Sister Abigail Hester

Tag: healing

  • The Herbal Healer: A Living Sacrament of Compassion

    The Herbal Healer: A Living Sacrament of Compassion

    🌿 The Herbal Healer: A Living Sacrament of Compassion

    by Sister Abigail Hester, OFC

    In every age, the Spirit raises up healers — those who listen not just to the pulse of the human heart but to the heartbeat of the earth itself. The herbal healer is one such soul, standing barefoot in the soil between heaven and humus, mediating between Creator and creation.

    For me, being an herbal healer isn’t about potions or superstition; it’s a sacred vocation. Each leaf and root is a prayer, each tincture a whispered “peace be with you” to a weary body. I see herbs not as commodities to be sold, but as companions in healing, part of a living sacrament through which God’s grace flows into flesh and bone.

    🌸 Healing as an Act of Love

    When I blend an herbal tea or craft a salve, I’m not just mixing plants — I’m participating in an ancient dialogue between creation and compassion. Francis of Assisi called the body “Brother Donkey,” simple and stubborn but beloved. To tend it with herbal medicine is to honor the holy in the humble. Healing is not conquest but kinship.

    Every herb I use carries a memory: lavender for peace, yarrow for courage, calendula for joy. These plants don’t just treat symptoms — they teach presence. They invite the wounded and the weary to slow down, breathe, and reconnect to the rhythms of life.

    🌿 The Franciscan Way of Healing

    As a Franciscan Clarean, I believe that healing begins with relationship: with the earth, with one another, and with God. Herbs are not tools of control — they are partners in the dance of renewal. The herbal healer is not a magician or a doctor, but a friend to creation.

    To walk this path is to live with radical simplicity. You learn to grow your medicine, to harvest with prayer, to waste nothing. Healing becomes an act of nonviolence — a small rebellion against systems that profit from illness. It’s holy mischief in a world that has forgotten how to rest.

    🌕 The Inner and Outer Apothecary

    There’s a wild apothecary outside in the garden, and another one inside the heart. A true healer tends both. Herbs help soothe the body, but love and laughter mend the soul. Sometimes the medicine someone needs most isn’t a tincture — it’s a cup of tea shared in silence, or a reminder that they are not broken beyond repair.

    I’ve learned that the best medicine often grows in the cracks — in the overlooked, the humble, the resilient. Much like grace itself.

    🌼 A Rebellious Mercy

    To be an herbal healer is to refuse despair. It’s to stand with the sick, the forgotten, and the earth herself, and say: You are still sacred. You still belong.

    I heal because I believe resurrection happens in small ways every day — in gardens, in kitchens, in tearful prayers, in the quiet courage of those who keep loving anyway.

    The herbal healer walks between worlds — rooted in soil, reaching toward the stars — reminding us that creation is still speaking, still healing, still holy.

  • Holistic Health: Healing the Whole Person, Not Just the Symptoms

    In a culture obsessed with quick fixes and symptom suppression, holistic health stands as a quiet, stubborn rebellion — the radical idea that you are more than a collection of body parts, diagnoses, and prescriptions. Holistic health dares to say that your mind, body, spirit, and relationships are all bound together, and that true healing means tending to all of them.

    This is not a trendy wellness fad or a soft alternative to “real” medicine. It is a return to an older, deeper wisdom — the kind found in the teachings of St. Francis, in Indigenous medicine ways, in the midwives and herbalists who understood that you can’t heal a wound in the body while leaving the soul neglected.

    The Fourfold Path of Healing

    Holistic health recognizes four inseparable dimensions of our well-being:

    1. Body – Nutrition that nourishes, movement that strengthens, rest that restores. Not punishment or deprivation, but care rooted in dignity.
    2. Mind – Mental clarity, emotional balance, and learning how to unhook from the constant hum of stress that erodes our health from the inside.
    3. Spirit – Connection to the Sacred, however you name it, that restores meaning and purpose when life feels hollow.
    4. Community – We heal in relationship, not isolation. Friendship, mutual aid, and shared belonging are as medicinal as herbs and clean water.

    The Franciscan Clarean Way

    In the Order of Franciscan Clareans, we approach holistic health as an act of justice. Poverty, exploitation, and environmental destruction are not just “social issues” — they are health issues. You cannot breathe well if your air is toxic. You cannot eat well if the land is poisoned or food is priced out of reach.

    We take inspiration from Francis and Clare, who understood that health is communal. Care for the sick was inseparable from care for the poor, the earth, and the soul.

    Tools for a Whole Life

    Holistic health is not about buying expensive supplements or following Instagram wellness trends. It’s about integrating simple, sustainable practices into daily life:

    Herbal Medicine – Time-tested plant allies for prevention and healing.

    Mindfulness & Prayer – Practices that ground the heart and calm the mind.

    Seasonal Living – Eating and resting in rhythm with the natural cycles.

    Acts of Service – Healing the soul through compassion in action.

    A Call to Live Differently

    The path of holistic health is countercultural. It resists the idea that health can be bought in a pill or outsourced to a clinic. It calls us to live with intention, to tend our bodies as sacred vessels, and to care for one another as part of the same body.

    As Franciscan Clareans, we see health not as a personal possession but as a shared responsibility. We are not free until we are all well — body, mind, and spirit.

  • Healing Waters: The Ancient and Everlasting Gift of Renewal

    From the dawn of civilization, water has been revered not only as a source of life but also as a sacred agent of healing. Across centuries and cultures, the practice of using water therapeutically has flowed like a stream through human history—cleansing, restoring, and renewing body and spirit alike.

    A History Written in Water

    Long before the advent of modern medicine, ancient civilizations intuitively recognized the power of water. Egyptian and Greek physicians used hydrotherapy to relieve pain and stimulate circulation. Even before the time of Hippocrates—the so-called “Father of Medicine”—healers turned to springs, baths, and rituals of immersion to restore balance in the body. Hippocrates himself, in the 4th century BCE, famously recommended water treatments for a variety of ailments, from fever to fatigue.

    In the 18th century, John Wesley, the great revivalist and founder of the Methodist movement, penned Primitive Physick, a little book of natural remedies grounded in Christian piety and practical wisdom. Among his many recommendations was the regular and intentional use of water for maintaining health and treating disease. For Wesley, the body was a temple of the Holy Spirit, and water—a gift from God—was to be received with gratitude and used with care.

    Prophets of the Healing Stream

    As the centuries progressed, a river of thinkers and practitioners carried forward the legacy of water healing. Father Sebastian Kneipp, a 19th-century Bavarian priest, developed a system of hydrotherapy rooted in his personal recovery from tuberculosis using cold water immersion, herbs, and exercise. His work sparked a European naturopathic revival, influencing others like Dr. Winternitz of Vienna and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek Sanitarium—each integrating water therapy into larger health regimens.

    Dr. Kellogg, in particular, combined hydrotherapy with vegetarianism, exercise, and spiritual discipline, laying the groundwork for many of today’s holistic health movements. Dr. Benedict Lust, the father of American naturopathy, further expanded Kneipp’s principles in the United States.

    The 20th century saw passionate voices like Dr. Paul C. Bragg, Dr. N.W. Walker, and Allen E. Banik championing the curative powers of water. Walker, author of Colon Health, emphasized internal cleansing through water-rich foods and juicing. Banik, an optometrist, praised the purity of natural water as essential for vision, vitality, and overall well-being. These health advocates drew on both science and intuition, echoing the wisdom of yogis such as Yogi Ramacharaka, who taught about the pranic (life-force) benefits of water in spiritual healing.

    Water as Sacred, Healing, and Free

    The common thread among these many voices? Water is accessible, elemental, and universal. It doesn’t require a prescription, a co-pay, or a fancy label. It is the birthright of all creation—a holy sacrament in liquid form.

    For us in the Franciscan Clarean tradition, this rings especially true. Saint Francis of Assisi called water “sister,” singing her praises in his Canticle of the Creatures:

    “Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water, who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.”

    Water is humble. It meets us where we are—whether in a river, a teacup, or a warm cloth on a fevered brow. It is precious and chaste, unpretentious and healing. Its simplicity invites us to slow down, cleanse, and begin again.

    Embracing the Waters of Renewal

    Today, amidst chronic illness, environmental stress, and an often over-medicated society, a return to the healing traditions of water may be one of the most revolutionary acts of all. Cold compresses, warm baths, internal cleansing, herbal infusions, and prayerful immersion can serve as gentle tools of restoration.

    Water therapy isn’t a magic cure—it’s a sacred rhythm. It invites us to cooperate with the natural healing processes already at work in our bodies. It beckons us to live more simply, more attentively, and more in tune with the divine wisdom embedded in creation itself.

    So let us return to the waters. Let us drink deeply, bathe reverently, and give thanks for the life-giving stream that flows from the heart of God, through the earth, and into our bodies—cleansing, renewing, and reminding us of who we are: beloved, embodied, and worthy of healing.