In the coastal town of Seadrift, Texas, a new glimmer of hope has become available for those seeking spiritual and emotional renewal.
Our Lady’s Healing Center, a unique retreat center within the Diocese of Victoria, Texas, offers a deeply Catholic approach to healing. According to the center's website, its mission is "to bring the Good News of Healing through Jesus Christ to those suffering deep mental, emotional, and spiritual pain."
Bishop Brendan Cahill, an advocate for the healing center, recently discussed its mission and unique approach with ChurchPOP editor Jacqueline Burkepile.
Bishop Cahill explains how the sacraments, the healing center's unique experience and location, and the Jesuit spirituality make it an important place of renewal for anyone seeking healing.
Watch the full interview below:
“It’s called Our Lady’s Healing Center,” Cahill enthusiastically begins. “A center where people could come for intense healing—spiritually, emotionally, kind of a broad sense of healing.”
Our Lady’s Healing Center's healing director is Dr. Michael Fonseca, a Jesuit-trained spiritual director. The program begins with a five-day intensive retreat followed by 12 months of aftercare "with a Spiritual Companion to guide you on the path of healing and conversion."
The program then concludes with a "thee-day 'Renewed and Restored Retreat.'"
“Healing takes time, and in a sense, it’s a process,” Cahill told Burkepile. “It’s a whole program to bring healing to a person.”
The center also has a beautiful chapel dedicated to Our Lady, which Cahill consecrated.
Our Lady Star of the Sea Chapel contains stained-glass windows and beautiful sacred images and art.
“A beautiful chapel... with stained-glass of Jesus, a divine healer, all around beautiful images,” he described, emphasizing its importance in the healing process. “The Eucharistic presence is very much a part of the whole process of the healing."
“Daily Mass is to me a central part of it... ‘Lord, I am not worthy but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.’”
“Healing is reconciliation with God and one another,” Bishop Cahill adds.
The Catholicity–the sacraments—Mass, confession, and anointing of the sick—are central aspects of the experience. Cahill adds that "part of the healing is restoring that understanding of my beloved sonship or daughtership in God.”
"Part of our Catholic understanding of healing—it comes through the mercy of God for the individual —that every person is created as a beautiful child of God, and God's love never abandons them," he says.
Now in his 60s, Bishop Cahill also explains his struggles with grief and the possible impact the healing center could make on participants.
“The loss of a loved one...it still hurts, and it’s a wound...healing is just learning to accept the wound will be part of me and hopefully it can make me compassionate with others.”
“Underneath everything in our healing ministry is a sense that God loves us and has created us for a purpose, is with us on the path,” he continues.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted,” Cahill says, quoting Psalm 34. “Where our heart is broken, and we open it up to God, that’s where God is to be found.”
Here are more pictures of Our Lady's Healing Center:
