THE WORLD'S GREATEST SECRET
John Mathias Haffert
table of contents
CHAPTER NINE
PROOFS
Of the thousands of
frescoes, drawings, and inscription found in the catacombs from the first
centuries of Christianity, most refer to miracles* related to the Eucharist.
The miracle most frequently depicted is that of the Multiplication of the
Loaves and Fishes. Pictures of this miracle are even more frequent than the
"Breaking of the Bread" (see pp. 53, 55), which is the second most
recurring image. Next the catacombs reveal other miracles of Jesus in the
following order of frequency: the cure of the Paralytic who was let down
through the roof of a house; the resurrection of Lazarus; the cure of a woman
with an issue of blood; the cure of a blind man. The fourth most frequently
found subject is the adoration of the Magi at Christ's birth, again a
miraculous occurrence. As we mentioned before, miracles were a basis for
Christian faith in the "incredible secret." Our Lord Himself had
often told them: if they could not believe, they had only to remember the
miracles He performed. Hence we can particularly understand the frequency of
the pictures of the resurrection of Lazarus because, just before summoning the
four-day corpse to life, Christ cried out before the tomb: " . . but I
have said this for the sake of the crowd, that they may believe..." (Jn.
11:43). And there is the touching incident, also related by Saint John, of the
man born blind. When the Pharisees angrily questioned the parents, the latter
were afraid to explain what happened but affirmed that the man had been born
blind and that now he saw.
2 When
the Pharisees questioned the man, saying Christ was a sinner and ', . . we
have no idea where this man comes from," the man answered, "Well,
this is news! You do not know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes....
It is unheard of that anyone ever gave sight to a person blind from birth. If
this man were not from God, he could never have done such a thing" (Jn.
9:29-30, 32-33). But who of us is not made a little edgy and uncomfortable by
the word "miracle"? We usually prefer to satisfy ourselves with
descriptions and analogies. When it comes to saying flatly I believe in this
miracle" (beyond human comprehension and possible only to God), we are
left with only the supernatural. We may feel like a child walking into the sea
and suddenly finding only water beneath his feet. Sometimes we argue: If He
were really there in that bit of bread stuff which people receive, He could
and would give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and perform other
miracles just as He did in Palestine. Why the one big miracle of His Presence
without the others? To ask that question is not at all preposterous. More-~
over the answer is that He does perform miracles through the Eucharist. Indeed
in the light of modern facilities of communication and objective medical
tests, it seems that Christ performs more miracles today in His Eucharistic
life than He did in Palestine. But the Space Age is conditioned to publicize
only miracles of science. Real miracles rarely make headlines. Even those of
us who do not deny the possibility of miracles may hesitate to recognize that
miracles are an integral part of the Gospel fabric.
3 Though we see that we
cannot reject miracles unless we also reject Him and the veracity of the
Scriptures, we may murmur the trite phrase: "But the age of miracles is
past." Back in the fifth century, Saint Augustine wrote: "Miracles
are still worked in His Name or by means of the Sacrament ... but they are not
so popularized or made known as to have the same glory as those first ones.
" Now, fifteen hundred years later, in the twentieth century, those words
apply even more aptly. Some miracles He performs today are so striking that if
we examine them with an open mind, they leave no room for skepticism. Although
this train of thought may make some readers uneasy, there is no help for it.
It would be more comfortable to present the Eucharist in a general and vague
light, with soft draw pings of sentimentality, without the glaring light of
reality to reveal the embarrassing anomaly of miracles. But the fact is that
as Christ performed miracles in His`__~. Palestinian life, so He performs them
in His Eucharistic life. As we mentioned above, it seems certain that if we
add up all the evidence for miracles, we find that He performs many more
miracles in His Eucharist-life now than He did in Palestine. One reason these
miracles today are not so "popularized or made known," as Augustine
puts it, is because they are not witnessed in the same way as they were in
Palestine. Five thousand men, not counting women and children, were on the
mountain by the Sea of Galilee when He created matter from
nothing.
4 But today the Eucharistic
Christ is approached by single persons, one by one. The meeting between Christ
and man now is personal. Only in such places as Lourdes and Fatima do we see
the Eucharistic Christ today surrounded by vast throngs who cry out
"Lord, that I may see!" - "Lord, that I may hear!" -
"Son of David, have mercy on me!" There, of course, is where we are
most likely to witness Christ the Miracle worker. But even miracles at great
Eucharistic gatherings are scantily publicized. The press gives short space to
Lourdes or Fatima or any other such place, despite the fact that millions of
people visit these shrines, thousands have been cured there, and non-partisan
medical commissions have judged the miracles. An invalid coming to Lourdes
usually registers at the Bureau des Constatations Medicals. If he does
register upon arrival, and if he subsequently claims a cure, his before
and-after state is examined and assessed. The examining doctors are unpaid,
independent men. The President is the only medical man permanently attached to
the Bureau. Any doctor of any nationality, of any belief, or of no belief, is
free to enter the Bureau, make whatever inquiries he chooses, and be present
when any ,case or alleged case is being investigated. Pious people who imagine
cures, or hysterical people who are cured by suggestion, are quickly
dismissed. Despite all this, there are cures which no natural cause whatever
is capable of producing. ~ Lourdes being a place where the Virgin appeared is
of course a center of devotion to her. But it is consequently, and above all,
a center of devotion to Christ's Presence in the Eucharist. Most cures occur
during the procession of the Eucharist. It would take more than the extent of
this book to report even the most outstanding Eucharistic miracles, so rather
than enumerate many we may at least give details of one witnessed by Dr.
Alexis Carrel, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for physiology and
medicine.
5 His biography fills the
better part of a page in Collier's Encyclopedia. He was particularly
distinguished as an experimental surgeon and biologist and he won the
NordhoffJung Cancer Prize in 1931, the Newman Foundation Award in 1937 and the
United States Distinguished Service Medal. In a day when less was known about
the human brain and heart than is known today, he kept a heart alive for years
outside an animal's body. He pried deep into secrets of man, into the very
nature of the brain and the coordination of the sympathetic and parasympathetic
nervous systems as the bases of temperament and disease; into nutrition,
disease, mental illness, motivation, habit and conditioned reflexes. Withal he
found the time to write a number of books. One of them, Alan the Unknown, won
him international renown not only as a surgeon but as a writer. Published
simultaneously in Paris and New York, it soon became a best seller. Among his
other books were Anatomists and the Transplantation of Blood Vessels, The
Preservation of Tissues, The Transplantation of ,Limbs, The Transplantation of
Veins and Organs. At one time, for what he called "purely scientific
reasons," Dr. Carrel decided to go to Lourdes, and he quoted himself as
saying just before his departure for the shrine: "If God exists, miracles
are possible. But does God exist objectively? How am I to know? To the
scientific mind a miracle is an absurdity." When somebody asked him what
kind of miracle he would have to see to be sure that God existed, Carrel
answered: "An organic disease cured ... a cancer dis appearing, a
congenital dislocation suddenly vanishing.
6 "
On his journey to Lourdes he proposed to be "entirely objective,"
and he did not think it likely that he would admit a miracle even if the many
sick people on the train in which he traveled were suddenly cured, because
most of them probably were suffering from nervous and traumatic hysteria.
However, one patient obviously was dying from organic disease. Her name was
Marie Ferrand. "If such a case as hers were cured," wrote Dr.
Carrel, "it would indeed be a miracle. I would never doubt again."
With permission of Reader's Digest and of Harper & Row, publishers of Dr.
Carrel's account of his trip entitled Journey to Lourdes, here is what the
surgeon wrote after he went to the infirmary at Lourdes to examine Marie
Ferrand.1 In the account he refers to himself by name, spelling Carrel
backward. "Her head, with its white emaciated face, was flung on the
pillow. Her wasted arms lay flat at her sides. Her breathing was rapid and
shallow. "'How are you feeling?' Lerrac asked her gently. "She
turned her dim, dark-circled eyes toward him and her gray lips moved in an
inaudible reply. "Taking her hand, Lerrac put his fingertips on her
wrist. Her pulse was excessively rapid and irregular. Her heart was giving
out. 'Get me the hypodermic syringe,' he told the nurse. 'We'll give her an
injection of caffeine.'
7 "Pulling back the
covers the nurse removed the cradle that held up the bedclothes and the rubber
ice bag which hung over the patient's abdomen. Marie Ferrand's emaciated body
lay exposed again, her abdomen distended as before. The solid masses were
still there; at the center, under the umbilicus, he could still feel the
fluid. As the caffeine entered her thin thigh, Marie Ferrand's face contracted
suddenly. "Lerrac turned to A.B. 'It's just what I told you,' he added,
'advanced tuberculosis peritonitis. She may last a few days more, but she is
doomed. Death is very near.' "As Lerrac turned to leave, the nurse
stopped him. 'Doctor, is it all right to take Marie Ferrand to the pool
"Lerrac looked at her in amazement. 'What if she dies on the way?' he
asked. "'She is absolutely determined to be bathed. She came all the way
for this.' "At that moment Dr. J., who practiced in a town outside
Bordeaux and had accompanied his own patients to Lourdes, entered the ward.
Lerrac asked his opinion about having Marie Ferrand carried to the pool. Once
again the covers were removed and Dr. J. examined Marie Ferrand. 'She's at the
point of death,' he finally said in a low voice. 'She might very well die at
the Grotto.' "'You see, mademoiselle,' said Lerrac, 'how imprudent it
would be to take this patient to the pool. However, I have no authority here;
I cannot give permission, or refuse it.' " 'The girl has nothing to
lose,' said the Mother Superior. 'It would be cruel to deprive her of the
supreme happiness of being taken to the Grotto, though I fear she may not live
to reach it. We shall take her there now, in a few minutes.' ,1 11 will be at
the pool myself in any case,' said Lerrac.
8 'If she goes into a coma,
send for me.' "'She will certainly die,' Dr. J. repeated as they left the
ward." Dr. Carrel's account then goes on to describe the pools of
Lourdes, and he says that he was standing outside the pools when Marie Ferrand
was brought to be lowered into the waters. His narrative continues: "For
a moment, before going to the pool, they lowered the stretcher to the ground.
The sick girl was apparently unconscious. Lerrac put his hand on her wrist.
Her pulse was more rapid than ever, her face ashen. It was obvious that this
young girl was about to die. He wondered how it would affect the pilgrims if
she died in the pool. What would they think of miracles then?" Marie
Ferrand was not cured. But neither had she died. Nothing had happened. Many
dramatic cures at Lourdes follow exactly the same pattern. Dr. Carrel remarks
this fact and then describes the ceremonies which followed, leading up to the
great moment when all the sick are assembled at the Grotto to receive the
blessing of Christ in the Eucharist. He tells how he "walked past the
little carts and through the crowd toward the Grotto. Pausing for a moment at
the edge of the stream he observed the crowd. A young intern from Bordeaux,
Mr. M., whom Lerrac had met the day before, greeted him. 'Have you any cures?
Lerrac asked. "'No,' replied M. 'A few of the hysteria cases have
recovered, but there has been nothing unexpected, nothing that one can't see
any day in a hospital.' "'Come and look at my patient,' said Lerrac. 'Her
case is not unusual but I think she is dying. She is at the Grotto.
9 "'I saw her a few
minutes ago,' said M. 'What a pit: they let her come to Lourdes. I "It
was now half-past two. Beneath the rock of Massabielle, the Grotto glittered
in the light of its thou. sand candies. Beyond the high iron grille was a
statue of the Virgin, standing in the hollowed rock where Bernadette once saw
the glowing vision of the lady in white, the Immaculate Conception. In front
of the iron grille and almost touching it, Lerrac recognized the slender
figure of Marie Ferranti's nurse. He and M. made their way through the crowd
and, stopping near Marie Ferranti's stretcher, leaned against the low wall.
She was motionless, her breathing still rapid and shallow; she seemed to be at
the point of death. More pilgrims were approaching the Grotto. Volunteers and
stretcher-bearers came crowding in. The little carts were being wheeled from
the pools to the Grotto. "Lerrac glanced again at Marie Ferranti.
Suddenly he stared. It seemed to him that there had been a change, that the
harsh shadows on her face had disappeared, that her skin was somehow less
ashen. Surely, he thought, this was hallucination. But the hallucination
itself was interesting psychologically; hastily he jotted down the time in his
notebook. It was twenty minutes before three. But if the change in Marie
Ferranti was an hallucination, it was the first one Lerrac had ever had. He
turned to M. 'Look at our patient again,' he said. 'Does it seem to you that
she has rallied a little "'She looks much the same to me,' answered M.
'All I can see is that she is no worse.' "Leaning over the stretcher,
Lerrac took her pulse again and listened to her breathing.
10 The respiration is less
rapid,' he told M. after a minute. "'That may mean that she is about to
die,' said M. "Lerrac made no reply. To him it was obvious that there was
a sudden improvement in her general condition. Something was taking place. He
stiffened to resist a tremor of emotion, and concentrated all his powers of
concentration on Marie Ferrand. He did not lift his eyes from her face. A
priest was preaching to the assembled throngs of pilgrims and patients; hymns
and prayers burst out sporadically (the Blessed Sacrament was reserved in the
Grotto), and in this atmosphere of fervor, under Lerrac's cool, objective
gaze, the face of Marie Ferrand slowly continued to change. Her eyes, so dim
before, were now wide with ecstasy as she turned them toward the Grotto. The
change was undeniable. The nurse leaned over and held her. "Suddenly,
Lerrac felt himself turning pale. The blanket which covered Marie Ferrand's
distended abdomen was gradually flattening out. 'Look at her abdomen!' he
exclaimed to M. "M. looked. 'Why yes,' he said, 'it seems to have gone
down. It's probably the folds in the blanket that give that impression.'
"The bell of the basilica had just struck three. A few minutes later,
there was no longer any sign of distention in the girl's abdomen. "Lerrac
felt as though he were going mad. "Standing beside Marie Ferrand, he
watched the intake of her breath and pulsing of her throat with fascination.
The heartbeat, through still very rapid, had become regular. "'How do you
feel?' he asked her.
11 "'I feel very well,'
she answered in a low voice. 'I an still weak, but I feel I am cured.'
"There was no longer any doubt: Marie Ferrand' condition was improving so
much that she was scarcely recognizable... "The crowd at the Grotto was
not even aware that it had happened. "It was the resurrection of the
dead; it was a miracle! "Lerrac went back to his hotel, forbidding
himself to draw any conclusions until he could find out exactly what had
happened... "At half-past seven he started for the hospital, tense and on
fire with curiosity. One question alone filled his mind: Had the incurable
Marie Ferrand been cured? "Opening the door of the ward of the Immaculate
Conception (Hospital) he hastened across the room to her bedside. With mute
astonishment, he stood and gazed. The change was overpowering. Marie Ferrand,
in a white jacket, was sitting up in bed. Though her face was still gray and
emaciated, it was alight with life; her eyes shone; a faint color tinted her
cheeks. Such an indescribable serenity emanated from her person that it seemed
to illuminate the whole sad ward with joy. 'Doctor,' she said, 'I am
completely cured. I feel very weak, but I think I could even walk.'
"Lerrac put his hand on her wrist. The pulse beat was calm and regular.
Her respiration had also become completely normal. Confusion flooded Lerrac's
mind. Was this merely an apparent cure, the result of a patient's stimulus of
autosuggestion? Or was it a new fact, an astounding unacceptable event - a
miracle? For a brief moment, before subjecting Marie Ferrand to the supreme
test of examining her abdomen, Lerrac hesitated.
12 Then, torn between hope
and fear, he threw back the blanket. The skin was smooth and white. Above the
narrow hips was the small, flat, slightly concave abdomen of a young
undernourished girt. Lightly he put his hands on the wall of the abdomen,
looking for traces of the distention and the hard masses he had found before.
They had vanished like a bad dream. "The sweat broke out on Lerrac's
forehead. He felt as though someone had struck him on the head. His heart
began to pump furiously. He held himself in with iron determination. "He
had not heard Doctor J. and M. entering the ward. Suddenly he noticed them,
standing beside him. 'She seems to be cured,' he said to them, 'I cannot find
anything wrong. Please examine her yourselves.' "While his two colleagues
carefully palpated Marie Ferrand's abdomen, Lerrac stood aside and watched
them with shining eyes. There could be no doubt whatever that the girt was
cured. It was a miracle, the kind of miracle which took the public by storm
and sent them in hordes to Lourdes. And the public was justified in its
enthusiasm. Whatever the source of these cures, the results were not only
breathtaking but positive and good. Again it swept over Lerrac how fortunate
he was, that among all the patients at Lourdes that day it was the one he had
known and studied carefully whom we saw cured!" Then follows a
description of the scientist-doctor's personal reaction. What would his
fellow-scientists think of a man who believed in miracles? Would any one of
them believe who had not seen it for themselves? Dr. Carrel concludes:
"When a scientist tried to apply his intellectual techniques and
convictions to metaphysics, he was lost. He could no longer use his reasoning,
since reason did not go beyond the establishing of facts and their relations
to each other.
13 In the search for causes,
there was nothing absolute, there were no signposts along the way, there was
no proof of right or wrong. All things in this mysterious realm were therefore
possible. Intellectual systems no longer seemed to count. In the face of life
and death, the mere theories were void. It was not science that nourished the
inner life of man; it was the faith of the soul. He had to reach a conclusion.
He was certain of his diagnosis. It was incontestable that a miracle had taken
place. But was it by the hand of God? Some day he would know. Meanwhile, it
was safe to say it was a cure; that much he could guarantee. Yet deep within
himself, he felt that was not all ... "He climbed the steps of the church
in the glitter of lights while the organ boomed and a thousand voices chanted.
He sat down on a chair at the back near an old peasant. For a long time he sat
there motionless, his hands over his face, listening to the hymns. Then he
found himself praying: '... I believe in Thee. Thou didst answer my prayers by
a blazing miracle. I am still blind to it, I still doubt. But the greatest
desire of my life is to believe, to believe passionately, implicitly, and
never more to analyze and doubt.... Beneath the deep, harsh warnings of my
intellectual pride a smothered dream persists. Alas, it is still only a dream
but the most enchanting of them all. It is the dream of believing in Thee and
of loving Thee with the shining spirit of men of God.' " The notes which
Dr. Carrel made are still on record at the Medical Commission in Lourdes. If
the great scientist, Carrel, had not been at Lourdes that day, who would ever
have heard of Marie Ferrand and her cure?
14 One of the most
significant facts in the entire account is in the two sentences: "The
crowd at the Grotto was not even aware that it happened. It was the
resurrection of the dead; it was a miracle!" Many of the miracles Christ
performs now in His Eucharistic state are even more dramatic than that of
Marie Ferrand. There was a worker from Belgium with a piece of bone missing in
his leg, his ankle and foot dangled, suspended only by flesh and tendons, so
that it could be turned a hundred and eighty degrees. That missing bone was
instantly created in his leg. The doctors had before and-after X-rays. When
the man died, an autopsy showed where the new bone had come to unite with the
separated bone. The full documentation and X-rays can be seen at the office of
the Medical Commission at Lourdes, together with the affirmation of many
witnesses. Dr. Carrel was so deeply moved because he was a witness. The writer
can add the account of two apparent miracles which he himself witnessed, which
partially explains his desire to write this book. The patient in the first
case was a man in Lisbon, Portugal, who suffered from Parkinson's disease. As
the creeping paralysis rose from his lower limbs, advancing closer and closer
to the heart, the patient was plunged into deep melancholy. His wife pleaded
with him repeatedly to go only ninety miles away to Fatima. In mockery,
because he knew that, like himself, his attending physician did not believe in
miracles, he said to his wife in the doctor's presence: "I'll go if he
does." It occurred to the doctor that a trip to the church at Fatima*
might cheer his patient, or at least it would be a temporary distraction, so
he surprised the ill man by saying:
15 "All right, let's
go." The six apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima too place on the
13th day of six consecutive months, so the day is particularly celebrated at
the Shrine. As this we the l3th day of October there was a large crowd of pilgrims.
The no believing doctor and his no believing patient were among the first in
the rows of invalids. I was carrying the canopy over the Holy Eucharist as It
was raised by the priest to bless th patient. The man suddenly pushed himself
up in his wheel chair. Trembling, he began to move and feel his legs Then he
cried out to those around him: "I'm not dreaming, am I? I am not
dreaming?" This writer's reaction was something like the reaction of
thousands of television viewers in the first moment they saw the murder of Lee
Harvey Oswald, during a live news program following the assassination of
President Kennedy in 1963, or of hearing the news that Pope John Paul I had
died of a heart attack in late September, 1978, or that his successor, Pope
John Paul 11, had been shot in an assassination attempt in St. Peter's Square
on May 13, 198 1. It did not seem real The doctor's mouth fell open in
amazement as he slowly sank to his knees. Tears began to roll down his cheeks.
"This was not for you," he exclaimed through sobs. "This was
for me." Some years later I witnessed another apparent miracle in the
same place. The patient this time was a woman twenty-two years old named
Arminda dos Campos. She had been ill for nine years and had undergone seven
major operations. She had a greatly distended abdomen, total paralysis and an
opening in her side cut by a surgeon's scalpel to drain purulent matter.
16 Again I was standing very
close to the patient. In fact, I was standing directly in front of her at the
moment of her cure and saw the blankets flatten on her body, saw her sit up,
and within two hours I saw the scars which had instantaneously formed in the
place of the incisions. In another book' I recorded my own reactions to seeing
the scars within two hours of the cure: As I stood near the side of the table
opposite the Bishop, I the cured girl was introduced from the end of the table
by one of the nurses. The Bishop of Fatima listened patiently. In his
twenty-six years as Bishop he had heard many similar stories. He had gone into
sheaves of endless details about cures. Then I heard the nurse saying:
"Show the Bishop the scars where the fistulas were." There, on the
upper part of the thigh, at a spot revealed with careful modesty, were two
clear, dry scars. They were not red as a freshly-healed wound usually is. They
were clear (like a little scar on my own hand... more than thirty years old).
One of them was so deep that it would have been possible to insert the tip of
one's little finger where the opening had been. After staring at the healed
tissue, wondering if it could have been possible that there were really awful
sores there just a few hours before, I saw the face of the nurse. Tears were
streaming down her cheeks. With an open arm gesture and trembling hands,
suddenly she exclaimed: "And Your Excellency, to think that this morning
I put bandages there on large, running openings!"
17 It was only in that final
moment - looking into the tearstained face of the nurse - that the miracle
made its full impact. In that moment I believed with all my heart that we in
that room were experiencing the same wonder experienced when Christ healed the
ten lepers, or when the blind man shouted out that suddenly he could see. We
were, I felt absolutely sure, seeing it with our own eyes - not two thousand
years ago, but now. We were objectively experiencing the reality of the
Eucharist, the reality of Christ among us. But what of the many other
miracles? Few are so strongly confirmed. And yet, the Eucharistic Lord remains
in the reach of all, in all the tabernacles of the world, waiting to be asked
for His graces and assistance. And He gives them in abundance. In Santarem
Portugal there is a consecrated Host which took on the appearance of bleeding
flesh and which has remained incorrupt. An American group made a stop at this
important Eucharistic shrine during heir 1984 World Peace Flight. Archbishop
Pearce, chaplain of the group, told them: "Don't be afraid to ask for a
miracle." Just before entering the Santarem "Church of the Holy
Miracle," Archbishop Pearce, chaplain of the 1984 World Peace Flight,
told the pilgrims: "Don't be afraid to ask for miracles. One of the
pilgrims, Muriel Thornberg, had a diabetic sister, legally blind for twelve
years, and during the past six years had open suppurating sores on her legs
and feet which obliged her to use a wheelchair. Doctors said she would
probably never walk again. Adding to her sorrows was the fact that she was a
widow, living alone, with just about enough money to get by.
18 So Muriel Thornberg, as
she kissed the monstrance containing the miraculous Host in Santarem, begged
at least for the miracle that her sister's feet would be healed. She says:
"Somehow, as I was thus embracing Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in
this extraordinary manifestation of the 'Bleeding Host,' I felt surely that my
prayer was answered." When Muriel returned from the World Peace Flight
she could hardly wait to call her sister to ask about her condition. One foot
was healed. But on the other there was still a hole nearly an inch across and
more than an inch deep, filled with pus. Muriel knew that the Jesus to whom
she spoke in that miraculous Host in Santarem was the same Jesus in any
tabernacle. So she hastened to Church to remind Him of what He had done when
she had had the privilege of embracing Him by kissing the monstrance in
Santarem. It was Ascension Thursday and she prayed with fervor that the cure
would be complete. The very next day (Friday, June 1, 1984) the doctor
examined the foot. "He had a strange expression on his face," Muriel
reports, "and suddenly asked if someone had been praying for her."
The foot was completely healed and the doctor said he did not now how it could
possibly have happened. "When my sister then told him about my prayers
for her before the Blessed Sacrament the doctor said that this was the only
possible explanation for her recovery." Muriel had taken the exhortation
of Archbishop Pearce to heart: " Do not be afraid to ask for a
miracle." And from Whom could she more certainly expect a miracle than
from Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament, especially at Santarem where a
bleeding Host has remained incorrupt for several hundred years as a visible,
extraordinary proof of the words of Our Lord Himself: "This is My Flesh,
this is My Blood. " "I think God may have been testing my faith when
both feet were not healed right away," Muriel Thornberg says. "But
could it not also be that Our Lord had cured one foot, and then called me back
to the tabernacle before curing the other to remind me that He is the same
Jesus, truly present, in the Blessed Sacrament everywhere? " To
understand this reality we keep returning to the miracle of the Last Supper.
.
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