(Archive photo)
The human condition creates a nearly infinite list of reasons why God’s children need healing.
The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is empowering leaders to be channels of an infinitely loving God, to be a source of healing, through its Healing the Whole Person ministry.
“God is passionately in love with his people, and he came to set them free and draw them back into his love, back into communion with the Trinity,” said Associate Director of the Office of Pastoral Leadership for Parish Renewal Margaret Rhody. “That’s what we’re about.”
The ministry stems from a 10-year relationship the archdiocese has had with the John Paul II Healing Center, a national Catholic ministry centered on internal personal healing in areas including and beyond grief, trauma and spiritual wounds.
“We found that the John Paul II Healing Center’s Healing the Whole Person was faithful Catholic sacramental theology and sound psychology together,” Rhody said. They desired to offer videos presented by the center’s leadership, and an anonymous donation to the archdiocese allowed for any parish with a team trained through programs by the John Paul II Healing Center to offer the Healing the Whole Person ministry.
Those who desire healing can take part in Healing the Whole Person in two ways. The first involves an eight-week program called Engaging Your Story, hosted in person by local parishes. Rhody said that for the cost of the workbook, $25, people can join
a trained group that offers the video program and trained prayer teams.
“We’re there to accompany them through that process,” she said. “Trained prayer teams are there to help you talk with God and walk through the healing process with the Lord.” She emphasized that no one is ever forced to share their struggles. There is no required discussion. She adds that parishes will offer sacramental pathways to healing during the eight weeks of sessions.
“Parishes that host will offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation available, because God heals his people this sacrement of healing,” she said.
Two Milwaukee-area parishes are holding Engaging Your Story programs this late summer and fall. Old St. Mary in Milwaukee is conducting a session from Aug. 20 through Nov. 5, and St. Leo the Great in Racine is running it from Sept.15 through Nov. 3 at Sacred Heart Church. Registration is required.
The second pathway brings those who register to take part in a five-day retreat called Into the Deep. It runs from Wednesday, Oct. 21, to Sunday, Oct. 26, at the Schoenstatt Retreat Center on Cherry Lane in Waukesha.
“You’re with a large, trained team who are walking through it with you, and you have so much time and space to rest and get safe with the Lord,” Rhody said. “[With] that safety, we’re often better disposed or able to let the Lord walk us through the painful places.”
She said that many who have attended the eight-week series sense more opportunity for personal healing, and could use a more immersive, complete experience. “When you have five straight days, we’ve seen the Lord show up so powerfully and so beautifully and meet people in deep places and show them the wounds that they’ve suffered and the lies that they’ve believed about themselves, others and God,” Rhody said. “In that safety, the Lord can speak the truth, which can help people experience freedom.”
Prayer teams offer one-hour confidential, personal prayer sessions, and retreatants can receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation as well.
Rhody said that she has witnessed countless miracles of healing through the accompaniment found during these retreats, the kind of healing that connects the psychological to the physical. “People who have been carrying deep places of shame, deep places of fear, have been set free,” she said. “When they receive prayer, God not only healed the shame, freed them from that, but they experienced a physical healing as well. We’re whole persons, so if you attend to the psychological and the spiritual, it sometimes affects the physical.”
Rhody said that the on-site prayer teams have received their own healing experiences as part of their training offered annually from the John Paul II Healing Center. “Team training is really learning how to listen to the ways the Lord speaks to you, so that when you’re accompanying and praying with someone else, you can get a sense of where God is at work,” she said. “All we’re doing is noticing, asking questions and encouraging them to ask the Lord questions in order to better receive what God is doing.”
Rhody extends a hand to those who suffer in their personal journey, to let them know of a God who longs for them to enter his love and receive all they need. “The Lord always is pursuing you, all of us. His love for us is so much bigger than we know or imagine,” she said. “There’s no situation that is hopeless. There’s always hope, and God is always with you.”
For more information, visit www.archmil.org/nodes/healing-ministry.
