The Body That Heals Itself

Recently, I have been in a lot of pain, pain that has shut down the normal operations of my day to day life.  With the wisdom and guidance of doctors who could advise me how to help the body heal itself, the pain diminishes a bit more each day now, and I am in amazement at the healing operations of our bodies -- the way they know what to do in a crisis.

About 40 years ago, having been renewed in mind and spirit by an anointing from the Holy Spirit, I looked hard at the Catholic church and decided that it was a sick and dying church.  I wanted to hear more emphasis on the Word of God, which I had grown to love and wanted to see taught in homilies and bible-study classes.  I wanted my children to learn Scripture and the love of God given to us in Jesus Christ.  One Sunday, after a particularly distressing sermon, I cried out to God, "I feel like I'm at a wake!"  (I had been thinking for some time of following the lead of some of my charismatic friends and looking for a more dynamic church.)  At that moment, the Spirit spoke to me clearly in my heart and mind:  Have I told you to leave the church?  I had to admit that my thoughts along those lines were coming from me, and not from the Lord.  "No," I answered.  If you don't stay for the wake, you won't be here for the resurrection, the Lord said to me.  And that settled it.  As Scripture says, "Let peace be the umpire in your heart, settling all your decisions."  And I did have great peace in that decision, even though at the time, I saw no changes in the church. 

The changes came slowly, but they came surely over the next 40 years.  Those who had been influenced by the charismatic movement of the 70's became the musicians, the teachers, the liturgists, the preachers, etc. of a newly-reviving and energetic church.  At the same time, another movement was taking place, just as Jesus foretold:  the weeds would grow among the tares, because "an enemy has done this."  Even while the church was renewing itself, coming back from the grave, evil was growing rampant with clergy abuse.  From the time Herod heard of a 'new-born king,' he determined to destroy the threat to his throne.  And spiritually, every time there is new growth in individuals or in the Body of Christ, there will be a concomitant threat to destroy the new growth. 

What people cannot see from the outside is the healing process that has been going in the Body, the Church, ever since the disease, the pain, has become evident.  I cannot detail here all that has been done in the past 20 years to rid the Body of the toxins that were poisoning it, and all the safeguards that have been put in place to ensure that such evil will not continue to grow.  What I would like to highlight here, however, is the first encyclical of Pope Francis, released on Jan. 16 of this year.  The Joy of the Gospel is heading the church in new directions, undreamed of 40 years ago, when the church was circling the wagons against the Indians -- a reaction that had begun centuries ago with the Counter Reformation, as a reaction against Protestantism.

I believe the Church, the Body of Christ, knows how to heal itself if it can just listen to the wisdom of the "doctors" who have seen the disease and can guide the Patient into new avenues of healing.  All along, even when we (or I) have not been able to "see" the healing process, there was always an undercurrent of health and of hope.  T