22.10.2013
New Prayer Ministers Commissioned at Diocesan Service
Eight prayer ministers from Dublin and Glendalough were commissioned at the annual Diocesan Service of Wholeness and Healing which took place in Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday October 20.
Elizabeth Caird, Anne O’Regan, Stella Obe, Kelly Fogarty, Adele Sleator, Ernest Mackey, Brendan Sheehan and James Kilbey were commissioned by Archbishop Michael Jackson having completed the diocesan training course.
In commissioning the new prayer ministers, Archbishop Jackson urged the congregation to support and pray for those who had been called to the ministry. He added that they could give thanks for the variety of gifts and ministry being bestowed on the church.
The address was given by the Revd Daniel Nuzum, Chaplain at Cork University Hospital, who spoke about a friend, John, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour from which, following an operation and treatment, it became obvious he was not going to survive.
He said that people prayed, laid hands on him, anointed him and prayed for a miracle. “If ever there was an opportunity for God to make Godself known this was it. If ever there was a time to feel cheated, let down, disappointed abandoned this was it. I need to be honest with you and say that there days when I wondered where God was, and who was it that I believed in. I was privileged to accompany John throughout his illness and like Elijah I tried to find God in the dramatic, the earthquake moments of brain surgery or the noisy sound of radiotherapy and yet, like Elijah it was actually in the sheer rawness and stillness where we experienced God. There would be no dramatic miracle, there would be no Lazarus moment. So where were we to find healing or wholeness?” he said.
The preacher said that his friend exuded an extraordinary sense of peace, wholeness and inner calm that radiated from him to those who were close to him. “When John came to a place where he was at peace with how things were and that he would not recover from his tumour, there was an extraordinary sense of inner peace for him. He described it as a healing,” he said.
Mr Nuzum said that healing was about acknowledging and addressing anything that disrupts our sense of relationship with creation, with God, with ourselves and with one another.
However, he said that the other end of the spectrum of healing was and the church needed to proclaim that healing ministry was part of its core work. He added that the greatest challenge for our faith was being able to hold in the one hand the reality of disappointment and pain and yet our hope in God who knew every hair on our head.
“This is not a resignation or a giving up but rather it is finding an inner strength that proclaims that nothing is greater than who we are as created in God’s image. We may be frail, we may have physical, spiritual or emotional pain but nothing can diminish our core personhood. So when we pray today we are not trying to convince God to do anything but rather as Søren Kierkegaard puts it ‘The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays’,” he said.
The newly commissioned prayer ministers will work in their parishes and will participate in Services of Wholeness and Healing. Apart from services in various parishes, prayer teams minister in St Ann’s Church on Dawson Street, Dublin, on Tuesdays and in Christ Church Cathedral on Thursdays – both at 12.45 pm.
Photo caption: Archbishop Michael Jackson and Dean Dermot Dunne are pictured with the newly commissioned prayer ministers with their rectors following the Dublin and Glendalough annual Diocesan Service of Wholeness and Healing in Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday October 20. Also pictured is the Revd Daniel Nuzum who preached at the service.