Posted on 12/06/2010 10:52:32 AM PST by NYer
I prayed to Newman daily, he said.Beautiful! I'll show my daughter (this post) who shies away right out the door, when I start kissing the relics on the wall of our church.
His doctor told him recovery would be months, possibly years, because the dura mater in his spine was not only compressed but torn up.
It was three weeks before the fourth-year diaconate classes were to begin. Ive got to try to walk, Mr. Sullivan told his nurses.
It took me 10 minutes to get myself to the edge of the bed. the pain was constant, he said. I couldnt get up. I was in agony. I was brought to prayer. The same simple prayer. Please Cardinal Newman help me to walk so that I can return to classes and be ordained.
Then something unbelievable happened. You talk about the communion of saints ... that experience I had approached that concept.
Suddenly, I felt tremendous heat ... and a tingling feeling all over my body. I also felt a tremendous sense of peace and joy. I was totally consumed, totally engulfed in what I have believed and will always believe was Gods presence. I had no willpower of my own. I was just totally captivated.
I realized I was standing up, standing with no pain I could walk normally, he said.
The nurse offered him a walker, then a cane; but he needed neither. He walked up and down the corridors of the hospital with the nurse telling him to slow down. How could I slow down? he asked with a chuckle.
He was discharged that day, went on to diaconate classes, and was ordained a year later, on Sept. 14, 2002, the feast of the triumph of the cross. Link.
I remember in RCIA when a woman brought in her collections of relics. That was a hard one for me.
But knowing that the early Christians prayed over the tombs of the martyrs . . . .
Do I venerate? Not really. It’s just like the apparitions. I don’t venerate those either.
I believe in all the Church, Magisterium, and Tradition teach. I can be a good Catholic by going to mass, confession and following the teachings.
What I find so freeing about the Catholic Church is that there is so much room for us all. Someone said: The Church is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
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