Prayer heals

That is not a surprising statement for believers but now, even medical science seems to agree as mounting research results provide growing evidence.

About last year, even CNN ran a report on how prayer from nuns, monks, priests, and rabbis all over the world before, during, and after the bypass operation of Roy led to very successful results. He was part of a pilot study on the effects of "distant prayer" on the outcome of patients undergoing high-risk procedures.

"Research focusing on the power of prayer in healing has nearly doubled in the past 10 years," the CNN report claimed. Even a national agency which "refused to even review a study with the word prayer in it four years ago" is now funding one prayer study through its Frontier Medicine Initiative.

Peace That Comforts

For 30 years now, Harvard scientist Dr. Herbert Benson has conducted his own studies on prayer. Although his study is focused on meditation, the Buddhist form of prayer, he professes that "all forms of prayer evoke a relaxation response that quells stress, quiets the body, and promotes healing."

"Prayer involves repetition – of sounds, words – and therein lies its healing effects," says Benson. "For Buddhists, prayer is meditation. For Catholics, it’s the rosary. For Jews, it’s called dovening. For Protestants, it’s centering prayer. Every single religion has its own way of doing it."

Benson used MRI brain scans to document the physical changes that take place in the body when someone meditates. He claims that as an individual goes deeper and deeper into concentration, intense activity begins taking place in the brain until a certain "quietude" envelops it.

Benson says that this results in a sense of awe and quiet that many meditators feel. "The body becomes more relaxed and physiological activity becomes more evenly regulated," he adds.

Believers Are Healthier

Harold Koenig, MD, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at Duke University, says that prayer transcends meditation. He documented 1,200 studies done on the effects of prayer on health in his book Handbook of Religion and Health.

Koenig says that the studies show that religious people tend to live healthier lives. "They’re less likely to smoke, to drink, to drink and drive," he elaborates. "In fact, people who pray tend to get sick less often, as separate studies conducted at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale universities show," he adds.

The pertinent statistics from these studies include the following:

• Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly.

• Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in a religion.

• Elderly people who never or rarely attended church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.

• In Israel, religious people had a 40 percent lower death rate from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"People who are more religious tend to become depressed less often. And when they do become depressed, they recover more quickly from depression. That has consequences for their physical health and the quality of their lives," Koenig encourages.

"Nobody’s prescribing religion as a treatment," Koenig clarifies. "That’s unethical. You can’t tell patients to go to church twice week. We’re advocating that the doctor should learn what the spiritual needs of the patient are and get the pastor to come in to give spiritually encouraging reading materials. It’s very sensible."

Intercessory Prayers

As the CNN report said, "When Aretha Franklin crooned the words ‘I say a little prayer for you’ in the hit 1960s song, she probably didn’t imagine that the soulful pledge would become the stuff of serious science. But increasingly, scientists are studying the power of prayer, and, in particular, its role in healing people who are sick. A few scientists have even taken a further step. They are trying to find out if you can help strangers by praying for them without their knowledge."

In the October 1999 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr. William Harris, who spearheaded the St. Luke’s study on intercessory prayer, concluded, "Prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care."

About 1,000 newly-admitted heart patients at St. Luke’s were involved in the study. They were randomly divided into two groups. Half received daily prayer for four weeks from five volunteers who believed in God and in the healing power of prayer. The other half received no prayer at all.

The volunteers were all Christians. The participants had no knowledge that they were part of a study.

Meanwhile, the "prayer warriors" were given only the first names of their patients and never visited the hospital. They were instructed to pray for the patients daily "for a speedy recovery with no complications."

Harris concluded that the group receiving prayers fared 11 percent better. This is a number considered statistically significant.

When Harris originally embarked on his study, his objective was to duplicate a similar 1988 study of intercessory prayer conducted at San Francisco General Hospital. The San Francisco study, one of the only published studies of its kind, found that prayer benefited patients, but by a different measure: The patients were able to go home from the hospital sooner. However, the Harris study did not document any variance in the length of the hospital stay and the time spent in the cardiac unit between the two groups.

Soaked In Prayer

It is again the time of the year for us to focus on our spirituality. However, I hope that those who find it difficult to devote even 15 minutes of their day to prayer will be able to find time to grow a prayer mindfulness in their hearts and minds.

Prayer really provides an unspoken comfort and peace.

It provides such an amazing grace. It is especially heartwarming to know that little prayerful wishes can provide hope and life even to those who are not aware that they are being prayed for.

It is just like we are part of one spiritual web, wired to each other and a greater being from which we derive strength, hope, inspiration, and graces.

A recent Sunday Gospel reminded us, "God is Spirit, and only by the power of His Spirit can people worship Him as He really is. (John 4:24)" Is that why the charismatics beckon the Holy Spirit with song and prayer before they start praying as a community? Is that why we profess that "when two or more people are gathered in Your name then You are in their midst"?

If you have difficulties praying, ask God to help you. We were given freedom of choice. And the act of choosing and the willingness to make prayer an important part of our daily lives is already a big step of faith.

In this Lenten season, remember that prayer is important to your spiritual and physical health – and those of the people around you!

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E-mail mylenedayrit@yahoo.com for questions and comments.