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Healing of the Family Tree

family tree

When I was new in my grief, many well meaning friends and relatives advised me this and that. I don’t know who among them suggested the “Healing of the Family Tree” and gave me a prayer. Each night, I was to say this prayer hoping in the belief that the curse of family deaths would end . (My 2 brothers, and a mother died before my son’s death in 2000) . As if we don’t all die.

A part of this prayer goes:

“Heavenly Father, I ask You now to go back though all in my bloodline, my husband’s/wife’s bloodline, and the bloodlines connected to all of my family and relatives and forgive the wrongs, heal the illnesses, bind the evil deeds. I ask You Lord to break the chains, associations and links any of these may have to us here in the present. On their behalf Lord, I seek Your forgiveness, your healing and a pouring out of your Divine Love so that Your Love may now pour forth through the years and touch us in the here and now. So that Your Divine and Healing Love will take the place of all the past hurts, angers, hates, unlove of You, destructive emotions or actions and evil ties of our ancestors. So that Your Precious Blood and Divine Love and Healing will heal us of the residue we carry from our ancestors. In true faith I thank You Lord because You have said ‘Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened to you’. Today Lord I knock, I seek, I ask. All praise and thanks to You my loving Father.”

Now being newly bereaved and distraught, I went along with the idea that my ancestors were so sinful that all these deaths were brought about by their sinful ways…. Yes, it must be a curse, “malas” “karma” or “gaba” until one day, I just had it.

Praying the “Healing of the Family Tree” is the most depressing thing ever. In the first place, before my son died, we underwent a public healing of our family tree at Christ the King Church through our “Couples of Christ” group. We prayed that all the cancers, diabetes , hypertension would not continue on our present generation. Also, we prayed that early death will be spared further in our families.

I believe that our families have patterns of behavior that are passed on from generation to generation. This is especially true for those with genetic predisposition to suicide, alcoholism . Some of these patterns are not coincidences. We are also adversely affected by the sins of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and by the sins of the ancestors who adversely affected them.

Don’t be mistaken, I believe in the Healing of the family tree. What I find truly objectionable in the prayer is guilt feelings that most newly bereaved feels whenever a priest tells them about the “Family Tree”. Also, the prayer is so repititious like all Catholic prayers. Imagine praying that everyday for the rest of your lives. There is no meaning . No substance. We have no control over the sins of our ancestors. We did not cause their sins. A bereaved mother thinks her great grandfather who was a priest might have been the root cause for her son’s death. Another bereaved mother attributes the death of her daughter because her marriage was not blessed in Church. Is God truly vengeful? Why are others spared? We cannot cure the sins of our ancestors but we can truly change ourselves.

We heal our family trees primarily by changing ourselves to be better persons, even much better than our ancestors could ever be. We heal our family trees by taking care of our health so our predisposition to certain genetic diseaes will be curtailed. We heal our family trees by receiving a new nature through total commitment to God . Secondly, we heal our family trees by repentance and healing. The change starts in us. Healing starts in us. It’s time to stop looking back at the past and move forward now.

8 thoughts on “Healing of the Family Tree”

  1. I agree with you that change starts in us. If sins were committed by the previous generation, then we should learn from their mistakes. If diseases were the cause of deaths of our ancestors, then we should try to be more vigilant of our health. I also like to say my own prayers instead of the repetetive ones.

  2. @touchmenot- I don’t think you understood the whole point of the entry. or perhaps you didn’t read everything. Yes mistakes were made in the past but can we change the past? can we undo what THEY did? To change the whole generation disease or ailments, the change has to start in us. In this generation. That’s the only change we can control NOT the past.

  3. I’m sorry if my comment came out unclear. I understand that we cannot change the past. Who can, right? It’s already been done. What I was trying to say is that we can learn from the mistakes and avoid doing them again.

  4. Healing of the Family Tree is a prayer intended for breaking the chains that bind us with the sins of our ancestors. It is written in the bible that our sins can be handed down to a certain number of generations. Our ancestors might have died without the grace of reconciliation and could have commited mortal sin/s…the “curse” of such since could bind the family circle. By contemplating on the prayer with deep longing for forgiveness, we are also reminded to be careful with our lives that we may not repeat the cycle by commiting the same sins as our ancestors did.

  5. To be honest,I still have a lot of questions about the healing of the family tree. Sometimes I doubt it. But my relatives are actively involved in this spiritual undertaking.

    I’ve gone through several healing sessions about it. At first, I was not so confident about it.

    But you know, God works in mysterious ways.

    Changes began to occur in our family. Specially in the financial aspect.

    Though we didn’t get rich, there has been an improvement in our financial status.

    Beneficial changes in my attitude

    And we were also able to discover in us Spiritual Gifts that God has given to us.

    Indeed,even if we put together all the sins of all our ancestors, it can never equal the amount of God’s love and mercy.

    God bless us all!!!

  6. God gave us gifts for us to be cleansed before entering his kingdom. It is always our Faith which can make everything possible for everybody. God is present in everybody, it is up to us if we believe or not.

    May the Blessing of the Almighty God the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Be with us all…

  7. It is good to acknowledge the sins of the past, and it is good to pay attention to learn from the sins of the past. I do not like the word “mistakes” because mistakes are done by accident, and not all sins were done by accident. Most were done on purpose. It is good to seek forgiveness of sin. One problem we as humans have is holding on to sins once we have asked for forgiveness. If we are going to go to all the trouble to ask for forgiveness, can’t we go to all the trouble to believe he is faithful to forgive (Heb. 10:23; I John 1:9). Here’s our problem, we to often either hold on to the guilt of the sin because we loved the sin, or we wear it as a badge of courage on our sleeves. Both of these are sin in and of themselves. Seek for GOD’S help, seek for GOD’S forgiveness, Seek for GOD”S intervention in our lives, then praise HIM for HIS intervention and HIS forgiveness, and praise HIM you don’t have to go down that path any more. It’s one thing to ask GOD for the healing, claiming to trust in HIS SON, and it’s another to continue to visit and revisit the sin, the pain, the guilt, and the condemnation. Conviction is not condemnation. To Love GOD is to trust HIM to do what HE said. HE claimed your blood line, if you serve HIM, up to 1,0000 generations. Sin only has up to 3 or 4 generations, and what people don’t realize is, GOD’S claims supersedes sin, or it’s master’s claims. Not because I said so, but because GOD said so. Break the curse, learn from the past, but live for the future in the present time. The day will come that we will come before GOD’S judgment but judgment for HIS own will not be the same judgment for those who do not belong to HIM. Shalom

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