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sacredheart-stigmata · 3 months ago

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The Healing Mysteries of the Holy Rosary

A few weeks ago, before the beginning of Lent, I posted a rundown of the "hopeful" mysteries of the most holy rosary that I had found through hopefulmysteries.com I fell in love with the idea of a layperson's spiritual fruit shining out through their own understandings of the mysteries, and since then have been keeping my eyes out and ears perked for any new ones I could find. And new ones I did! This post will be on the 'Healing Mysteries', and I will make and link a second one on the 'Miraculous Mysteries'.

The First Healing Mystery: Jesus Restores the Outcast to Community (Luke 17: 11-17)

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

If there is one thing we can be certain of, it is Christ's love of the outcast. The Beatitudes make this clear, but we also see it here, in the cleansing of ten lepers. These men did not even approach Jesus, knowing their status well, begging from afar that Christ have mercy. Jesus brought them healing, loving them even when no one else did. Their belief in Jesus brought them cleanliness, but it was the Samaritan's faith and thanksgiving that made him well. Let us be like the Samaritan, proclaiming God's grace, that we may be made well as we are welcomed into the family of the heavenly host, outcasts no more. And let us remember as we live each day to welcome others to us, including the outcast and unwanted, just as our Lord did.

The Second Healing Mystery: The Bleeding Woman is Healed By Her Faith & Courage (Mark 5: 25-34)

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Immediately her flow of blood stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my cloak?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

In one of the most famous healing stories in the Bible, the bleeding woman has lived with pain and hemorrhaging for 12 years. What explicitly caused her disability, we do not know, but we do know one thing for certain: her unwaving faith in Christ. She pursued him through a crowd, pushing and shoving of who knows how many people to reach him. Did she fall? Was she pushed to the ground by the clamoring of others, nearly trampled underfoot? Did her blood stain her hands as she reached for the hem of Jesus' clothes, the heel of his sandal, anything she could reach? Did that same blood transfer to the clothes of her Lord as she finally grabbed hold? When the bleeding woman reached forward, she reached with more than faith-- she reached with courage. How frightened she must have been when she came to see him. How scared she must have been to be pressed in by all sides by the crowd! And yet, she persisted. She pushed forward and grabbed his cloak. Her faith and courage made her well.

The Third Healing Mystery: Jesus Cures What The Disciples Could Not (Matthew 17: 14-20)

When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has epilepsy and suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured from that moment. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.

There are many different words used to describe the man's son between translations of Matt 17. Two that you may be most familiar with are a 'demon' and 'epilepsy'. Let's not confuse or conflate the two; serious medical conditions are not demons, and an epileptic child is not in need of an exorcism. Regardless, the point of this passage stands: Christ's disciples could not heal the boy, and Jesus could. "Why?" the disciples ask. "You've sent us out already, given us permission to do good in your name. Why not us?" And God answers: faith. A mustard plant is not a pretty plant. It is not easy to control. A small, unassuming seed explodes outward into a plant that devours the farm land in its path. We are called to be the same as this tiny mustard seed. We must explode out, reaching and grabbing and pulling the good in the world, making it greater, and gifting it to God. When we have faith, we too can heal.

The Fourth Healing Mystery: The Healing of the Unclean Spirit (Mark 1: 21-28)

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

It is tempting to focus on the declaring by a demon of Jesus as the Holy One of God on this mystery, but I choose to instead focus on the matter of an unclear spirit. What makes one 'unclean'? That answer is different from person to person, priest to priest, church to church and denomination to denomination. To me, that is an answer that can be given to you only through sitting with and asking God. For me, I ask where have I fallen short. Have I lashed out with anger to a friend? Have I hated someone without a care? Have I turned up my nose to one in need? Have I thought myself above others? Above God? Regardless of what the answers to the questions are, or what you may consider unclean, Jesus stands by us. He came to liberate, both society and ourselves, that we be slaves to hatred, anger, indifference, and pain no more. He heals us, and in doing so, we are called to heal each other.

The Fifth Healing Mystery: Jesus heals the Earth (John 21: 3-14)

Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he had taken it off, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off. When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them, and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

We have reached the final mystery! In it, the disciples fish, filled with pain after the state-sactioned murder of their Lord. We live in a word torn asunder. Pain and suffering, war and genocide, fractured communities, and a large divide between those who have and have not fill our beautiful green marble, and we work diligently to kill this planet each day. Yet, the Lord promises us prosperity and healing. He heals the outcast, the courageous, the faithless, and the unclean-- and, in this world so full of suffering, he heals the ground beneath our feet and headlines in our newspapers. Peter, John, and the disciples saw their Lord after death, and he provided for them through a miracle all the sea had to offer. Likewise, he provides for us and our beautiful world. Through Christ, all things are possible, including the healing of this cracking, but never broken, world.

#rosary #rosaries #healing mysteries #holy rosary #jesus #jesus christ #christblr #cathblr #christian #christianity #catholic #catholiscism #my writing #mine

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