Prayer is a Part of Healing – Healing 2024

Summary

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How is prayer a part of healing? Healing is not simply eliminating pain; it’s about becoming whole again and it cannot be done apart from God. Jake Khym delves into this question by sharing timeless truths of theologians and the saints and inviting you to ponder their words in your own prayer.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“Whoever truly wishes to heal man must see him in his wholeness and must know that his ultimate healing can only be God’s love.”

Father John Horn

1. St. Teresa of Avila said: “Prayer…is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” When I go to prayer, am I with an intimate friend? Do I know that God loves me? Do I believe I am loveable? Why or why not?

2. Healing is not merely pain going away; it’s the process by which God “loves us back into right order”. With this in mind, what does/could healing look like in your life right now?

3. Fr. John Horn writes: “When carefully appreciating and encountering this attractive love of God, one develops a relationship with God that infuses healing.” Where have I encountered God’s love today? Do I find God’s love attractive? Do I express regular gratitude and appreciation for God and His love? Do I struggle to be grateful?

4. Have you seen the role prayer has played in your healing?

Text: Prayer is a Part of Healing

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Hello, my name is Jake Khym, I am happy to be with you where today we’re going to talk about how prayer is a part of healing. But let’s start with a prayer.

Opening Prayer

 In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Jesus, you are here. We draw our attention to you. We give this time to you and we trust you. I ask that you would bless us and open our hearts that in this time we would encounter your love. We love you Jesus. In your name, we pray, in the name of the Father, and of the son, and of the and Holy Spirit, Amen. 

The Link Between Prayer and Healing

So like I said, how is prayer a part of healing? Well, here’s what I want to do. I want to give you a very simple answer because you can take some very simple points or truths from what we know that Jesus has revealed and what the church teaches us. And the answer’s pretty simple, but that would be boring for me to just talk to you for a few seconds and then that’s it. So what I’d actually, what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you a lot of quotes and why I am giving you these quotes is because it’s a way for us to take these truths that I’m going to be listing out for you. And then with these truths, you can actually sit with them and pray with them yourself. So simple answer and then a bunch of quotes that explain how prayer is a part of healing. But the goal is not just to give you a bunch of quotes. 

The goal is for you to take these and actually spend time with them in prayer. Okay? So first of all, how is prayer a part of healing? It’s very simple. Prayer is being an engaging and a loving relationship with God. Healing is being loved back into wholeness and being restored in and through love. So prayer is healing because we’re being loved back into wholeness. It’s maybe like you took a logic class back, you know, whenever you were in school or maybe you’re still in school. 

So it’s pretty simple prayer’s, a loving relationship with God. Healing is being loved back into wholeness. So prayer is healing because it loves us back into wholeness. Alright? Pretty simple, but it doesn’t give us a lot of flesh. It doesn’t give us a lot of stuff to work with. And so I want to give you some things to actually sit with and ponder. And as the quotes come up, I’ll try to throw in random questions that you can actually take and use in your time of prayer. Or I’ll offer some commentary on the actual quote to hopefully flesh it out and give us some more substance. But the goal of this is to actually pray. 

So here’s the fun part, we could watch this whole talk or you could watch it and I could give it, and none of us actually pray. And that would kind of be defeating the whole point of this. We can learn about prayer and not actually pray. We can talk about prayer and not actually pray. We can even know a lot about Jesus and not actually pray. The real goal here is to actually pray. And so that’s the win I’m hoping for, for the both of us. So I’m going to give you a bunch of quotes, but before I do that, I want to show you why quotes and thinking and you know, kind of truths are a wonderful part of prayer. And I’m going to do that by quoting some of the saints. 

A Quote From Saint Teresa Avila 

So here’s quote number one, Saint Teresa Avila. And the way of perfection says this, “If you cannot meditate, reflect upon some simple truths of our holy faith and let your heart remain in peace.” It’s amazing. So what she’s basically saying is, if you’re struggling to meditate, which is the primary action of what we do in prayer, it’s called mental prayer. So the primary thing we’re doing is meditating. We’re putting a truth before us and paying attention to it. But if we find that hard, what she’s saying is just put some simple truth of our faith in front of you. Reflect on it, think about it, read it, and then let your heart remain in peace. In other words, take the quote, read it over, but don’t worry about it. Don’t stress, don’t freak out, just pay attention to it. The good will happen. 

A Quote From Saint Josemaría Escrivá

Okay, now this next one from Saint Josemaría Escrivá, he says, “Don’t neglect your spiritual reading. Reading has made many saints.” That’s amazing. So what, what I’m offering to you is a bunch of little snippets from spiritual reading and he’s saying reading is made many saints. So, alright, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, that’s what we’re about to do. Here we go, we’re going to do it. So to really get into this whole thing of wise prayer healing, we first need to talk about what is prayer and we need to talk about what is healing. And I’m going to give you those quotes and then I’m going to give you some that link prayer and healing. Alright, so first let’s start with prayer. 

Quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

The catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 2559 says this, “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.” Okay? It’s pretty simple is what the Church is saying. And here I think they’re quoting Saint John Damascene, if I’ve said his name right, but you can double check me on that. “Prayer is raising one’s heart and mind to God.” So it’s actually not hard to do, it’s just becoming aware, paying attention to God. That’s what attention is kind of raising one’s mind and heart. That would be like putting our attention on God or they say or requesting good things from God. 

So yeah, you know, when we watch a kid go, God, can I have a big ice cream cone and that’s prayer. and it sounds silly and but often we can become super critical of our prayer and make it way more complex than it needs to be. It’s just drawing our attention to God and requesting things from God. That’s prayer. You’re, praying when you’re doing that. Okay, awesome. 

Here’s another one on prayer Catechism. Paragraph 2739 “Transformation of the praying heart is the first response to our petition.” So back in the previous quote, requesting good things from God that could be called petition. So what is the first response that God does to our petition? Transforms the praying heart. Now have you ever noticed that when you ask for something from God, He doesn’t always automatically do it? And then have we never wondered like, why are you doing this? 

Well the church is saying very clearly because the first response to petition is the transformation of the praying heart. Right here, I mean I’ve kind of slipped it in; We’re already talking about healing. When we’re asking for things from God, God’s first reaction is to heal our hearts. It’s amazing. And so if we don’t get what we asked for, I wonder if that’s exactly what He’s doing. He’s pursuing transformation and what would the ultimate transformation be? It would be deeper union with Him. And so not answering our prayer sometimes exposes the things that are below the surface, our distrust in Him that we only want Him to give us something good, and after that we don’t care. So the first response to our petition is transformation. So ask away and be open to transformation being the response. 

Okay, now Catechism, paragraph 2558 “Prayer is a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God.” Here’s kind of the real point I was making earlier when I made our logical argument, but what is prayer? “It’s the vital and personal relationship with the living and true God.” It’s personal, it’s alive with God who’s not far away but who’s living and true it’s relationship, prayer is relationship.

A Quote From Saint Augustine

Okay, now listen to this one from Saint Augustine. “True prayer is nothing but love.” It’s crazy, true prayers, nothing but love, it’s so simple. Except if we don’t know what love is and I don’t know about you, I think our world and culture is massively confused about love. So what is love? Thomas Aquinas defines it really simply. It’s willing the good of the other. So what is true prayer? It’s nothing but willing and wanting what is good for the other. And so what are we doing when we’re doing that personal relationship with the living and true God? We are willing and wanting God’s good and He is willing and wanting our good. And you might be like, well how do I will God’s good? Well you have to understand Him and know who He is and what He’s about to be able to do that. And so that means we have to get to actually know Him. 

So we read the gospels, we do spiritual reading to actually come to know the person that we’re talking about so that we can will His good. So for example, what would be something that would be willing God’s good? Well, what would God want? He says in the gospels, all through the gospels, He desires mercy, not sacrifice. He longs for us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Like read the Gospels, you can get a whole bunch of things that He cares about and that’s how we will His good. That’s how we love Him. And you know the crazy part is all those things that we actually do when we’re willing His good. Do you know who they ultimately benefit is us? Like He can never be outdone in generosity. 

A Quote From Teresa of Avila 

Okay, and finally a quote about prayer from Theresa of Avila. She says, “Prayer is nothing else then an intimate sharing between friends. It means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” Wow, it’s so beautiful, it’s rich. “Prayer is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends. It means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” Alright, some reflection questions that we can take to prayer here. When I go to prayer, am I with an intimate friend? How close is God to me? Why? Why not? Do I believe that he’s close or not close? Why? What do I believe about how close God is? Talk to God about that, there’s the sharing. 

She also says “It means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” So do I know that God loves me? Jesus? Do I really believe that you love me? Why? Why not? Do I believe that I’m lovable? What a powerful question to bring to prayer and to share with an intimate friend. I mean, notice how it changes it. If he’s far away and doesn’t know us very well, that’s a completely different conversation than with someone who we know loves us, who’s a dear friend. And so a little nuance, she’s also saying is “frequently to be alone.” So, notice what that means is that it’s happening regularly. It’s not like one once every now and again and it’s alone, which means my phone isn’t right there, I’m not distracted, I have time to actually engage with a friend and it’s close. And so when I’m praying, am I bringing things in that are distracting me? How do I feel about actually being alone with you? God? Talk to him about that. All of these little questions I’m listing are things that we can springboard into prayer. They can launch us into prayer, talk about them with God. 

You know, you’re not praying if you’re just talking to yourself, you’re dealing with your anterior life when you’re just talking to yourself. But prayer is all of that conversation internally being done with God. Now He can handle it, don’t worry about what you say to Him, just direct it toward Him. Now we’re praying. Okay, now let’s go to healing. Some quotes on healing and then we’re going to do some quotes where it links the two of them. All right, so healing in general I think is a really simple way to define healing. But alright, let me say it differently, I’m in the healing world, like that’s part of what I do for work and, and all of that kind of stuff. It’s my calling is to be in healing. And you know what’s funny is we can read a lot of books. There’s a lot of great books out there about healing, but it is actually hard to find a nice concise, tidy definition of what healing is. 

Approaching God for Healing

A good friend of mine, Dr. Bob Schutz, he and I talk about this a lot. Like what is healing? And, and I think we have to be really clear about what healing is so that we can understand how prayer is healing and then what we’re even doing when we’re pursuing healing. So here’s what I’ll say that it’s not healing is not simply the removal of pain or the removal of struggle. I think most people when we approach healing, I’ve sure done this a lot. I approach healing and I approach God for healing. And basically what I’m doing is approaching him for things to get better, for my difficulties to go away. I don’t like this pain that came from this, painful experience I had and now I don’t trust people. So God, can you heal this so that I feel better around people? Now is that a bad prayer? No, it’s not a bad prayer at all. But if healing only becomes my pursuit of pain going away, we have a problem. Because what healing actually is, is being put back into right order. That’s how I would define healing the process by which God loves us back into right order. That’s healing. You might also say healing is being made whole again and wholeness is holiness. 

A Quote From Dr. Mary Healy

Listen to this quote from Dr. Mary Healy and her book on healing. She says, healing in the fullest sense is becoming whole in spirit, soul and body. And because God created us for Himself, wholeness is nothing other than holiness. A union of love with the all, holy God. A lot of holes and holy there, so let me read it again quickly. Holiness in the fullest sense is becoming whole. Sorry. Healing in the fullest sense is becoming whole in spirit, soul and body. And because God created us for Himself, wholeness is nothing other than holiness, a union of love with the all Holy God. 

So what’s the point here? Healing is when we become whole. When things are put back into right order, when something’s off and it’s fixed, it’s made right again. But let me use an analogy. You’re driving down the road and you hear this awful noise coming from your car and it’s terrible and it’s like, whoa, this is not good. And it sounds really, really bad. What would be fixing the car? We could say fixing the car is making the sound go away. In some ways that would be fixing the car. But if we don’t go to the actual problem and fix the real problem that makes the sound go away and we just take away the sound, we haven’t actually made the car whole again. So if the annoying thing, the noise is all that we’re after and we leave the brokenness in there, healing or wholeness hasn’t been realized. It’s the putting it back together again. It’s the making it whole again, that’s what healing is. 

So wholeness is holiness the process of becoming holy a saint, that’s what healing is. I don’t think it’s a common way that we look at it when we are being purified of things in a sin, vices, et cetera, that’s healing. When that’s occurring, that is a healing process. It’s being made whole again. It’s not just the removal of difficulty, it’s being made holy. 

A Quote From the Book Jesus of Nazareth

Now, I’ll quote from Pope Benedict and his book Jesus of Nazareth. This is a beautiful one. It’s a real good, beautiful definition of healing and it links us back to prayer. So he says, “Whoever truly wishes to heal, man” okay, that’s me. Amen to that. “Must see him in his wholeness and must know that his ultimate healing can only be God’s love.” So who, if anybody wants healing, first of all, we have to see man in his wholeness. And then we have to know that his ultimate healing can only come from God’s love. Man, is this ever important right now in our current age, if we want to heal someone, we first have to know what he is. We have to know that his wholeness is what we’re after. Not just abandoning things about what it means to be human and thinking, oh, I’m better. I’ve been healed. 

This is what our culture’s doing and it’s killing us. It’s not healing at all. We’re making it worse for ourselves where we try to pursue something that is actually not rooted in our wholeness. So wholeness is critical, we have to understand what we are in our nature as human beings to know what the heck we’re shooting for. 

The Only One Who Can Ultimately Heal Us

So for example, love. We have to know what love is and we have to receive love and give love for healing to take place. That’s wholeness. That’s what we are. And in the midst of all of that, the only thing that ultimately heals us is the love of God. Sorry, psychologists, sorry counselors, I’m in this business, but this is what I’ve learned and discovered. The only true and ultimate healing can be God’s love. Does that mean that you have to pray for healing to occur? Not necessarily, but what you can be for sure of is that if healing occurs, it’s because God’s love’s in there. Absolutely no question. I’ve experienced healing in many, many areas. Sometimes we technically prayed every time God’s love was there. And so I guess if we’re blending together our definitions here, what we’re saying is that whenever I’m turning toward love and its trueness and in its fullness and I experience healing, I prayed. See how it starts to get intertwined here because we talk about love and love as a person. It’s God, it’s Jesus. Alright, let’s take one more step into this integration of prayer and healing.

Again, you might be like, well Jake, lots of ideas, lots of quotes. I’m overwhelming you right now because I just want to give you all these things. But I want you to take these things, anything that’s agitated you, anything that’s distressed you, anything that’s made you feel peace, anything that you’ve really liked, that’s the stuff to take to prayer. And in that process, that’s where we’re going to experience healing. I’m trying to set us up for prayer and healing instead of just giving a talk on it. 

A Quote From the Booklet Healing Prayer

Alright, final section here. So how is prayer healing? I want to now read a quote by Father John Horn and a little booklet he wrote called Healing Prayer. This is what he says, “When carefully appreciating and encountering this attractive love,” love of God, “One develops a relationship with God that infuses healing. When we carefully appreciate and encounter this attractive love.” So here’s some reflection questions. “Where have I encountered God’s love today?” What a great way to pray. We would actually argue that’s part of the examined prayer that Saint Ignatius gave us. “Do I find God’s love attractive?” Why? Why not? What am I wanting from Him that he’s not giving me to talk to God about that? “Do I express regular gratitude and appreciation for God and for His love?” Why? Why not? “Do I see the blessings that He’s given me?”

What are they? Do I struggle to be grateful? What’s going on there? Talk about that with the Lord. This process, doing these questions, what does it do? It develops a relationship. That’s why I’m giving them to you. Sometimes we need starters, like I said earlier, we need to springboard our way into a conversation. I need this all the time. I love it when you kind of get a cool question and you bring it to a conversation it just enlivens it. That’s my style. I really like to do that. So I’m kind of doing this in our relationship with the Lord, trying to give us questions about these ideas. But when we have those questions, it develops a relationship. We’re now engaging about a topic about something. And when that happens, what does Father John say to us? “God infuses healing when that occurs.” So when I’m praying, talking about things with God, what happens is that God draws near I’m in relationship with Him, and when I’m in relationship, a loving relationship with Him, I’m made more whole. I am healed, I am made holy, I’m brought back to myself, that’s how prayer is healing. Because God loves us in prayer and love is what heals. 

A Final Quote

Final quote, This one is from Jesus of Nazareth as well. It’s from Pope Benedict. It’s a little bit longer, but it’s this got this amazing part at the end. So bear with me. It says, “Let us go back to the second beatitude. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Is it good to mourn and to declare mourning? Blessed? There are two kinds of mourning. The first is the kind that has lost hope, that has become mistrustful of love and truth, and that therefore eats away and destroys man from within.”

Let’s just pause there. Wow. There’s two kinds of mourning. There’s one kind that becomes mistrustful of love and truth, and that eats away and destroys man from within. Holy smokes. Is that what my inner world is like? God is that how it relate to you? Like so just ask yourself, have I become mistrustful of love and truth? If so, I’m probably mourning. I’m mourning a wound and that wound needs healing. But I’m not approaching the healing right because I’m mistrustful of love that heals and it’s eating me away. Gosh, is that ever true? 

Pope Benedict goes on. “But there’s also the morning occasioned by the shattering and counter with truth, which leads man to undergo conversion and to resist evil.” There’s two kinds of mourning where we could say there’s two kinds of looking at our wounds. There’s the kind where it eats us away, and then there’s the kind where it’s occasion by the shattering and counter with truth. Holy smokes. What is the shattering encounter? What is it shattering lies. That’s healing, a shattering encounter with truth that is healing. That’s what prayer is. It’s amazing. What does it do? It leads us to undergo conversion, wholeness to holiness. Here’s how he ends it This mourning heals. The second kind this mourning heals because it teaches man to hope and love again. Judas is an example of the first kind of mourning struck with horror at his own fall. He no longer dares to hope and hangs himself in despair.

Ah, Peter is an example of the second kind struck by the Lord’s gaze. He bursts into healing tears that plow up the soil of his soul. He begins anew and is himself renewed.” Oh my gosh, Pope Benedict’s amazing. Listen to that, Peter is an example of the second kind struck by the Lord’s gaze. That’s prayer looking face to face with God. Conversing with him. Peter bursts into healing tears. Oh, that plow up the soil of his soul. Oh my gosh, there’s so much richness to sit with there. Have I ever burst into healing tears? What would that be like? if I have no idea just let’s imagine Peter doing it for now to get a taste of it. Do I dare not hope again? Am I like Judas? Where? How? Why? Talk to God about it you’re praying and that loving encounter leads to healing. The plowing up of the soil of the soul. Oh, what a beautiful image of healing.

Pulling out what is not right, planting back what is right that makes us whole and holy. I hope that all of these quotes have blessed you, but again, really what I’m hoping for is that you would take them to prayer and encounter the love that heals. Thanks so much. God bless you. 

About Jake Khym 

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