Healing Ministry

A week ago I participated in a healing service, a ministry I organized with another priest of our diocese and the deacon of my former assignment.  It was truly lovely to see so many showing their trust in God’s healing love as they came for Confession, holy Mass, and to be prayed for by the participating priests, deacons, and lay members of our healing ministry team.

The hurt that exists in so many lives is truly something terrible to behold.  But where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more!  And so, it is truly humbling to be a minister of God’s healing love – in the confessional, offering holy Mass, and in praying over those who present themselves for prayers of healing.

The healing that has taken place over these past couple of years since we began this ministry in Cashton has spanned the spectrum of human suffering.  People have reported to us healing from spiritual afflictions, emotional and psychological afflictions, as well as physical issues.  And we praise God for his loving kindness

I ask your prayers as we organize a healing ministry in this north-west region of the diocese.  Fr. Bob Thorn, a senior priest of the diocese has been engaged in healing ministry in the Wausau area for about 20 years now.  The healing ministry in Cashton has been operating for two years.  That leaves this region of the diocese with need of such a ministry.  Bishop Battersby has given his enthusiastic permission for such a ministry.  And so, over the next two Mondays I will be meeting first with interested clergy, and then those lay-people interested in beginning the formation and prayer necessary to form a prayer team and healing ministry in our part of the diocese.

I am hoping that we can have our first “Night of Healing” late next winter.  But, this will depend on how the formation of our local prayer team comes along as well as the availability of members of our other two diocesan teams to assist us in the first go around.

So, your prayers, acts of penance, and fasting are asked in support of this badly needed and necessary ministry.