First Spiritual Exercises – Checking Health

Honour physicians for their services, for the Lord created them; for their gift of healing comes from the Most High. The Lord created medicines out of the earth, and the sensible will not despise them. By them the physician heals and takes away pain; the pharmacist makes a mixture from them. God’s works will never be finished; and from him health spreads over all the earth.

My child, when you are ill, do not delay, but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you. Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him; do not let him leave you, for you need him. There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians, for they too pray to the Lord that he grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. Because you are precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.

Sirach 38:1-14

We pray that the standard of health improves in rural Timor-Leste. We pray that the roaming doctors and nurses continue to provide quality medical care to those in need and that their reach expands throughout the country.

1. Desire...I ask the Spirit for the Gift of Health

I hold some medicine, new or old, of any kind. I consider how access to doctors, health care and medicine is a basic human right. So too is sanitation and security in the event of disability. I remember the times I have urgently needed health care and how dire it would have been without it. I open myself to the needful Spirit of Health.

I ask the Spirit for the medicine, health care and healing I need for myself or one I love.

2. Relish...Today I live in the Trinity of Health

I imagine I am surrounded in a circle by the Trinity of Health. Father, Jesus and Spirit, address me by name, saying, ‘I will help you become healthy. Your faith will heal you.’

Not knowing how I will receive health care, it being far away, too expensive, or denied, I sit humbly, for a while, with my desire and the mystery of the Trinity of Health.

I relish being well and healthy.

3. Health... I breathe in the Spirit of Health

Then I imagine and feel the Spirit of Health breathing health into me.

I breathe it in deep, wait, then breathe it out to flow through my need or the need of one I love, imagining it healing. I repeat as desired – breathing, healed, healthy.

I conclude giving thanks, looking forward to the well-being of good health.

PRAYER TIME: 10 minutes.

Click here to download the prayer of Checking Health.