Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

Deryl Davis, host

Priest and nationally recognized physician Anne Brower meets with Deryl Davis, producer of the Sunday Forum, to discuss the meaning of healing and the role prayer plays in wholeness and well-being.

Since time immemorial, listening and touching were the main components of what Brower calls the “art of medicine.” Today, however, many physicians spend only a few minutes with a patient before turning the patient over to a machine for an MRI, X-ray, or other procedure.

Crucial aspects of care are lost when conversation and touch are removed from care. Common terms elucidate the position of the patient—and the people around that patient—when an ailment strikes. “Disease is the organic thing that attacks” the body, she says. “Illness is your response to your disease,” she adds, pointing out that illness is the hardest challenge for people with a disease to face. “Sickness is the social response to your disease,” she comments. Early AIDS patients, for example, were the lepers of our day. Shunning patients is a sickness that makes it harder for patients to recover.

How do people recover from disease, illness, and sickness? Brower defines cure as restoring the body to its original state before the disease or injury. Because this often cannot happen, medical conditions are managed to enable patients to function better. (“Forget about cure,” Brower summarizes.)

By contrast, healing is a way of living that involves both medical ailments and “any kind of brokenness,” Brower says. “We have to live our lives constantly towards healing…. That’s change. That’s coming closer to God every moment of our lives. It involves love, it involves surrender, it involves moving out of where we are to a new place.”

After his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus himself appeared before the disciples with his wounds still present. He invited “doubting Thomas” to touch the wounds. Why didn’t Jesus come back in a medically perfect, cured state? Brower believes that Jesus’ message was: I am whole, with my wounds.

People may come to a healing ministry to ask that their cancer be cured, but that is not the purpose of healing prayers. Those who pray “will lift you up to God, and ask that God be with you … that you might feel his healing touch…. Healing is basically helping you to move with your disease through and beyond it to a higher consciousness … a higher presence with God,” Brower explains.

What of the miraculous cures related in the New Testament? “I believe, yes, Jesus performed cures. I can’t get around that,” Brower says. “But if you notice … every cure that he did … he used that moment to talk about the kingdom of God.”

Jesus “also talked about, ‘Your faith has made you well,’” Brower points out. “I think that he was doing the cure to talk about the healing aspect, or to talk about the kingdom of God.

“If he had really wanted cure to be the real thing, he would have cured everybody,” she adds. But Jesus did not cure everyone. He healed, always talking to one person, always with a touch to the ears, or the mouth, or another part of the body.

Does suffering confer wisdom? Brower doubts that people must suffer as Job did in order to gain wisdom. “The trick is to get beyond your disease or your brokenness,” and reach a higher spiritual plane or a greater wisdom.

About The Rev. Dr. Anne C. Brower

The Rev. Dr. Anne C. Brower is senior chaplain and director of the Healing Ministry at Washington National Cathedral. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and was honored in 1997 by the American Association of Women Radiologists as “The Most Outstanding Woman Radiologist” in the nation. Her most recent book is I Am Not Ready to Die Just Yet: Stories of Healing.