It has recently become a custom to take a theme for the year in the GoHealth Community. It gives an angle to explore what it means to be a Christian healer, and to deepen our wisdom about what is the healing that we offer to others and seek for ourselves.
So, welcome to the Year of Belonging! It’s great that you are here.
In his letter to the Corinthians, St Paul writes about the belonging of being a baptised Christian: For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ (1 Cor12:12). So the belonging of being a Christian is not just a club that we have joined that allows us access to a bunch of benefits, this belonging helps us uncover who we are at the deepest level – we are created and loved by God, we are utterly unique and of great value – connecting into this leads to flourishing and true health.
Science has shown us that finding a sense of belonging is essential to happiness and also our ability to get things done and succeed in life. When we feel like we belong, then community is deepened and can provide healing from isolation and division. It can even boost our health, as an individual and as a community. In the recent book, ‘Belonging: The science of creating connection and bridging divides’ the author Geoffrey L. Cohen writes:
Even fleeting experiences of belonging…can have far-reaching benefits. They raise our sense of wellbeing and self-worth, improve our performance, lessen our defensiveness and hostility, increase our tolerance of outsiders, and make us more compassionate. We become more humane (p.x)
The Christian faith offers belonging par excellence – we can through the grace of God find reconciliation, we can serve God through our own vocation and we can experience the love of God through our relationship with God and with creation. True belonging. Indeed, this is what St Augustine was writing about when we famously said: You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. (Book I)
But we all know that just because we are baptised Christians it doesn’t mean that we live in a perpetual state of joy and belonging. Even the saints would never claim that. We ‘see in a mirror dimly’, at St Paul wrote in 1 Cor 13:12, and so the job really is finding our way through this poorly lit world, seeking moments of belonging, and finding a community of people to journey alongside. It is the invitation of the church and of our spiritual journeys, and it is the task of the healing ministry to help others in this dim world.
The traditional healing ministry is all about helping people find a sense of belonging no matter what they are going through. In the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper or Mass, we find a deep bodily connection with Jesus, and share in his suffering as we share in his resurrection. And we do so ‘with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven’ – our true home where we always belong. Or, when we lay on hands in the healing ministry. It is not so much a case of something we do for sick people so that they feel better. When we lay on hands and pray, we are connecting them into the love of God; we are saying that you still matter and are a precious child of God. We are saying do not be afraid; we are saying ‘You belong’. Or when we are engaged in pastoral ministry, whether as part of a formal ministry, or when you are simply taking the time out of a busy day to stop, have a cup of tea and listen to someone, you are sharing time together in a moment that can never be repeated. There is deep value in this and it demonstrates that the person matters and belongs. These are all part of the healing ministry of the Christian faith, and if you would like to explore your vocation to healing through belonging, why not join The GoHealth Community
In 2025, the world continues to look unstable. We need people of peace and hope at this time because when people feel like they belong then violence is reduced, and volume is turned down on all the strife and anger that we see in the newspaper headlines and in our own communities too.
The world needs this, and God calls us to enact this – the Christian faith is an invitation to find a way through the noise of the world, connect into a God of love and create spaces in our own lives for others to find their belonging. In the GoHealth community we seek to flourish, to take our faith seriously, to seek health for self and others, and do it all in the community of the faithful. It is our place of belonging. We may not often be in the same room but we share much – a desire for wholeness, a wish that there was more peace, the powerful and Christian vision that each person deserves to live into God’s vision of wholeness. It has never been an isolated activity, and I am thrilled that science is catching up with what the faith has always known – we belong to one another.