We All Need Healing

We all need healing. Every one of us. Can I get an Amen!🙌🏻

We’ve all inherited a fallen nature (shout out Adam and Eve 🙁 ), have grown up in a broken world, and have sometimes suffered greatly at the hands of the broken people around us.

There’s no denying it, we have all been a bit battered and worn from the battle to do the right thing, to forgive the wrongs done to us, and to love the people around us, even when it’s difficult.

Which is why we need healing — spiritual, physical and emotional healing — and it’s also why God stepped in and gave us a pathway to healing and restoration.

Did you know that confession is known as the “healing sacrament” and, along with the anointing of the sick, is meant to heal us? It’s true.

Not only is meant to heal our brokenness, but it is also meant to help us to restore the broken relationships in our lives: first with God and then with our neighbor.

So I guess the only question is why aren’t we taking advantage of that healing and restoration of relationships — freely offered — more often?

Maybe you doubt the effectiveness of confession in healing and restoring lives? It’s understandable.

To illustrate the power of confession, I’m going to share an encounter I once had with a beautiful young woman who was struggling with her body image. She had gained a few pounds (honestly those extra pounds looked good on her!) and she was overcome with feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing.

I spoke with her for a while and all of a sudden a question just sprang from my lips, “Have you gone to confession about this? Have you confessed raising up a jean size or number on the scale as a god in your life? If not, maybe you need to confess it, because it seems you’ve allowed it to take the place of God in your life and it’s taking your peace away.”

I’m not usually that bold (shout-out Holy Spirit) but she did go to confession, and the next time I spoke to her she told me that that confession was the beginning of a change in her attitude towards food.

That one confession helped her to began to look at eating as a way to love and nourish her body and not as a source of punishment and denial because she wasn’t “worthy”.

That little encounter left me with the conviction that God wants to heal us and He has given us a sacrament designed to do just that.

To be fair, confession isn’t necessarily a one time fix-all for every ill — but hey, that’s what regular confession is all about: cleaning our spiritual, mental and emotional houses and getting them back in order when they have gotten out of order — again!

You wouldn’t clean your house only once and say that one cleaning pretty much covers it for the rest of your life, would you? (If so, TLC’s Hoarders series just might like you to contact them for their next episode 🙂 . )

Of course that one cleaning wouldn’t work for your house — so all the more reason to consider regular “cleanings” for the house of the Holy Spirit (that’s you, if you’re baptized!).

Let’s keep our houses in order, people!

If you are serious about working on lasting healing and a return to order in your soul, then you need to get serious about regular confession.

The truth is that we can’t “fix ourselves” and so we need to open ourselves up to the healing power of God on the regular.

I guess at the end of the day we have regular confession because we need a Savior — not just once — but again and again.

As an aside, this isn’t to say that therapy or counseling can’t be an important part of God’s healing in your life — the church recognizes the gift that therapy can be for a person — but rather, it is to say that even if you are seeking out the help of others, don’t underestimate the one-two punch that confession can be in the pathway to healing.

It doesn’t have to be an either/or. It can be a both/and.

Its true that God often chooses to heal us through the hands of others — He’s humble that way — but even when He chooses to heal through others, let us not fail to recognize that He is still the ultimate source of healing in our lives.

So let’s continue to go to Him and ask for the healing that we so desperately need.

Now let’s just look at the alternative for a minute, shall we. If you want to freak out about the alternative to frequent confession, let’s just hear from our good friend, St. Paul.

If we’re being honest, sometimes he can be a real killjoy. Ha! But that killjoy is trying to save us from the many pitfalls that Catholics have been falling into since the very beginning of the Church.

Get ready, people, because this might just blow your mind!

“Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”

1 Corinthians 11: 28-30

Yikes!

So basically, if you’ve ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and you remember the part where the unworthy Natzi drinks of the chalice and basically melts into a puddle of blood and guts before their eyes, Stephen Spielberg was actually on to something.

You might wonder if perhaps it would have been better for us if we could actually see the effects that receiving “unworthily” has on our hearts, minds and bodies (though the clean up crew in our Churches would definitely deserve a raise).

But God is merciful. He doesn’t necessarily always give us what we deserve. He is patient and kind and He wants to give us a second chance (and a 490th chance for that matter!).

But do not doubt that what St. Paul said was true. There is a slow death going on, if we receive unworthily — even if we don’t immediately see the consequences.

This doesn’t mean that we should stop receiving Jesus because of our general unworthiness. (By the way, this was once a problem in the Church where Christians almost never received Jesus — and the Church set a requirement that all Christians go to confession and receive Jesus at least once a year to combat that error in reasoning.)

We all fall short of God. Of course, none of us is ever fully worthy of receiving Jesus. Of course not!

Which is why, along with the Eucharist, God gave us confession.

Furthermore, God knows the struggles and the failures we all face and so, in His infinite mercy, He allows all of us to receive Him in our weakness and sinfulness, as long as we aren’t in mortal sin.

In case you are wondering, mortal sin is a sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and full consent. Read here for a fuller explanation of sin

The point is, God wants us to receive Him as often as possible. In fact, He longs for us more than we could ever imagine — which is why He gave us the sacrament of confession.

We should avoid being over-scrupulous and making serious sin out of things that aren’t actually grave matter — but we should also avoid a presumption that our serious sins actually aren’t all that damaging to us.

People, mortal sin is just that — mortal. Like dead-as-a-doornail, mortal! It’s no laughing matter.

Which is why I would recommend a good spiritual director or a good confessor to lead you through any doubts of whether or not your sin is, indeed, mortal.

Woah, this post took an unexpectedly serious turn. Don’t blame me. It’s all St. Paul’s fault!

But let me just leave you with the hopeful words of St. John

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins.”

1 John 1:8-9

God knows you and I would fall short of His glory. He knew we would give in to weakness or desire or even despair.

He knew it, and so He gave us the remedy for all of it.

He gave us confession and with each confession, He also imparts to us a grace to make us stronger the next time we face those same sins.

Hooray for confession! And hooray for the healing that God is offering to each one of us through His Sacraments! 

So don’t lose heart. Keep Going. Never give up. Never give in.

Stay humble, acknowledge your sins and accept God’s grace and healing so that you can become that uniquely amazing man or woman God created you to be.

You can do it! I believe in you!

Sharing over at Kelly’s