Together with a group of other people, I had registered for a training course for leading prayer groups. This took place in Germany in an educational house in Maihingen, which was under the direction of Father Hans Buob.

I expected various lectures there so that I could "learn" something. But it turned out differently.

Father Buob made it clear to us right at the beginning that we should all first strive to become completely reconciled people before God. Only then should we think about accompanying and guiding other people in prayer. If we were not reconciled with ourselves, with our fellow human beings and above all with God, we could not be permeable to God's work.

He then invited us to come into the chapel and remain quietly before the Blessed Sacrament for a while. We were to ask Jesus to show us where we still had wounds in our hearts, what would make us emotionally free before God and what could prevent us from trusting in God's love. In a second step, in a healing service, we were to lay everything we had become aware of before God, asking him to heal it.

We went with him into the chapel, where two women we did not know were already there, and prayed.

After a while of silent prayer, suddenly one of the women said that she had received an image: she saw a pregnant woman, a man was standing next to her and tried to persuade her to abort the child, which the woman did not do. The man then walked away.

Suddenly, next to me, my friend G. from our group burst into tears and could not calm down for a while. Finally, still in tears, he said, "That's me, that's my fate! When my mother was pregnant to me, my father wanted her to abort me. She didn't do it, that's why my father left her. I have never been able to forgive my father for wanting to kill me. But I also couldn't forgive my mother. Later she always reproached me that she could have married such a great and rich man if I hadn't been in the way. Her rejection and these accusations always hurt me a lot."

After this account, we returned to prayer.

Suddenly the other woman came forward, she had also received a picture. She described that she saw a rural building with a strange door, which not only had a right and left door panel, but was also divided in the middle. The upper door was open. She saw a man enter this house with a small child by his hand. Inside the building, she then heard the child crying and calling while the man walked away without turning around even once.

Now it was a woman from our group who came forward quite affected - "yes, that girl, that was me!" She told us that she came from a big family with many children. When she was 5 years old, her father became seriously ill and could no longer go to work. A man who was a stranger to her then took her to a farm with just such doors. He left her there and went away without a word and without turning around. The people there were also complete strangers to her. She then lived there for the next few years. Much later, she understood the plight of her parents, who no longer knew how to feed their children. However, the fact that her parents had not talked to her about it and explained the situation was a dramatic breach of trust for her, which she never overcame.

After another period of silent prayer, it was again the first woman who had received another picture for someone from us. She saw a family with children, the father beating the children. The mother stood motionless beside them.

Now it was another woman from our group who now told us, just as deeply affected, that this picture was from her childhood: Her father was an alcoholic. Very often, when he came home drunk, he beat her and her siblings. But much more than her father's beatings, her mother's behaviour hurt her. She had never been able to forgive her mother for never protecting her children from their father's arbitrariness.

On this day, each of us was shown by God where there was still hurt in us that had not yet been fully forgiven. In the service that followed, all these spiritual wounds, which God had now made conscious, could be laid down with the request that they be healed.

Besides this gift of reconciliation and inner healing, we were all able to learn two very interesting lessons. God could have healed all our spiritual wounds on his own. But since he has given us complete freedom, he did not intervene in our lives on his own initiative, but had obviously chosen a different path. He gave gifts of his Holy Spirit to people who let themselves be led by him in prayer, to make us aware of where we would still need healing from God. These gifts were not for themselves but for the salvation of others. The second lesson was that this knowledge of where healing was needed did not already bring about the healing. God did not give this healing on his own, but he had also waited for our request for healing beforehand, within the framework of our freedom. And crucially, he had waited for our willingness to forgive beforehand all those who were guilty of wrongdoing against us.