When you get old
like I am, you realize that you have a few books on your shelf that were the
source of breakthroughs in understanding. Such is the case with a book by
Father Louis Evely. With it, I had a great breakthrough in my understanding of
“faith healing.”
Father Evely makes
the case that the phenomenon known as a “faith healing” is simply the manifestation
of the natural world not yet understood. A “miracle,” he says, does not happen
from the outside in but from the inside out. We see that in today’s reading.
Jesus did not tell the woman with the hemorrhage who was cured, “My power
has cured you.” Instead, he said, “Your faith has cured you.”
In fact, Mark
(6:5) reports that “Jesus could work no miracle there because of people’s lack
of faith.” It was not touching the holy tassel outside of her that cured the
woman in the Gospel that day; it was the faith inside of the woman who touched
his tassel that triggered her cure!
What about the
miracles that have been recorded at places like Lourdes and Fatima? Well, there
have been miracles there and at every shrine of every religion and most
of these have been miracles of healing.
Father Evely notes
that the sole characteristic of a miraculous cure is the “abnormal acceleration
of the natural healing process.” That which cannot be healed by a natural
process is not susceptible to a miraculous cure. There are no reported
cases of an amputated leg or arm, for example, being regrown miraculously — not
even a finger. However, it seems that an “abnormal acceleration of the natural
processes of healing” can be triggered by faith.
It’s not the
sacred stone, the saint’s relic, the water from a mysterious water source or
even the tassel of Jesus’ cloak that causes the healing, but the
intensity of faith that is released within those who believe that
triggers their extraordinarily rapid healing processes. That’s why Jesus said
to the tassel-touching woman with a hemorrhage, “It is your faith that
saved you.”
I believe in the
power of faith to work miracles. In almost every assignment I have ever had, I
have had to override the negative advice I was given by my predecessors. I was
advised not to get my hopes up because “nothing could be done because this or
that situation was hopeless.” By choosing to believe in the amazing
possibilities of faith, not fairy godmothers, I have been able to witness
amazing results in all those assignments.
Even doctors will
tell you that some patients have mysteriously gotten well when they are able to
believe that getting well was possible, while they have mysteriously lost
patients who gave up believing in their treatment programs. Even Henry Ford
said, “Those who believe they can and those who think they can’t, are both
right.”
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