Paul Glynn - Healing Fire of Christ: Reflections on Modern Miracles-Knock, Lourdes, Fatima

PAUL GLYNN

Reflections on Modern Miracles
Knock, Lourdes, Fatima

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Original edition: Healing Fire from Frozen Earth
Published in 1999 by Marist Fathers Books,
Hunters Hill, N.S.W., Australia
1999 by Fr. Paul
All rights reserved
New edition printed by permission of Fr. Paul Glynn, S. M.
The Society of Mary, Australia

Cover art: Nicolas Poussin, Christ Healing the Blind at Jericho ,
The Louvre Museum, Paris
Reunion des Muses Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y.
Cover design by Riz Boncan Marsella

Published in 2003 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-827-1
Library of Congress Control Number 00-109329
Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to Jack Josephs, 1925-1996,
man of God, good husband, father, grandfather, and friend,
helper of the poor,
serviceman in the Pacific War, and
thereafter worker for reconciliation, peace and love

A s I was growing up, I wrestled with doubts about the existence of God and the kindness or all-goodness of this God. I presumed that I was not different from most young people trying to come to grips with the great questions of life. It was a great pleasure for me to be invited by Paul Glynn to write a foreword to his latest book, first because he is a good friend whom I admire very much, and second because I could resonate with so much that he has written about his own wrestling with the huge God questions.

This is a book that can keep you awake into the wee small hours. I took the manuscript with me to a conference. I read each night till my eyes dropped out. Through his previous writings Paul Glynn has taught me so much about reconciliation and about the book of Psalms. Now he has reopened my mind and heart to the God who heals the broken, the wounded and the most wretched of the earth.

He writes of the many who think of suicide or give up trying in their marriage because of doubt, pain and loneliness. To help people who are thin on hope and peace of heart, Father Paul was not content just to do some reading research. He spent three months of 1997 at some of the famous healing shrines of the world in France, Poland, Portugal, England, Ireland and Mexico.

His research is thorough and detailed. He spoke at length with actual people who have been healed miraculously, to the extent that I feel I now know them personally. He met relatives, family, doctors and Church authorities. So conscientiously did he treat the material about which he was writing that, he admits, he would wake up in the middle of the night worried about the content of his writing. A psychiatrist friend comforted him by saying, Im glad to hear that! Id be worried if you did not worry, since you are dealing with life-and-death matters for so many people.

I am quite sure, Paul Glynn, that your readers will find much enrichment from this book. People who claim to be agnostics or even atheists will certainly be challenged in their unbelief. Men and women of faith will have their faith strengthened. I can envision those in a state of confusion and depression being lifted up and given new direction. My final thought is that God, as found in your book, is for real, and Mary is a genuinely caring, loving mother and friend.

Father Pauls previous books have been written to help seekers come closer to the heart of God. The books have sold very well, and all profitsto date, over half a million dollarshave gone to the impoverished of the Third World. A further $15,000 has gone to Saint Vincent de Paul work in Australia. All profits from the new book, Healing Fire of Christ , will likewise be channeled to the poorthose people, the Psalms assure us, who are so close to the heart of God.

+ Bishop David Cremin, D. D., E. V., VG.
Hurstville, Sydney

F or more than one thousand years before Christ, the Jews, his people, suffered war, invasions and persecutions. Many were forced to flee to other lands. One reason they held on to their faith and national identity was their practice of going up to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. Fifteen of the 150 Psalms begin with the title Songs of Ascent. These were the Psalms sung on the occasion of pilgrimage back to Jerusalem. There were many roads to the Holy City, Zion, as it was called. Roads that came from Egypt, Ethiopia, Babylon, Syria, Greece or Rome. Paved roads, dirt roads, desert tracks. There are today many roads that lead to the outskirts of the New Jerusalem, which is belief in a loving God. This book is merely about one of these roads, a road that helped me on my way. Maybe it will help others.

I think it is normal if not almost universal for everyone at times to have difficulties in believing in a omnipotent, loving God, especially when things arent going right. I had my biggest problems in my early twenties. It was not long after World War II. The newspapers and magazines carried horrendous stories and photosAuschwitz, Dachau, Dresden, Nagasaki, prisoner of war camps. There were stories, too, of current degradation and barbarity in nations occupied by the Red ArmiesPoland, Hungary, the Baltic Statesand chilling rumors about slave labor camps and thought prisons in Siberia and parts of China. Was God no longer in control, or was he no longer? Was he ever?

I had some personal problems about le bon Dieu , the good God, even though I mostly repressed them. I will briefly recount them, as I think they had a bearing on my problems of faith. Maybe they will find an echo, even in the depths of the subconscious, of some readers who find it hard to believe.

My mother died when I was four years old. My only memory of her is her corpse. My fourteen-year-old sister Aileen lifted me up to the coffin so I could kiss my mother good-bye. I wondered why she didnt kiss me back, why her face was so cold. For years I feared that front room where the coffin had been placed and then suddenly disappeared. I would not go into it alone. I did not know the term then, but it was like a black hole in my little universe that was threatening to collapse in on itself.

After my mothers death something extraordinary happened. Her youngest sister, Molly, very close to our mother and us, took off her engagement ring and moved in with us childrenwe were seven, ranging from four years old to eighteen. She became a real mother to us, and we loved her deeply. Her ex-fiance married someone else.

Tragedy struck again. For me, anyhow. I was eleven years old, and it was a Friday night in 1940, with my older siblings having left home or being away in boarding school. Aunty Molly gave me a very nice evening meal. After that, with a tense voice she said, Tomorrow, your father is bringing home a new mother. The shock is still vivid in my memory.

She left our home early the next day, never to return. Dad arrived with his new wife, Lil, whom Id never met before. She was a very good person and made my lonely father happy again. But to me she was an intruder. She had driven out Aunty Molly and the beautiful stories Aunty often told me of Nina Rose, my mother.

Our home was a devout Catholic one, and I did all the Christian things with everybody else. But seeds of doubt had been sown. If God loved me, why had he done these things to me? I remember my first Christmas holidays after we lost Aunty Molly. The family was staying at Bondi Beach. It was a gloomy day, the sun losing out to heavy oppressive clouds that intermittently hurled down chill rainstorms. I sheltered in some rocks at one end of the beach, feeling quite desolate. I felt empathy with the seagulls calling mournfully to one another while dark waves crashed against the rocks below them. Such moments of loneliness can bring doubts about the goodness of life and of the Author of life. But they can bring something else, too. Dr. Anthony Storr, at the time professor of psychiatry at Oxford University, wrote of it in one of his books, Solitude : The experience of loneliness, with the sense of alienation it often brings, can be a wonderful catalyst to help us look deeper and find meaning in the universe... beyond fashionable things.