Blessed are those who listen - they bring about healing

Being listened to with full attention, empathy, and without judgment supports mental well-being by meeting basic psychological needs and easing distress. When people feel truly heard with kindness, they feel more in control, more connected to others, and more able to recognise and honour their own feelings, values, and needs. This kind of listening helps them accept themselves more gently, align their behaviour with their inner truth, and experience support, and belonging. This can also lead to meaningful relationships in families, friendships, workplaces, and communities. Active, compassionate listening can reduce stress and anxiety, counter loneliness, and improve emotional regulation, thereby strengthening overall mental health.

I invite you to pause and remember moments in your own life when you felt truly heard—or when you offered that kind of listening to someone else, and how those encounters helped healing to unfold.

Fifteen years ago, while I was facilitating a “Healing of Memories” workshop, a Catholic sister from South Asia, who had spent decades serving in the Andes, shared a story that marked me deeply. Arriving as a new missionary in a country whose language she did not yet speak, she went early one Sunday to attend Mass. Finding the church still closed, she sat on a bench in the garden, facing the waking town and the rising sun. A young woman, forlorn and in tears, crossed the garden, saw the sister sitting alone with a gentle smile, and slowly approached. The sister greeted her with the only Spanish words she knew, “Buenos días,” and invited her to sit. Though she did not understand a word, she recognised the depth of the young woman’s pain. She listened with her whole heart, held her, wiped her tears, and remained in compassionate silence until the young woman, calmer, thanked her and left.

Years later, in a distant mountain town, the same woman ran up to the sister, now radiant and confident, and embraced her, thanking her for saving her life. Only then did the sister explain that she had never understood what was said that day, because she did not yet speak Spanish. Shocked, the woman revealed that, on that morning, betrayed by her lover, she had been on her way to take her own life, carrying a lethal poison in her handbag. The simple grace of being able to speak and weep, to be held and heard by a compassionate stranger, gave her the strength to let go of her plan and to choose life.

Deep listening is not only powerful in personal encounters; it can also serve as a public health strategy. The “Friendship Bench” programme in Zimbabwe embodies this vision. Created by psychiatrist Professor Dixon Chibanda around 2006–2007 in Harare, when there were only a few psychiatrists for millions of people, it trains community members—often grandmothers—to sit on simple benches at clinics and offer structured problem‑solving conversations and a warm, nonjudgmental presence to people living with depression and anxiety. What began as a small, self‑funded pilot in a handful of clinics has since been adopted into Zimbabwe’s National Strategic Plan for Mental Health, expanded to all ten provinces, and inspired similar initiatives in other countries. The programme has trained thousands of community health workers and now provides therapy to hundreds of thousands of people each year, showing that a low‑cost, community‑based listening approach can significantly relieve symptoms and narrow the mental health treatment gap. It reveals how ordinary people, equipped with listening skills and support, can become powerful agents of healing in their communities!

Blessed are those who listen to others,

Attentive, empathetic, and reflective,

For they bring about healing.

Blessed are those who listen to the experiences of others,

While sharing their own story with sincerity,

For they shall perceive truth.

Blessed are those who strive for justice and for truth,

Yet remain attentive to different narratives,

For they become makers of peace.

Blessed are those who hear the faint cry of the vanquished,

Even amid the cacophony of the victorious,

For in that cry they hear the voice of God.

Blessed are those who move beyond their own suffering,

To listen to the cries of others, distant and near,

For they become bearers of healing.

Dr Manoj Kurian is director of the WCC Commission of the Churches on Health and Healing.