I wanted to write and tell you all about the amazing miracle angel sighting that took place very near where I grew up and was reported on the same channel I sat in front of to watch Ed Sullivan as a child.
Don't you love a good angel/miracle story? I sure do. This is one of the best ones because it meets all the criteria of a bona fide miracle: instantaneous and unexplained. Plus, for this one, there were tons of witnesses and no pictures. The no pictures part was the best part.
Here is what happened. My favorite part of the story was that more than 80 photographs of the scene were taken and no priest appeared in even one of them, even though everyone at the scene saw and heard him. Not to mention the girl lived.
I meant to write about this all yesterday, I was so tickled with it.
And then yesterday.
Oh well.
A lot of people would still claim this was a miracle, that the priest worked a miracle. Maybe some day when he's dead and in Heaven we'll think of this as a miracle on earth. But our standards for miracles are very strict. Instantaneous and unexplained. And this has been explained. So that's that.
Although...no one expected Katie to live. And there was that thing about the equipment not working.
Now my favorite part of the story is the one where (before the priest was identified) the mystery priest was none other than St. John Vianney, as the whole thing happened on his feast day and the person who wrote up the story had an artist's rendering of the mystery priest and a portrait of St. John Vianney so we could all see the amazing resemblance.
I failed to see any resemblance whatsoever, let alone an amazing one. Even more amusing, Father Dowling looks nothing like the artist's rendering. At all.
Still, we are buoyed at the story of a priest bringing peace to a suffering accident victim and to the paramedics and police who were serving her. Angels don't always come from Heaven.
Remember that. Because the next angel might be you.
2 comments:
Now, now. I know that you know that people are not angels; not even dead people are angels. Angels are angels, dead people in heaven are saints, and live people on Earth are the body of Christ, the children of God, His hands and feet.
That made me laugh. Father Dowling looks more like the saint than the artist's impression, although not much like either.
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