subject: Will a Healing Touch Non secular Ministry Be an Answer for Nowadays's "Healing Pilgrims?" [print this page] Will a Healing Touch Non secular Ministry Be an Answer for Nowadays's "Healing Pilgrims?"
By the point we tend to reached the Middle Ages healing played a smaller and smaller role in church life. By the seventh century, western civilization had deteriorated significantly. Barbarian invasions plundered cities, and scattered, tortured, and murdered the people. Survival became a daily struggle and folks looked to God and to the "saints," those who made it into heaven, for his or her healing needs. St. Gregory the Nice, leader of the Christian world, regarded sickness as a discipline sent from God. One may solely hope for a better life in heaven. He taught that miracles had to be an indication of the "finish times." But, he believed saints might heal and he inspired folks to recollect these holy ones as "friends at court" in heaven thus they might intercede for them. This teaching laid the inspiration for pilgrimages to the burial sites or "shrines" of the saints. Holy folks were commemorated since they were in heaven and could reach across the veil of this existence to help others. Occurring pilgrimage meant traveling dangerous roads. Since few individuals may afford to stay in inns, they might try to walk to the nearest abbey or monastery for shelter along their journey. Here at intervals those walls, the monks and nuns tended their healing wants in body and spirit. Compassionate healing became a chief focus of many monastic orders. Monks and nuns practiced the healing arts that included surgery, laying-on of hands, healing herbs, essential oils and alternative holistic treatments for the wayfarers traveling on pilgrimage. The church however in an endeavor to separate religious healing from physical healing within the twelfth century, forbade monks from performing surgery. They were to be healers of souls only. An outstanding Christian healer throughout this period was Hildegard of Bingen. She was a mystic, visionary, herbalist, scientist, composer, author, artist and consultant to kings and popes. All of the Benedictine Motherhouses of Europe would send representatives to be told from Hildegard how to treat all manner of physical and mental illnesses. Her abbey became a gathering place for healers across Europe. The nobility within the Middle Ages all had their own non-public physicians and healers but the commoners had to depend upon every other for healing. They used "wise women healers" who knew about herbs and who had vast experiential knowledge relating to ladies's cycles, childbirth and a way to heal common ailments. The monks and nuns within the abbeys and monasteries likewise had vast experiential knowledge. They practiced a compassionate healing within the name of Christ and in the tradition of the first church Fathers and Mothers. What will we learn from this piece of history about healing body/mind/spirit? Can a healing ministry help restore each soul and body to wholeness? Many think therefore and are "happening modern-day pilgrimages" to seek out complementary and various healing practitioners-especially those that are Christian focused.
