Is there a crisis in your life? Do you feel overwhelmed by your present circumstances? Maybe it’s an opportunity for spiritual healing. Maybe it’s a call from God. This is something that even the field of psychology is recognizing and beginning to pay attention to.

In the area of counseling, Mark Young, professor of Counselor Education at the University of Central Florida says, “There is a great deal of research that shows if you include a client’s religious or spiritual background in your treatment, it’s going to be more effective.”

Michael McCullough, associate professor of Psychology at Southern Methodist University, says, “Matters of transcendence are just too important to what it means to be a human being, so some psychologists have now begun to take them quite seriously.” As the lead investigator of a recent study published in Health Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association, McCullough found that there is a definite association between church attendance and longer life.

Sometimes people think of spiritual healing as occurring only in an instantaneous and miraculous sense, but doesn’t healing also mean having a more fulfilling existence because of God’s action in your life? And, isn’t health a by-product of that?

That’s how Betty Crowell, R.N., coordinator of the Parish Nurse program at St. Vincent’s Health System, talks about healing. “In my personal experience, healing is a life-long process – it is a journey in faith.”

In 1989, Crowell coordinated a retreat for nurses. She says, she expected God to bless her, but instead, two weeks later she seriously injured her back and shortly after that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “God was trying to get my attention,” said Crowell.

Over the course of two years, “I started just being, listening, and seeking Jesus. I learned how to be a Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus rather than a Martha running around getting everything done,” she said.

Crowell attributes her new attitude as playing a significant role in her healing process. She, of course, had medical treatment, but says she “became totally open to God, letting God’s love and mercy fill my emptiness.”

It was through the celebration of Mass and the Eucharist, Crowell says, she felt the presence of Christ in a “powerful way.” Community also played a big part in her healing. A member of Sacred Heart Parish in Jacksonville, Crowell points out, “It’s in community that you share your joy and your sorrow. The parish is the place where people attain wholeness and healing through faith in God.”

Crowell says she has been free of cancer for 11 years and while she still has severe limitations due to her back injury, she is able to walk and continue working.

Someone who has seen the effects of prayer up close is James Gallagher, M.D., a critical care physician at Shands Hospital in Gainesville and chairman of the diocesan Bioethics Commission. “I have seen conditions turn around because of prayer,” said Gallagher. However, his patients often cannot pray for themselves because they are in various stages of trauma.

He describes an incident when he thought a patient had about 10 minutes to live. The priest chaplain at Shands came in and began praying with the family around the man’s bedside. Gallagher said, within a few minutes, the man’s blood pressure came up and he rallied.

The man died three weeks later, but it was, Gallagher said, a “pretty powerful thing to see everyone around his bedside praying and for that to happen when there wasn’t a medical reason for it.”

Gallagher says there have been numerous cases where medically, people should have died, but lived. And in most of those cases the families were “praying hard for their recovery.”

Gallagher says the vast majority of cases wind up the way you’d expect them to from a medical standpoint. He points out that there is only so much a doctor can do. Adding, he often prays that families will have the strength to handle the death of a loved one.

Acceptance is one of the fruits of prayer. Professor Young talks about the serenity prayer of Saint Francis and says people who pray learn to surrender and learn that one must accept things that can’t be changed.

Another benefit of prayer is relieving stress. Having to be in control causes emotional stress. And Young points out that control means, “you must be constantly vigilant.” Prayer involves “surrender” and one learns to let go.

Crowell says she reached the point in her illness when she could accept whatever it was God wanted for her. She says, “It was in facing death that I truly learned to live. I learned acceptance, forgiveness, and my priorities changed overnight.”

But what if someone is afraid to pray? Young says, “The more people pray and meditate, the less fear they have…Fearlessness is a quality that people develop the more they pray and meditate.”

People may be afraid they will have to change. And Young says, “You will be changed by your connection with God.” But he reassures us that we don’t have to retire to a cave, like Saint Francis, for change to occur. “God is in control,” and we don’t have to worry.
Perhaps healing begins with a call by God to walk with Him — and with our response of faith and courage to whisper that first prayer. While miracles may prove that God can’t be put in a box, perhaps it is through prayer, scripture, the Eucharist, and community that many healings occur in our lives. Perhaps our walk with the Lord and all that entails is the greatest healing of all.