to come together. The cabin had been built by a Catholic woman I met years before when I was in college. She was a Benedictine oblate and a very devout and simple Catholic. While I was living alone in that cabin, I had plenty of extra time, and it was then that this book, Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing, was given to me. I say it “was given” because it almost wrote itself. The idea came to me in prayer, and each section of the book tripped off my fingers almost automatically.
Since then the book has helped thousands of people and has continued to be reprinted. Now, some twelve years later, I am pleased that it is going into a second edition with a fresh cover and an updated text. The book has been translated into Polish, Croatian, and French, and we would love to see it published in Spanish, Italian, and other languages.
The Christian faith is not just a theory or a good idea. It works. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is transforming the world. He is doing this by transforming individuals into the likeness of Christ.
The process of this transformation is a long, hard journey. It’s the work of a lifetime. The first step of the journey is coming to realize that we need God’s help. Then we have to accept what God has done for us in Christ. Then, with God’s help, we embark on the adventure of faith. The end of our journey is what Jesus calls “abundant life.” This is a life of total healing. It is a life of fullness. It means becoming all that God created us to be. This is not just a possibility, but a command. If you’re a Christian, fullness of life and holiness is your calling.
We make the fastest progress on this journey on our knees. In other words, it is through prayer that we reach out for God, and he reaches down to heal us. The Rosary is one of the most effective and powerful ways to pray. As we pray the Rosary, God can heal us and transform our lives.
I hope as you learn to use this book that God will change your life by the redeeming work of Christ and through the love and prayers of the Mother of God and our Mother.
Father Dwight Longenecker
Greenville, South Carolina
Epiphany 2019
Praying the Rosary
for Inner Healing
Introduction
Jesus the Healer
Jesus Christ came to heal. He announced it himself when he stood up to read the lesson as he began his ministry in the synagogue in his hometown.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good
news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Luke 4:16–19
Jesus proved it throughout his ministry. Wherever he went, he healed people and set them free.
Jesus wasn’t the only healer the world has seen. There have always been wonderworkers. There have always been men and women who have a natural gift to understand people and help them get better. There have always been doctors and wise people who have exercised healing gifts. There have also been shamans and showmen who would “heal” people through the power of suggestion and hypnosis. Others have healed through the power of demons, and their healing has always come at a price.
Jesus’ healing power is different from all of these. The healing power of Jesus is unique. Jesus is the only one who heals by going to the root of illness and disease. Jesus understands that the root cause of all disease and distress is sin. As soon as we hear the word “sin,” the red flag of guilt flies, and we get defensive. We don’t need to be ashamed of the word “sin.” Sin is simply the word we use for what has gone wrong with humanity. Sin is the twist in our godlike nature. It’s the glitch in the system. It’s the blemish on the faces of the beautiful sons and daughters of God that we were all created to be.
There’s no point trying to deny the fact of sin. Sin is as ancient as the Garden of Eden and as fresh as today’s headlines. Sin is a fact of life. It’s the one Christian belief that no one can deny, because we all experience it firsthand every day.
Sin’s Curse
Sin includes all of the things we do that we are ashamed of — but sin is bigger and simpler than that. The Bible puts it simply when it says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). This is the basic definition of sin: We were created to share in the fullness of God’s power, beauty, and glory, but we don’t. We miss the mark. We are not all we can be — and left on our own, our condition gets worse, not better.
Missing the fullness of God’s glory is bad enough, but the side effect of sin is that it causes pain and suffering. When there is something missing, we feel hunger, longing, and grief. When our lives go haywire because of sin, pain is the result; and when things continue to go wrong with no remedy, an inner illness develops. Eventually, we become numb to sin — and as we become numb to sin, we also become numb to the goodness of life. The joyful, hopeful, and youthful part of us starts to die. We become confused, the emptiness of our lives leads to despair, and eventually this inner illness causes spiritual death. That’s why the Bible puts it quite simply when it says that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).
It’s easy to blame ourselves for the sin that causes illness, disease, and death, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. We suffer from the wrong things we do, but we’re caught up in more than just the individual sins we ourselves commit. We live with other people who are also sinful, and we live in a world that is shot through with evil — like a nasty virus. All of us are caught in a sticky spider’s web of sin — and the more we struggle, the more entangled we become.
All of us suffer from four categories of sin.
The simplest sins are the things we do wrong. All of us miss the mark. We do things that seem pleasurable or good, but these actions injure ourselves or others in some way — even if we can’t see it.
The second type of sin is the good things we have left undone. We all have fantastic potential that we have failed to realize. We’re naturally lazy, and we avoid the effort of doing positive good, and this absence of good is a very insidious kind of evil.
Many people are totally unaware of the third type of sin. This is the bad things that are done to us. Other people do us harm — sometimes intentionally, but very often unintentionally. These sins wound us deeply and cause our inner sin-illness to get worse.
Finally, we all suffer what might be called general sin. We get infected, harmed, depressed, and weighed down by the everyday sin that is all around us and shot through this wicked world.
Worst of all, there is nothing we can do about this curse on our own. We can try very hard to be good, but that doesn’t
