Spiritual Healing: What Is It?
You are not feeling well. You may feel okay on the physical level, but something is missing, you are suffering from anxiety and lost, or perhaps you have a combination of symptoms. What can you do? You have visited your traditional doctor and they have prescribed certain drugs to help with the symptoms but you still have those feelings. You may have visited a counselor for your emotional anxieties but still like you need more. Perhaps you have even traveled the paths of alternative healing and tried to live the natural life to achieve wholeness. All of these steps may help you achieve wholeness and complete happiness but there is another avenue you may want to explore. This is the avenue of faith healing.
What Is Faith Healing?
The broad definition of faith healing would be the attempt to use religion or spiritual means to prevent illness, cure diseases, or just improve health. This is usually done through prayer. Those who attempt this form of alternative healing say they can summon divine or supernatural intervention by using prayer, mental practices, spiritual insights, and other techniques. This form of healing can be used together with traditional forms of healing and may offer relief of pain or even the power of a “miracle cure”. The term “faith healing” is greatly used by outside commentators. Those who believe that God heals through the Holy Spirit believe in the “laying on of hands”.
Christian Belief
In the Christian faith, it is said by the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that Jesus had the power to heal the sick. He would grant this healing to those he felt truly had faith in him and the Holy Spirit, but would deny these miraculous healing powers to those who were just testing validity. An example of this healing is told in each of the Gospels. It goes something like this: “A young woman who had discharge of blood for over twelve years spent her whole fortune on traditional doctors, of the time. She saw Jesus and believed in him and the Holy Spirit and new that the touch of Jesus’ robe would indeed heal her.” Because of her full belief, she was cured instantly.
Jesus did believe in traditional medicine, which is mentioned in the Bible with the use of herbs, oils, and wines. Many people criticize Christians for using faith healing as the only true method for cure. The critics state the sole use of faith healing delays the potential cure from traditional medicine. This is especially criticized when parents choose faith healing for their children and do not use any forms of traditional medicine. Sometimes the outcome is death and the thought is that if the child has died then it was God’s will to do so and the child is brought to Heaven by angels and they will live in peace with God, in the kingdom of Heaven.
The Thoughts Of Catholicism
Those who practice Catholicism believe that faith healing is a result of intercessory prayer to a saint or to the person who has the gift of healing.
The apparition of the Virgin Mary has been attributed to several miracles around the world. Some people claim to see the Blessed Virgin Mary in different traditional things, which will bring great blessings to those who go and offer prayer to that vision. For example, it is told that the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in the underground chamber in Lourdes, France. The Catholic Church has acknowledged over 60 miracles and 7,000 medical cures since the sighting in 1858.
Saint Jude is known as the patron saint of lost causes. Many Catholics pay tribute and pray to Saint Jude for the aspects of their life that need the most attention. Some write to the local paper of these desired prayers as a tribute to the Saint and for other Catholics to join in their needed prayers.
This form of alternative medicine comes under great scrutiny from those who do not believe. It is sometimes hard to grasp ideas that do not have concrete evidence and the thought that an unseen being could be responsible for suffering and healing. There are others that truly believe and have personal accounts of healing.
