*Mary Ann Cortes, a manic depressive, after seventeen years of treatment enjoyed no improvement but was healed through the Mass.
I am coming to know that the
Eucharist is the greatest healing sacrament and that every Mass is a healing
service. For seventeen years I was in and out of every mental hospital in the
region of New Orleans, Louisiana. I was diagnosed as manic depressive and given
almost every treatment available to psychiatric patients. The doctors gave up
hope of my recovering my mental health, and doomed me to a life of mood-altering
drugs.
When I went to bed at night I was afraid of waking up to another day of
terror. After I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began to attend healing
Masses, I became mentally, emotionally and physically well.
Today I am a new
person in Christ. I’m not afraid of the morning anymore. In each Mass I unite
all that I am with Jesus’ sacrifice. In that union with Him I receive into my
being the risen life of Jesus, which transforms me more and more. I identify
with Him and receive His life. The more I actively participate in the Mass, the
more real He becomes to me. Jesus Himself enters into me and heals from the
inside.
*Father
Richard Woldum of Los Angeles, California was ordained in 1979. Shortly
afterwards he was assigned as hospital chaplain for one year to St Joseph’s
Hospital in Alton, Illinois. This is his account.
One morning I received a call to
come to the emergency room to see an 11-year old boy named Johnny who was dying.
I found him on a breathing machine, his head swollen very large.
Johnny’s parents told me that he
had been riding his bike on a gravel road near his home when a truck came flying
over the hill and hit him head-on. The collision caused him to be thrown into
the nearby field. When the ambulance arrived the medics found his head cut wide
open with half his brains scattered in the field. They literally picked up the
pieces of his brain, shoved them into his head, and took him to the hospital.
When I asked Johnny’s parents if
he had been baptized, they said, ‘No.’ They informed me they attended no
church but prayed at home as a family. I asked them if they would like me to
baptize Johnny. They glanced at each other as if to say, ‘It couldn’t cause
any harm,’ then said to me, ‘Go ahead.’ They also said if I wanted to I
could baptize him into the Catholic faith. That night, with the parents and two
nurses as witnesses, I baptized Johnny.
The next morning I was doing
communion rounds when my beeper went off. Johnny’s doctor wanted me in the
intensive care unit. ‘What you do last night?’ he asked in broken English,
as I met him outside Johnny’s room. I explained to the doctor, a Buddhist,
that I had baptized Johnny (with the permission of his parents) so that he could
go to heaven. When I asked him why he was so concerned, he informed me that the
boy’s swelling had disappeared. The doctor was still convinced that the boy
would die, however; or if he lived, remain a vegetable, never moving, talking or
even moving his eyes.
That night Johnny’s parents
thanked me for baptizing him. I then explained about the anointing of the sick,
and asked if they would like Johnny to receive that sacrament. With their
agreement and in their presence, I anointed Johnny.
The next morning during communion
rounds the doctor again paged me on my beeper. He met me at the door of
intensive care and directed me to Johnny’s room, explaining on the way that he
had heard from the nurses that I had again prayed for Johnny.
Then he pointed to Johnny’s eyes
and asked, ‘What you do?’ I saw that Johnny’s eyes were moving. ‘It is
just the power of Jesus through prayers for the sick,’ I responded. He gave a
faintly sarcastic grin and said, ‘It no matter. Boy no talk or move. He remain
vegetable.’
It was now the third night,
counting the night of the accident. I suggested to the parents that they permit
me to give Johnny the sacrament of confirmation. They agreed.
The following morning his legs and
arms were moving. The doctor said to me in front of the parents, ‘I no longer
in control.’ He was simply unable to explain what was happening. The parents
turned to me and said they wanted to become Catholics. I recommended that they
wait and see what happened to Johnny before making a final decision.
That evening when I explained to
them about the Eucharist, they said they wanted this for Johnny too. I gave him
some Precious Blood with an eye dropper. The next morning he was making sounds.
Fr Woldum was away for the weekend and
when he returned he continues his account
When I checked in on Johnny upon
my return, I learned he had been transferred to the third floor, which was the
surgery unit. I went upstairs to see him, fearing that he had gone back to
surgery. He was sitting on his bed, talking to his mother.
After his recovery they took
another x-ray of his head and found that the part of his brain that had spilled
out in to the field had grown back.
When I eventually talked to Johnny’s
parents about becoming Catholics, they informed me they would continue praying
at home. The doctor in the case started looking into Christianity. Three nurses
converted to Catholicism. (Taken from Healing through the Mass pages
13-15 by Robert DeGrandis, published and copyright 1992 by Resurrection Press and used
here by permission of the publishers.)