The Wound as a Portal to Grace and Healing
By Amy Kulesa
The idea of wounds as a portal to grace and healing is an area that is close to my heart and experience. My entryway into faith and my continued healing journey have inevitably, throughout my life, been catalyzed by times of pain and challenge. There is a central place for joy, yes; but when it comes to transformation, I believe that God most often “breaks us open” through experiences that often feel like they are going to break us.
The Lord Jesus himself shows us the tender and important place of the wound in our identity as children of God after his resurrection, when he appears to the apostles in their locked and fearful room and specifically shows them his wounds. But Thomas is not among them, and, not having seen the Risen Lord, he does not believe. When Jesus appears again, he shows Thomas his wounds and tells him to touch those wounds, so as to believe in the reality of his Presence.
Often we want to avoid our wounds, and those of others…but here Jesus shows us another way. Jesus was resurrected at this point, a glorified body, beyond the suffering that he had so recently endured. But notice that it is by his wounds that he identifies himself to his followers; they are the markers — the identifiers — of who he is in loving relationship to them.
I believe that Jesus shows us here the importance of our whole story — sorrows and joys — in the glory and grace into which we are being gradually transformed. They are the primary way that he shows us that God is with us, in the mess of the human condition. The wounds are not disfigurements; they are the way we are inaugurated into compassion and deepened wisdom.
In the words of playwright Thornton Wilder, “Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. Physician, draw back.”
Our wounds, often in ongoing process of being healed, can become transformed portals of empathy, shared understanding, and self-gift, empowering us to reach into the place of others’ woundedness as emissaries of Christ’s healing.
I invite you to join me in further exploring these ideas on Friday, March 27 for a one-day retreat called The Wound as Portal of Grace and Healing.