“When we are a healing presence to others, we are, in some sense, a healing presence to Christ Himself, who resides in others. Better said, Christ is the healing presence in us who moves through us to heal others...every person is called to be a healing presence—that is, to love others…Many of us shrink from becoming a healing presence to others because of the initial cost. We don’t experience the full joy because we get stuck in the suffering. Joy emerges by living through the suffering to the other side.” (Albert S. Rossi)
“When we desire to do the will of God, it leads us to worship the Lord among His people, praying and living as He instructs in the bosom of God’s family. From our fathers in Christ – and our aunts, uncles, big brothers and sisters – we learn how greatly we need the healing presence of our Father and our family in order to be transformed and restored to His design.” (Dynamis 1/29/2020)
“When we recognize that the world does not revolve around our own desires and needs, we discover that we can be a healing presence to others.” (Christine Valters Paintner)
“We must pray and fast in order to open our souls ever more fully to the healing presence of the Savior. We must be on guard against unholy thoughts and desires and mindfully refuse to welcome them into our hearts. We must resist the temptation to make power, pleasure, and pride the measures of our life, and especially be on guard against the hypocrisy of trying to use our faith as a way of gaining anything in this world. We must cultivate the spiritual strength of those who “are fools for Christ’s sake” if we are to have faith even the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains such that “nothing will be impossible to you.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“And this is truly the most important thing about Confession: not that we fulfill some formal obligation to recite the list of sins which we have committed, nor that we feel sufficient guilt about the wrongs we have done, but rather that we come naked into the healing presence of the Lord God – hiding nothing, coming as we truly are – and simply ask for His grace and His mercy. And this is also part of the reason why we confess our sins in the presence of a priest: so that when another human being sees us as we truly are, with all of our filth and ugliness, and responds to all the worst things about us with nothing but mercy and compassion and forgiveness, we will catch but the smallest glimpse of the ineffable love and compassion which our All-merciful Savior has for every each and every one of us sinners.” (Hieromonk Gabriel)