Noel’s Reviews > Healing the Wounds of Sexual Abuse: Reading the Bible with Survivors > Status Update

"The Eucharist, of all the ways we can pray, mediates most powerfully the presence of Jesus as a loving, tactile, healing embrace. It is a form of prayer in which we survivors can in some sense 'touch Jesus.' For survivors, the element of touching and being touched by Jesus carries profound implications. "

"How we remember Jesus in the Eucharist can either re-inflict the original wounds of survivors or heal some of our deepest wounds. The Eucharist is an interpretation of the Bible that we enact physically. It is a drama that tells some of our most basic beliefs about salvation, forgiveness, atonement, and grace. It reflects what we believe or don't believe about God's healing intent for survivors."

"To remember is to re-member, to bring together into a unified whole that which is broken or scattered. So in the Eucharist we re-member everything about Jesus's life: his healing, his love, his compassion, his outrage, his wisdom, his vulnerability, his poverty, his suffering, his death. We remember his resurrection and his promise to come again."

"Atonement is the healing of the wounds, the forgiveness of the sins, and the making of all things new. It is the reversal of fragmentation, the uncursing of the world. "

"Atonement for survivors also means that through the power of Jesus's resurrection, we are no longer doomed to live out the broken consequences of the abuse. Because the Holy Spirit is counseling us and comforting us, teaching us about Jesus's healing love, we do not have to keep repeating the patterns of wounds and since and grief. We can have at-one-ment with Christ, who heals us and sets us free."

"We were lambs at the mercy of wolves, and the Lamb of God was with us, walking to Golgotha."

"Mary's orientation is one of openness, vulnerability, availability, and grace. Being Mary requires childlike trust in the goodness of the Lord, even when the way is hard and lonely. Contemplatives 'waste' much time at the feet of Jesus, learning to recognize the movements of the Spirit. Prayer is what keeps the Marys right side up."

"But when Judas judges her, the voice of Jesus warns, 'Leave. Her. Alone.'

"As we heal, a great many of us survivors become like Mary. We have opened our alabaster jars. Our lives are spilled in ministry to Christ. We are free in our worship; we are outrageous. Our hair tumbles down as we kneel at Jesus' feet. The grief of our lives has become anointing oil. Jesus receives our love with open arms."

"But larger than all the wounds we see redemption. For the same Jesus who got into a boat and crossed over to the other side, the same Jesus who called a bleeding woman 'daughter,' the same Jesus who said, 'Tabitha cum! Little girl, arise!' has come to us. He has given us back our lives. And we will never agree to participate in our own subjugation again. Christ has set us free."

"'Jesus, what a friend for sinners,' the old hymn says, and we sing it with gusto on Sunday morning in our pews. But would we really like Jesus if he showed up and was the 'friend of sinners' among us that he was two thousand years ago?"