HEALING IS THE binding together of the disintegrated personality into a new, transformed whole. Healing results in a true wholeness of the person which allows him to approach the transcendent holiness of God in intimacy and love.
We have been considering how the Holy Spirit regenerates the personality by infusing its dark recesses, brought courageously into the light of truth, with His power, so that what was formerly a source of shame and secrecy can now unfold into its true nature as a part of the creation of God. This is the beginning of the healing process and also its heart. The true Spirit works from within outwards. As the soul is cleared of the debris that occludes the Spirit within it, so the mind is sharpened and cleansed, and the body invigorated and renewed. The Holy Spirit is the power that integrates; He does not concentrate exclusively on one part of the personality, leaving the remainder without care. In this respect He differs from al1 the secondary agencies of healing, whether medical, psychotherapeutic, or psychic, which apply themselves predominantly to one part of the personality.
This means that the Spirit acts slowly and progressively. But what about the healing miracles ascribed to Jesus and His disciples? These surely were rapid if not instantaneous. And were the people involved really healed? As far as the scanty scriptural record tells us - and we know little of their subsequent progress - they were cured of various diseases and infirmities. But cure of a physical or mental disability is not to be equated with healing of the personality. Jesus Himself, on more than one occasion, warns the person not to sin any more. If the healing had been complete, this warning would have been unnecessary. The person could never have returned to past inadequate ways of thought. But Jesus did not come to effect miraculous changes in people by intruding into their private lives and forcing them to turn to God. He knew and respected the integrity of every person He encountered. He wanted a free response acting by means of an informed, renewed will. He did not come to take people over by dominating them. His healing ministry was primarily one of spontaneous compassion, as for instance in the cure of the leper described at the end of the first chapter of St Mark's Gospel. He also healed to teach some important spiritual truth, as in the story of the man with a withered arm (Mark 3:1-6), where He demonstrated that acts of compassion took precedence even over observance of the Sabbath. His healing power and miraculous acts were, furthermore, a demonstration that the kingdom of God was close at hand, which was the Good News from God that He proclaimed right at the beginning of His ministry. (Mark 1:15) He showed the way to the kingdom but He never forced people to enter it. On the other hand, He taught that the road that leads to life is hard and its gate narrow, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:14) The Spirit Who proceeds from the Father and the Son is the life giver, but no one is obliged to receive the life He brings. Jesus came so that men might have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10), but no one was ever coerced into accepting Him.
When Jesus performed His healing ministry, He gave the afflicted their first experience of God's love. They were afforded their first glimpse of the Kingdom through the person of Christ and His act of divine compassion to them. Not all responded even if they were cured of their illness; in the instance of the ten lepers, only one returned to give thanks to God (Luke 17: 11-19), while the others took the gift for granted, and were as unhealed in themselves after their encounter with Jesus as before. But of those who responded in gratitude to Him, how many stayed the course and supported Him during His passion? Even His disciples ran away then. It was the later events of the Resurrection and the downpouring of the Holy Spirit that continued the healing initiated by Jesus while serving on earth. When their end was near, as often as not in martyrdom, they bore witness to a healing of the whole person that was of a different order to that started by the Incarnate Lord. Until the healing wrought by His Spirit is seen in this radical context, the Ministry of Healing will be a truncated, impotent thing.
When Jesus performed His healing work, His two great sayings were, "Your sins are forgiven" and "Your faith has cured you." Forgiveness and faith are the foundation stones of healing. They are complementary parts of the inner humility that is a prerequisite for receiving the grace of God. Faith is a state of being open to life's potentialities; by it the righteous man will live. (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans l:l7) It is not to be identified primarily even with a belief in a personal God, since some images of God are so dangerous psychologically that they fill the afflicted person with fear, guilt, and a sense of such utter unworthiness that he cannot begin to accept any healing or love. There is a close connection between faith and our ability to make relationships with others - our fellow men, the world around us, and the unseen hosts of eternity. I cannot begin to relate to anybody until I have a solid basis of personal identity. Until this has been attained, I will drift helplessly and never be able to perceive the concern for me of those around me, Let alone yield myself to God's personal love. Faith is a giving of oneself in trust to the process of life, to the cosmic flow that orders all things aright. As I proceed in the venture of life, so I will come to a deeper knowledge of myself, light and dark elements mixing to form an intricate mosaic of personality. The knowledge, and the bringing together of the pieces of the mosaic, is given to me by God's love through the power of His Spirit. This is the way in which the injunction "Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened" (Matthew 7:7) is fulfilled. As I become more open, more trusting, and less enclosed, so the Spirit enters me from without and radiates within me.
This faith has nothing to do with a blind, compulsive belief in the personality of anyone (including even God, seen in a personal mode), or in some system of metaphysics, or in an occult power. It is rather a relaxation of the entire personality in the warmth of life, admitting my own ignorance but at the same time affirming a belief in my supreme importance in the scheme of things. As I wait in quiet expectation, so the strengthening warmth of the Spirit infuses me, and I begin to glimpse something of the nature of God in my life. He strengthens me and fills me with the courage to proceed in life's quest for healing. I repeat: there is no necessity for positive thoughts in this process. One need affirm no principle nor proclaim any system of belief. All that is needful is to be empty of personal conceit and to give of oneself unreservedly to the life of that moment.
What one receives in this act of childlike openness is beyond description. It is an encounter with the Living God, Who comes to us in a personal mode of being, so as to emphasise to us the supreme value of persons.
The forgiveness of sins is a natural result of the faith that will not shrink from exposure of the self to God, "to whom all hearts are open, al1 desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid." Of course He knows, but how often we play a private game of hide-and-seek with Him, pretending that we can deceive or dupe Him into condoning a false action! All we are doing, in fact, is deceiving ourselves. When we can face our diseased nature in full unashamed honesty, He can enter our lives in the form of His Spirit and show His eternal love for us. The forgiveness of sins at once removes all feelings of guilt. It goes beyond rational explanations or clinical analyses of past circumstances. It is as spontaneous as the joyous welcome given to the Prodigal Son by his father, who asked no questions and made no demands.
As we are forgiven, so a new principle enters our lives, the supremacy of love. We are now moved in our actions neither by fear nor a sense of duty but by such an overruling concern for others that only their well-being matters to us. In other words, the forgiveness of sins does not annul the consequences of sin. On the contrary, only when we know we are forgiven can we start to put right the damage caused by our past selfishness and thoughtlessness. And this new approach to relationships with others is not obsessive in intensity so that we overwhelm them with our guilt-ridden concern; it is calm, peaceful, and benevolent so that a feeling of trust can develop between all the people concerned. I am convinced that this is the pattern of growth in the purifying life of the world to come. The risen Christ, by His atoning sacrifice for the world's sins, raises the consciousness of all who are open to His love so that a real change of heart and mind, a "metanoia," occurs. Then we can Start to atone for what was imperfect in our attitudes to the world and to our brothers. It follows therefore that faith makes us open to God's unreserved forgiveness, and the fruit of this is a changed response to the world, which is made manifest in good works. Works that come directly from the personal self are inevitably tainted with selfish motives, such as the need for recognition, the will to dominate others (allegedly for their own good), and the asuaging of feelings of guilt over past actions. This is true even when the works in question seem beyond reproach. But when works proceed from undemanding love for others, a love that has a divine origin, they set in train a sequence of benefits that bless giver and receiver alike. For then there is the divine-human collaboration which is the pre-requisite for all fruitful action.
This matter of divine-human collaboration is of vital importance in understanding the healing work of the Holy Spirit. He acts as a mediator between two or more people. He is the very basis of a loving relationship. In an I-Thou relationship, the Spirit is the third person. In the I-It relationship of selfish life, there is really no relationship as such at all. The object, which is frequently another person in this context, is used by the dominant subject without any acknowledgement of its integrity: It exists only to serve the subject. But when it is accepted as something of eternal meaning in its own right, the subject cherishes it and brings it to himself. And then the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, infuses both with new life, so that each moves beyond the ephemeral to the eternal.
In a therapeutic relationship between analyst and analysand, the same truth holds. It is well-recognised that the healing wrought by the analytic process is not so much the bringing to light of hidden damaging memories from the unconscious as the creative relationship between the two persons. The analyst frequently substitutes for a parent figure who, perhaps for the first time in the analysand's life, is able to give love and recognition to him. As I have already emphasised, a mere intellectual understanding of the part past difficulties in relationships have played in our present malaise, does not in itself necessarily dispel that malaise and bring us to greater integration. It is the inscrutable work of the Spirit of God, Who binds up that which is broken, that leads us to a new understanding of the importance of past experiences in our growth to full humanity.
This Spirit works best in human relationships. Even Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist when the Spirit descended fully on Him, and He took His three closest disciples with Him both to the Mount of Transfiguration and the Garden of Gethsemane. On neither occasion did they show the slightest understanding of what they were witnessing - indeed during the Agony in the Garden they were asleep to the reality of the unfolding drama - but their presence must have strengthened Jesus for the trials to come. When the Spirit comes to us in solitude, even then we may be less alone than we believe. Surely the Communion of Saints is always available to us if we are available to God. This is an important aspect of the work of the Holy Spirit that we will have to consider later.
The healing Spirit never remains stationary. He impels us onwards to the fulfilment of what we came in to attain. This is to become as perfect in ourselves as we see manifest in the person of Christ. In other words, healing is not concerned merely with the removal of a present illness or aberration, or even with making us more adapted to our present situation by infusing us with greater peace and forbearance. All this is certainly important, but in itself it does not lead us onward into the hidden country of santification. The Holy Spirit is that divine discontent that drives all creative persons on to their full stature as sons of God. He will allow the artist to be content with nothing less than a masterpiece that mirrors its divine source in an earthly medium, be it in the music, shape, or word. In the throes of his work, the scientist will sacrifice comfort and ease in order to penetrate the deepest secrets of the world in the service of truth. But the greatest masterpiece within human range is the perfect life. What great art presages is made real in the full life of man, the life indeed of a full man. No wonder St Irenaeus could say that "the glory of God is a living man," a man grown in the stature of Christ. Anyone who has received a mark of healing from the Spirit, whether this mark be physical, mental or emotional, is now obliged to lead a new life. This is the price paid for truly spiritual healing.
If the payment is not forthcoming, the mark of healing is withdrawn, and "the evil spirit returns with seven others to possess a psyche cleaned and ready to receive them." This statement applies not only to healing that has been given charismatically or sacramentally, and therefore has a "spiritual" aura about it. It applies equally to the healing of disease by medical or psychotherapeutic means. From this we gain the important insight that the failure of health which caused us to learn about the deepest realities of life is the beginning of true salvation. What a paradox it is that our failure of normal health is the beginning of real inner healing! Disease is potentially the Spirit's first agency of healing, in that it takes us beyond restricted, selfish ways of thought, and brings us to the mountain of purification. Until, as a result of the illness or suffering, we have glimpsed something of the truth about ourselves, especially the motives that dominate our Lives and the selfishness that has been the Central theme of our existence, we are in no position to receive full healing.
Jesus said to the man who had been crippled for thirty eight years, "Do you want to recover?" (John 5: 1-15). This seems a strange question; surely the man who waited to be immersed in the healing waters of the Pool whose name was Bethesda desired healing above all else. Yet Jesus with His profound psychic sensitivity and psychological understanding knew that there was a deep fear of the consequences of health in this man despite his sincere longing to be made well. This is the human dilemma. The present state of things is what we really want because it makes no great demands on us. Indeed, a state of persistent ill health is an insidious excuse for an attitude of passive resignation to the difficulties of life. We can retreat into inadequacy instead of facing the challenge of constantly changing circumstances around us. Let me say at once that this cringing approach to the demands of a full life is nearly always unconscious. If only it could be brought into the open, we would be able to deal with it much more effectively. To attain health necessitates moving from an attitude of passive subservience to outer events and a dependence on other people to a condition of active, willed response to the world's demands. As I have already noted, the Holy Spirit moves us onwards. When He is involved, He does not relinquish us unless we relinquish Him, in which case He leaves us at the mercy of every possible difficulty and derangement. This is one reason why it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31 ). The cripple's life was certainly changed by his encounter with Jesus; not only was his physical defect cured, but he was also brought face to face with the challenge of religious orthodoxy. Furthermore - and most important of all - there was Jesus' later injunction, "Leave or your sinful ways, or you may suffer something worse." In other words, the thoughtless, selfish way of life that this man led, in common with his fellows, was no longer enough. He had now to show the power of the Spirit in his own life by becoming an agent of love and healing.
It is not surprising that most people practising what they dubiously call "spiritual healing" restrict themselves to a particular aspect of healing practice and look merely for an amelioration of some symptom. Seldom do they concern themselves with the full person. If they did, they would have to reflect rather more soberly on the course of their own lives than they were normally accustomed to do. This would reveal their own inner disorder, and few would be prepared to face it, 1et alone do something about it. It is much easier and far more agreeable to proffer healing to others than to have the humility to seek healing for oneself. "Physician, heal thyself" is the challenge of all who aspire to the spiritual life. If we can face our unhealed state with honesty and courage, we can, through that very incompleteness within us, act as remarkable instruments of God's grace. Our very lack of wholeness, once acknowledged, can bring us close to others, and by giving them something that we can ill afford, both they and we can grow in spiritual stature.
The widow's mite may well have contributed more to the coming of the Kingdom of God than the large sums of the rich and socially eligible people who frequented the Temple in Jerusalem. The Spirit works, as I have already noted, through people. But the people who are most filled with that Spirit are those who are emptiest of self-opinionation and arrogance, even the arrogance for God that is a feature of some types of dogmatic religion.