Becoming Charismatic:
In 1971, I woke up to the fact that I had to be the one to
teach our children our Catholic Faith. After several months of praying the
St. Jude Novena, I found a book, “Catholic Charismatics.” It recounted that people were receiving healings
and answered prayers. Something I could
not say I knew about, except for the account of my mother’s healing from
Scarlet Fever. I was told that in 1935
my mother was in the Hospital for Contagious Diseases and had a fever of 107
degrees for 10 days. My father thought
that the doctors were letting her die, so he contacted her only sister in the
United States to tell her. She said she
would go immediately to the Shrine of St. Therese, the Little Flower to request
a Mass for her healing. My father then went
to see his neighbor, a Baptist, who was a surgical nurse. He told her of my mother’s condition. She phoned the Surgeon for whom she worked,
who immediately left his office and drove to the Hospital where my mother was
staying. He ordered blood transfusions
which saved her life. The surgeon
sacrificed in doing this, because he could not enter the hospital where he
practiced for two days following a visit to my mother’s hospital. My mother lived with a clot in the main
artery of her left leg, for the rest of her life, knowing that if it moved, she
would mostly likely die. She had two
more children despite the doctor’s warnings. At her eightieth birthday, she commented that
she had asked God to let her live to raise her children, and now her great-grandchild
was attending her Birthday party. My mother lived until she was 83 years old.
After four months of reading “Catholic Charismatics”, I determined to find a group like the people noted in the book. So, one Sunday after Mass, I asked a visiting Priest from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Seminary how to find a group. He referred me to a prayer meeting held every Friday night in a Franciscan Monastery that was about 25 miles away. Attending this Prayer Meeting required planning on my part as we only had one car. My husband was attending college during the day before going to work on the second shift at IBM. So, on that Friday I would drive with my husband and children to the college 35 miles away. Then, the children and I would drive home and later, return to the college before 4:00pm to drive my husband to work. After driving him to work, we would return home and I would feed my children their supper. I hired a neighborhood college age girl to babysit. This was the first night I ever left my children with someone who wasn’t a family member. When the children were settled, I drove to the prayer meeting. Afterwards, I drove 50 miles to get my husband from work and we drove the 24 miles home. I had driven approximately 155 miles that day!
The prayer meeting
was unlike anything I ever experienced.
I was a reserved Catholic and not used to people praying aloud. I repeated this ”Friday” trip three
times. I wanted to continue attending,
but it was so tiring. That night I prayed
to God for a second car. The following
morning, I received a call from my sister in New Jersey. She had just had brake work done on her car,
a Pontiac Tempest, and decided to purchase a new car. She asked if I wanted the Tempest. I was so shocked at that quick answer to
prayer. A short while later we had the
second car.
(To be continued)
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