VIEW FROM THE PEW
I’ve given a lot of thought to healing lately. Of course, a lot of my pondering is stimulated by headlines about our world today, people working themselves into a frenzy of dissension, disrespect and belligerence and our planet damaged and threatened by pollution and rising temperatures, bad bugs and viruses destroying plants, oceans, animal species. It even plays out close to home. The aloha spirit needs a bit of mending in the public arena, at the produce department and on the road.
The recent retirement of a doctor who had me believing I will survive and thrive led to musing about the healing profession. There are so many health care professionals who are super in their science, adept as practitioners, but very few rise to the status of healer. We’ve seen some inspiring examples on the front lines of this pandemic, beyond tired and tearful as they stand before news cameras to talk about their battles to save lives. I’ve been fortunate to have encountered a few healers and my former eye doc was one of them. I now realize that he continued with a treatment that was perhaps redundant but it was a dose of hope each time I endured it. It felt like lighting a candle as a prayer against darkness, blindness. I didn’t realize how much I needed that hope until his successor kicked that candle out. I actually begged but left with tears after he was adamant treatment be curtailed. His parting shot: “Some things happen because of aging and there’s no cure for that.” He may have a reputation for expertise, but empathy and encouragement, not so much.
I fantasized about a letter to his superiors, but figured he’s probably a hero for saving on medical costs for that health care giant that professes “thrive.” I was clearly heading down the dark path to despair where these last couple of years of isolation and fear have led some of us.
Thank God I’m getting my head back on straight … with the help of those liturgists who put together the daily Mass readings, which in recent weeks are full of the Gospel stories of Jesus healing people while he’s teaching them about the hope and love that his Father provides.
My mood took a healthier turn when we started talking about healing in my parish.
Our pastor Father Clyde Guerreiro is reviving a program he launched in 1995 as part of the celebration of the beatification of Father Damien de Veuster who served as a missionary to the leprosy patients at Kalaupapa until his death from the disease in 1889.
A relic bone of the priest was brought back from Rome to Hawaii for burial in his original gravesite. But first, the relic was ceremoniously taken to each island as the focus of devotional services.
Father Guerreiro, who was active in interfaith activities on Kauai at that time, decided to organize ecumenical events, open to all faiths. “A healing service is universal,” he said, healing being a concept held in many faith traditions. He invited a retired Episcopal priest and two physicians to join him in the laying on of hands as attendees lined up to ask for the healing they sought.
“All four of us believed, including the doctors, that all healing is spiritual,” said Father Guerreiro, now pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Kaimuki. He borrowed the term “magic bullets” which medical and pharmaceutical researchers use about the cures they seek to find. My theme is to focus on four magic bullets for healing. They are faith, love, forgiveness, gratitude.
He said there is a need for people to contemplate all the times that Jesus healed people as he taught. The healing “gives affirmation and credibility to the word of God.”
The healing services in 1995 came at a time when Kauai residents were still struggling to rebuild from the devastation of the 1991 Hurricane Iniki. The priests and physicians continued with the healing services for several weeks, extending to Oahu, Maui and Molokai before they were phased out. “I didn’t want to become known as the healing priest,” Father Guerreiro said. “My theology is that all Christians have the power to heal.”
Hovering hands
On Nov. 16, about 50 of us gathered for an evening healing service in the St. Patrick School auditorium. The pastor was joined by Father Ed Popish, whose long career with the Sacred Hearts religious order includes several years as a chaplain at St. Francis Hospital, and Dr. Fernando Ona, a physician who is also a deacon at the parish. After a liturgy of Gospel readings, psalms, and a brief homily, the three men stood there laying hands on people’s heads as each prayed for the healing they sought. A note about COVID protocols: it was more of a non-contact hovering of hands over heads.
Should you be picturing a scenario you may have seen of televangelists starring in a choreographed drama, with organ music swelling as people fall faint as they are “slain by the spirit” — this wasn’t it.
We did do some robust singing — “Be Not Afraid” and “Amazing Grace” — but this was not a crowd from the charismatic Christian movement. It was a serene scene.
Seeking comments afterward, I mostly got opinions about how much we need to get together more often for ‘this kind of spiritual experience,” as one woman put it.
The pastor emphasized his theme of “magic bullets” of faith, love, forgiveness, gratitude in a brief homily. Whether healing comes from belief, or the pharmaceutical, or the surgical, or the laying on of hands, all healing is spiritual. We seek healing whether it is physical, psychological, social, spiritual. It’s who we are as people of faith.”
“Think about your life and what needs to be healed,” he said. His instruction was to come forward with one focused request. “You can mention it, or you can hold it in your heart. Some may wish to ask healing for another … you don’t need a judgment call about whether that person has faith.”
He referred to a Gospel story about the Roman centurion who came to Jesus asking that his beloved servant be healed of a deadly ailment. The soldier’s humility and faith is something we recall with his words in every Mass: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, say but the word and my servant shall be healed.” With the slight theological editing, we say “my soul shall be healed “in those words just before we receive Communion.
The format of the service featured Biblical stories of the healing of persons with leprosy, a subject pertinent to the Damien celebration for which it was created. From the Gospel of Luke was the story of 10 men who begged to be healed. Jesus answered their prayer, sent them off to be examined and cleared to return to society. Only one came back to thank Jesus who told him, “Stand up and go, your faith has healed you.”
That was a most meaningful instruction to ponder.
But the story from the Second Book of Kings struck a chord with me. It was a lengthy tale of Naaman, an army commander of a country hostile to Israel, who was persuaded by his Hebrew slave to seek healing of his leprosy. The Jewish prophet Elisha told him to go and wash seven times in the Jordan river “and your flesh shall heal and you will be clean.”
Following Elisha’s instruction
The prideful soldier threw a snit fit because it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Aren’t the rivers in my own country superior? Why didn’t this prophet move his hand over me and invoke the Lord, his God, and cure me? He was ready to stalk off, but his servants set him straight: “If the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary, would you not have done it?” He followed their advice and Elisha’s instruction.
As the story goes “his flesh became again like the flesh of a small child.” When Naaman returned to thank the prophet he said, “Now I know there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”
Those readings weren’t what ran through my mind as I meditated before getting in line to tell the priest what I’m praying for. I was thinking of two stories from Mark’s Gospel, about two blind men whose sight was restored in miracles meaningful to me.
Father Guerreiro talked about one of the stories in an interview before the healing service.
It’s one of those times when I wonder why the writer gave the details. Father likes the gritty physical element. “I love the imagery of Jesus spitting and making a patch of mud for the eyes. After he blessed the man and asked if he could see, the man said not so much. So Jesus did it again.”
What the blind man told Jesus was that people appeared to be the shape of trees walking, another intriguing detail. I’ve thought that might be fodder for a conversation with my old eye doc who was patient enough to engage in such theoretical conversation.
“If it doesn’t happen that healing happens the first time, then we will do it again,” the pastor told the audience of petitioners. He said a quarterly healing service will be planned at St. Patrick.
With my personal petition in mind, I wish the service might be edited to include readings about the blind being healed. Another is about Bartimaeus, a beggar who called out to Jesus when he was passing by. The beggar refused onlookers’ advice to shut up and cried out louder. When Jesus asked, he said “Master, I want to see” and Jesus told him “Go on your way, your faith has saved you.” So Bartimaeus received his sight and followed Jesus.
I had my own self in mind when I headed up the line and under the hovering hands. I imagine I don’t have to tell you what I focused on.
Afterward, when I talked with the folks sitting ahead of me, Sylvia Hanohano told me that she had just been diagnosed with cancer and had an appointment with another doctor. Her husband Tim said he’d just had bad news about his mother. “I’m very glad we came,” he said.
“I’ve never been to a healing service. I needed to be here,” said Sylvia. “I felt the presence of the Lord.”
I spoke with another friend, who brought her husband who is slipping away from their former life and into dementia. Those troubled folks made me feel pretty small and selfish.
“Sometimes we make a request of God, and God heals you at a deeper level,” said the pastor, quoting Dr. Don Pachuta, a participant in earlier healing services.
I found this comment from a Michigan priest who is not shy about being called a healing priest. “Healing is a process.”
I came away with no miracle but a little clearer vision about my anger at a doctor. I’m going to need to make a few more trips to the banks of the Jordan.
And I think Father should add hope to his list of magic bullets.
