We all have issues in our families – healing issues, emotional issues, spiritual issues, financial issues. We have problems with addiction. Alcoholism may run in households – and through generations. There may be repeated cases of divorce.
Are these merely the effect of upbringing and genes -- or might there sometimes and even often be a hidden spiritual component?
These and other questions are tackled in Life Missions, Family Healing by Catholic author Michael H. Brown, who surveys the literature on the topic and presents an easy-to-read little manual on evaluating spiritual health and praying our ways to freedom – perhaps from bondages and “curses†that have come down through the family tree and our lineages!
It is for our discernment. We recall the Bible statements of “sins of the fathers.†But we also recall how Jesus readily cast darkness out of so many – and thus freed them of physical and other difficulties.
Are we also called to do the same? Is it part of our mysterious “missions†on earth? Can we and our children (and their children) benefit by purging past darkness?