Prayer, Healing, and Eucharistic Spirituality
© 2005 - Your Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Here are a few excerpts from my book, God I Choose You. If you would like to read the whole book email me at richardbain@frontier.com and I will attach a copy of the book on the return email.
The People of Nazareth and Healing
"So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart form curing a few sick people by laying hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith." (Mark 6:5-6)
When a parent would bring her child to me for a blessing after a Mass for healing, I would always ask if the child had something seriously wrong. If the child did, I would ask the parent to wait until all the blessings were over so everyone in the church could pray for the child. Usually these children were not expected to get better. (Some of the most amazing healings I have ever seen came from these blessings.) These children were too young to understand what was taking place, or better, asleep during the prayer. This would take away the skeptics' two strongest arguments against the healing being the result of prayer: The symptoms went away on their own or the healing was the result of the person believing she would be healed, the "placebo effect."
Once, a mother took her son up for a blessing who had a serious heart condition. She was desperate, as there was little hope anything but prayer could help the boy. Later she found her son to be healed. At the time a television producer wanted to interview a few people who had been healed by prayer at our Masses. I asked the mother if she would do this. The woman refused. She said that even though there was only the slimmest chance that anything other than prayer was the cause of her son's sudden healing, she simply could not bring herself to admit that.
I am very skeptical about a lot of these healings myself, and I am more than ready to accept an alternative explanation such as the placebo effect or the work of the doctors; but in this case I really believed the only explanation for the healing was the prayer. Also, I knew that her testimony on TV would give a lot of parents such as herself hope. So, I pressed the woman. Her answer was that she did not want to believe her son was healed by prayer because that would mean we have a God who can heal and yet who often does not, thus allowing children to die very painful deaths.
Here in San Francisco every Sunday morning there is a religious program on one of the popular talk radio stations. The former host is a very gifted, knowledgeable, and faithful person. In fact, he is a former Catholic priest. I enjoyed listening to him because he has almost faultless logic. He only seems to go wrong when he get his facts wrong, which is not too often, and usually only when it concerns the Catholic Church and spiritual matters. When that happens, I change the station as it is too painful listening to such a good, intelligent person flying down the wrong path because of a false premise.
This man absolutely does not believe in the effectiveness of healing prayer. His reasons are similar to those of the mother. He cannot conceive of a God who would chose not to heal if He could. Also, he takes as an absolute fact a theory or belief that God is not omnipotent in the sense that he can suspend the laws of nature.
His thinking is far from new. Epicurus, the Greek atheist philosopher, wrote in the third century B.C., "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from where comes evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
The mother, the talk show host, and people who think this way are very much like the people of Nazareth in the gospels. Jesus had been healing people wherever he went. Now, he is back in Nazareth where he grew up and he is excited because he can share his wonderful gift with the people he loves the most, his family and friends. But, Scripture tells us that he was not able to perform any miracles there because of their unbelief. The logic of the people of Nazareth was precise too: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" Yet, like the radio talk show host, their conclusion was still wrong. Their lack of faith is the only reason why Jesus could not perform miracles in Nazareth.
Years ago I got out of the healing ministry because a woman with whom and for whom I had prayed daily for several months died a horrible, painful death. In time, thank God, I came to see I was wrong and so I returned. Healing was essential to the spreading of the Gospel in the early Church, and even to this day is central in the lives of many Christians. Who was I to question it because my small mind could not break the paradox of God's love vs. apparent selectivity? I simply had to live, as we so often do, with a paradox. And, because I am willing to live with it, countless numbers of people have been healed who may not otherwise have been.
A Protestant friend of mine just got back from Africa where she witnessed many, many extraordinary and powerful healings - bones growing back, teeth being filled, the blind getting their sight, and even a dead person who had been embalmed being raised back to life. She asked me why miracles are so common in Africa and are not common here. The answer is quite simple: Too many of us in the United States are like the people of Nazareth - we doubt!
Healing Power
"Then Peter, filled with the holy Spirit, answered them, 'Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed."(Acts 4:8-10)
In chapter three of the Acts of the Apostle we hear that the people, in response to Peter and John's healing of the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate "hurried in amazement toward them." Peter immediately set the record straight. . Men of Israel, why are you so shocked at [what happened to] this man? And why are you gazing at us, as though it were by our power or godly qualities that we caused him to walk? It was not by his own power that the man was healed, but by Jesus' "And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect health, in the presence of all of you."
A few years ago my physician told me that I should not pray over others for healing because it was my energy alone - being transferred to the person by my touch - that healed them, and I needed that energy for my own healing. This surprised me as I have always felt the way that Peter did and the way most healer do, that any healing that took place as result of prayer came not from me, but from Jesus' power passing through me. I remember after a parish mission in Atlanta, a young boy coming up to me with his grandmother and said, "Father Bain prayed over me, but Jesus healed me."
So, I challenged my Doctor's belief that these healings by touch were not coming from God but solely from my own energy. In response to this, he asked me to participate in a little experiment which he felt would prove that he was right. He wondered if I would bring someone from my parish that I had been praying over for healing and he would measure the amount of energy coming from me as I laid hands on the person.
My doctor has an unusual gift. He can actually measure a person's energy. He does this by slowly moving his open palm down towards the patient's chest. When his palm feels the energy, he stops. If this happens far from the body then the patient's energy is high that day, and if it happens closer to the body then the patient's energy is low that day.
The following week I took with me a woman from my parish that had cancer. The doctor first spent two or three minutes measuring my energy in various parts of my body. He used a ruler for this and then wrote the measurements down. Next, he asked me to lay my hands on the parishioner and pray for healing. During this time he measured my energy again. Lastly, he told me to stop praying and he measured my energy a third time. After, with a look of amazement he studied his findings, suggested I sit down, and then he said, "This is not what I expected at all. Before you prayed your energy was about fifty percent. As you began to pray your energy dropped to twenty-five percent, just as I had expected. But then a few seconds later it increased to seventy-five percent and stayed like that all the while you were praying. When you stopped praying it returned to exactly where it was before you began praying."
My doctor's own experiment had proven him wrong. If it were only my energy that was going into the person, as the good doctor had believed it would be, then while I was praying over my parishioner my energy level would have gone down and stayed down all the while I was transferring my energy by touch. But, it didn't, it went up. Where did the extra energy come from, why did it disappear when I stopped praying, and whose energy was it?
I believe that when we lay hands on the sick and ask Jesus to heal them, His healing love begins to flow through us into the other person. And it is His love that heals. This gift is available to every baptized Christian. Please, use your healing gifts for the good of your sisters or brothers? Don't be shy. Don't doubt but thrust. Let God's healing love flow through you into you sick brother or sister. It is so beautiful, so simple, so easy, so loving, and so like Christ. Best of all it is very easy to do.
How To Pray For Healing
"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)
It is very easy to pray for healing of people you know and love. Simply place your hands on the part of the body that needs healing. So, for example if a person has arthritis of the shoulder let you hand rest there. Then either out loud or to yourself, I don't think it really makes a difference which, pray, "Lord Jesus, let my hand become your hand. Let your healing love flow through my hand into this shoulder and heal the arthritis. May it heal the muscle the tissues, the tendons, and remove any and all inflammation", and so on. Then in silence let you hand stay on the shoulder trusting that Jesus' healing love is flowing into the person. After about five minutes you might ask the person if they are feeling anything. Often they will tell you that they feel that your hand is warm or that heat is coming into their body and going directly to the pain. Ask them if the pain is any less intense or if they have move movement. If you get a positive response then keep your hand on their shoulder for perhaps five more minutes, and just keep repeating this until the person is completely healed. Francis MacNutt said, "If a little prayer helps, a little more prayer will help more."
When praying over a person of the opposite sex it is very important to avoid even the slightest inappropriate touch. When a male is praying over a female this would mean not touching areas such as the knees or the stomach. Once at that VA hospital there was a woman patient that was suffering tremendous pain in her stomach area. Of all the types of healing that I pray for, pain is the area where I get the most positive results. I placed my hands not on her stomach, but on her head when I prayed over her. She told me that she could feel heat coming from my hands and move directly down to the area of her stomach where that pains was and take it away. So, if the part of the body that needs the prayer is not appropriate to touch, it is just fine to place you hands on the persons head and trust that the healing love of Jesus will go right to the exact place that He wants to heal.
It is very important to know that this can take some time, can be very tiring, and some of your own energy may go into the person too. So, be careful. If you pray for a long over a person or over too many people you may get sick yourself. The problem I describe in part two of this book were, according to my psychiatrist, caused by losing the energy I needed to kept a small psychic wound in place by praying over thousands and thousands of people.
Also, it is important to understand that it may that a few or even several prayer sessions before the person is completely healed. For some reason the healing love seems to stop after a certain amount of time. I seem to have a way of knowing when this happens, and if the person is not completely healed yet I will usually say something like, "You may need to come and see me again as it is not unusual for someone to need to be prayed over more than once."
If you experience good results from praying over your loved ones and would like to pray with people you do not know as well or have some type of ministry the would include people you have met for the first time, I suggest the following two books that will teach you how to do this: Power Healing by John Wimber and Learning To Do What Jesus Did by Michael Evans. Or, even better, order from Christian Healing Ministries - www.christianhealingmin.org - their set of CDs or DVDs from their School of Healing Prayer, or best of all take a group from your parish with you to Jacksonville for a week of training.
Can you imagine how much more alive, dynamics, and Christ like the Church would be if every parish in the United States had trained healing teams available? It is the main reason why in many parts of the world Protestant churches that have healing teams are growing in spectacular numbers at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church.
Healing Power
"Then Peter, filled with the holy Spirit, answered them, 'Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed."(Acts 4:8-10)
In chapter three of the Acts of the Apostle we hear that the people, in response to Peter and John's healing of the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate, "hurried in amazement toward them." Peter immediately set the record straight. . Men of Israel, why are you so shocked at [what happened to] this man? And why are you gazing at us, as though it were by our power or godly qualities that we caused him to walk? It was not by his own power that the man was healed, but by Jesus' "And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect health, in the presence of all of you."
A few years ago my physician told me that I should not pray over others for healing because it was my energy alone - being transferred to the person by my touch - that healed them, and I needed that energy for my own healing. This surprised me as I have always felt the way that Peter did and the way most healer do, that any healing that took place as result of prayer came not from me, but from Jesus' power passing through me. I remember after a parish mission in Atlanta, a young boy coming up to me with his grandmother and saying, "Father Bain prayed over me, but Jesus healed me."
So, I challenged my Doctor's belief that these healings by touch were not coming from God but solely from my own energy. In response to this, he asked me to participate in a little experiment which he felt would prove that he was right. He wondered if I would bring someone from my parish that I had been praying over for healing and he would measure the amount of energy coming from me as I laid hands on the person.
My doctor has an unusual gift. He can actually measure a person's energy. He does this by slowly moving his open palm down towards the patient's chest. When his palm feels the energy, he stops. If this happens far from the body then the patient's energy is high that day, and if it happens closer to the body then the patient's energy is low that day.
The following week I took with me a woman from my parish that had cancer. The doctor first spent two or three minutes measuring my energy in various parts of my body. He used a ruler for this and then wrote the measurements down. Next, he asked me to lay my hands on the parishioner and pray for healing. During this time he measured my energy again. Lastly, he told me to stop praying and he measured my energy a third time. After, with a look of amazement he studied his findings, suggested I sit down, and then he said, "This is not what I expected at all. Before you prayed your energy was about fifty percent. As you began to pray your energy dropped to twenty-five percent, just as I had expected. But then a few seconds later it increased to seventy-five percent and stayed like that all the while you were praying. When you stopped praying it returned to exactly where it was before you began praying."
My doctor's own experiment had proven him wrong. If it were only my energy that was going into the person, as the good doctor had believed it would be, then while I was praying over my parishioner my energy level would have gone down and stayed down all the while I was transferring my energy by touch. But, it didn't, it went up. Where did the extra energy come from, why did it disappear when I stopped praying, and whose energy was it?
I believe that when we lay hands on the sick and ask Jesus to heal them, His healing love begins to flow through us into the other person. And it is His love that heals. This gift is available to every baptized Christian. Please, use your healing gifts for the good of your sisters or brothers? Don't be shy. Don't doubt but thrust. Let God's healing love flow through you into you sick brother or sister. It is so beautiful, so simple, so easy, so loving, and so like Christ. Best of all, it is so fruitful.
How to Pray For Healing
"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)
It is very easy to pray for healing of people you know and love. Simply place your hands on the part of the body that needs healing. So, for example if a person has arthritis of the shoulder let you hand rest there. Then either out loud or to yourself, I don't think it really makes a difference which, pray, "Lord Jesus, let my hand become your hand. Let your healing love flow through my hand into this shoulder and heal the arthritis. May it heal the muscle the tissues, the tendons, and remove any and all inflammation", and so on. Then in silence let you hand stay on the shoulder trusting that Jesus' healing love is flowing into the person. After about five minutes you might ask the person if they are feeling anything. Often they will tell you that they feel that your hand is warm or that heat is coming into their body and going directly to the pain. Ask them if the pain is any less intense or if they have move movement. If you get a positive response then keep your hand on their shoulder for perhaps five more minutes, and just keep repeating this until the person is completely healed. The former Catholic priest and famous healer Francis MacNutt, who started Christian Healing Ministries in Jacksonville, Florida, with his wife Judith once said, "If a little prayer helps, a little more prayer will help more."
When praying over a person of the opposite sex it is very important to avoid even the slightest inappropriate touch. When a male is praying over a female this would mean not touching areas such as the knees or the stomach. Once at that VA hospital there was a woman patient that was suffering tremendous pain in her stomach area. Of all the types of healing that I pray for, pain is the area where I get the most positive results. I placed my hands not on her stomach, but on her head when I prayed over her. She told me that she could feel heat coming from my hands and move directly down to the area of her stomach where that pains was and take it away. So, if the part of the body that needs the prayer is not appropriate to touch, it is just fine to place your hands on the persons head and trust that the healing love of Jesus will go right to the exact place that He wants to heal.
It is very important to know that this can take some time, can be very tiring, and some of your own energy may go into the person too. So, be careful. If you pray for a long period over a person or over too many people you may get sick yourself. My severe ringing in my ears that I describe in part two of this book was, according to my psychiatrist, caused by losing the energy I needed to keep a small psychic wound in place by praying over thousands and thousands of people. A year ago, we had a healing priest from India come to our area of the county. I was told that he was extremely gifted and prayed over many people. A month later I learned that he had cancelled all his healing services and was not even taking phone calls because he was suffering from severe tinnitus. When I first got very sick seven years ago, I was told that there were five other healing priests in other parts of the country that were at the present time also not praying over people because of illness. So again, be very careful. I would recommend that if you are tired or sick yourself that you do not pray over anyone until your full energy returns and you are well again.
Also, it is important to understand that it may take a few or even several prayer sessions before the person is completely healed. For some reason the healing love seems to stop after a certain amount of time. I seem to have a way of knowing when this happens, and if the person is not completely healed yet I will usually say something like, "You may need to come and see me again as it is not unusual for someone to need to be prayed over more than once."
If you experience good results from praying over your loved ones, and would like to pray with people you do not know as well, or have some type of ministry that would include people you have met for the first time, I suggest the following two books that will teach you how to do this: Power Healing by John Wimber and Learning To Do What Jesus Did by Michael Evans. Or, even better, order from Christian Healing Ministries - www.christianhealingmin.org - their set of CDs or DVDs from their School of Healing Prayer, and best of all, take a group from your parish with you to Jacksonville for a week of training. Can you imagine how much more alive, dynamics, and Christ like the Church would be if every parish in the United States had trained healing teams available for the sick?
Healing Hands
"They shall lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." (Mark 16:18)
One night I was watching a good movie on TV when my phone rang. It was a man who asked to stop by my rectory with his cousin on the way to the airport. She had been in the Bay Area for the last six months seeing a specialist about her back and now was returning home without success. The man wanted me to pray for his cousin's healing. As I was enjoying the movie, and this was before the DVR, I said no. (Just kidding; but that is what I wanted to say.)
As I was waiting for them to arrive I thought to myself what a waste of time this is. If one of the top specialists in the country cannot help his cousin, what makes him think that I can? At the time I really was not sure I had a special gift of healing. It is interesting, though, that every time I would seriously doubt my gift of healing and think that it was just circumstance that got me involved in the healing ministry, the phone would ring with someone who wanted to thank me because they got healed after I prayed over them.
When the man and his cousin arrived I tried to be nice, even though I was a little annoyed that both the woman's time and mine were being wasted for what I felt was no good reason. I remember thinking this is crazy, that he would risk his cousin missing her flight home just to stop by for a prayer from me. To make it appear that I really believed in the prayers, I kept my hand on her back longer than I ordinarily would, all the time not believing it would do any good. When I was finished praying, the cousin told us that she felt pain free for the first time in years. She was extremely grateful.
You always have to wonder if a healing is due to something like the placebo effect rather than the prayers. I really thought her pain would return. So, about six months later I called the man to find out how his cousin was doing. He reported that her back had been absolutely pain free since the moment I prayed over it.
There is a statue of Jesus in France that was damaged during the WWI; the hands were blown off by an explosion. After the war they were going to put new hands on the statue, but instead they left it as is and put a plaque under it which read, "I have no hands but yours." The next time you are with someone who needs healing, don't look at yourself wonder whether you have healing gifts or not; look to Jesus and let him use your hands. You will be amazed at the good that will come from them.
Cured or Healed?
"The rest of the sick on the island came to Paul and were cured." (Acts 28:)
A San Francisco firefighter was cured of lung cancer at one of our Masses for healing. A year later another firefighter from the same engine company contracted lung cancer. As you know, lung cancer is one of the worst kinds. The young man was afraid to die. He came to several of our masses, but was not cured. Months later I was told that the prayers and masses had really helped him a lot. He not only was able to accept his illness, he was actually looking forward to going home to the Father.
The first firefighter was cured, the second was healed. It is good to be cured; it is better to be healed.
Do you want to be well?
"When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be well'?" (John 5:1-4)
What a question, "Do you want to be well?" There are many reasons given as to why not everyone who seeks prayers for healing is healed, ranging from lack of faith to the need to forgive. ,Francis MacNutt has a list of more than twenty. Included in the list is, "You don't want to be healed." Jesus may have suspected that this was the sick man's problem, because he did not give him a chance to answer.
We can, without being aware, hang on to our illness for a multitude of reasons, from wanting to control someone, to wanting to avoid responsibilities, to just wanting attention. If you are like me, and have had an illness for a long time, it might be good to hear Jesus asking you the question, "Do you want to be well?"
Healing and Faith
"He said to them, 'Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20)
During my deacon year I gave a homily inviting people to come to me for healing prayer. It was explained that healing was very much part of our Catholic tradition and somehow had got lost until recently. I naively thought many would respond to this invitation, but only two people approached me. One was an elderly woman who had difficulty cleaning her home because of arthritis. The other was a woman who had difficulty seeing because of cataracts. The arthritis would be easy to heal. I had had great success praying with people with arthritis. The cataracts would not be easy to heal. They do not go away. There is no medication that can make them shrink or disappear. They need to be removed by surgery.
The woman with arthritis did not have much faith, whereas the woman with cataracts believed strongly that she would be healed. They both we were healed. The woman with the cataracts told me her eye doctor sent her to a specialist because he did not believe in prayer, and he knew there was no way the cataracts could disappear without surgery. The specialist was not able to find the cataract either. It was totally gone.
The next year, as a priest, I gave the same homily on healing. It seems that a deacon is twice as believable as a priest. This time only one person came to me. Her husband had a bad back, and was not able to walk.
The man looked at me like I was some sort of a nut. It was obvious he was just putting up with me to please his wife. But the expression in his face changed to amazement as the prayers took all his pain away. I suggested that he invite his entire family and his close friends to come and celebrate the sacrament of the sick with us. That took place two days later and at that time the man got up and walked.
In Matthew's gospel, Jesus said to his disciples, "…..I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you'." You see, it does not take much faith, but all the faith in the world will not move a thing if we are not open to being prayed over. Twenty-eight years later, I still wonder why a mere three people responded to my invitation for healing prayers. At least three thousand people heard the talk. Even more disturbing is the fact that so many people could be helped, and even better, come to know the love of God in a more direct and personal way, if more of us had even a little faith in healing prayer.
God's Way
"For in fire gold is tested and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation." (Sirach 2: 5)
A good friend in New York was telling me recently that everyone she knows is suffering. She has a very painful broken bone in her foot that is not healing. Another friend has a nerve problem that causes sharp pains to constantly run through her head and neck. Another friend has cancer. The list of woes goes on and on. All these people pray and are close to God. Why does He allow them to suffer?
Some Christians teach that it is God's will that there be no sickness. Suffering may sometimes be part of God's plan for us, but illness never is. It is God's will in each and every circumstance that we be healed of our afflictions. They then point to churches where all sorts of extraordinary healings and blessings are taking place thanks to this kind of belief.
The other explanation is that God's ways are not our ways. There is sometimes a reason for our illnesses beyond our understanding. Jacob Needleman in his book Lost Christianity has a great analogy to help us understand this.
"Imagine that you are a scientist and you have before you the object known as an acorn. Let us further imagine that you have never before seen such an object and that you certainly do not know that it can grow into an oak. You carefully observe these acorns day after day and soon you notice that after a while they crack open and die. Pity! How to improve the acorn? So chemical analyses of the material inside the accord and, after much effort, you succeed in isolating the substance that controls the condition of the shell. Lo and behold, you are now in the position to produce acorns which will list far longer than the others, acorns whose shells will perhaps never crack. Beautiful."
But, what would such an acornologist say about this? A man came to me who wanted to take his life. He had severe ringing in the ears. I prayed over him everyday for over six months, but it only gave him the grace to live for another day. Years later he reminded me of this and then said, "Father I would never want anyone to go though what I did, but I am glad the Lord did not heal me when you prayed over me. You see, at the time I was a very hard man, hard on my wife and hard on my friends. The severe ringing in my ears brought me to my knees and softened me. I am a much happier man today because I suffered that way for six months."
Mysteriously, the Father allowed His Son Jesus to suffer. He allowed those who followed Jesus, St. Paul, St. Peter, and the other apostles, to suffer. He allowed the Saints to suffer. Should we not expect God to not allow those who seek to be close to Him to suffer too?
Are those who claim that illness is never a part of God's plan for our growth nothing more than acornologists? Or, are those of us who accept our illness as part of God's will in the whole mystery of suffer just flat-out wrong? Which is correct?
The book of Sirach can give us a clue. It speaks about trials, adversity, sorrows, and crushing misfortune. It then goes on to explain: "For in fire gold and silver are tested and worthy people in the crucible of humiliation."
It seems that misfortunes, including illness, contrary to what reason may suggest, or some Christians may believe, can sometimes be a gift from God to test our worthiness. St. Vincent de Paul said, "What was the life of Christ but a perpetual humiliation?"
How sad for the person who was cured due to a strongly held conviction, but at the cost of losing the gift of the crucible of humiliation that God had given her. I read once of a man who was healed of blindness at a faith-filled healing session. Two weeks later he was moved to ask in prayer if the healing was what was best for his salvation. He seemed to get an answer that said it was not. He then prayed that the blindness return and it did. Maybe this is why St. Francis of Assisi on his death bed threw out of his room the Brother that came to pray that Francis be relieved of his suffering.
Personally, I think it is absurd to hold that every kind of trial, adversity, sorrow, and crushing misfortune expect suffering due to illness can be part of the crucible of humiliation. Yet, I also believe that God wants us to pray and expect to be healed. Because of this I think it is important to always seek healing, never give up. Francis MacNutt tells the story of his daughter. She suffered for many years from asthma. He and his wife and many member of his healing team in Jacksonville prayed over her numerous times but to no avail. Then one day a stranger at the healing center prayed over the girl and she was instantly healed. So, again keep seeking healing pray and never give up. And if your prayers are not answered, trust that there is a non-acornologist reason.
The Blessed Sacrament and Healing
"If we deny him, he will deny us; if we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself." (2 Timothy 12-13)
A woman came to me who had a rash on a very sensitive part of her body. It had been there for five years. She had seen numerous doctors and none were able to help her. I asked her if anything stressful in her life had happened at the time the rash appeared. She said her boy had disappeared completely from her life. The boy had been the apple of her eye. He was any mother's dream, well behaved and an excellent student. She just loved him so much. Problems with the boy began when he started school at the University of California. There he met and fell in love with a woman a few years older than he. Both were on drugs and eventually they moved in with each other. In time the son stopped going to church and dropped out of school.
I asked her how she responded to this. She said she did everything she could to get her son to stop drugs, leave the girl, go back to the sacraments, and return to school. As she was explaining this, it became clear to me that the problem was hers and not the boy's. She was inordinately possessive of her son and needed to let go.
So, I told her, "We want what is best for our children, so of course we are not pleased when they embrace a life style that is destructive. At the same time it is their life and there is not much we can do about it. We can never condone their sinful, destructive behavior, and there is nothing wrong with letting them know we do not approve. But, at the same time we need to communicate that we understand they are adults, it is their life, and we will love them no matter what. It is hard for a mother who loves her son as much as you do to let go like that. I suggest that you spend one hour each day in a Catholic Church praying before the Blessed Sacrament." (The Blessed Sacrament is the Eucharist, the bread that has been consecrated at Mass and is believed by Catholics to no longer be bread, but the actual Body, Blood and Divinity of Jesus Christ. This consecrated bread is kept in a small box called the tabernacle in the center of the church.) "Just sit there at the feet of Jesus and let him fill you with love for your son. In time your feelings will change. You will notice that even though you still don't approve of his behavior, you love him just the same or maybe more."
The woman returned a few months later and reported that the rash was still there and as painful as ever. She also said that there was no change in her attitude. I told her that she needed to continue making her daily Holy Hour. A few months after that she let me know that the rash had finally disappeared. She said that one day while in church praying she suddenly realized that she was accepting her son the way he is. She still did not approve of his lifestyle, but she loved him the same. Then she shared with me the real kicker: "Father, yesterday my boy called me for the first time in five years and asked if we could get together."
St. Paul wrote, "If we deny him, he will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself." Divine healing love is poured into our hearts when we pray in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
Healed of Smoking
"I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me." (Philippians 4:13)
In 1975 I quit smoking cigarettes. Four years later I was in my classmate Herman's room at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California, a few months before we would be ordained deacons. Herman was a Carmelite monk. He was more prayerful, other worldly, and holier than those of us who were studying to be secular priests. So, I was sort of shocked when I found him in his room smoking a cigarette. My response was, "Herman, I did not know you smoked." "I don't." he said, "but I am nervous about the evaluations that they may not let me be ordained a deacon." I said, "Give me one of those cigarettes, I'm nervous too." Three days later I was buying my own cigarettes and found myself unable to quit.
At first I was I confident that when I was ordained a deacon I would quit smoking. But my ordination came and went, and still I was not able to quit. This became hard for me. I did not want to smoke. As the year went on I would think, "Surely I will quit when I am ordained a priest." But that ordination came and went and still I could not quit. This was so frustrating for me because I have been blessed with tremendous will power.
It was clear that I could not quit on my own; I needed God's help. So, on Pentecost Sunday of that year I prayed to the Holy Spirit. "Today is the birthday of the Church. Please give me a birthday present. Take away my desire for cigarettes." My prayer was answered. Not only was the desire for smoking taken from me, but my whole system, body, and memory, was restored to a state of one who had never smoked. For example, in the past when I quit smoking I would enjoy being around a smoker when he or she would blow smoke in the air. No longer, as now cigarette smoke smelled terrible to me.
A message seemed to come with the healing. "Dick, you are now a non-smoker. Non-smokers never take a puff of a cigarette; they have no desire to do so. If you take one puff of a cigarette ever again you will lose the healing." I don't know if those words were from the Lord or my imagination, but they are the perfect words of advice for anyone who wants to quit smoking.
Over the years I have shared this healing several times in my parish mission talks. More than a few people have told me that after hearing this story they made the same prayer to the Holy Spirit and were healed of their addition to cigarettes.
Pray, Preach, Forgive, Heal
"Jesus summoned the Twelve gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." (Luke 9:1-2)
A few years back we lost a tremendous priest in our diocese. His name was Jack Isaacs. He worked as a missionary in Peru in the 1980s when the people there were literally starving to death because a certain powerful First World country's banks were forcing the people to grow cash crops rather than food crops. After retuning from Peru his diet consisted mainly of peanut butter sandwiches. I asked him why he ate like that. His answer was that he felt the protein in the peanuts was good for him and he liked the taste. I think the real reason was that it was the best way he knew to personally conserve food for the millions of starving people in the world. I also think his poor diet caused his early death.
Father Isaacs told me that he had become very close to one of the villagers, whom he described as an intellectual. The man was not Christian but had read a lot about our faith. One day he had a question for Jack. "I read in your Bible that Jesus after prayer did three things. He preached, he forgave sins, and he healed. My understanding is that Catholics believe their priests to be 'another Christ.' I see priests, preaching, hearing confessions, and yet I do not see them healing. Why is this so?"
I would say, the vast majority of priests do not pray over their parishioners for healing because they were never taught about the connection between the ministry of healing in the life of Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Church and their ministry. It is not truly amazing that the words "healed" is found numerous times in the Gospels, yet is not found in the index of either the Catechism of the Council of Trent or the new Catechism of the Catholic Church? Shockingly, it's almost as if the last two great councils of the Catholic Church did not believe the whole Gospel message.
Francis MacNutt in his book, The Early Church Would Not Believe It, explores this extraordinary disconnect in depth. He explains why healing, something so central to Jesus' own heart, something so essential to the spreading of the Gospel, has nearly been lost in the Church.
In John's gospel Jesus says to the apostles, "Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them." We can ring any rectory doorbell in the world seeking forgiveness and the priest is expected by the Church to drop whatever he is doing to hear our confession. Luke's gospel tells us, "And he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." We can ring any rectory doorbell in the world seeking healing and the priest is expected by the Church… Well, let's pray that healing becomes as central to the Church's ministry as it was to Jesus'.
Two Healings
"Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere." (Luke 9:16)
In 1985 we had a Mass for healing at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. Thanks to a lot of media coverage more than 4000 people packed the church. For more than two hours ten priests gave individual blessings for healing while five priests heard confessions. The most powerful healing during the service came to two individuals who were not inside the cathedral at the time.
A woman with a crippling condition was continually encouraged by her co-workers to attend the Mass to the point where she finally made a decision to go. But, first she had to drive to her home in the East Bay to take care of her mother who had cancer. She was really tired when she got home and the only reason she went to the Mass for healing was to avoid having to explain to everyone at work on Monday why she did not go. Arriving late, and with more than 4,000 people already in the cathedral, she found herself having to park blocks away. It was very difficult for her to walk. When she finally reached the cathedral and placed her foot on the first step she was instantly healed. Prayers were offered during the Mass for friends and relatives who were not able to attend the Mass. When the woman got home she found her mother completely healed of the cancer.
One of the reasons why I like this story is because it challenges more than a few popular beliefs about healing. One, it shows that you do not need to have a big time healer pray over you for healing. Both the woman and her mother were healed without a healer laying a hand on them. Two, it shows that you can be healed with out great faith. The woman went to the Mass not because she believed that she was going to be healed, but to avoid having to explain to her co-workers on Monday why she did not attend. And three, it does not allow for a placebo explanation. The mother did not know that 4000 Christians were praying for her.
Prayer, Time, and Space
"The royal official said to him, 'Sir, come down before my child dies.' Jesus said to him, 'You may go; your son will live'." (John 4: 49-50)
Several years ago a woman came to me asking for help with her daughter who was planning to have an abortion, because the baby was upside down in the womb, a "breech baby." I asked the mother if she had a picture of her daughter, which she did. I placed my hands on the picture and prayed silently for twenty or thirty seconds. Then I told the woman to ask her daughter go to her doctor for another examination. A few years later, before one of the healing services the woman came up to me and reported that her daughter did not have the abortion as the baby was found to be right side up.
A woman asked me to pray over a picture of her son who was very depressed from just having broken up with his girl friend. At the moment he was thirty-five miles away working in his office. That evening he came home and told his mother that he fainted at the office and was taken to the hospital. Finding nothing wrong with him the hospital released him. She asked her son at what time he fainted. It was at the exact moment I prayed over his picture. In John's gospel the royal official's son was healed even though Jesus did not go to him. It seems that healing prayer is not limited by space.
Heart patients in England who had been discharged from the hospital six months previously were divided into two groups. One group began receiving prayers from members of local churches and the other group did not. Then, the medical records of the two groups were compared. Amazingly, the patients who received prayers six months after being discharged had fewer complications and shorter stays while in the hospital than the group not receiving prayers. Thus, it appears that prayers in the present can have an effect on the past and thus not limited to time.
If indeed prayer is not limited by time or space then it must be true that God, the receiver of prayers, is in eternity.
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God
Is there a God?
"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
Light, as you know, travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second or 700 million miles per hour. The nearest star is 4.6 light years away from our sun. The farthest star is estimated to be 25 billion light years away. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a diameter of about 120,000 light years more than200 billion stars. The universe has a diameter of 156 billion light years, 200 billion galaxies, and more than 70 sextillion stars - that is 70 thousand million million million, or 7 followed by 22 zeros - which means there are about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts. (wow oh wow!) Yet, the universe twenty-four hours after the Big Bang, 13.6 billion years ago, had a diameter of only one light year. These are numbers that the mind obviously cannot come close to comprehending.
Discoveries over the last forty years about the Big Bang and the formation of the universe, especially from radio telescopes and the Hubble, have most scientists agreeing that the odds of our universe existing the way it does by chance are so incredibly small as to be virtually impossible. Yet, the majority of these men and women are atheist. They have had to formulate new theories that allow for chance. Some now hold that there are billions of other universes beyond ours. A few don't want to deal with either chance or a Creator, and so they believe that there are an infinite number of universes beyond ours.
It is not possible for scientists to see beyond the other side of the outer shell of our universe or know anything of what may have existed before the Big Bang. They can only guess about these things. It seems strange indeed, to me, that some of these men and women can, therefore, so dogmatically proclaim that there is no God. Albert Einstein as a scientist had doubts about the existence a Creator, but as a human being he knew that science cannot answer the God question. He said, "It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."
None of us, not even the most brilliant scientist or theologian, knows for certain if there is a God or not. We will only know for sure when we get to the next world, that is if there is one, and if there is not, well, we will never know. Right now we only have a choice, either to believe or not to believe. Whether we chose not to believe or to believe in something greater than ourselves, we can always find more than enough reasons to support our belief. That is why it is so fascinating when two equally brilliant scientists, from the same fields, and with the same education, fiercely debate this subject.
Charles de Foucauld, the founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus, shows us perhaps, a clearer way to find God. He lived in nineteenth century Catholic France where as an adolescent from a wealthy family he lost his faith. Deeply hurt in romance he joined the French Foreign Legion and was sent to Morocco where he saw the lively faith of the Moslems. He decided that he wanted to believe in God. Back in Paris he began daily to spend long hours in St. Augustine Church sitting in silence. His simple prayer was, "My God, if you exist, make me know you." It took six months of prayer before his faith returned. When it did he said, "As soon as I believed in God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than to live for him alone."
Peter van Breemen, S.J. in The God Who Won't Let Go, tells us that the Desert Fathers and Mothers (The Desert Fathers were Christian Hermits, Ascetics and Monks who lived mainly in the desert of Egypt, beginning in about the third century) compared this experience of praying for God to make Himself known with the situation of hounds who chase a hare. "One dog spots the hare; then it barks excitedly and starts running. Other dogs hear the barking and join in the chase. But sooner or later, the dogs who only heard the barking give up. Those who have seen the hare, however, keep running. It is an apt image for our prayer: whoever prays only because he has heard the barking of others without seeing anything himself will not persevere."
This analogy describes the pain of many honest seekers. They live on the "barking of others, and in the long run that is simply not enough." Father van Breemen then writes, "But when we wait with open hands and undefended hearts, God does come."
Having been an atheist at one time myself and now a theist, I can tell you there is much more joy, satisfaction, peace, and fulfillment in being a theist. There are moments in prayer when I feel so very satisfied and complete as God's love touches the very depth of my being that I can only think, "Oh, how spiritually deprived is that person who does not know the love of God in prayer." My suggestion to any atheist is to find a church or other holy place and wait there for God to touch you, even if it takes months. There is no greater gift than faith in a loving, personal God.
The People of Nazareth and Healing
"So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart form curing a few sick people by laying hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith." (Mark 6:5-6)
When a parent would bring her child to me for a blessing after a Mass for healing, I would always ask if the child had something seriously wrong. If the child did, I would ask the parent to wait until all the blessings were over so everyone in the church could pray for the child. Usually these children were not expected to get better. (Some of the most amazing healings I have ever seen came from these blessings.) These children were too young to understand what was taking place, or better, asleep during the prayer. This would take away the skeptics' two strongest arguments against the healing being the result of prayer: The symptoms went away on their own or the healing was the result of the person believing she would be healed, the "placebo effect."
Once, a mother took her son up for a blessing who had a serious heart condition. She was desperate, as there was little hope anything but prayer could help the boy. Later she found her son to be healed. At the time a television producer wanted to interview a few people who had been healed by prayer at our Masses. I asked the mother if she would do this. The woman refused. She said that even though there was only the slimmest chance that anything other than prayer was the cause of her son's sudden healing, she simply could not bring herself to admit that.
I am very skeptical about a lot of these healings myself, and I am more than ready to accept an alternative explanation such as the placebo effect or the work of the doctors; but in this case I really believed the only explanation for the healing was the prayer. Also, I knew that her testimony on TV would give a lot of parents such as herself hope. So, I pressed the woman. Her answer was that she did not want to believe her son was healed by prayer because that would mean we have a God who can heal and yet who often does not, thus allowing children to die very painful deaths.
Here in San Francisco every Sunday morning there is a religious program on one of the popular talk radio stations. The former host is a very gifted, knowledgeable, and faithful person. In fact, he is a former Catholic priest. I enjoyed listening to him because he has almost faultless logic. He only seems to go wrong when he get his facts wrong, which is not too often, and usually only when it concerns the Catholic Church and spiritual matters. When that happens, I change the station as it is too painful listening to such a good, intelligent person flying down the wrong path because of a false premise.
This man absolutely does not believe in the effectiveness of healing prayer. His reasons are similar to those of the mother. He cannot conceive of a God who would chose not to heal if He could. Also, he takes as an absolute fact a theory or belief that God is not omnipotent in the sense that he can suspend the laws of nature.
His thinking is far from new. Epicurus, the Greek atheist philosopher, wrote in the third century B.C., "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from where comes evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
The mother, the talk show host, and people who think this way are very much like the people of Nazareth in the gospels. Jesus had been healing people wherever he went. Now, he is back in Nazareth where he grew up and he is excited because he can share his wonderful gift with the people he loves the most, his family and friends. But, Scripture tells us that he was not able to perform any miracles there because of their unbelief. The logic of the people of Nazareth was precise too: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?" Yet, like the radio talk show host, their conclusion was still wrong. Their lack of faith is the only reason why Jesus could not perform miracles in Nazareth.
Years ago I got out of the healing ministry because a woman with whom and for whom I had prayed daily for several months died a horrible, painful death. In time, thank God, I came to see I was wrong and so I returned. Healing was essential to the spreading of the Gospel in the early Church, and even to this day is central in the lives of many Christians. Who was I to question it because my small mind could not break the paradox of God's love vs. apparent selectivity? I simply had to live, as we so often do, with a paradox. And, because I am willing to live with it, countless numbers of people have been healed who may not otherwise have been.
A Protestant friend of mine just got back from Africa where she witnessed many, many extraordinary and powerful healings - bones growing back, teeth being filled, the blind getting their sight, and even a dead person who had been embalmed being raised back to life. She asked me why miracles are so common in Africa and are not common here. The answer is quite simple: Too many of us in the United States are like the people of Nazareth - we doubt!
Healing Power
"Then Peter, filled with the holy Spirit, answered them, 'Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed."(Acts 4:8-10)
In chapter three of the Acts of the Apostle we hear that the people, in response to Peter and John's healing of the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate "hurried in amazement toward them." Peter immediately set the record straight. . Men of Israel, why are you so shocked at [what happened to] this man? And why are you gazing at us, as though it were by our power or godly qualities that we caused him to walk? It was not by his own power that the man was healed, but by Jesus' "And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect health, in the presence of all of you."
A few years ago my physician told me that I should not pray over others for healing because it was my energy alone - being transferred to the person by my touch - that healed them, and I needed that energy for my own healing. This surprised me as I have always felt the way that Peter did and the way most healer do, that any healing that took place as result of prayer came not from me, but from Jesus' power passing through me. I remember after a parish mission in Atlanta, a young boy coming up to me with his grandmother and said, "Father Bain prayed over me, but Jesus healed me."
So, I challenged my Doctor's belief that these healings by touch were not coming from God but solely from my own energy. In response to this, he asked me to participate in a little experiment which he felt would prove that he was right. He wondered if I would bring someone from my parish that I had been praying over for healing and he would measure the amount of energy coming from me as I laid hands on the person.
My doctor has an unusual gift. He can actually measure a person's energy. He does this by slowly moving his open palm down towards the patient's chest. When his palm feels the energy, he stops. If this happens far from the body then the patient's energy is high that day, and if it happens closer to the body then the patient's energy is low that day.
The following week I took with me a woman from my parish that had cancer. The doctor first spent two or three minutes measuring my energy in various parts of my body. He used a ruler for this and then wrote the measurements down. Next, he asked me to lay my hands on the parishioner and pray for healing. During this time he measured my energy again. Lastly, he told me to stop praying and he measured my energy a third time. After, with a look of amazement he studied his findings, suggested I sit down, and then he said, "This is not what I expected at all. Before you prayed your energy was about fifty percent. As you began to pray your energy dropped to twenty-five percent, just as I had expected. But then a few seconds later it increased to seventy-five percent and stayed like that all the while you were praying. When you stopped praying it returned to exactly where it was before you began praying."
My doctor's own experiment had proven him wrong. If it were only my energy that was going into the person, as the good doctor had believed it would be, then while I was praying over my parishioner my energy level would have gone down and stayed down all the while I was transferring my energy by touch. But, it didn't, it went up. Where did the extra energy come from, why did it disappear when I stopped praying, and whose energy was it?
I believe that when we lay hands on the sick and ask Jesus to heal them, His healing love begins to flow through us into the other person. And it is His love that heals. This gift is available to every baptized Christian. Please, use your healing gifts for the good of your sisters or brothers? Don't be shy. Don't doubt but thrust. Let God's healing love flow through you into you sick brother or sister. It is so beautiful, so simple, so easy, so loving, and so like Christ. Best of all it is very easy to do.
How To Pray For Healing
"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)
It is very easy to pray for healing of people you know and love. Simply place your hands on the part of the body that needs healing. So, for example if a person has arthritis of the shoulder let you hand rest there. Then either out loud or to yourself, I don't think it really makes a difference which, pray, "Lord Jesus, let my hand become your hand. Let your healing love flow through my hand into this shoulder and heal the arthritis. May it heal the muscle the tissues, the tendons, and remove any and all inflammation", and so on. Then in silence let you hand stay on the shoulder trusting that Jesus' healing love is flowing into the person. After about five minutes you might ask the person if they are feeling anything. Often they will tell you that they feel that your hand is warm or that heat is coming into their body and going directly to the pain. Ask them if the pain is any less intense or if they have move movement. If you get a positive response then keep your hand on their shoulder for perhaps five more minutes, and just keep repeating this until the person is completely healed. Francis MacNutt said, "If a little prayer helps, a little more prayer will help more."
When praying over a person of the opposite sex it is very important to avoid even the slightest inappropriate touch. When a male is praying over a female this would mean not touching areas such as the knees or the stomach. Once at that VA hospital there was a woman patient that was suffering tremendous pain in her stomach area. Of all the types of healing that I pray for, pain is the area where I get the most positive results. I placed my hands not on her stomach, but on her head when I prayed over her. She told me that she could feel heat coming from my hands and move directly down to the area of her stomach where that pains was and take it away. So, if the part of the body that needs the prayer is not appropriate to touch, it is just fine to place you hands on the persons head and trust that the healing love of Jesus will go right to the exact place that He wants to heal.
It is very important to know that this can take some time, can be very tiring, and some of your own energy may go into the person too. So, be careful. If you pray for a long over a person or over too many people you may get sick yourself. The problem I describe in part two of this book were, according to my psychiatrist, caused by losing the energy I needed to kept a small psychic wound in place by praying over thousands and thousands of people.
Also, it is important to understand that it may that a few or even several prayer sessions before the person is completely healed. For some reason the healing love seems to stop after a certain amount of time. I seem to have a way of knowing when this happens, and if the person is not completely healed yet I will usually say something like, "You may need to come and see me again as it is not unusual for someone to need to be prayed over more than once."
If you experience good results from praying over your loved ones and would like to pray with people you do not know as well or have some type of ministry the would include people you have met for the first time, I suggest the following two books that will teach you how to do this: Power Healing by John Wimber and Learning To Do What Jesus Did by Michael Evans. Or, even better, order from Christian Healing Ministries - www.christianhealingmin.org - their set of CDs or DVDs from their School of Healing Prayer, or best of all take a group from your parish with you to Jacksonville for a week of training.
Can you imagine how much more alive, dynamics, and Christ like the Church would be if every parish in the United States had trained healing teams available? It is the main reason why in many parts of the world Protestant churches that have healing teams are growing in spectacular numbers at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church.
Healing Power
"Then Peter, filled with the holy Spirit, answered them, 'Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed."(Acts 4:8-10)
In chapter three of the Acts of the Apostle we hear that the people, in response to Peter and John's healing of the crippled man at the Beautiful Gate, "hurried in amazement toward them." Peter immediately set the record straight. . Men of Israel, why are you so shocked at [what happened to] this man? And why are you gazing at us, as though it were by our power or godly qualities that we caused him to walk? It was not by his own power that the man was healed, but by Jesus' "And by faith in his name, this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, and the faith that comes through it has given him this perfect health, in the presence of all of you."
A few years ago my physician told me that I should not pray over others for healing because it was my energy alone - being transferred to the person by my touch - that healed them, and I needed that energy for my own healing. This surprised me as I have always felt the way that Peter did and the way most healer do, that any healing that took place as result of prayer came not from me, but from Jesus' power passing through me. I remember after a parish mission in Atlanta, a young boy coming up to me with his grandmother and saying, "Father Bain prayed over me, but Jesus healed me."
So, I challenged my Doctor's belief that these healings by touch were not coming from God but solely from my own energy. In response to this, he asked me to participate in a little experiment which he felt would prove that he was right. He wondered if I would bring someone from my parish that I had been praying over for healing and he would measure the amount of energy coming from me as I laid hands on the person.
My doctor has an unusual gift. He can actually measure a person's energy. He does this by slowly moving his open palm down towards the patient's chest. When his palm feels the energy, he stops. If this happens far from the body then the patient's energy is high that day, and if it happens closer to the body then the patient's energy is low that day.
The following week I took with me a woman from my parish that had cancer. The doctor first spent two or three minutes measuring my energy in various parts of my body. He used a ruler for this and then wrote the measurements down. Next, he asked me to lay my hands on the parishioner and pray for healing. During this time he measured my energy again. Lastly, he told me to stop praying and he measured my energy a third time. After, with a look of amazement he studied his findings, suggested I sit down, and then he said, "This is not what I expected at all. Before you prayed your energy was about fifty percent. As you began to pray your energy dropped to twenty-five percent, just as I had expected. But then a few seconds later it increased to seventy-five percent and stayed like that all the while you were praying. When you stopped praying it returned to exactly where it was before you began praying."
My doctor's own experiment had proven him wrong. If it were only my energy that was going into the person, as the good doctor had believed it would be, then while I was praying over my parishioner my energy level would have gone down and stayed down all the while I was transferring my energy by touch. But, it didn't, it went up. Where did the extra energy come from, why did it disappear when I stopped praying, and whose energy was it?
I believe that when we lay hands on the sick and ask Jesus to heal them, His healing love begins to flow through us into the other person. And it is His love that heals. This gift is available to every baptized Christian. Please, use your healing gifts for the good of your sisters or brothers? Don't be shy. Don't doubt but thrust. Let God's healing love flow through you into you sick brother or sister. It is so beautiful, so simple, so easy, so loving, and so like Christ. Best of all, it is so fruitful.
How to Pray For Healing
"Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father." (John 14:12)
It is very easy to pray for healing of people you know and love. Simply place your hands on the part of the body that needs healing. So, for example if a person has arthritis of the shoulder let you hand rest there. Then either out loud or to yourself, I don't think it really makes a difference which, pray, "Lord Jesus, let my hand become your hand. Let your healing love flow through my hand into this shoulder and heal the arthritis. May it heal the muscle the tissues, the tendons, and remove any and all inflammation", and so on. Then in silence let you hand stay on the shoulder trusting that Jesus' healing love is flowing into the person. After about five minutes you might ask the person if they are feeling anything. Often they will tell you that they feel that your hand is warm or that heat is coming into their body and going directly to the pain. Ask them if the pain is any less intense or if they have move movement. If you get a positive response then keep your hand on their shoulder for perhaps five more minutes, and just keep repeating this until the person is completely healed. The former Catholic priest and famous healer Francis MacNutt, who started Christian Healing Ministries in Jacksonville, Florida, with his wife Judith once said, "If a little prayer helps, a little more prayer will help more."
When praying over a person of the opposite sex it is very important to avoid even the slightest inappropriate touch. When a male is praying over a female this would mean not touching areas such as the knees or the stomach. Once at that VA hospital there was a woman patient that was suffering tremendous pain in her stomach area. Of all the types of healing that I pray for, pain is the area where I get the most positive results. I placed my hands not on her stomach, but on her head when I prayed over her. She told me that she could feel heat coming from my hands and move directly down to the area of her stomach where that pains was and take it away. So, if the part of the body that needs the prayer is not appropriate to touch, it is just fine to place your hands on the persons head and trust that the healing love of Jesus will go right to the exact place that He wants to heal.
It is very important to know that this can take some time, can be very tiring, and some of your own energy may go into the person too. So, be careful. If you pray for a long period over a person or over too many people you may get sick yourself. My severe ringing in my ears that I describe in part two of this book was, according to my psychiatrist, caused by losing the energy I needed to keep a small psychic wound in place by praying over thousands and thousands of people. A year ago, we had a healing priest from India come to our area of the county. I was told that he was extremely gifted and prayed over many people. A month later I learned that he had cancelled all his healing services and was not even taking phone calls because he was suffering from severe tinnitus. When I first got very sick seven years ago, I was told that there were five other healing priests in other parts of the country that were at the present time also not praying over people because of illness. So again, be very careful. I would recommend that if you are tired or sick yourself that you do not pray over anyone until your full energy returns and you are well again.
Also, it is important to understand that it may take a few or even several prayer sessions before the person is completely healed. For some reason the healing love seems to stop after a certain amount of time. I seem to have a way of knowing when this happens, and if the person is not completely healed yet I will usually say something like, "You may need to come and see me again as it is not unusual for someone to need to be prayed over more than once."
If you experience good results from praying over your loved ones, and would like to pray with people you do not know as well, or have some type of ministry that would include people you have met for the first time, I suggest the following two books that will teach you how to do this: Power Healing by John Wimber and Learning To Do What Jesus Did by Michael Evans. Or, even better, order from Christian Healing Ministries - www.christianhealingmin.org - their set of CDs or DVDs from their School of Healing Prayer, and best of all, take a group from your parish with you to Jacksonville for a week of training. Can you imagine how much more alive, dynamics, and Christ like the Church would be if every parish in the United States had trained healing teams available for the sick?
Healing Hands
"They shall lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." (Mark 16:18)
One night I was watching a good movie on TV when my phone rang. It was a man who asked to stop by my rectory with his cousin on the way to the airport. She had been in the Bay Area for the last six months seeing a specialist about her back and now was returning home without success. The man wanted me to pray for his cousin's healing. As I was enjoying the movie, and this was before the DVR, I said no. (Just kidding; but that is what I wanted to say.)
As I was waiting for them to arrive I thought to myself what a waste of time this is. If one of the top specialists in the country cannot help his cousin, what makes him think that I can? At the time I really was not sure I had a special gift of healing. It is interesting, though, that every time I would seriously doubt my gift of healing and think that it was just circumstance that got me involved in the healing ministry, the phone would ring with someone who wanted to thank me because they got healed after I prayed over them.
When the man and his cousin arrived I tried to be nice, even though I was a little annoyed that both the woman's time and mine were being wasted for what I felt was no good reason. I remember thinking this is crazy, that he would risk his cousin missing her flight home just to stop by for a prayer from me. To make it appear that I really believed in the prayers, I kept my hand on her back longer than I ordinarily would, all the time not believing it would do any good. When I was finished praying, the cousin told us that she felt pain free for the first time in years. She was extremely grateful.
You always have to wonder if a healing is due to something like the placebo effect rather than the prayers. I really thought her pain would return. So, about six months later I called the man to find out how his cousin was doing. He reported that her back had been absolutely pain free since the moment I prayed over it.
There is a statue of Jesus in France that was damaged during the WWI; the hands were blown off by an explosion. After the war they were going to put new hands on the statue, but instead they left it as is and put a plaque under it which read, "I have no hands but yours." The next time you are with someone who needs healing, don't look at yourself wonder whether you have healing gifts or not; look to Jesus and let him use your hands. You will be amazed at the good that will come from them.
Cured or Healed?
"The rest of the sick on the island came to Paul and were cured." (Acts 28:)
A San Francisco firefighter was cured of lung cancer at one of our Masses for healing. A year later another firefighter from the same engine company contracted lung cancer. As you know, lung cancer is one of the worst kinds. The young man was afraid to die. He came to several of our masses, but was not cured. Months later I was told that the prayers and masses had really helped him a lot. He not only was able to accept his illness, he was actually looking forward to going home to the Father.
The first firefighter was cured, the second was healed. It is good to be cured; it is better to be healed.
Do you want to be well?
"When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be well'?" (John 5:1-4)
What a question, "Do you want to be well?" There are many reasons given as to why not everyone who seeks prayers for healing is healed, ranging from lack of faith to the need to forgive. ,Francis MacNutt has a list of more than twenty. Included in the list is, "You don't want to be healed." Jesus may have suspected that this was the sick man's problem, because he did not give him a chance to answer.
We can, without being aware, hang on to our illness for a multitude of reasons, from wanting to control someone, to wanting to avoid responsibilities, to just wanting attention. If you are like me, and have had an illness for a long time, it might be good to hear Jesus asking you the question, "Do you want to be well?"
Healing and Faith
"He said to them, 'Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matthew 17:20)
During my deacon year I gave a homily inviting people to come to me for healing prayer. It was explained that healing was very much part of our Catholic tradition and somehow had got lost until recently. I naively thought many would respond to this invitation, but only two people approached me. One was an elderly woman who had difficulty cleaning her home because of arthritis. The other was a woman who had difficulty seeing because of cataracts. The arthritis would be easy to heal. I had had great success praying with people with arthritis. The cataracts would not be easy to heal. They do not go away. There is no medication that can make them shrink or disappear. They need to be removed by surgery.
The woman with arthritis did not have much faith, whereas the woman with cataracts believed strongly that she would be healed. They both we were healed. The woman with the cataracts told me her eye doctor sent her to a specialist because he did not believe in prayer, and he knew there was no way the cataracts could disappear without surgery. The specialist was not able to find the cataract either. It was totally gone.
The next year, as a priest, I gave the same homily on healing. It seems that a deacon is twice as believable as a priest. This time only one person came to me. Her husband had a bad back, and was not able to walk.
The man looked at me like I was some sort of a nut. It was obvious he was just putting up with me to please his wife. But the expression in his face changed to amazement as the prayers took all his pain away. I suggested that he invite his entire family and his close friends to come and celebrate the sacrament of the sick with us. That took place two days later and at that time the man got up and walked.
In Matthew's gospel, Jesus said to his disciples, "…..I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you'." You see, it does not take much faith, but all the faith in the world will not move a thing if we are not open to being prayed over. Twenty-eight years later, I still wonder why a mere three people responded to my invitation for healing prayers. At least three thousand people heard the talk. Even more disturbing is the fact that so many people could be helped, and even better, come to know the love of God in a more direct and personal way, if more of us had even a little faith in healing prayer.
God's Way
"For in fire gold is tested and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation." (Sirach 2: 5)
A good friend in New York was telling me recently that everyone she knows is suffering. She has a very painful broken bone in her foot that is not healing. Another friend has a nerve problem that causes sharp pains to constantly run through her head and neck. Another friend has cancer. The list of woes goes on and on. All these people pray and are close to God. Why does He allow them to suffer?
Some Christians teach that it is God's will that there be no sickness. Suffering may sometimes be part of God's plan for us, but illness never is. It is God's will in each and every circumstance that we be healed of our afflictions. They then point to churches where all sorts of extraordinary healings and blessings are taking place thanks to this kind of belief.
The other explanation is that God's ways are not our ways. There is sometimes a reason for our illnesses beyond our understanding. Jacob Needleman in his book Lost Christianity has a great analogy to help us understand this.
"Imagine that you are a scientist and you have before you the object known as an acorn. Let us further imagine that you have never before seen such an object and that you certainly do not know that it can grow into an oak. You carefully observe these acorns day after day and soon you notice that after a while they crack open and die. Pity! How to improve the acorn? So chemical analyses of the material inside the accord and, after much effort, you succeed in isolating the substance that controls the condition of the shell. Lo and behold, you are now in the position to produce acorns which will list far longer than the others, acorns whose shells will perhaps never crack. Beautiful."
But, what would such an acornologist say about this? A man came to me who wanted to take his life. He had severe ringing in the ears. I prayed over him everyday for over six months, but it only gave him the grace to live for another day. Years later he reminded me of this and then said, "Father I would never want anyone to go though what I did, but I am glad the Lord did not heal me when you prayed over me. You see, at the time I was a very hard man, hard on my wife and hard on my friends. The severe ringing in my ears brought me to my knees and softened me. I am a much happier man today because I suffered that way for six months."
Mysteriously, the Father allowed His Son Jesus to suffer. He allowed those who followed Jesus, St. Paul, St. Peter, and the other apostles, to suffer. He allowed the Saints to suffer. Should we not expect God to not allow those who seek to be close to Him to suffer too?
Are those who claim that illness is never a part of God's plan for our growth nothing more than acornologists? Or, are those of us who accept our illness as part of God's will in the whole mystery of suffer just flat-out wrong? Which is correct?
The book of Sirach can give us a clue. It speaks about trials, adversity, sorrows, and crushing misfortune. It then goes on to explain: "For in fire gold and silver are tested and worthy people in the crucible of humiliation."
It seems that misfortunes, including illness, contrary to what reason may suggest, or some Christians may believe, can sometimes be a gift from God to test our worthiness. St. Vincent de Paul said, "What was the life of Christ but a perpetual humiliation?"
How sad for the person who was cured due to a strongly held conviction, but at the cost of losing the gift of the crucible of humiliation that God had given her. I read once of a man who was healed of blindness at a faith-filled healing session. Two weeks later he was moved to ask in prayer if the healing was what was best for his salvation. He seemed to get an answer that said it was not. He then prayed that the blindness return and it did. Maybe this is why St. Francis of Assisi on his death bed threw out of his room the Brother that came to pray that Francis be relieved of his suffering.
Personally, I think it is absurd to hold that every kind of trial, adversity, sorrow, and crushing misfortune expect suffering due to illness can be part of the crucible of humiliation. Yet, I also believe that God wants us to pray and expect to be healed. Because of this I think it is important to always seek healing, never give up. Francis MacNutt tells the story of his daughter. She suffered for many years from asthma. He and his wife and many member of his healing team in Jacksonville prayed over her numerous times but to no avail. Then one day a stranger at the healing center prayed over the girl and she was instantly healed. So, again keep seeking healing pray and never give up. And if your prayers are not answered, trust that there is a non-acornologist reason.
The Blessed Sacrament and Healing
"If we deny him, he will deny us; if we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself." (2 Timothy 12-13)
A woman came to me who had a rash on a very sensitive part of her body. It had been there for five years. She had seen numerous doctors and none were able to help her. I asked her if anything stressful in her life had happened at the time the rash appeared. She said her boy had disappeared completely from her life. The boy had been the apple of her eye. He was any mother's dream, well behaved and an excellent student. She just loved him so much. Problems with the boy began when he started school at the University of California. There he met and fell in love with a woman a few years older than he. Both were on drugs and eventually they moved in with each other. In time the son stopped going to church and dropped out of school.
I asked her how she responded to this. She said she did everything she could to get her son to stop drugs, leave the girl, go back to the sacraments, and return to school. As she was explaining this, it became clear to me that the problem was hers and not the boy's. She was inordinately possessive of her son and needed to let go.
So, I told her, "We want what is best for our children, so of course we are not pleased when they embrace a life style that is destructive. At the same time it is their life and there is not much we can do about it. We can never condone their sinful, destructive behavior, and there is nothing wrong with letting them know we do not approve. But, at the same time we need to communicate that we understand they are adults, it is their life, and we will love them no matter what. It is hard for a mother who loves her son as much as you do to let go like that. I suggest that you spend one hour each day in a Catholic Church praying before the Blessed Sacrament." (The Blessed Sacrament is the Eucharist, the bread that has been consecrated at Mass and is believed by Catholics to no longer be bread, but the actual Body, Blood and Divinity of Jesus Christ. This consecrated bread is kept in a small box called the tabernacle in the center of the church.) "Just sit there at the feet of Jesus and let him fill you with love for your son. In time your feelings will change. You will notice that even though you still don't approve of his behavior, you love him just the same or maybe more."
The woman returned a few months later and reported that the rash was still there and as painful as ever. She also said that there was no change in her attitude. I told her that she needed to continue making her daily Holy Hour. A few months after that she let me know that the rash had finally disappeared. She said that one day while in church praying she suddenly realized that she was accepting her son the way he is. She still did not approve of his lifestyle, but she loved him the same. Then she shared with me the real kicker: "Father, yesterday my boy called me for the first time in five years and asked if we could get together."
St. Paul wrote, "If we deny him, he will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself." Divine healing love is poured into our hearts when we pray in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
Healed of Smoking
"I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me." (Philippians 4:13)
In 1975 I quit smoking cigarettes. Four years later I was in my classmate Herman's room at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California, a few months before we would be ordained deacons. Herman was a Carmelite monk. He was more prayerful, other worldly, and holier than those of us who were studying to be secular priests. So, I was sort of shocked when I found him in his room smoking a cigarette. My response was, "Herman, I did not know you smoked." "I don't." he said, "but I am nervous about the evaluations that they may not let me be ordained a deacon." I said, "Give me one of those cigarettes, I'm nervous too." Three days later I was buying my own cigarettes and found myself unable to quit.
At first I was I confident that when I was ordained a deacon I would quit smoking. But my ordination came and went, and still I was not able to quit. This became hard for me. I did not want to smoke. As the year went on I would think, "Surely I will quit when I am ordained a priest." But that ordination came and went and still I could not quit. This was so frustrating for me because I have been blessed with tremendous will power.
It was clear that I could not quit on my own; I needed God's help. So, on Pentecost Sunday of that year I prayed to the Holy Spirit. "Today is the birthday of the Church. Please give me a birthday present. Take away my desire for cigarettes." My prayer was answered. Not only was the desire for smoking taken from me, but my whole system, body, and memory, was restored to a state of one who had never smoked. For example, in the past when I quit smoking I would enjoy being around a smoker when he or she would blow smoke in the air. No longer, as now cigarette smoke smelled terrible to me.
A message seemed to come with the healing. "Dick, you are now a non-smoker. Non-smokers never take a puff of a cigarette; they have no desire to do so. If you take one puff of a cigarette ever again you will lose the healing." I don't know if those words were from the Lord or my imagination, but they are the perfect words of advice for anyone who wants to quit smoking.
Over the years I have shared this healing several times in my parish mission talks. More than a few people have told me that after hearing this story they made the same prayer to the Holy Spirit and were healed of their addition to cigarettes.
Pray, Preach, Forgive, Heal
"Jesus summoned the Twelve gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." (Luke 9:1-2)
A few years back we lost a tremendous priest in our diocese. His name was Jack Isaacs. He worked as a missionary in Peru in the 1980s when the people there were literally starving to death because a certain powerful First World country's banks were forcing the people to grow cash crops rather than food crops. After retuning from Peru his diet consisted mainly of peanut butter sandwiches. I asked him why he ate like that. His answer was that he felt the protein in the peanuts was good for him and he liked the taste. I think the real reason was that it was the best way he knew to personally conserve food for the millions of starving people in the world. I also think his poor diet caused his early death.
Father Isaacs told me that he had become very close to one of the villagers, whom he described as an intellectual. The man was not Christian but had read a lot about our faith. One day he had a question for Jack. "I read in your Bible that Jesus after prayer did three things. He preached, he forgave sins, and he healed. My understanding is that Catholics believe their priests to be 'another Christ.' I see priests, preaching, hearing confessions, and yet I do not see them healing. Why is this so?"
I would say, the vast majority of priests do not pray over their parishioners for healing because they were never taught about the connection between the ministry of healing in the life of Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Church and their ministry. It is not truly amazing that the words "healed" is found numerous times in the Gospels, yet is not found in the index of either the Catechism of the Council of Trent or the new Catechism of the Catholic Church? Shockingly, it's almost as if the last two great councils of the Catholic Church did not believe the whole Gospel message.
Francis MacNutt in his book, The Early Church Would Not Believe It, explores this extraordinary disconnect in depth. He explains why healing, something so central to Jesus' own heart, something so essential to the spreading of the Gospel, has nearly been lost in the Church.
In John's gospel Jesus says to the apostles, "Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them." We can ring any rectory doorbell in the world seeking forgiveness and the priest is expected by the Church to drop whatever he is doing to hear our confession. Luke's gospel tells us, "And he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick." We can ring any rectory doorbell in the world seeking healing and the priest is expected by the Church… Well, let's pray that healing becomes as central to the Church's ministry as it was to Jesus'.
Two Healings
"Then they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news and curing diseases everywhere." (Luke 9:16)
In 1985 we had a Mass for healing at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. Thanks to a lot of media coverage more than 4000 people packed the church. For more than two hours ten priests gave individual blessings for healing while five priests heard confessions. The most powerful healing during the service came to two individuals who were not inside the cathedral at the time.
A woman with a crippling condition was continually encouraged by her co-workers to attend the Mass to the point where she finally made a decision to go. But, first she had to drive to her home in the East Bay to take care of her mother who had cancer. She was really tired when she got home and the only reason she went to the Mass for healing was to avoid having to explain to everyone at work on Monday why she did not go. Arriving late, and with more than 4,000 people already in the cathedral, she found herself having to park blocks away. It was very difficult for her to walk. When she finally reached the cathedral and placed her foot on the first step she was instantly healed. Prayers were offered during the Mass for friends and relatives who were not able to attend the Mass. When the woman got home she found her mother completely healed of the cancer.
One of the reasons why I like this story is because it challenges more than a few popular beliefs about healing. One, it shows that you do not need to have a big time healer pray over you for healing. Both the woman and her mother were healed without a healer laying a hand on them. Two, it shows that you can be healed with out great faith. The woman went to the Mass not because she believed that she was going to be healed, but to avoid having to explain to her co-workers on Monday why she did not attend. And three, it does not allow for a placebo explanation. The mother did not know that 4000 Christians were praying for her.
Prayer, Time, and Space
"The royal official said to him, 'Sir, come down before my child dies.' Jesus said to him, 'You may go; your son will live'." (John 4: 49-50)
Several years ago a woman came to me asking for help with her daughter who was planning to have an abortion, because the baby was upside down in the womb, a "breech baby." I asked the mother if she had a picture of her daughter, which she did. I placed my hands on the picture and prayed silently for twenty or thirty seconds. Then I told the woman to ask her daughter go to her doctor for another examination. A few years later, before one of the healing services the woman came up to me and reported that her daughter did not have the abortion as the baby was found to be right side up.
A woman asked me to pray over a picture of her son who was very depressed from just having broken up with his girl friend. At the moment he was thirty-five miles away working in his office. That evening he came home and told his mother that he fainted at the office and was taken to the hospital. Finding nothing wrong with him the hospital released him. She asked her son at what time he fainted. It was at the exact moment I prayed over his picture. In John's gospel the royal official's son was healed even though Jesus did not go to him. It seems that healing prayer is not limited by space.
Heart patients in England who had been discharged from the hospital six months previously were divided into two groups. One group began receiving prayers from members of local churches and the other group did not. Then, the medical records of the two groups were compared. Amazingly, the patients who received prayers six months after being discharged had fewer complications and shorter stays while in the hospital than the group not receiving prayers. Thus, it appears that prayers in the present can have an effect on the past and thus not limited to time.
If indeed prayer is not limited by time or space then it must be true that God, the receiver of prayers, is in eternity.
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God
Is there a God?
"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1)
Light, as you know, travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second or 700 million miles per hour. The nearest star is 4.6 light years away from our sun. The farthest star is estimated to be 25 billion light years away. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a diameter of about 120,000 light years more than200 billion stars. The universe has a diameter of 156 billion light years, 200 billion galaxies, and more than 70 sextillion stars - that is 70 thousand million million million, or 7 followed by 22 zeros - which means there are about 10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts. (wow oh wow!) Yet, the universe twenty-four hours after the Big Bang, 13.6 billion years ago, had a diameter of only one light year. These are numbers that the mind obviously cannot come close to comprehending.
Discoveries over the last forty years about the Big Bang and the formation of the universe, especially from radio telescopes and the Hubble, have most scientists agreeing that the odds of our universe existing the way it does by chance are so incredibly small as to be virtually impossible. Yet, the majority of these men and women are atheist. They have had to formulate new theories that allow for chance. Some now hold that there are billions of other universes beyond ours. A few don't want to deal with either chance or a Creator, and so they believe that there are an infinite number of universes beyond ours.
It is not possible for scientists to see beyond the other side of the outer shell of our universe or know anything of what may have existed before the Big Bang. They can only guess about these things. It seems strange indeed, to me, that some of these men and women can, therefore, so dogmatically proclaim that there is no God. Albert Einstein as a scientist had doubts about the existence a Creator, but as a human being he knew that science cannot answer the God question. He said, "It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."
None of us, not even the most brilliant scientist or theologian, knows for certain if there is a God or not. We will only know for sure when we get to the next world, that is if there is one, and if there is not, well, we will never know. Right now we only have a choice, either to believe or not to believe. Whether we chose not to believe or to believe in something greater than ourselves, we can always find more than enough reasons to support our belief. That is why it is so fascinating when two equally brilliant scientists, from the same fields, and with the same education, fiercely debate this subject.
Charles de Foucauld, the founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus, shows us perhaps, a clearer way to find God. He lived in nineteenth century Catholic France where as an adolescent from a wealthy family he lost his faith. Deeply hurt in romance he joined the French Foreign Legion and was sent to Morocco where he saw the lively faith of the Moslems. He decided that he wanted to believe in God. Back in Paris he began daily to spend long hours in St. Augustine Church sitting in silence. His simple prayer was, "My God, if you exist, make me know you." It took six months of prayer before his faith returned. When it did he said, "As soon as I believed in God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than to live for him alone."
Peter van Breemen, S.J. in The God Who Won't Let Go, tells us that the Desert Fathers and Mothers (The Desert Fathers were Christian Hermits, Ascetics and Monks who lived mainly in the desert of Egypt, beginning in about the third century) compared this experience of praying for God to make Himself known with the situation of hounds who chase a hare. "One dog spots the hare; then it barks excitedly and starts running. Other dogs hear the barking and join in the chase. But sooner or later, the dogs who only heard the barking give up. Those who have seen the hare, however, keep running. It is an apt image for our prayer: whoever prays only because he has heard the barking of others without seeing anything himself will not persevere."
This analogy describes the pain of many honest seekers. They live on the "barking of others, and in the long run that is simply not enough." Father van Breemen then writes, "But when we wait with open hands and undefended hearts, God does come."
Having been an atheist at one time myself and now a theist, I can tell you there is much more joy, satisfaction, peace, and fulfillment in being a theist. There are moments in prayer when I feel so very satisfied and complete as God's love touches the very depth of my being that I can only think, "Oh, how spiritually deprived is that person who does not know the love of God in prayer." My suggestion to any atheist is to find a church or other holy place and wait there for God to touch you, even if it takes months. There is no greater gift than faith in a loving, personal God.