I Have Never Felt Such a Joy Before
October 15, 1993, it was midnight—the beginning of the 15th of October—when I felt a very strong calling to go and pray before Our Lord. (There is a chapel nearby which has a seven-day-a-week, twenty-four-hour Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.) I went to the chapel and knelt before Our Lord for about forty-five minutes. It was during this time that I was filled with such a great joy. I almost could not get up—my soul desired to continue to kneel before Him. The joy continued to grow in my heart to the point of overflowing. (This is the best way I can describe it.) It was then Our Lord spoke. Each word was powefully felt within me, as if time began to move slower.
He said, “It is here that I wish for you to come and rest. It is here that I will refresh you. Tell Me that you love Me to make up for the ingratitude of so many of My children in the world.”
At this point I began to say over and over again very slowly, “I love you, Jesus, I love you, Jesus … “ I have never felt such a joy before. I wanted to be with Him for hours in that moment. I continued to kneel for a while more, telling Jesus that I loved Him and asking Him to have mercy on me and on all the world.
(Taken from My Daily Eucharist II by Joan Carter McHugh, and an excerpt contained there from Open Your Hearts, Messages from Our Lord Jesus and His Blessed Mother, by Michael McColgan.)
He Stopped Right in Front of Me, Holding the Host
“’After Communion, Fr. Rookey came down among the congregation with the monstrance containing the Host, to bless the people and pray for healing.
“’I was at the edge of a seat, quite near the front, and he stopped right in front of me, holding the Host up above me. I remember looking at the Host and begging for healing, and suddenly I began to cry. I just sat there and cried and cried and no matter how I tried to stip, the tears kept coming. I couldn’t understand it myself. I remember feeling mortified in front of so many people, but the tears kept coming. Then, just three rows in front of me, a young girl with cerebral palsy suddenly got out of her seat, hander her crutches to her mother and walked across the church and up onto the altar. I have never seen anything like it in my life.’
“Susan left the church later that afternoon feeling, she says, as if something special touched her life.
“I knew I had been touched in some way, if only that my faith had been restored to me. Once I managed to stop crying I felt utterly peaceful and relaxed, a feeling that stayed with me for days.
“’A week later I visited my doctor, as routine, and after examining me he said in great surprise that the power had come back into my leg. I said I knew this, and told him that besides this I had no pain either. He was completely taken aback.’
“A few weeks later she visited her specialist, one of Ireland’s leading neurologists, to receive the results of the lumbar puncture.
“’He didn’t know quite what to say to me,’ Susan remembers vividly …
“’The specialist looked at us and eventually said that he was sorry, that he was unable to confirm the diagnosis of MS, because it hadn’t shown up in the lumbar puncture. The fluid test was completely clear. He just couldn’t understand it, he continued. All the symptoms, all the indications following the MRI had proven to their satisfaction that their original diagnosis was correct. Yet now, the fluid just didn’t confirm this. All he could say, he finally told us, was that I did not have MS.’”*
*Parsons, Heather, A Man of Miracles (Oak Lawn, Illinois, CMJ Marian Publishers, 2005) p.156-57.
The Flow of Whiteness
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955) was a Jesuit priest, a philosopher, paleontologist and geologist. He took part in the discovery of Peking Man and developed the theory of the Omega Point, a maximum level of consciousness and complexity toward which the universe is purportedly evolving. Hymn of the Universe, a book published after his death, is a collection of various essays he wrote from 1916 to 1955. In one such essay, he recounts an encounter his a friend of his.
“The light was fading. I pressed a switch, and the lamp on my desk lit up … My friend gave a start; and I noticed that his gaze remained fixed on the lamp, as though to draw from it memories of the past, as he began again to confide in me.
“‘On one occasion,’ he said, ‘I was again in a church had just knelt down before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in a monstrance when I experienced a very stange impression.
“‘You must, I feel sure, have observed that optical illusion which makes a bright spot against a dark background seem to expand and grow bigger? It was something of this sort I experienced as I gazed at the host, its white shape standing out sharply, despite the candles on the altar, against the darkness of the choir. At least, that is what happened to begin with; later on, as you shall hear, my experience assumed proportions which no physical analogy could express.
“’I had then the impression as I gazed at the host that its surface was gradually spreading out like a spot of oil but of course much more swiftly and luminously. At the beginning it seemed to me that I alone had noticed any change, and that it was taking place without awakening any desire or encountering any obstacle. But little by little, as the white orb grew and grew in space till it seemed to be drawing quite close to me, I heard a subdued sound, and immeasurable murmur, as when the rising tide extends its silver waves over the world of the algae which tremble and dilate at its approach, or when the burning heather crackles as fire spreads over the hearth.
“’Thus in the midst of a great sigh suggestive both of an awakening and of a plaint the flow of whiteness enveloped me, passed beyond me, overran everything. At the same time everything, though drowned in this whiteness, preserved its own proper shape, its own autonomous movement; for the whiteness did not efface the features or change the nature of anything, but penetrated objects at the core of their being, at a level more profound even than their own life. It was as though a milky brightness were illuminating the universe from within, and everything were fashioned of the same kind of translucent flesh.
“’You see, when you switched on the lamp just now and the glass which had been dark became bright and fluorescent, I recalled how the world had appeared to me then; and indeed it was this association of images which prompted me to tell you this story.’”*
*Gaudoin-Parker, Michael L., The Real Presence Through the Ages (Staten Island, N.Y., Alba House, 1993), p.175-176, quoting Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., Pierre, Hymn of the Universe (London, Collins 1965) p. 47-48.
What Do You Mean, I Live In Here
“Some years ago, on my annual retreat, I found myself under terrible temptaions and discouragement. Every temptation you can think of, I had that night. On my way to Mass the next morning, I felt very battered and discouraged because of the attacks and temptations of the preceding night.
As I walked up to Communion, I made an act of faith. I said, ‘Jesus, I know I am receiving You, but I feel so discouraged, so downhearted, and so unworthy to receive You.’
This was the way I felt as I received Communion. As I received the Sacred Host and turned to go back to my place, I received a clear image of a tent. I remember looking at the tent and thinking, ‘Well, that poor tent is really battered.’ I remember examining it and saying, ‘It must have gone through a terrible storm.’
As I got to my pew and knelt down, I saw a man coming to go into the tent. I saw myself in the image and I was telling the man, ‘Oh, you can’t go in there, it’s a mess. It’s all battered. There are big holes in it.’
The man looked at me and smiled and said, ‘What do you mean? I live in here.’
At that moment, I realized that I was the battered tent, that I had been battered with the temptations to sin and discouragement and all those things that had harassed me during the night. Now, Jesus was showing me that, battered and all, He still made His home in me—and that He had just come to me again under the appearance of the sacred Host. “
(Taken from My Daily Eucharist II by Joan Carter McHugh, and an excerpt contained there from Miracles Do Happen by Sr. Briege McKenna)
Brother, Do Y ou See What I See
During his stay at the new abbey which he had established at Floreffe, when he (St. Norbert) was saying Mass, he noticed upon the paten just before communion a large drop of the Precious Blood, all red and surrounded by rays of light … He turned to his deacon and said, “Brother, do you see what I see?” “I do, Father,” he replied. The altar upon which the miracle occurred has always been kept in the Monastery at Floreffe.
St. Norbert was known for his devotion to the Eucharist, his frequent pronouncements on maintaining the utmost cleanliness about the altar and for combatting the Sacramentarian heresy. The Sacramentarians believed that consecrated Hosts held only metaphorical power and that they did not contain the Real Presence. St. Norbert was called to Antwerp to quell this heresy there. He succeeded. Afterwards, he was known afterward as the “Apostle of Antwerp” and the “Apostle of the Blessed Sacrament.”
(Taken from My Daily Eucharist II by Joan Carter McHugh, and an excerpt contained there from Witnesses to the Eucharist by Father Hugh F. Blunt, LLD)
There’s Really Nothing That Can Be Done
“A little boy was brought to this outdoor Mass who was suffering from very severe burns and sores on his body. I remember thinking, ‘My goodness, there’s really nothing that can be done. It’s so bad. We have no doctors or medicine here.’
I admired the priest. We prayed with the little boy, then the priest said to the old woman who had carried him to the Mass, ‘Just leave him under the table here and let’s continue with the celebration of the Eucharist.’
As we approached the Consecration, I had my eyes closed. When I opened them, I discovered that people were prostrate on the ground. They lifted up their eyes to adore the Lord (in the Eucharist). The look on their faces made me think, ‘They really believe this is Jesus.’ Then when I looked at the Sacred Host, in my imagination, I got the most beautiful image of Jesus with his two hands out. He was smiling with great love and compassion. He was embracing these poor people and saying, ‘Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you life and faith.’ After the Mass, I went around to see how the little boy was. I looked at the child and he was fine. There wasn’t anything wrong with his little body.
During the Mass as in all Masses, the priest had put his hands over the bread and wine, and he called upon the action of the Spirit to make this action holy ‘that it may become the Body and Blood’ of Jesus. When the priest said this prayer, the Holy Spirit came, but He of course was not limited to do only what the priest asked. The Spirit also put His power over the little boy and the boy was changed. He was healed and made whole.”
(Taken from My Daily Eucharist II by Joan Carter McHugh, and an excerpt contained there from Miracles Do Happen by Sr. Briege McKenna)
A Greater Love for Charlie
The following is a seemingly simple story. It does not contain any astonishing supernatural event, and can be discounted as something due entirely to the personal capabilities of the storyteller herself. Yet she thought otherwise. She knew the level of hostility in her heart and the depth of the change she experienced. She says:
“When I went forward to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, the Lord gave me a greater love for Charlie … Jesus had worked a great healing in me and I wanted to tell someone. How I wished I could go home and tell Charlie!
As soon as we got home I phoned Charlie at his motel. When he answered I said: ‘Honey I want you to know that I love you just the way you are and that it doesn’t matter to me where you go or how long you stay or who you go with. I’ll be waiting for you.’ Then I hung up.
Charlie says that he just stood there in the motel room not knowing what to do. When he heard my voice on the phone, he had expected me to tell him he was a sorry excuse for a man and that three lawyers would be waiting for him when he returned. He would have known how to handle that. But he didn’t know how to handle love or how to respond to it.
That was November 14, 1976. The following February 8, Charlie Osburn, the ‘wild man of Warrington,’ the man who could never change, the man who I ‘had to teach a lesson to,’ went down on his knees with Father Jim Smith … and asked for the infilling of God’s Holy Spirit.” (Jeanne Osburn)
(Taken from My Daily Eucharist II by Joan Carter McHugh, and an excerpt contained there from The Charlie Osburn Story by Charlie Osburn, with Fred Lily.)
Mothers with special children
God continue to grant love to those moms with special children.
For that care and devotion to the kids and for the abandonment in their journey.