When Emily Jane Woodhead, a speech pathologist from Bathurst, first heard that Dr Christopher West was bringing the Theology of the Body Institute to Australia in 2024, she knew it was an answer to “many novenas.”
What she didn’t know was just how profoundly the five-day immersion course – rooted in the writings of St John Paul II – would transform her life, her faith, and her daily work with people facing the end of their lives.
This transformation is lived out every day in her vocation as a speech pathologist at Viva Ability, an NGO in Bathurst, where she works with children and adults with disabilities, including those with progressive motor neurone disease.
“I have people who are in their last stages of life, and it allows me to see every single person as Jesus. In those moments when people are having hospital admissions or their children are having terrifying, horrible moment, I’m there, and I’m imagining Jesus is right there in front of me.
“No matter how hard this is, I have to love the person as much as Jesus loves them, or try to, because they deserve it.”
Theology of the Body has given Emily the tools to see her patients as Christ-like, to treat them with respect and love, and to embrace them as a daughter of God, secure in her own identity as a woman.
“If I can know my true identity as a woman, I am able to be maternal to anyone that I need to be. I’m able to be generous to anyone that I can be, sensitive to the needs of others,” she says.
As Dr Christopher West prepares to return to Australia in January next year, Emily’s message to those considering the course is simple: “Seize the day, grab that opportunity. Do not miss it. I’m so looking forward to hearing how their relationship is like fireworks and becomes such a precious, precious thing, where their relationship with God just blossoms. It’s just a beautiful encounter with Christ.”
Emily describes the retreat as a time of deep encounter – not just with Dr West and the teachings of St John Paul II, but with her own identity as a beloved daughter of God.
“It was something that’s just completely changed my life,” she shares.
“My heart and mind were completely and utterly saturated by the pureness of the content. It touched my soul so completely that it basically allowed me to be more of who I was.”
“He [Dr West] exposed the struggles that he had been through and how they were so important for developing who he was as a man and a son of God.
“That opened my heart, allowed me to start seeing that God wanted me to know that, in my weaknesses, that’s where he loves me the most, and that’s where he allows me to prosper the most. The smaller I am, the more he does, and the more beautiful the things we can do together.”
For Emily, the course was the answer to a prayer she made when she first began working in disability care: “I begged God to teach me how to love the people that I worked with the way he did, because I knew that I needed to have a huge heart, and I didn’t have that as much as I wanted it to.
“So he answered that novena with the course of the Theology of the Body. It was a pretty good answer to my prayers.”
Don’t miss the next Theology of the Body I: Head & Heart immersion retreat 18 – 23 January 2026.
For more information go to: https://tobi.sydneycatholic.org/
