the peace and holiness of the Lord Jesus fills our lives.

Down through the centuries divine healing has been approached in different ways by different people. One way would be confrontational, breaking the hold of the evil one over a person to set them free and restore them. Another is intercessory, appealing directly to the Lord or through one of the saints or a holy person that healing may take place. Another is incubational in which a person stays and prays in a shrine or a retreat centre until they receive healing. The reliquarial method would be to use relics of the saints as touchstones to be in direct contact with a saint or holy person who has died, expecting that the prayer to the person would be effective. A revelational approach is one in which a person receives from the Lord a revelation of the healing taking place and speaks it to the person or persons who then receive the anointing touch of God upon their lives and so healing takes place. The soteriological approach is to call and invite people to embrace the cr

oss to crucify their sinful passions and desires, receiving salvation, the healing effect of salvation won for us by Jesus Christ through His death and rising from the dead. Divine healing is not faith healing. Healing does not depend solely on having enough faith to be healed. Healing involves the will of God, a climate of faith and readiness to receive. Today the preaching of healing and deliverance creates a climate that awakens faith and expectancy that God does and will give healing. So often the biggest difficulty in receiving healing is for the person to take their eyes off the problem or the infirmity and give the Lord full attention and permission to do the healing needed. It really is a matter of asking and receiving. That may well require giving forgiveness, having a forgiving heart and being free from sin and negativity, having one's heart open to receiving God's gift as one asks in the person of Jesus. Trusting in God's power and establishing a relationship with Jesus, people open themselves to whatever the Lord in His compassion and power would do for them. In a lived relationship with Jesus, healings occur to lead to or strengthen that relationship. Throughout Church history God has intervened to bring restoration to health by His direct intervention. Divine healing continues today as it did when Jesus ministered healing in Galilee wherever He traveled. Jesus never ministered healing in one particular way nor did He give any particular formula or prayer to use to bring about healing. Jesus is the healer and how it is accomplished is a mystery. Healing is all about God's unconditional and unending love freely given to whomever He chooses. Divine healing takes place in a person's experience, but it is God who brings it about through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The gift of healing belongs to the one who receives healing from Jesus. The ministry of healing is exercised by whomever the Holy Spirit uses for the manifestation of His presence and power. A person who is willing, says "yes" to being empowered for ministry and exercises the courage needed to act in a particular need can be said to have the ministry of healing when their prayers are regularly answered. A person may be used to bring healing once or countless times. One really knows they have a ministry of healing when people keep knocking on the door for them to pray for healing. In my own life I have been exercising a healing ministry for over thirty years.

Some people are specialists when it comes to prayer for healing, for example, being effective in prayer for back problems or with cancer patients, for healing of memories of soul-spirit hurts, in healing of open wounds or relationship difficulties. For myself, I consider myself more of a general practitioner in that I pray for everything and often see amazing healings or miracles take place. All people are to pray for healing for self and others but some are gifted with an extraordinary ministry of healing to the sick.

There are many questions that surround the healing ministry. Does everyone get healed? I firmly believe that healing occurs every time we pray for it, but it may not be the healing for which we specifically ask. The Lord knows what is for our greatest good and blessing. For example, we might pray for a specific physical healing and the healing received is the absence of fear or anxiety, an infilling of peace, or a different physical need may be met. The Lord reveals His presence and power in order to deepen our relationship with Him, form in us oliness, strengthen our faith or simply to delight our spirits-filling us with joy and greater love for Him.

Healing may happen immediately or it may come slowly by stages. All healing is from Jesus and He knows the best way for us to grow strong in Him. We marvel when pain instantly disappears, when a person has free movement, hearing or sight restored, the heart changed or transformed. Instant healings help to increase the sense of expectancy in faith for other healings to be received. Sickness and death come about in the lives of all of us because of the effects of the original sin of our first parents. That does not mean that an individual sickness is caused by the person's own sin or the sin of their parents.

Sickness and death are part of the human condition because of our fallen human nature. There are good and holy people who suffer unrelieved sickness, poor health, weakness, and do not get well. This is part of the mystery of divine healing and God's will and purpose. It may be that the infirmity keeps the person in relationship with the Lord or deepens the relationship. Their situation may bring faith to others and be a testimony as to how a Christian deals with suffering through faith and dependence on the Lord.

I remember a young man of twenty-seven dying of cancer who was a great example to all on the hospital floor though he was not a church-goer. When people asked or lamented how this could happen to him, he responded, "Why not me?" In another situation I was asked to see a man with whom I had prayed fourteen years before. Unknown to me he was instantly healed of brain cancer when I had prayed with him. Fourteen years later I was told this.

Cancer had recurred and I prayed with him again. I knew when I prayed that he would die in two weeks time. However, the healing that took place this time was in his spirit. He forgave and reconciled with his brothers and his sons and had a wondrous and peaceful death with his family and both parish priests at his bedside. What he had not made right the first time he received healing, he accomplished before his death, dying a happy man ready to meet the Lord. In another situation I prayed with a woman in great pain after surgery for cancer of the spine. She had also wrenched her knee and pulled a muscle in the opposite thigh and needed a lot of help to move about. When I prayed with her, her knee was healed instantly and all the pain disappeared. She remained pain-free until two days before her death several weeks later when she died happily and at peace.

Believers don't always get well. Their ministry is often found in their witness of how to live in the midst of sickness and suffering. And healing accompanies their faith as their spirits are made whole and holiness becomes more and more evident in them.

Medicine, too, is God's gift and doctors and pharmacists work for healing in the lives of the people they serve. When the Lord heals, it is good to seek confirmation from the doctor and let the doctor terminate the medication that has been prescribed. When a person receives divine healing, they know they have been touched by God, set free and healed, made new in the wonder of divine love. What is the healing ministry? It is God's love made real, tangible through the Lord's direct or indirect ministry as He intervenes to make new, renew and transform the circumstance of His beloved people.

The above was taken from Chapter One of Fr. Peter Coughlin's The Healing Ministry of Jesus Christ in the Church Today (Hamilton, ON: C.C.S.O. Bread of Life Renewal Centre, 2003). Reprinted with permission. To order a copy of this book please visit the Bread of Life website at: http://www.thebreadoflife.ca/items.htm

Other chapters are titled: 2) Prayer for Healing; 3) Scriptural Foundations; 4) Healing Through the Centuries; 5) Sacraments of Healing; 6) Pastoral Applications; 7) From Experience; 8) Practical Procedures; 9) Possible Dangers, Abuses, Aberrations; and 10) The Challenge and Place of Healing in Evangelization Today.