“The weekend retreat is really about an encounter with the Father’s love.”
- Leslie Lien, of St. Benedict Parish in Nebraska City
By Cathy Blankenau Bender
Editor, Southern Nebraska Register
The John Paul II Healing Center in Tallahassee, Fla., is bringing its “Healing the Whole Person” conference, including a “Day of Equipping,” to the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln. Registration is now open at jpiihealingcenter.org.
Speakers at the conference will include Dr. Bob Schuchts, Sr. Miriam James Heidland and Bart Schuchts.
The “Healing the Whole Person” conference will be April 16-18, at North American Martyrs Church in Lincoln. A separate but complementary event, a “Day of Equipping,” will be held April 17, and requires a separate registration.
The John Paul II Healing Center was founded in 2004 by Dr. Bob Schuchts, author of the best-selling book “Be Healed: Encountering the Powerful Love of Jesus in Your Life” and many other titles. Dr. Schuchts spent more than 30 years as a therapist, while also teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in marriage and family relationships, human development, applied psychology, and marriage and family therapy. He has taught at Florida State University, Tallahassee Community College, the Center for Biblical Studies in Tallahassee, Fla., the Theology of the Body Institute and the Augustine Institute.
In a November interview with Dennis Kellogg, director of communications for the Diocese of Lincoln, Dr. Schuchts explained healing from a Catholic perspective.
“Catholic... means according to the whole. We usually talk about it in terms of ‘universal,’ but it’s the whole Church. And so, healing, from a Catholic perspective, is looking at the whole person, the whole family…. Jesus came to heal all of that, to restore all of that.”
Fittingly, while the conference is hosted by North American Martyrs Parish and supported by the Diocese of Lincoln, it is a collaboration of volunteers, priests, religious and lay faithful, from many parishes around the diocese, all working together to bring this retreat to Lincoln.
Leslie Lien, a member of St. Benedict Parish in Nebraska City, is heading the core team preparing for the event. She said the “outpouring of generosity” from all the volunteers assisting in preparations for the conference “has truly been so humbling!”
She agreed to lead the core team at the invitation of Father Craig Doty, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Denton and director of the Lincoln Equipping Team for Prayer and Healing. Lien was an obvious choice for Father Doty, as she was well acquainted with the John Paul II Healing Center’s events.
A former teacher at Lourdes Central School in Nebraska City, Lien subscribed to the mailing list for the John Paul II Healing Center and in August 2023, saw a job opening for an events coordinator. She eagerly applied and got the job that fall, on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima. As she began the work, she quickly developed a deep desire to bring the conference to Lincoln—and the John Paul II team agreed.
Lien eventually had to leave the job to care for a parent, but was happy to have the chance to help bring the idea of hosting the conference in Lincoln to life.
“The Healing the Whole Person weekend retreat is really about an encounter with the Father’s love,” she explained. It is “taking Jesus and the Father into our hidden—or known—places of grief, shame, and woundedness, and experiencing His freedom and love in those places of our hearts. It is in this journey that our hearts can be transformed so that we can love God, ourselves and others around us from a place of wholeness and deeper communion for which our hearts long.”
Lien said all Catholics are “healing” if they are in communion with God and the Church sacramentally.
“The sacraments are the primary source of grace for healing to occur,” she said, “but again, it’s in relationship that we are encountering a Person – and His name is Jesus. He’s the Divine Healer.”
Lien said Bishop James Conley has been very encouraging about the conference, and expressed hope that the fruits of this work go beyond the city of Lincoln and sow the seeds in the entire diocese.
As people are transformed in the fire of God’s love, she explained, “the Holy Spirit fills us with His Presence and power to go out and encounter others who are still finding the way into new life.”
God living in one person can serve as a powerful encounter with God for another, she said.
“We are One Body.”
Priests across the diocese have seen these fruits as well. Father Doty is serving as a chaplain for the conference along with Father Nathan Hall, pastor of North American Martyrs Parish. But other priests have participated in promoting the events by writing columns about the conference for the Southern Nebraska Register, unpacking the meaning of healing.
“In the modern Church,” wrote Father Ryan Kaup, pastor of the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, “the word healing can become a buzzword… and lifted on a pedestal as the grand prize of discipleship. Yet, this understanding of healing as an end in itself isn’t biblical, nor does it jive with the Christian life as a whole.
“The goal of our life is not to be perfectly healed of every encumbrance,” he continued. “Our goal is to live eternally in relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And yes, in the mercy of God, healing is often found through this relationship, but as a fruit, rather than a separate goal.”
Father Ryan Salisbury, pastor of St. Paulinus Parish in Syracuse and Holy Trinity in Avoca, said he has seen that fruit firsthand in his priesthood. Years earlier, he admitted, he believed that God brought about physical healing—but assumed it was a rarity.
“But because God is good, He can take the imperfect or mustard-sized faith that we have and still work through it to bring about His will!” he wrote.
Lien said there is a misconception in secular culture “that healing is a quick fix;” that if a person reads a particular self-help book, or participates in a particular mode of therapy, he or she will be “healed.”
“But most of the time, that’s just not the case,” she said, “because Jesus is in it for the long game: the relationship, our salvation, and our sanctity. I’ve seen God use secular therapy, but never apart from then bringing it back to the sacraments and prayer—bringing Jesus into the situation.”
An upcoming Register column on the conference echoes Lien’s assertion that healing is not a quick fix.
Father Christopher Goodwin, a priest of the Lincoln Diocese in service at the Apostolic Nunciature of the United States in Washington, D.C., was the first priest from the diocese to attend a Healing the Whole Person weekend retreat several years ago. He recounts his experience and understanding in the column to be published in February.
Since the retreat, Father Goodwin explains, “healing has become less of a moment and more of a way of life.”
While the experience did not instantly remove every struggle, he said something fundamental shifted.
“What continues to astonish me is this: God feels our wounds with us,” he writes. “He knows our losses. And he has plans—real plans—to restore the joy that has been diminished or taken from us. Often his restoration is deeper and more abundant than we imagine.
“For me, that is what ‘inner healing’ really is: an encounter with the living God that brings conversion, freedom, and the integration of the heart,” he continues. “It is not separate from holiness; it is part of it. And it is available to every one of us.”
Lien said her prayer is that the Lord invites all lost sheep to attend – those who are humble and hungry and are desperate for a new way of life, like the hemorrhaging woman from Luke 8:43-44, who tried everything else but a life in and through Christ and His Church.
Dr. Schuchts stressed: “There’s no pressure to do what anybody asks you to do, or do anything else,” he said.
The event will include a combination of teaching, from Dr. Schuchts, and from his brother Bart Schuchts and Sister Miriam.
There will be time for reflection after each session, the availability of group prayer, and adoration with guided reflections by Sister Miriam.
“So,” he said, “people can expect… the freedom to just sit and watch, or the opportunity to really receive a lot of healing through the entire weekend.”
