The Wounded Healer, an Image for the Priesthood
by Faith DiVecchio, a student in the “Knowing Christ” program
What does it mean to be a wounded healer? To explore this image, we can first ask, what does it mean to be wounded? And when we understand our woundedness, what is the alchemy that transforms wounds into the activity of healing?
Our woundedness began long ago in the fall of humanity from paradise, in the beginning of separation from the divine and the whole spiritual world. This descent, in essence, is our fallen or wounded condition. Human earthly life since that time has been full of suffering. In Genesis 3:18, for example, we learn that the ground will produce thorns and thistles for us, a picture of ongoing struggle. The need was created also at that moment for a spiritual being to make a sacrifice for us in order to create the possibility of healing the wound.
Christ could only bring healing and redemption to us, in our wounded condition, through incarnating into a path of woundedness himself. To follow him is to walk this path with him and to welcome the wounds in our own being to work alchemically in us to become the places of strength. The Apostle Paul, in 2nd Corinthians 12:9, tells us that he has been taught by the Lord, “My Grace is sufficient for you, because your power is made perfect in weakness.” Our suffering is also our potential. It is through pain that we can reach the greatest consciousness. When we feel our brokenness, we can then turn to the higher world and pray, “Dear Lord, give me your strength to overcome this part of my fallen nature.” When we ask for healing in a pure, humble way, we open a doorway to receive grace. These same areas become then our most beautiful characteristics, places where the light of Christ shines through us.
In the words of Novalis, “Whoever flees pain will love no more. To love is to feel the opening, to hold the wound always open.”
Our wounds are part of what define us as unique individuals. Even Christ, after the resurrection, was often first known by his wounds! (John 20) Our wounds, we might say, call us into existence in the incarnated world. It is a deep acceptance of entering the woundedness of the incarnated world which makes earthly life possible. The wisest parts of ourselves love the wounds and the challenging path through them. Every part of us that is broken, torn, ravaged by life and circumstance is a part in which we can come more tenderly into the compassion and gentle love of Christ, who seeks us in those places as we seek Him. These are the places that call us out of the banality of mundane life, out of our less than conscious places. They wake us up. These are gifts.
“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.” –Vance Havner.
The Thornton Wilder play, the Angel Who Troubled the Waters, uses the setting of John 5, the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem where a healing angel would appear every so often and stir the waters, bringing healing to the first who entered. In Wilder’s play, there is a doctor from the city with wounded legs who visits the pool. He does not receive healing, and the one who does become healed that day asks him to come back home with him to heal his family. He will go. He is still healing others, the wounded physician. What picture is this for us?
The Angel Troubling the Waters by J.M. William Turner c. 1853
When we have said yes to our wounds, yes to our suffering, yes to the awakening this brings, the dawning and deepening awareness of the need for God’s grace and love, we begin to be transformed by our wounds. This does not always mean the wound disappears. It more often means we pick up our pallet and walk. We learn to carry our pallet, our woundedness and fallen nature, as we learn to carry, with Christ, our cross. This is the heart of the Christian path and it is this exquisite process in our own being which opens the doors for us to witness, with insight and compassion, the wounds of others. It gives us the ability to bear suffering with others, to walk beside them, and to ask for the grace which transmutes the wounds into portals of light. In this age, this is healing. This is what is needed.
This image of the wounded healer is one of the seven archetypal images for the priesthood which are forming the work of the seminary. An introduction to these images by Seminary Director, Patrick Kennedy, and “Walking With Christ” student, Erica Maclennon, can be read in the “There, but for the Grace of God, go I…” June 4, 2021 blog entry.
Also a special thank you to Gisela Wielki for her beautiful conversations about woundedness and the Sacrament of Consultation with us in classes in Hillsdale.
About the Author: About the author: Faith DiVecchio is a "Knowing Christ" seminary student in the Hillsdale, NY campus. She is also a mother of three and the Legacy Giving Coordinator for the Christian Community of North America.
This is a blog entry by a student at The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These are posted weekly by the student editorial team of Robert Bower, Shannon Young and Faith DiVecchio. For more information about our seminary, see the website: www.christiancommunityseminary.ca and for even more weekly podcast and video content check out the Seminary’s Patreon page: www.patreon.com/ccseminary/posts.
The views expressed in this blog entry do not necessarily represent the views of the Seminary, its directors or the Christian Community. They are the sole responsibility of its author.