21.10.2024
‘Search for the wholeness in our lives’ – Church’s Ministry of Healing Annual Service
A Service of Wholeness and Healing can be a catalyst to kickstart the search for wholeness in our lives. So said the Rt Revd Patrick Rooke who preached at the Church’s Ministry of Healing: Ireland’s annual gift day and service in Christ Church Bray yesterday (Sunday October 20). He said this search was not a search for perfection but rather for what is possible.
The service was led by the Rector of Bray, the Revd Leonard Madden in the presence of the Chairperson of CMH:I the Revd Lesley Robinson. CMH:I is a registered charity which supports all who are in pain of mind, body or spirit and also helps those who minister to them.
During the service members of the congregation had the opportunity to come forward to receive prayer with the laying on of hands and anointing with oil. Healing Prayer Ministers also had an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to their ministry.
Bishop Rooke, who is a member of CMH:I, said he was delighted to be back in Bray where is father was Rector for 11 years. He remarked that much had changed in Bray since his teenage years but he was also aware that he was looking at it through different eyes than he did when he was a child. “Nothing stands still and we too change with the passing of time,” he noted.
He asked the congregation to consider what a Service of Thanksgiving and Wholeness and Healing might look like to them and urged them to imagine their lives as whole and complete and to think about what was stopping that wholeness from happening. St Luke the physician placed a lot of emphasis on wholeness and healing and turning to the Gospel reading [Luke 15: 1–10] he pointed to the shepherd and his lost sheep and the woman and her lost coin.
“We often see the lost sheep and the lost coin as the focus of the stories. But what if the emphasis is on the shepherd and the woman,” he said explaining that their joy was in finding and recovering the lost part of themselves. “The lives of the shepherd and the woman were complete until the shepherd lost his sheep and the woman lost her coin. It is not just any sheep or any coin, it is this sheep and this coin. Their lives are now diminished, less, incomplete. Who among us does not know what this means? What part of our lives is missing today? What are we searching for? What might wholeness and healing look like for you now? What would make you feel fully alive?” he asked.
Bishop Rooke said sometimes people lost part of their lives through grief, exhaustion, fear, anger, jealousy, wanting to be right, refusing to forgive or people lose themselves to success. “It is so easy to lose a piece of ourselves and that can happen in many different ways. The temptation for us is to settle for a life that is less than whole, less than complete. The woman and the shepherd refused to settle… Let’s not settle either,” he said.
He added that a Service of Wholeness and Healing can kickstart the search for wholeness in our lives just as the shepherd and the woman kept searching until they found what they were missing. “What we really want is to be true to ourselves, comfortable with ourselves. This is wholeness and healing. This is for the benefit of ourselves and others,” he concluded.