Gospel (Mark 1:40-42)

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling said to him,” If you want to you can cure me.” Moved with compassion Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “Of course I want to. Be cured.” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

Imagine Jesus standing in front of you. Tell him of a specific hurt, a deep-seated resentment, or an unfreedom in your life that you want him to heal. Say to him, “If you want to you can cure me of…” Be specific in naming what it is you want him to heal. He is filled with compassion for you, and he says to you, “Of course I want to cure you of… Be cured.” He lays his hand on your head.

Imagine his light and strength moving into your mind and lighting up dark areas of misunderstanding, critical judgments, remembered rejections, and so on. When in imagination you experience that light of love flowing through your mind, let it move into your heart to free you from any fear or resentment that may have taken hold of your heart. Imagine that healing light helping you to let go of any idols that are enslaving you—especially the idol of an unforgiving, resentful attitude—and when you sense that light freeing you from darkness, imagine Jesus calling you by name and saying, ‘You are the light of the world’.

Then recall somebody you wish to pray for—possibly but not necessarily a person who has hurt you—and imagine that person being present with you. Spend some time allowing that to happen, and then lay your hands on that person. Imagine the love and light of Jesus flowing through you into that person’s mind and heart bringing healing.

After you have allowed yourself to experience the presence and love of Jesus, so that your faith, hope and love are strengthened, go back with Jesus to the scene of the hurt. Imagine him walking with you and reconciling the two of you, looking at you and looking at the other person, saying to both of you, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Linger lovingly.

Go to Calvary. Spend some time experiencing that scene and making it as vivid as you possibly can. Then go to the scene of your hurt and recapture it in detail. Be aware of your feelings. Then return to Calvary, allowing yourself to experience the pain of Calvary. Take plenty of time. Go back now to the scene of your hurt. Spend some time there, then go back to Calvary. Going back and forth, allow the love of Calvary to heal you.

Healing does not usually take place instantly but is a process. Deep pain and resentment which have developed over some time will usually take persistent prayer to heal. Often there are layers of hurt, resentment and unfreedom that need to be uncovered in prayer. Once one layer of hurt, resentment and unfreedom has been healed others may present themselves for healing. We know we are healed when we can recall the hurting experience and no longer feel the pain and the resentment.

Embrace prayer

See Jesus standing before you. See him open his arms and invite you to him. Go to him, letting him hold you. Feel his arms around you and let yourself be loved as if you were a small boy or girl in his or her father’s arms. (You may want to pray in a similar way with God the Father, or with Mary as your mother.)

Breath prayer

Sit erect, feet flat on the floor, hands on your lap, palms up without touching each other. Become aware of the openness of your hands and the air at your fingertips, between your fingers, on your palms.

Take a deep breath, as if you were breathing through your toes, and let that breath be carried up through your legs, abdominal muscles, lungs—your entire body. As you breathe in, say silently, “Lord Jesus Christ,” while taking in whatever you need from him: his peace, joy, wisdom, etc. You may want to visualize him standing before you or see him looking into your eyes. See his light and experience that light coming into your own body as you inhale his presence.

Check your body for any tension. Release the tension by tensing up a given muscle and then relaxing it or by rotating your jaw or other joint. As you exhale, smile and breathe out whatever may have been behind that tension. With each exhalation, surrender more deeply until you hunger for Jesus as much as you hunger for air.

Prayer of Creative Imagination

Firstly, we begin with the Breath Prayer. Ask Jesus to bring you back to a time in your life when you were hurt.

Ask Jesus to help you to enter the scene until you can smell what was in the air, feel what was beneath your feet, see the faces of each person who was present and hear what each was saying. Continue this until you experience with Jesus some of the pain and destruction from this hurt.

When you have felt some of the hurt, look into the compassionate eyes of Jesus and breathe out to him the pain and destruction you wish to hand over to him. Watch what he says and does to heal you and the others in the scene. Pray Jesus’ prayer for those people and for yourself.

Ask Jesus to help you live out his response.

Writing Prayer

Write a note to Jesus asking him for what you would like to have changed in your life.

Do the Breath Prayer.

Ask Jesus when he or another person in the Gospels felt this way. Write down how he responds to you.

Ask Jesus to help you to live out his response.

Release Prayer

Do the Breath Prayer. Then, cup your hands and place in them a person you are concerned about.

Tell the Father or Jesus about all that you long to have happen for that person. With each request, squeeze your hands more tightly as if you were squeezing into that person all that you long to give.

When you have said it all, open your hands and release the person into the hands of God the Father or Jesus. Watch what God the Father says or does for the person. Be ready for surprises.

Petition

Quieten yourself in preparation for petitionary prayer…

Forgive each person against whom you have a grievance… Say to each one in imagination, “I forgive you with all my heart in the name of Jesus Christ, just as the Lord has forgiven me…”

Now ask the Lord to fill your heart with the faith that makes petitionary prayer omnipotent… “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”

Then ask for the gift you want from the Lord: health, success in some enterprise…

Imagine the Lord giving this gift to you and imagine yourself joyfully praising him for this…

Journaling

Write down what is in your heart. Write as if you were writing a letter to your best friend—Jesus—sharing what you feel most deeply. Don’t worry about having the “right” words, but only try to share your heart. Begin as you would a letter, Dear Jesus,

Now get in touch with Jesus’ response to you, as he is already speaking to you within. You might do this by asking what are the most loving words that you want him to say to you in response, or perhaps by imagining that what you have just written is a note to you from the person you love most, and you want to respond to that person in the most loving possible words.

Write Jesus’ response. Perhaps it will be just one word or one sentence. You can be sure that anything you write which helps you to know more that you are loved is not just your own thoughts or imagination but is really what Jesus wants to say to you.

Leaving a hurt with Jesus

If you get in touch with a hurt that you find is just too painful to think about, simply ask Jesus to heal that part of you and to fill it with his light. Then leave that part of yourself in Jesus’ hands, without pushing yourself to focus on it or think about it any longer. You might want to do this before going to sleep at night, or as you go forward at the Eucharist to receive Holy Communion. At that time, you can say the words, “Only say the word, and I shall be healed.” You invite Jesus into this part of your life and then leave it in his hands.

Note: Only go as deeply into a hurt as you can while continuing to feel loved. When you feel only pain and no love, you have probably gone too far, and it is best to simply leave the hurt in Jesus’ hands as suggested above.

Prayer of abandonment and betrayal

Once you are in touch with a feeling of being abandoned or betrayed, cry out to the Father with Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Continue until you are crying out these words with the same intensity, volume and feeling as Jesus.

After crying out as Jesus did, find the part of your body that feels most tense and most abandoned. Be present to that part of your body and to any memories or situations that trigger the feeling of abandonment. Breathe out into God the Father’s hands anything that might be behind the tension and the feeling of being abandoned. Continue to do this until that part of you become relaxed.

Ask the Father what is the next simple step in dealing with the feeling of being abandoned, so that more and more every cell of your relaxed body might pray, as Jesus did, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Eucharist for another

At Mass, forgive one person by praying for him or her throughout the liturgy and receiving Communion for that person.

Praying the Rosary as you walk

As you walk, say the whole rosary, or just a decade of the rosary, for a person who has hurt you.

WHY IS IT THAT OUR CRIME RATE SOARS and our prisons are packed, and the rate of mental illness has soared to such an extent that the mentally ill now occupy one out of every six hospital beds? Dr Karl Menninger, psychiatrist and the founder of the famous Menninger Clinic, answers in Whatever became of sin? that our prisons and mental institutions are bulging because the modern man and woman cannot discover their sin. Menninger pleads that we again make the healthy discovery that we are sinners, because a sinner is one who says, “I am responsible for my unloving actions and I can change.” When we hurt ourselves or another, we have the choice of ignoring it and letting the destructive pattern continue, or of recognizing the evil and correcting it.  Menninger lays out three options for altering a destructive pattern of behaviour:

• Imprisonment. Imprisonment is based on the assumption that we are responsible, but that we can’t change. We need to be incarcerated to contain our destructive patterns of behaviour.
• Mental hospitalisation. Mental hospitalisation is based on the assumption that we are mentally ill, and that we don’t know the evil that we are doing.
• Responsible sinners. The third, and only healthy option, is to see ourselves as healthy and responsible sinners who want to change and who can, with God’s grace, change. The power to change comes when, as healthy sinners, we hate the sin and love the sinner. If we do not hate our sin, we become insensitive to our sin rather than anxious to correct it. If we do not love the sinner, we become depressed and scrupulous with no power to correct our destructiveness.

How can we discover our sin?

It is healthy but difficult to discover our sin. One way to get in touch with our sinfulness—and especially that which we cannot forgive in ourselves—is to note where we overreact to others. Often we overreact to the evil in another because the evil is in us. As Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel,

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye’, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Mt. 7:3-5)

You might spend some time prayerfully considering where you overreact to others.

Every sin is the distortion or misuse of what was originally given to me as a gift by God.

For instance:

Prayer to find the gift in my sinfulness

Ask Jesus to help you get in touch with what you feel is your greatest sin. Ask Jesus to reveal to you the gift that lies beneath this sin. Ask Jesus to redeem this part of you, restoring what you understand as your sin to the gift that it was originally intended to be. With your breathing, inhale the light of Jesus with each breath. Exhale the fear, darkness and the hurt that have caused this gift to become distorted and sinful.

AN UNWILLINGNESS TO FORGIVE OTHERS for the real or imaginary wrongs they have done us is a poison that affects our health—physical, emotional, and spiritual—sometimes very deeply.  (It can affect our family and community life and our work and social life). 

Here is a simple way of ridding yourself of resentments that you may be nursing:

First, imagine that you see the person you resent there in front of you. Tell him or her of your resentment, and express all your anger to him or her as forcefully as you can. Do not baulk at your choice of words!

After expressing all your resentment, but only after, look at the whole incident that caused the resentment from the other person’s point of view. Take the other person’s place and explain the whole thing.  How does the incident look when seen through his or her eyes?

Another way of ridding yourself of anger and resentment is this:

Imagine, that you see Jesus on the Cross…Take all the time you need to picture him in vivid detail…

Now go to the scene of your resentment…Stay with it for a while… Then return to Jesus crucified and gaze at him again… Keep alternating between the event that caused your resentment and the scene of Jesus on the Cross…until you notice the resentment slipping away from you and feel the freedom, joy and light-heartedness that follows. 

[1] Anthony de Mello, Sadhana— a way to God.  

AYBE YOU CARRY WITHIN YOU WOUNDS FROM THE PAST that still rankle in your heart. It is helpful to return to the events that produced these negative feelings so as to drain them of any harmful effect that they might be having on you today.

Return to some scene in the past where you have felt pain or grief or hurt or fear or bitterness… Relive the event. See the place and the people and what was done in detail… But this time seek and find the presence of the Jesus in it… In what way was He present?

Or imagine that Jesus himself is taking part in the event… What role is he playing?… Speak to him. Ask him the meaning of what is happening… Listen to what he says in reply…

Return to the event again and again in your imagination until you are no longer affected by the negative feeling that is produced.

It would be good to write down your personal reminiscences of where you have felt pain, grief, hurt, fear, or bitterness. Journaling in this way will help you to take hold of those events in your life story rather, than having the events take hold of and influence you.

Questions to reflect on and write about after the prayer:

• What happened in the prayer?
• What did Jesus do?
• Did you experience any spiritual and emotional benefits in this exercise?

[1] Anthony de Mello, Sadhana— a way to God.