Recovery & Healing Ministry
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The Webster Dictionary defines Addiction as a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming behavior, substance, or activity having physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety or irritability) upon withdrawal or abstinence.
This defines the relationship that many of us have had with life in general. A lot of people can usually look at their lives and identify patterns of such behaviors. The obsessive-compulsive, codependent, self-seeking relationships that we have formed with different “entities” throughout our lives, which eventually turn against us. Unknowingly we have been relying on people, places, and things to give us something we can’t find, something they can’t provide. Subconsciously we keep seeking that one thing that we believe will make everything ok, and through trial and error, we try everything: jobs, money, hobbies, relationships, success, power, property, prestige, substances, even our own selves, we cling on to each possible solution until we realize each time it fails us. It never satisfies that void we seek to fill. Some recovery literature provides insight into this condition: “…we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. Lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves”. In the middle of our troubles, blinded by pain and delusion, we seek relief in every possible human power without success. Like kids on Christmas morning who run to open up their gifts, and one by one, full of excitement, they unwrap each box only to find it empty. In the same manner, we went through our lives looking for the missing power in all the wrong places. The journey of recovery and healing is a journey of discovery and awakening. It starts with the awareness that we should all come to a place where we feel empty. As Jesus stated, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” This is the starting point. Before healing, we experience that emptiness. Having it all and feeling like something is always missing. Subconsciously trying to find the answer. In awareness we come to find the appropriate solution. We learn that the power we have been searching for was always there. As we become awake and aware of reality, we begin to see that we are part of something greater. There is a bigger picture that we will never be able to completely see, but in awareness, we are able to get glimpses of it. A few years ago, a friend asked me if I didn’t wonder sometimes how God is able to invest so much into every single being in the world. I was contemplating that thought and it brought me back to times when I used to put together huge puzzles. Every single piece is critical to complete the whole picture. Each one of us may just be a single puzzle piece in this great universe. Without each one of us the picture is incomplete. I remind myself often that this journey is not about us, but about what God can bring to those around us through the lives we have been entrusted with. |
Group Meeting:
Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. We are currently studying Addiction & Grace by Gerald May. Recovery Mass: Last Saturday of each month at 5:00 p.m. In the News:
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Books we have studied
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