The Healing Power Of The Blessed Sacrament

When I was a student at university, I had a friend, who used to say, “If people knew the healing that is in the Church, it would be full, but it’s empty.” She herself spent 45 minutes in the local church every day and claimed the healing of being in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament was tangible for her.

And it is true for me too. Every single time I go to Adoration I do not leave the same way I went in. The Lord is always present in an incredibly real way for me – He heals, He reveals, He comforts, reassures, confirms, lifts burdens, breaks chains, restores peace, inspires with hope, directs my decisions. God is faithful and full of consolations. To be honest, I don’t think I could function without this time of being with the Lord.

Blessed Sacrament

The church I go to is St. Anthony’s in Edgware, North London. It is an amazing church and has adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from 6am to 10pm every day of the week (except Sunday). When I first came to live in London everything was very new. I had a few friends but they were busy. It should have been a time of loneliness and uncertainty for me and in some ways it was but because of St Anthony’s I felt very strong. The Church was on my way to work and so I was able to ‘go home’ there every morning and feel the companionship of God. As soon as you walk into the church you can feel the peace of God. I would often arrive there feeling nervous and filled with unnameable anxieties about my new job, but by the time I left I felt calm. Just going there gave me a feeling of security, familiarity and belonging. I used to go quite often and once the regulars saw me, they asked me to go on their weekly rota. Thus I do an hour on Friday mornings. As it was on my way to work I got into the habit, in fact, of going every day for shorter or longer periods, depending on how much time I had before I went to work. I work for a very small company and over the years we have changed office premises quite a bit, but because I had got into the habit of going to the church, even when it became a bit more difficult to do so, I still continued to make the effort to go because of all the benefits I received. Because of my work commitments, I’ve never been able to get to daily Mass, but for me adoration more than makes up for it, as it brings me into spiritual communion with the Lord.

I only realized how vital it was to my routine when I moved house to south London. On paper the move seemed a good one. The new house was beautiful and in a lovely area and I was flat sharing, with a wonderful committed Christian woman. It ended up being a nightmare, however, because I hadn’t realized how much the increased travelling would take out of me, as my office was still in north London. Worst of all now it became out of the question for me to go to adoration at St Anthony’s and I even had to drop my weekly Friday rota commitment which before had been sacrosanct. I remember when I first realized I would have to stop it I cried, not just because I couldn’t go anymore, but because I knew I would soon get out of the habit, and after a while I wouldn’t even miss it. And this is exactly what happened and I dropped the whole thing from my life.

I was still a member of a prayer group, however, which I continued to attend, but because of the travelling I was so exhausted that I stopped going out almost completely. The one person I did visit, however, was a friend called Bernie, who lived in a hostel in Willesden, which was very near my work. It turned out there was a room going in the place, and although it wasn’t half as nice as the house in Wimbledon, I realized God was opening up an opportunity for me to safeguard my physical and spiritual health.

Shortly after I moved up to the Willesden hostel, the office moved again. The good news, however, was that, once again, I was passing St Anthony’s on my way to work. I knew God was calling me back to the parish. It was strange. At the church they still had my name on the Friday rota. Someone had just been filling in for me, so within a short time I was slotted back into my old routine as if I had never been away. Although going to pray every day there before work, does mean I have to get up earlier, it is not hard for me to get up in the morning when I know I am going there. When I wake up I often feel burdened down and distressed with internal angst, business pressures and other commitments I have. Thus I often wake up with a kind of heaviness. This gives me a real incentive to go to the church because I always feel so much better afterwards. Sometimes I feel better as soon as I walk through the door. Other times it takes longer, but I always feel full of energy by the time I get to work. It is quite extraordinary. Recently I felt myself almost on the verge of depression because of all the situations I was carrying. One of my friends had become a widow and I was trying to support her and several other close friends were going through difficulties of various kinds, and I felt a sense of being out of control and panicky because I was in danger of missing crucial work deadlines. Once again I was away from my spiritual support system because I was doing jury service up in Yorkshire. All this was threatening to throw me off course.

However, as soon as I came back to London and my routine of adoration, however, things started improving. When I go to adoration I just plonk myself in front of the Lord. I don’t ask questions, or demand resolutions for the different situations. I just bring myself and the mess of my life and that of my friends to Him and just stay there with Him. It is like being in the company of your husband or wife or the person who loves you best. You often just feel better in their company, without needing to say anything, because of the empathy they have for you and whatever you are going through. You know you are not alone in whatever you are facing and that’s how I feel when I am with the Lord in adoration.

I have had a wonderful healing over the last couple of weeks and I am now in a totally different place than I was. I feel I have been healed of the wound I received from sharing in the suffering of others. I am even glad of the pain I have felt on the behalf of my friends, because Jesus has transformed it for me. I feel I have a new strength to help them now and I can stand with them in a positive way rather than being destroyed by what is hurting them. It means I can listen and be empathetic in a positive way and the pain I feel for them becomes redemptive because I take it straight to Jesus. I don’t even have to articulate what the pain is because He knows and He takes care of it!

This article was written by Peggy Wood (not her real name) who has a stressful job in London.

Source: Good New Magazine

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