I bring myself to the Lord for healing.
The traditional mysteries of the rosary are a rich field for meditation, unfolding and revealing their infinite depths over the years, never exhausted.
But, occasionally, it may be fruitful to meditate on other mysteries as well. The American bishops in their Pastoral Letter on the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1973 suggested using new sets of mysteries, for example, ones taken from the public life of Jesus.
There are many possibilities. We might use five Scripture passages from the current liturgical season, perhaps the Sunday Gospels. Or we might take a thematic approach, five resurrection stories, five parables, five miracles, five accounts of prayer.
One series of mysteries I use from time to time is the Healing Mysteries:
- Jesus heals the lame and paralytic (Lk 5:17-26).
- Jesus heals the blind, deaf, and dumb (Mt 20:29-34;Mk 7:31-37).
- Jesus heals the leper (Lk5:12-16).
- Jesus heals the epileptic and demon-possessed (Mk9:14-29).
- Jesus raises the dead (Mk5:35-43; Jn 11:1-44).
As I pray each decade, I meditate on one of the stories in the Gospel relating to each mystery. There are several possible passages for each, besides those cited above. Then I bring myself (or someone I hold in my heart) to the Lord for healing.
I invite Jesus to touch the disordered parts of my own life. In what areas of my life am I lame and paralytic, not moving with the Spirit? Or can I carry someone to Jesus in my prayer who isn’t able to go himself?
How am I blind and deaf, or as Jesus said, Do you not yet understand? Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear? Lord, that I might see! That I might hear! That I might cry the Gospel with my life!
For the third mystery: what are the ways I experience myself as a leper, an outcast, unacceptable to myself and others; what things do I think I have to hide? Jesus meets and loves me precisely in this area.
The Reality of Evil
During the fourth decade I might look to see areas where my life is out of control, where I refuse to let the Lord be master, where the reality of evil has touched me, and where I need to ask his forgiveness and protection. And, finally, what are the dead areas in myself that need to be brought to life? Am I willing to die to self so he can live in me? These are but a few suggestions.
Other stories of healing might be used. Those of us who carry wounds as a result of deficiencies in relationships with our parents might reflect on Jesus’s gift to us of his mother, or his reminder that his Father is our Father. We let those life-giving relationships gradually transform and heal us.
There is a Prayer of Healing by Fr. Robert Pelton which would make a good addition to a rosary of healing mysteries. It goes like this:
O Lord Jesus Christ, out of love you died and rose for me and gave me the Holy Spirit. In his light and through the prayers of your holy Mother, proclaim the gospel of your love in my heart and in my life today.
I renounce attachment to sin, and I rebuke in your name every spirit of evil and disorder. Let your risen glory shine all through me that I may love and adore you with my whole being.
Shine in my body — my brain and nervous system, my chemistry, every tissue and organ. Shine in my mind and will and all their powers, in my psyche, my unconscious, my sexuality, and all my energies so that I may love and work, pray, play, and sleep in your holiness.
Shine in my heart and spirit. Put to death my egotism. Cast out my fear and every sinful habit. Enlighten me wholly and transform all my relationships.
Fully restore your image in me so that I no longer live, but you live in me. Root me and center me in the Father’s love. Consecrate me to his praise and to the wholehearted love of my brothers and sisters, and order all my days and deeds in your peace.
For you are my life and my hope, my joy and my healing, and I send up glory to you and your eternal Father, together with your all holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and always and forever and ever. Amen.
(Jude wrote this article for Restoration in 1989.)
Icon of St. Raphael the Archangel, by ©Jude Fischer, Madonna House
