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For our discernment:
OIL THAT HEALS: MYSTERIOUS POWER OF SACRAMENTAL SAID TO CAUSE DRAMATIC MIRACLES IN 'IMPOSSIBLE' INSTANCES
A short while ago we had an article on the power of healing unleashed -- often miraculously -- during the Anointing of the Sick and also the efficacy of sacramental "blessed oil," which we can all use. Blessed oil is different than the holy oil used in sacraments.
Opening the mailbag, we see other instances during which, allegedly, healing has taken place.
"Several years ago my husband and I were out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise to South America," wrote Jane Griffin of the St. Louis area. "I had picked up a bug onboard and it had turned into a very bad upper respiratory infection. There was no doctor onboard with antibiotics and I was having a lot of pain just breathing. I had to lay in bed just a certain way in order to sleep. I decided to go to the Saturday Vigil Mass on board, and at the end of Mass, the priest announced that if any aboard were old or sick to come for anointing. Was I ever happy to go! He anointed me and I went back to my cabin to sleep. At three a.m. I awoke completely well! (I recall joyfully walking briskly up and down the hall in amazement at this gift!)
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So it is.
"I've witnessed a number of miraculous healings through the intercession of Padre Pio," said another viewer, Don Marrandino, of Brigantine, New Jersey. "About five years ago a man in his late thirties overdosed on drugs and was pronounced brain dead in the Atlantic City Medical Center. When I visited him it was ten days since his parents were told that he was 'brain dead.' I laid hands on his forehead and prayed for Padre Pio's intercession. Within a day or two I was told that he came out of the coma and had brain activity. He was sent to Moss Rehabilitation Center with little hope for recovery. I was told that he made double the progress of anyone that they ever treated. He was sent home and is doing fine with some memory loss. His uncle, who is a surgeon, told the parents that Tom had a better chance of hitting the lottery than making a recovery.
"Another time I was visiting my mother in the same hospital. A nun assigned to the hospital asked me to come with her to the trauma center to pray with a seventeen-year-old boy who was in a car accident. We went to the trauma center where I found the young man whose head was terribly swollen. I placed Padre Pio's oil on his head and prayed for Saint Pio's intercession. The parents were told he had little chance of recovery due to the severe trauma to the brain. Relatives came from England to be by his deathbed. Although I don't have all the details, the young man made a miraculous recovery, later attended college, and his mother came to Padre Pio's Shrine in Landisville, New Jersey to witness about the miracle and to give thanks. A few years later, I was being treated for neuropathy and was witnessing to the doctor about miracles that I had witnessed through prayers to Padre Pio. When I stopped, she said that she had witnessed a miracle and described the young man she treated in the trauma center who had been in the accident and had days to live! I have witnessed a number of other healings including pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, a child with holes in the heart, etcetera."
*We also heard from an old friend named Mary Ann Wichmann who works with Father Joseph Whalen, a well-known priest from Connecticut; father (who is now ninety!) has an extensive ministry of blessing Saint Raphael healing oil, praying for the sick, and shipping the oil -- which is gold-color and blessed annually during a deep, devout, and long ritual -- around the world (now more than a hundred countries).
According to Bill Baril of Wakefield, Massachusetts, who works with Father Whalen, the priest blesses 300 five-gallon jugs of oil a year, each of them touched by the priest; the oil is then put into smaller, many of them half-ounce bottles (100,000 to 200,000). It takes a crew of twenty-five volunteers to make the oil (which is heated and contains crushed rose petals) as the prayer are recited and the entire Book of Tobit is read.
Notes Wichmann, "One of our core team members had throat cancer last summer and Father Joe prayed over him and he made it through a very delicate and painful surgery with flying colors and recovered well. Because he had throat cancer the surgeon had been watching for it to pop up in other areas. In February they did a CAT scan and found an irregular tumor in the upper lobe of the lung (bad location), they followed it up with a PET scan to see if any other tumors 'lit up' in the body. Right after this Father Joe prayed over him and blessed him with the Saint Raphael oil. He went in the third week of March for the PET scan results, resigned to another surgery. The doctor just kept shaking his head and said he could not explain it but not only did no other areas 'light up,' but the lung tumor had disappeared! Ray called Father Joe and said the surgeon did not know where it went, but "we do", praise God! The stories are endless, Jesus is so good to us!" (Father's website contains other such reputed miraculous happenings.)
*Recently, asserts Mary Ann, oil was found exuding from a statue of the Archangel Michael in father's office. "Just a side note," she had said. "I was cleaning Fr. Joe's office yesterday and got to the table with his statue of St. Michael (about 24" high, between Saint Gabriel and Saint Raphael) and I placed my hands on either side of him to lift him up and move him so I could dust the table and my hands became covered with oil! The statue is exuding oil and a lot of it. I had to put him in a tray to catch the overflow. Father Joe and Father John say that oil has always been a sign of healing in the Bible but it is also a sign and consolation for us that He is with us and helping us, especially now [pictures above]."
For discernment.
Caution always.
We'll leave you with this testimony sent to the priest.
“I heard about your amazing healing ministry on Michigan Catholic Radio and sent out my request for your healing oil. I was desperate and my life was horrible. Not only was my husband critical but the hospital treating him tried to euthanize him! The doctors never told me about the true nature of his illness—severe atrophy of the mid-brain (the part of the brain that makes you a person). Add diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, gallbladder disease with gallstones and a tumor, hepatitis, acute pancreatitis, an 'undiagnosed brain injury' (caused by a car accident), severe anemia, with a shower of clots in the brain from a blood clotting disorder. Let’s not forget the hypoglycemic episode with anoxic encephalopathy which means very low blood sugar and no oxygen in the brain and multiple strokes causing severe damage. I know that the healing oil changed our lives dramatically. After numerous talks of euthanasia by the doctors, Louis miraculously improved! Today Louis only suffers from amnesia (from the car accident) and diabetes, all other medical conditions have returned to normal! (How do you live without brain cells and act normal? Only by a miracle of God!) I know it was this healing oil! Thank you St. Raphael."
Wrote Elizabeth Pringle of the United Kingdom of a long-ago event: "I was twenty-two months old in Clydebank, Scotland. We had just been through the Blitz. As a result of being dragged out of bed in dark of night, seeking underground shelter, I contracted pneumonia. Penicillin was not yet available, the fever would not break, the priest was called. I was thought to be 'gone' when he arrived. He anointed me and administered the Last Rites. I saw the Lord. To me He was a star -- the most beautiful star I had ever seen, way up in the darkness. I started to run to him. 'No,' he said, 'you must go back. My Father has work for you.' Crushed, I reluctantly obeyed. For many years this encounter was buried in the annals of time yet its still unfolding ramifications have affected my entire life. There is nothing on earth to compete with the power of the Sacraments in God's Holy Church. Death has no sway over God's perfect Will but I had to obey or I would have missed all of the incredible life I have been allotted.
"Destiny hangs by the finest of threads!"
[As in all cases, we urge prayer and fasting before any laying on of hands]
[resources: books on healing]
[see previous story on Father Whalen]
[Note also: Michael Brown retreat: Philadelphia-New Jersey area]
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