17.10.2017
Healing Ministry is the Story of Christ Lived Out in Our Parishes – Annual Service Hears
The Diocesan Service of Wholeness and Healing took place in the Church of St John the Baptist in Clontarf on Sunday afternoon (October 15). The service was led by the Rector, the Revd Lesley Robinson and the preacher was the chairperson of the Dublin & Glendalough Committee of the Church’s Ministry of Healing, Ireland, the Revd Bruce Hayes, Rector of Dalkey.
During the service prayer ministers and members of healer prayer unions renewed their commitment to the ministry and there was an opportunity for members of the congregation to receive healing prayer and be anointed with oils.
In his sermon the chairman spoke of the challenges and privileges of the healing ministry. He said he had always found it a tremendous privilege to share in the breadth and depth of the ministry and said it was important to remember the importance of the ministry at the core of all Christian faith and ministry.
He said that the healing ministry also came at a personal cost to those involved. “If we are to protect the vulnerable, the hurt and the suffering, whilst encouraging an openness to God’s presence in people’s lives, our own stories, the rich tapestry of our life, must be unfolded. Because only then will a sceptical people know that our ministry is above all a spaciousness in the heart; an awareness that there is a space, inside every human being, where God dwells,” he said.
“I personally have always found the Healing Ministry exceptionally difficult, and I imagine I am not alone in this. In the ministry of healing we have little option but to come honest about ourselves: events lay us bare. But you have to dig deep. Because you mustn’t settle for a shallow relationship with God,” Mr Hayes added.
He said those involved in the healing ministry had a high calling but it often came with a sense of failure. He urged those present to remember that none of them were here by their own merit but were doing God’s will. The Healing Ministry isn’t about personal success or failure, he said. Rather it is the story of Christ, lived with one another in local parishes.
He said that St Luke’s Day was synonymous with giving thanks for the Healing Ministry and wondered what made St Luke change from physician to evangelist. “I wonder what he found that was so important? I imagine it was something about the experience of being with suffering; did he find in his faith the depths necessary to sustain the care of those in pain over the long term. For it is no easy matter to be with the ill, especially when we cannot do much for them other than simply be present. Luke must have realised that prayer was not a supplement to his medical knowledge. Neither was it an insurance policy for when is medical knowledge ran out. St Luke must have realised prayer was the means that we have to make God present whether medical skill is successful or not,” he said.