By Ana Perišić, hagioassistant
EXISTENTIAL FEAR
Due to the events of the pandemic and earthquake, hagiotherapy centres throughout Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, via emergency telephones, became involved in hagiotherapeutical assistance and support to those in need. This is not something new, we have acted like that for years.
I remember well the war years and the time at the beginning of the recession when we received dozens of calls every day coming from people in anxiety, fear, depression, those family members who suffered outbursts of aggressive and alcoholic individuals, and lonely elderly people. Some clearly expressed distrust of their loved ones, whose help they could not count on, or of government structures that devalued them in their wounds, the sacrifice they suffered and their irresponsibility for the common good.
I choose late–evening appointments, when at night the suffering becomes even more pronounced.
Through these encounters with people whose voice I hear only, I become aware again of how precious every life is, how every pain is original and needs attention, help, empathy. But there is a danger that we give them only a warm word and our time. Hagioterapy meetings with hagiopatients start long before the conversation. It is necessary to prepare in spirit for that person: he is a gift to me, he is a mystery to me, I can only help him if I am connected to the Source, both of his life and mine.
I have to go through the steps of overcoming every helplessness, I have to gain a new experience of a living relationship with the Doctor – the Cure.
Our hagiopatients need a new life, to see the higher meaning of the sacrifice, to feel hope, and they get it only from the one who is full of values, from the Creator. The hagioassistant is only a mediator, one who has the experience of coming out of fear into trust, out of anger into forgiveness, out of helplessness and disappointment into hope and a decision to accomplish the mission of his unique life.
Hagiotherapy is paradoxical, man in the power of the spirit uses every suffering he experiences to work even harder for good. When existential fear is overcome, the hagiopatient acquires a trust that has no basis in the weak man from his coexistence, but in the fundamental sense and reason for existence. Man encounters the Person. From this encounter, values emerge as a cure, and expectations of people fade, disappointments fade, forgiveness becomes possible.
Thus, hagiotherapy does not address psychosomatic symptoms at all; does not treat pathological conditions diagnosed as depression, panic fears, suicidality, eating disorders, etc., but enters the very essence of man’s existence: in the meaning of life, purpose and fruitfulness of the victim, trust as an exchange of values from one person to another, the decision to realize man’s unique personal talent despite everything.
Hagiotherapy mediates the laws of the very essence of life and trust, so it can be believed that the torturous existential fear of this time can be overcome.
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Born in Split. For many years she worked as a teacher of vocational subjects at the Secondary Agricultural School in Zagreb, for which she previously studied at the Faculty of Agriculture and the Pedagogical Academy, also in Zagreb. After graduating from ITKL in 2004 at the Catholic Faculty of Theology in Zagreb, she took over the position of director of the Children’s Home and head of the Center for Rehabilitation and Occupational Therapy of the CZN. She also led the project Psychosocial and spiritual assistance to people in need in CZN. She currently works as a hagioassistant and mentor at the Center for Hagiotherapy – Split, and is one of the members of the editorial board of Hagio.hr.
