Let’s revisit the issue of “healing the family tree.”
For years there have been controversies about it — not very loud ones, but still questions.
We respect all discernments based on prayer (and especially with fasting).
There is the book, from years back, in many ways invaluable, by the priest from Uganda, Father Yozefu Ssemakula, ordained in 1993 and from territory that — rife with worship of ancestors and even voodoo — is a prime training ground as regards inherited spiritual sin (and superstition). He has written in profound depth about how spirits plague families, here in America as well.
One has to be cautious not to label every affliction or sinful tendency as derived from family lineage, notes the priest. “Didn’t Jesus say it was not generational for the man born blind, and yet He healed that, too?” writes Father Yozefu in Healing of the Families. “So He doesn’t only heal generational suffering.”
However, the priest quickly adds, sins of the fathers (and forefathers, and fore-forefathers) do visit upon and affect progeny. He provides prayers for such situations.
In one case, he notes, “I found two young siblings who were deaf. I suggested to the parents that we pray the generational healing prayer anyway, for we would lose nothing. The result was that the ears of the two children soon opened up and their hearing was restored. The healing proved then that it was generational; [the parents] had prayed about their children’s hearing since they were babies, one for eight years and the other for five years, all in vain.”
Many times, the solution, the key, is for prayer to be specific. Ask the Holy Spirit to identify the problem with specificity. This brings focus and laser-like prayer power. Critical it is to pray for guidance from Jesus. When we ask Him to be there right in front of us, He arrives precisely in front of us. Do this in a special way during Communion.
“The first thing to be stated about this is that family bondages are primarily Satan’s strategy to disrupt our lives here on earth,” writes the priest. “His hope is that he terribly burdens our lives here, makes them so bitter that in the end we may quit believing in God because we see Him nowhere near our suffering, and so lead us to renounce God and then have us ready to cook in his eternal abode of hell because we all have renounced God. That is his goal.
“So how do we go about our prayer?
“Well, probably by now you have realized there is no such thing as ‘wrong’ prayer? Yes, you have prayed, and your prayer was always good in the sense that it asserted the recognition of your Heavenly Father — only you did not say or do what He gave you the power to do in your prayer. And unfortunately, He could not substitute for you because He would have been taking back the freedom He gave you.
“So, slowly He has guided you, first to this knowledge and again He is going to let you be free to apply it or not. When you apply it, you will free yourself and your family. The freedom and choice are yours.”
The steps to that freedom?
In Father Yozefu’s view, first: awareness. Second, identification of the family’s sin. Denying a family problem is participation in the darkness. Matters stay the same or worsen. Third: repentance and confession to God. Purge the evil drawn to the family by moral weakness (see not just the Commandments but the “cardinal” sins.). Fourth: canceling “agreements” with darkness, renouncing them, ordering Satan out (“The Lord rebuke you, Satan,” it says in Jude), and professing faith in God. Next: infilling with the Holy Spirit. “Come oh Holy Spirit. Come oh Holy Spirit. Come in the Name of Jesus!” And seventh: thanksgiving in all things.
There is no salvation but for Jesus, the priest points out, though it certainly helps, in this regard — in healing the family — to invoke the assistance of the Blessed Mother.
Obviously, she was sinless. Obviously, she had no darkness to pass on. Obviously, her family was the epitome.
[resources: Healing of the Families] and Spirit Daily pilgrimage to holies sites in Italy]
