(OSV News) ─ So much has surfaced in recent decades about the need for healing within the Catholic Church and the world, at least when viewed through the eyes of Katharina Westerhorstmann, a professor of theology and medical ethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Her quest to find what Christian healing means led her to make it the theme of Franciscan University's sixth annual Truth of Love Conference, with this year's edition titled as "Toward a Theology of Healing."
The Sept. 4-6 event gathered Catholic educators from worldwide locations to explore the topic, its roots in Scripture, Jesus Christ's journey of salvation and the history of the Catholic Church, its weaving within the sacramental tradition and its applications in the modern world today.
"I felt the need that this would be explained more, really rooted in our Christian tradition and then presented to the Church, to the faithful, as a pathway for the future," Westerhorstmann said.
The conference, traditionally held at its main campus in Ohio, took place this year at Kartause Maria Thronus Iesu (Monastery of Our Lady, Throne of Jesus). It houses Franciscan University's academic programs in Gaming, Austria, where Westerhorstmann has served as a professor of theology since 2020.
"What Katharina first gave me was this incredible quote from Benedict XVI in 'Jesus of Nazareth,' showing (how) Christianity is a therapeutic religion in the sense that the entire way of Christian life is a path of healing, and seeing the entire growth of the person as healing," said Hannah Barrett, an associate professor of theology who teaches alongside Westerhorstmann.
"That person who is on the path of Christ is, of course, wounded," she said. "There's manifold levels of healing that accompany the journey into salvation for any of us."
The Truth of Love Conference featured topics and testimonies that span causes for human woundedness within and beyond the Church, from our own mortality to loneliness and isolation, and even to the trauma of sexual abuse. The conference also provided talks and personal encounters of healing, everything from journeys of faith, and medical healing to our own practical capabilities, interspersed with Mass, adoration and vespers.
Stephen Hildebrand, provost and professor of theology at Franciscan University, told OSV News about how the conference sought to dive into a blessed enigma about healing in the sense of our faith.
"At the heart of Christianity is a paradox, that by the death of Jesus, we are given life," he said. "In Christianity, you're healed by being wounded. It sounds really bizarre. The whole phrase 'wounded by love' should be jarring to us (and) seems not to make sense, but there's a genuine healing still."
Much of the conference explored how the Catholic faith shows that woundedness by love, and the Lord using our own vulnerability, can heal us from wounds that are harmful and destructive. It also dove into how the process of experiencing and understanding our own wounds not only heals us, but opens the door to healing each other in relationship with Christ.
"It is by being vulnerable and being vulnerable to the Lord that our wounds can heal," said Westerhorstmann.
Sometimes, she said, that includes sacrificing our own masks and walls to offer our vulnerability in relationship with others as well as the Lord.
"In our relationships with others, it's often that whenever we open our hearts for others, we also may be wounded, but we can also receive healing through their love and through God's love in this relationship," she said.
Hildebrand said he also sees how that blessed, open heart to the woundedness of ourselves and others in the loving wounds of Christ empower us in healing.
"We don't see our agency as reducing God's agency. When we're present, it doesn't mean he's absent," he said.
"Having a sense of agency seems to me really important for overcoming one's own woundedness with the help of God," he said. "God invites us to participate in his saving us, in his saving others. He is the healer, and he makes room for us to be, so to speak, co-healers with him, under him, by his power."
Westerhorstmann also spoke of the Church's most active, present agency in healing us: the sacramental pathways that have healed people for centuries.
"We can experience it in a very profound way in the sacraments of the Church, especially in the two sacraments of healing," she said, referring to the sacraments of reconciliation and anointing of the sick. "I would add in the sacrament of the Eucharist, through which we're deeply healed in our wounds and given a strong sense of belonging to the Lord and, through his body and blood, also to each other."
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Jay Sorgi writes for OSV News from Philadelphia.
