Vulnerability, Trust, and the Foundation of All Healing

Healing is messy, uncomfortable, and at times excruciating. What I’ve discovered about the journey is that it’s even messier—and far more complicated—when healing is taking place with the person who did the wounding.

How can I trust again? How can I again give the precious gift of my vulnerability—a gift once so cruelly mocked and tossed aside—back to the one who did the betraying?

These are the questions I’ve grappled with, and the one thing I’ve learned is that there are no solid answers. On my own, I am weak. I can accomplish nothing. I am she who is not.

In a mystical vision Saint Catherine of Siena heard Jesus ask her, “Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you have beatitude in your grasp. You are she who is not, and I Am He Who Is.”

(from The Life of Catherine of Siena, written by her confessor and friend, Fr. Raymond of Capua)

How would Jesus have reacted if, instead of giving up in despair and compounding his sin by committing suicide, Judas had fully repented and asked his Savior to welcome him back into the apostolic family? Since Jesus is God—Divine Mercy embodied—we know He would have forgiven. We see this in the stories of Peter’s betrayal of our Lord, as well as in the betrayal of Saul, who killed Christians yet later became the great apostle Paul.