A Prayer for Healing

This prayer can be done whenever you need inner peace, are suffering, or just in need of healing of past memories. It has four steps:

1. Act of Presence - just imagine yourself before the Blessed Trinity who are looking at you with love. This loving God is wanting to help me, to heal me, to enable me to grow.

2. Ask for the Grace I want - I may be asking for courage, or for wisdom, or just light to see the next step I am to take. I pray now for what I want and for what Jesus seems to want for me. I may need to pray for the grace to accept what Jesus helps me to see.

3. Prayerful Reflection - I now dialogue with Jesus about the things I see as I prayerfully ponder over the past memory or hurt that I am trying to get rid of or at least to know what I am to do. I talk to Jesus and let Him take the lead. Sometimes I let Jesus surface the memories and I become aware of the feelings I now have as I am looking at this memory in his presence.

4. Colloquy - This is not the same as the dialogue. Now I talk to Jesus about what I am feeling. I talk about these things that are hard for me to accept until I find peace in God's presence and realize that all is gift.

This is sort of a simplified summary of a paper by John Gavan, S.J. from Guelph, Ontario. I am sure you see that a Jesuit would go through these four points. I think I might be combining the last two. I am not sure why I am trying to put this method of prayer on my blog tonight, but hope the Holy Spirit knows and perhaps it will help someone!