God knows that often the best way to reach us is through our bodies, our senses. After all, that is why Jesus, the Word of God, took on our human flesh, so that we could see God, touch God, hear God. If both our bodies and souls are affected by fear, anxiety, illness, and stress, than the opposite is true: our prayers and meditations, and the loving care of the people around us, bring us close to God, open us up to God, and can positively affect us, body and soul. Jesus uses His own Body, The Body of Christ, to give us His Peace today, to comfort us, encourage us, and heal us.
In the Bible's Book of Tobit, the loving father Tobit gives some advice to his young son Tobiah, which includes these wise words: "Seek counsel from every wise man (woman) and do not think lightly of any advice that can be useful." God often blesses us with Peace through the loving words and actions of those wise, loving people God places in our lives. These can be our family, our friends, our co-workers, a wise social worker counselor, a soul friend, a priest or minister, a doctor, nurse, or volunteer in ministry.
In the photo above, we see one person holding and caressing the hand of another. When Jesus healed, he almost always used touching. When we lovingly and respectfully touch one another, we are reminded that we are not alone in this world - because both people are simultaneously touching and being touched, giving as well as being a blessing for another.
At Valley Children's Hospital in Fresno, California, "There are volunteer cuddlers in the neonatal intensive care unit from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Parents can opt out of receiving a cuddler for their baby, but most are happy they are there, Lynne Meccariello, a supervisor in the neonatal unit, says. Cuddlers also leave cards at the babies’ cribs that tell parents who cuddled their baby each day and for how long.
“'We love our cuddlers,” says Valley Children’s nurse Shayla Norwood. “We would not get through our day without them. These babies need to be loved and they need to be held, and we can’t clone ourselves. We can’t hold them all day, so they help us do that.'
Lynne Meccariello, unit support supervisor of the neonatal intensive care unit and a liaison for the hospital’s volunteer services department, describes the cuddling program as providing “developmental care and comfort to babies' when their parents can’t be there.
”Meccariello says holding a sick baby reduces pain and provides warmth, and the cuddler encourages 'self-soothing' – children’s ability to comfort themselves when they aren’t being held.
"Stacie Venkatesan, director of neonatal services for Valley Children’s, says the comfort of cuddling helps premature babies grow because they spend more time sleeping and less time awake and fussy, which burns more calories and limits their growth. Human touch also promotes emotional development through socialization.
“'Having it be a nurturing, more calm environment, that really promotes health and growth for these very small children,” Venkatesan says.
"Kerry Abbott drives down to the hospital from Oakhurst every Wednesday morning to cuddle babes.
“'It brings so much comfort to them that can’t be found in a shot or an IV,” Abbott says of the cuddling. 'It’s been amazing to me how quick they respond to cuddling when they aren’t at their best.'
"The cuddling likely helped Grant Early ( a baby Kerry Abbott cuddled) in his healing. The baby boy was discharged from the hospital on Monday after healing from a nerve injury he suffered during birth that left parts of his body temporarily paralyzed. Grant was connected to breathing and feeding tubes for the majority of his nearly four-month stay in the hospital.
"During one of his last cuddling sessions at Valley Children’s, Abbott cooed and hummed and talked happily to little Grant as he sat on her lap on a chair facing a window as morning sunshine streamed in.
“'To sit here and comfort a child and bring them some peace,” she says, 'it fills my heart.'” (from Carmen George in the "Fresno Bee," May 25, 2017)
Seeking counsel from every wise man or woman can be simple sharing from the heart with our family and friends. There is no shame in being broken. There is no shame in baring our fears, anxieties, and griefs to others. We are radically united with one another in Christ, and as human beings we all fear, all are broken, all face confusion, emotional paralysis, emotional fatigue. We should never fear sharing our pain, because we are blessing another as they are blessing us though their listening and compassion. The blessing is that as we bear each other's burdens, theirs are lightened, and our own are lightened. To be one in brokenness is to be one in rising to new life. Our love, as one broken being for another, heals us, allows us to transcend our mutual pain, and find God's Peace. We are blessed and we are a blessing.
Seeking counsel from every wise man can involve seeking professional counseling. None of us is Super Man. We all need one another as members of the Body of Christ, and, especially during times of great stress from physical or emotional or social disruptions in our lives, we need to consult those with specialized knowledge and wisdom.
When my son died at the age of forty, I sought grief counseling. When my husband found a suicide victim, he went for counseling for PTSD. Another family member who had a bout with cancer went for counseling. Counselors can encourage us, teach us coping strategies, listen to our inmost secrets without judgement, and help us to make positive changes in our unhealthy patterns of interaction in our relationships. A loving, trained therapist can be the instrument for the Words of Wisdom of God and the Peace of God.
The Peace of God also comes to us through personal prayer and communal prayer. Praying daily, on a regular basis, helps us to open ourselves more freely to God's Presence and God's Will. Praying daily opens us to the possibility of God's comfort and enlightenment. How often during the night, when I'm distressed, I grab my rosary and pray either the Rosary Mysteries or a Divine Mercy Chaplet. Just the touch of the cross and the beads in my hands brings me comfort; their warmth and solidity convey the reality of the warmth and solidity of God's Presence there in the darkness with me. The repetition of the beloved words in my mouth reinforces the truth of God's Promise to always be with me. Praying with my community at Mass strengthens me in the comfort of receiving the Body of Christ, the Eucharist, while praying with the Body of Christ as one people of God. Our words, our holding hands, our standing and kneeling together as one, fills me with Peace.
Daily prayer, a certain time and amount of time promised to be with God, strengthens our trust in God, our relationship with Him, so that we know, as Peter Marshall says, that "God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty."
For over twenty years, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin gave the first hour of his day to personal prayer, and had seen his life as a priest deepen. In "The Gift of Peace," he says,
"This doesn't mean that I've learned to pray perfectly. It doesn't mean that I have not experienced the struggles that other people have faced. Quite the contrary. But, early on, I made another decision. I said, 'Lord, I know I spend a certain amount of that morning hour of prayer daydreaming, problem-solving, and I'm not sure that I can cut that out. I'll try, but the important thing is I'm not going to give that time to anybody else'....
"What I have found as time has gone on is that the effect of that first hour doesn't end when the hour is up. That hour certainly unites me with the Lord in the early part of the day, but it keeps me connected to him throughout the rest of the day as well. Frequently as I face issues, whether positive or negative, I ask for His help."
Then the Cardinal faced a new, soul-shattering experience: a diagnosis of cancer. He shares his brokenness without shame. He says,
"When I entered the Loyola University Medical Center last June, my life had been turned completely upside down by the totally unexpected news that what I had been experiencing as a healthy body was, in fact, housing a dangerous, aggressive cancer. The time since the diagnosis, surgery, and postoperative radiation and chemotherapy has led me into a new dimension of my life-long journey of faith.
"I have experienced in a very personal way the chaos that serious illness brings into one's life. I have had to let go of many things that had brought me a sense of security and satisfaction in order to find the healing that only faith in the Lord can bring.
"Initially, I felt as though floodwaters were threatening to overwhelm me. For the first time in my life I truly had to look death in the face. In one brief moment, all my personal dreams and pastoral plans for the future had to be put on hold. Everything in my personal life and pastoral ministry had to be re-evaluated from a new perspective. My initial experience was of disorientation, isolation, a feeling of not being 'at home' anymore.
"Instead of being immobilized by the news of the cancer, however, I began to prepare myself for surgery and postoperative care. I discussed my condition with family and friends. I prayed as I have never prayed before that I would have the courage and grace to face whatever lay ahead. I determined that I would offer whatever suffering I might endure for the Church, particularly the Archdiocese of Chicago. Blessedly, a peace of mind and heart and soul quietly flooded through my entire being, a kind of peace I had never known before. And I came to believe in a new way that the Lord would walk with me through this journey of illness that would take me from a former way of life into a new manner of living.
"Nevertheless, during my convalescence I found the nights to be especially long, a time for various fears to surface. I sometimes found myself weeping, something I seldom did before. And I came to realize how much of what consumes our daily life is trivial and insignificant. In these dark moments, besides my faith and trust in the Lord, I was constantly bolstered by the awareness that thousands of people were praying for me....
"I have also felt a special solidarity with others facing life-threatening illness. I have talked and prayed with other cancer patients who were waiting in the same room for radiation or chemotherapy."
Whenever we find ourselves in the darkness of unexpected stress, anxiety, trauma, or illness, it's important to realize that we need to take step after step, journeying through the darkness. The darkness of grief. The darkness of fear of the unknown. The darkness of anxiety. The darkness of illness. God's Peace waits to bless us through personal prayer and through the presence of the Body of Christ which surrounds us. Through their words, touches, and time spent with us, our family, friends, and various professional care-givers help us realize that we are not alone, that others understand our brokenness and are broken too, that others care, that others have the God-given wisdom and expertise to help us through these trying times. Even in the darkness of night, overwhelmed by sorrow, we can find comfort, as Cardinal Bernardin did, in knowing that thousands throughout the world pray for us.
When we take the time to develop a personal relationship with God - and by that I mean a trust that God loves us personally and cares for us personally - this journey through darkness can bring us unexpected blessings and insights, and a radically new sense of Peace. A deepening in our trust in God and a more radical surrender to His mercy. The realization of how much in our daily lives is trivial and insignificant. The desire to offer our sufferings in union with Christ's heart for the spiritual sake of others. The blessing that we can find new solidarity with fellow sufferers and offer them our support, and that our brokenness can accept and affirm the brokenness of others.
God's Peace meets us every day, blessing us, body and soul. May we be ready to recognize God and welcome His healing, loving, peaceful Presence in the presence of His loving Body in our lives. May we recognize God's presence within our own brokenness and so allow ourselves to be broken people without shame. To be one in the brokenness of the Body of Christ is to become one in rising, united, to the Peace of new life.