"Your Healing is God's Secret"

  God's incredible kindness was shown to me last week.

  My current cancer treatment protocol is failing. My PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) has been steady at less than detectable to barely detectable for the entire two and a half years I’ve been participating in a drug trial which uses a combination of two cancer treatment oral pills, combined with hormone deprivation therapy. The average success period is about eight months according to one of my advisors, so four times the average isn’t bad. But now the PSA is slowly rising. When it fluctuated between 0.0 and 0.1, it always went back to 0.0 in time for the following month’s blood draw. But recently it stayed at 0.1 for two months in a row and then steadily climbed with a mild acceleration - jumping 2 points, then 3, etc… It won’t be long now before they see it as ineffective and it will be time to look for a new treatment.

  People with cancer often hope for miracles. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read or heard someone say they are trying to survive long enough for better and more effective treatments to be developed. Most of the Christian denominations I worshipped in had a skeptical view of miraculous healings for our time. Denominations that obsessed with healings often proved to be mostly emotion-driven and unreliable and I avoided them. "Faith is the key - my faith - and if I’m not healed, it is my own weak faith that failed." This is clearly a false religious view and easily refuted, but our conservative denominations essentially denied the possibility of miraculous healing at all except in theory, believing that most of these events disappeared with the deaths of the Holy Apostles themselves, yet always allowing for the remote possibility that God could choose to intervene if He really wanted to.

  Then I became an Orthodox Christian. What a weird religion to my Western mind!

  And it got weirder as time went on. Talk about faith! 2000 years of corroborated historical accounts from around the world of miraculous healings, myrrh-streaming icons, bodies of saints that don’t see decay, clairvoyance, prophecy. And people actually receive healing after praying to saints for help, or after asking a known holy man or woman for prayer for deliverance from an illness.

  And even stranger, how about a holy man who prays to receive cancer because he knows of the intense spiritual value of suffering.

  What is a modern 62 year old man with cancer (me) supposed to pray for? I cannot deny the incredible value suffering from cancer has been to me. I am going to die anyway. How much better is it to be spiritually prepared for entrance into the Holy presence of God than to have a painless and pleasant existence here on earth with an unprepared soul?

  So I asked my priest.

  There are several wonderful and miraculous Holy Icons in the world today that literally stream myrrh. Should I make plans to fly to Hawaii to pray before the Hawaiian Iveron icon of the Mother of God? Should I travel to the Holy Mountain or visit myrrh-gushing relics? One could become so obsessed with physical healing that the soul could become malnourished due to misplaced focus. Or what if my physical healing happens, and that suffering that caused incredible growth is no longer there, and I deteriorate into self-centered pleasure, spiritually demotivated.

  My priest gave wonderful advice. He reminded me that the desire to live was placed in my being from God. My desire to love my wife, to provide for her to the end of a long life, to revel in the joy of twelve (Yes, twelve!!!) grandchildren. To serve our little Orthodox Mission Church, to help it become a beacon of Hope and Truth in our city… all placed in my being by God. The desire to live is good. He said that if I have the opportunity to pray before a miraculous icon, take the opportunity. If I make plans to go, but the plans fall through, it is OK. Just walk the path He has laid out before me.

  Holy Unction is a special prayer service in the Orthodox Church. Up to seven priests will pray over the sick with prayers a thousand+ years old. Censing, anointing with oil, readings from the Holy Gospel, it is intense and wonderful and powerful. I have suffered from cancer for 4 1/2 years now, and for one reason or another, have not been able to participate in a Holy Unction service. Several weeks ago, without my prompting, our priest decided to try to organize one and we settled on Tuesday July 12 at noon because several priests from Elevation of the Holy Cross Church in Sacramento could be available on that day. I said Juli and I would be there.

  The week before the service, I saw that the myrrh-streaming Hawaiian Iveron icon would be in San Francisco. I realized it would be impossible to go and be anointed with myrrh from the icon without having to renege on commitments to our church, so I remembered the words of our priest and simply “walked the path.” Wouldn’t that be an incredible convergence of events? Drug protocol failure, Holy Unction planned after 4 years of patient waiting, and a miraculous icon available to receive an anointing of myrrh?

  The Saturday morning prior to the 12th, I was participating in my normal routine of reading The Lives of the Saints on the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) website when a text came through from a good friend. The Hawaiian Iveron Icon was coming to Sacramento. My first thought was, well, we’re headed out of town soon and the icon will probably arrive after we are on the road. I knew I could “walk the path” if that was the case, so I would not be disappointed. I would trust the kindness of God to shine light on the path He has for me.

  Then I looked at the schedule.

  The Iveron icon was scheduled to arrive at Holy Ascension Russian Orthodox Church on Monday night the 11th, for the first time in 4 years, with a two hour service and time for anointing, and Divine Liturgy on Tuesday morning at 9AM on the 12th, completed in time for Juli and I to travel across Sacramento to Elevation of the Holy Cross by noon.

  I admit, I burst into tears.

  Sometimes the kindness of God is overwhelming.

  That Saturday night at Vespers, I related all of this to our priest and asked him what I should think about this amazing confluence of events? I could be justified in imagining that this meant I was about to be healed. But of course, it was more likely that the healing of my soul, which will outlive this body by a million years, will take a much higher precedence. How crazy could be my thoughts if I let them run?

  My priest again gave wise advice. He said, “Your healing is God’s secret.” Timing, what, when, if… all these things are God’s secret and not for me to know. It is enough to know that He is kind, and that He loves me and will do what is best for me in His wisdom, not mine.

  Armed with that peace-filled approach, it was with incredible joy that I drove to Sacramento on Monday night and prayed and sang prayers with a full church of believers as the Iveron icon was brought into the nave and placed on its stand.

  The icon itself is solid wood. You can read about it here. It is beautiful, adorned with pearls, and is inside a protective case with a glass face. There is so much myrrh streaming from it that the case collects the myrrh with cotton. It is a miraculous suspension of the laws of physics for the purpose of increasing our faith. God shows us in a tangible and miraculous way that yes, He is not constrained by the laws of physics that He Himself created, and we are encouraged by the fact that we truly are not alone through this gift.

 

  I touched it with my hands. I pressed my forehead on the wet glass (If the myrrh can flow from wood it can certainly penetrate its glass cover) I kissed it, and I prayed. At the end of the service, a line formed as people processed toward the icon for personal prayer and veneration of the icon. We each received an anointing of myrrh on the forehead from a priest, traced in the shape of the cross and then I went out to the car for the drive home. After arriving home, I pressed my forehead against Juli’s, took some of the myrrh, still wet, and traced the cross on her forehead, and also onto a replica of the same icon we had purchased a couple of years ago.

  The next morning, we drove early to Holy Ascension for Divine Liturgy. We both had opportunity again to venerate the icon and then we worshiped and sang with a full church, ending with a special homily given by the caretaker of the icon. At the end, all were invited to share a meal and at the end of the meal, the case would be opened by a priest and those present would be able to see it from all sides (No special tricks here folks!!!) and then the cotton in the case would be torn into pieces to be given to those who wished to take some myrrh home with them. As much as we wanted to stay, we had just enough time to get across town to Elevation of the Holy Cross and did not want to cause anyone to have to wait on us. We were a little disappointed to miss having some myrrh to take with us, but God had already shown overwhelming kindness, and we were content.

  When we arrived at Holy Cross, we were shocked to discover that I was the only one there to receive Holy Unction. 4 priests had made themselves available, plus a Reader, and a Singer. Tears were easy to come by in the next hour and a half as I stood there while priests went through seven sets of prayers, readings, and anointing of oil. Near the end, I sat as they placed the Holy Gospel over my head and prayed a final series of prayers, then our priest exhorted all of us, and especially me, with a sobering homily.

The intensity and the beauty of that day will never be forgotten. But it wasn’t over.

  Our priest’s wife had prepared a simple meal for all of us and we took it out to a covered area to eat. When we were about halfway finished, a young mother who had also been at Holy Ascension worshiping came walking around the corner of the building toward us with something in her hands. She had stayed behind, with her young children, all the way until the end, receiving a small piece of myrrh-soaked cotton, which she presented to us. What a way to complete an incredible event. Kindness. Love. Miracles.

  This Monday I go in for another monthly blood draw. Wednesday I learn the results.

  

  Am I healed? I don’t care. I’ll walk the path that He is shining light on.

  

  My healing is God’s secret.