Story Excerpted from HOLY HANDS: 8 Stories of Lives Transformed by the Priesthood’s Mysterious Power
Medical personnel seem like gods. They have a say over life and death. They’re experts. They judge conditions and have a great gift to see the evolution of the disease or illness, and they can tell when a person is nearing the end. So they are very accurate in prognosis and diagnosis and the likelihood of death.
But some things cannot be explained.
In this story, doctors told Steve he had a serious heart condition, lung cancer, and Stage Four Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), for which there was no known cure at the time.
Doctors gave him eight years to live. But today, he expects many more. How? He received the best chemotherapy known to man: The spontaneous love of his Father, Our Father, and a brush with the Divine.
A missionary priest was passing by. And his invocations of St. Joseph, St. Stephen, and St. Raphael met with Steve’s literal and spiritual conversion of heart. As he stood before the priest and received a simple blessing, God suddenly knew the urgency of His beloved son’s need. In a moment of love, from Father to a son, the Lord immediately intervened in Steve’s life.
“Oh, how great is the priest,” said St. Vianney. “If he realized what he is, he would die.”
Steve Begins His Story
Steve: At one time in my life, I decided there were “more important things to do,” so I divorced and left the Church. I’m almost 70 now. I left the Church for 27 years.
I received an annulment, and then remarried in 1989, not in the Church. My new wife, Peggy, had been raised Catholic, but was away from the Church for 20 years. Peggy later received an annulment, too.
What got us back to the Lord was my brother-in-law, Jim. He was killed in a car accident in Georgia in 1995. We were living in Virginia. So we drove to the memorial service. And at the funeral we both heard in our hearts: “You need to get back to church.” Driving home, we didn’t say anything to each other. But when we got back, I said, “Did you hear-?” and she cut me off and said, “Yes! I heard the same thing!”
Three months after our marriage was blessed in the Roman Catholic Church on April 29, 1997, Peggy’s son, Greg, was killed. He was drunk, ran through a red light, and plowed into a van. It was July 24, 1997. If we had not returned to the Church, the grief would have been unbearable. But now we had the Sacraments and could cope better with the loss.
When Greg was killed, I walked out of my job and didn’t look back. It was such a life- changing event that I realized work wasn’t that important; family was. I was terrified of dying. I wouldn’t accept dying as part of life until I started working for Maureen Flynn at Signs & Wonders for Our Times in Herndon, Va.
And let me tell you, if you had told me about visionaries or miracles back then, I would’ve laughed at you. I just didn’t believe in them.
The homilist at Greg’s funeral told the story of a San Francisco bishop who was visiting a packed church, made up of wealthy and poor people. When he started his homily, a bum came in off the street, his hair all matted, and he smelled of whiskey. He shuffled pew to pew. And no one would give him a seat. Everyone shifted away. He walked around the church, and when he left, the bishop said, “Christ just walked by, and no one recognized Him.”
After the funeral, while in our hotel room—Peggy was sleeping—all of a sudden Greg was there, and someone I thought was the Lord, whose face was hidden by a bright light, so bright I couldn’t look at it. I focused on Greg. Both of them were standing in front of me, offering me a chalice. I tried to sip from the chalice, but it scared the daylights out of me. Even after my conversion, I wasn’t the greatest Catholic in the world. I didn’t have the kind of faith to believe in visions.
When we flew back to Virginia, I said, “I need to talk to a priest.” I didn’t know what to do. I was shaken. I finally told Peggy what happened, in detail: Greg had a white robe with a cincture around him, white like I-can’t-believe white. Peggy was more of a believer than I was. She wondered why the vision appeared to me and not her. I said, “Probably because I didn’t believe that stuff.”
We learned after Greg died, that he respected the homeless. He had all these people turn out for his funeral Mass, and we were astonished. We had no idea he had done so much with the homeless. He was not church-going. We didn’t think he was close to Christ.
Because of Greg’s death, and seeing him and Jesus after his death, made me come back to the Church with a vengeance.
We joined the Legion of Mary, and other prayer groups. We became active in a prison ministry on Saturdays and Sundays. I was one of these “abortion-is-a-personal- decision” folks and, man, did our pastor, the late Monsignor James McMurtrie, really set me straight. He was wonderful. We ended up joining pro-life groups and we marched for life.
I started working with Peggy Hennessey, Maureen Flynn’s mom, at Signs & Wonders for Our Times, a founder of the InternationalWeek of Prayer and Fasting at the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. My faith grew even more from working at Signs & Wonders. Peggy Hennessey and I worked in shipping and had a ball. I never really enjoyed work so much in my life, because it wasn’t work.
I was still working for Maureen when I was driving in my car one day, this is a year after Greg’s funeral, and a voice from the back seat said: “Greg would have given him a seat. Greg’s in Heaven.” And I knew exactly what he was talking about—that bum in the church. I couldn’t believe it.
I wasn’t afraid of dying anymore.
Conversion of Heart
I have arterial fibulation, A-Fib. The upper chamber of my heart won’t close, and it can lead to a stroke. In 2005, I had an A-Fib attack. I went to the hospital and spent the night. What happens is that if the medicine doesn’t convert the heart rhythm, it may not convert on its own. I’ve be blessed that my heart valve has always closed, if not by medicine, then on its own, within 24 hours.
Because it converted, and the heart went back to its normal rhythm, the next morning they said I could leave. But then the doctor said, “you’re not going anywhere, we have an internist who wants to talk to you.” When the internist shared the results of a blood test, he said he thought I had CLL, chronic lymphoma. He ordered a CT scan to see if anything else was going on.
That’s when they discovered something. They found a spot on the lower lobe of my right lung. But they didn’t think it was anything to worry about, or that it was related to the CLL. Meanwhile, Peggy and I were getting ready for a Florida vacation.
In Florida, I got a call and they said I needed to get back to see an oncologist. “Wait,” I said. “Just wait. We’ll be back in a week and a half to two weeks.” I wasn’t worried.
When I got back, and saw the oncologist, he ordered a PET scan. It came back: You have lung cancer. “This is wonderful,” I thought— leukemia and lung cancer. They did a biopsy. “Yeah, it’s lung cancer.”
And by the way, they said there’s no treatment, no cure for the CLL (one has been found since). They had said I had eight years to live, but now they believed the CLL was more advanced.
“I want you to see the surgeon immediately to get the lower part of the lung out,” the doctor told me.
I said, “That’s not happening.” I’m a hard-headed German to start with. Do it my way, and if I die, I die. This is how I was thinking now. I’m going to the International Week of Prayer and Fasting.
Prior to the Week of Prayer and Fasting, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006, on the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, there was a youth conference at a gymnasium in a nearby church, St. Joseph’s in Herndon, Va. Father, you celebrated Mass and gave the homily. Peggy Hennessey grabbed me in my seat. She took me right to you, Father. We’d never met before. She said: “Tell him what’s wrong with you.”
I said, “Father, I have leukemia and I have lung cancer.”
So you started praying over me. It was so loud in the gym—kids were screaming, a band was playing— people asked me what saints you invoked, and I said “I have no clue.” When you put your hand on my forehead, I felt a warm heat, almost like a fire, not burning hot, but so warm, go all through my body and out my toes.
I’ve been prayed over many times and I never felt anything like that. And when you were through, I hadn’t heard a word you said because of the noise. I turned to Maureen, who had come over, and my wife, and Maureen’s mom, and I said, “Don’t ask me why I am saying this, but I don’t think I have the cancer anymore.”
Dumbfounded Doctor
I had appointments with doctors when I came back, but the appointments canceled, and then two weeks later I was sitting in their offices. They took another scan. The doctor comes in and has this dumb look on his face. He looks down at the radiologist’s report, the results from a second CT scan, which would precede lung cancer surgery, looks up at me, and I’m waiting for him to say something. He says: “We can’t find the lung cancer.” I had never seen such a dumb look on a doctor’s face. I think he thought he had the wrong file. He looked up. He looked down. He looked up. “We can’t find the cancer.” Peggy and I were looking at each other. “The CLL is down to zero,” he said. (They had done blood work, too.) “I can’t explain it,” he said. Peggy said, “Do you believe in prayer?”—we were at a Catholic hospital—and he says, “Well, yeah.”
I thought about it: They said the CLL was down to zero and it had been Stage 4, no cure, no treatment.
To this day, they can’t explain it. I went back every six months for a chest X-ray and blood work. Last year, the doctor told me I didn’t need to see him for a year. He’s amazed. I’m amazed.
For a long time, every time I told that story, I cried. It would bring tears to my eyes. It was a feeling of joy, great joy.
When we visit relatives in California, we have a Rosary group there and we meet after Mass, this group of Filipino ladies, and when they heard the story, they wanted to touch me. Other people, too.
Every time I fill out a form in a doctor’s office, they want to hear how I’m doing, and they all go “Wow!” when they see what I’ve been through. “How are they treating you today for the cancer?” they ask. I tell them: “I don’t have cancer anymore.” And they look at me: “Excuse me?”
I still have my A-Fib and diabetes. I often think I wish I had told you about everything, Father. I have high blood pressure and arthritis, too, but let me tell you: I thank the Lord for you every day. You were
the instrument and God did it through you.
Let’s face it, even a lot of priests don’t believe in that stuff today.
No Diagnosis is Final
I met you Father, a year later at the next International Week of Prayer and Fasting, and I remember thanking you, kissing your hands. I did it because I know that the way people treat priests today is an abomination, it’s unbelievable. I wanted to respect your priesthood, and who you are as a person. A year later, you flew into town and came to dinner. I was so grateful!
I don’t think people should ever give up. People come down with cancer and they blame God. That’s stupid.
They should never give up. When I was diagnosed, I had progressed in my Faith, so it didn’t bother me that much. Peggy was more upset than I was. Life goes on. If God wants to take me, that’s life. It just never upset me at that point. Don’t get me wrong. After the healing when I got back and this doctor is telling me “We can’t find your cancer,” I had tears in my eyes. But those were tears of joy.
But it was not a situation of crying out, going, “Oh Lord!” Life goes on. Maybe my faith was stronger than I thought it was. I wasn’t looking to be healed. I was sort of thrown into it.
My CLL is still at zero, and the lung cancer hasn’t returned. I give thanks every day.
I love the Church. The older I get, the more I love it. We have the “Pink Sisters” here in St. Louis, Mo., the nuns of the Congregation of Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters, who wear a rose-colored habit and adore Christ in the Eucharist 24 hours a day every day; perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. And almost every day I get over to their church and pray with them. The first part of my Adoration is always Thanksgiving. That’s at the top, my healing. And I’m thankful that we have priests like you, Father.
You’ve extended my life and I love you for it. ~
Prayer for Healing from a Terminal Illness
Like the Gospel woman suffering from hemorrhage, I too, Lord Jesus, wish to touch the hem of your garment. Like the Roman centurion, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word and I shall be healed. May your Most Sacred Body strengthen my body ravaged by illness. May your Most Precious Blood in the Holy Eucharist purify the contagion in my blood. Revitalize me, oh Lord with hope, as I am forlorn and dying. You are my rock, my fortress, my refuge. In you is my only hope for salvation and healing. With expectant faith, I make up, as St. Paul says, in my body, what’s lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the salvation of souls, knowing that if it be possible, that I be cured from this terminal illness. Nonetheless, not my will but Your Holy Will be done. Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Amen
