It's that time of the year when more than usual we think of family and when we think of our families we often think of matters that would use correction and perhaps even the concept of generational healing. That's the idea that certain traits, problems, tendencies, talents, notions, and other aspects of body, personality, or spirituality can be tied to non-material forces. We find this most interesting.

Folks believing such posit that besides genetics and behavioral influences spiritual characteristics and perhaps even spirits themselves can travel down through the generations. There are striking cases where negative as well as positive predilections transmit in a way that seems beyond the physiological or psychological -- families constantly and oddly plagued by divorce, suicide, disease, addiction, sexual misbehavior, mental illness, and financial woes in a way that exceeds normal explanations.

Most who subscribe to such healing cite passages in Scripture such as those that mention consequences for sin that are handed down through the generations.

And a Scriptural basis there is (see Father John Hampsch's exhaustive book on that aspect, Healing Your Family Tree). It is something -- "healing the family tree" -- the formal Church has not ruled upon and bears controversial aspects, but more and more priests are addressing it and there are compelling cases that seem to go beyond the realm of physical cause for physical effect (such as when one person is delivered from an addiction to nicotine and at the same time a cousin who lives far away also finds himself giving up cigarettes at the same time, on the spot; such cases are discussed in extremely popular books such as Father Yozefu-B. Ssemakula's The Healing of Families).

Now, is there a hint at the validity of this new ministry from science itself?

Intriguing is a recent study at Laval University in Quebec whereby geneticists found during an examination of 5,000 genes that the children of mothers who had undergone gastric bypass weight surgery inexplicably had changes in their DNA: these offspring were less prone themselves to obesity (though there had been no surgery on them).  It was as if something psychological had been transmitted into the genome. Struggling to find an explanation, scientists have decided to call this "epigenetic inheritance": characteristics passed down from parent to child in a way that goes beyond the known functioning of genetic material. Psychological and emotional make-ups seem to be biological imprinted.

The new science focuses on something revolutionary: the effect on inheritance of biochemical markers between nucleotides (all those Gs, Ts, As, and Cs you may have learned about in biology).

"In this new paradigm," notes a science-oriented magazine called Verge, "the events of your life leave a lasting mark on your biological make-up, changing not just your own life but the lives of your descendants. In the other direction, your own methyl markers work as a kind of ancestral memory, encoding experiences that reach back centuries and change with each lifetime.

"Instead of a permanent code, what if your body's data is written in pencil?"

In other words: the genome can be changed in a way we don't understand. It is as if we "imprint" on it. And it may be inexplicable at least in part because there may also be spiritual influences on biochemistry. Thus, we can pray to rid of negative genetic aspects.

We have long held that the soul -- the spirit -- is the organizing field for our physicality (bodies).

What is in the spirit, therefore, may transmit physically.

Perhaps it isn't just hormones. Perhaps the soul -- the spirit -- is an organizing field (one that transmits to the biological).

This makes us more cautious not to exercise fear and unusual lust, which can be "imprinted."

These things may be inserted into our genes.

We believe they can also be prayed out.

Have no doubt that this new science is highly debated.

Most everything in science is. (Folks would be amazed at how controversies rage over things they were taught as facts in science class.)

Now, "epigenetics."

According to Verge, a study from Emory University in Atlanta just recently found that "lab rats conditioned to fear a certain smell will pass that fear on to their children.

"The shock? The inheritance happens biologically, even without behavioral contact."

-- Michael H. Brown

[resources The Healing of the Families and Life Missions, Family Healing]

[Note also: Michael Brown retreats: Florida]

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