Miracle Story

 Patricia Masters

There once occurred the only thing in my life I would call a true miracle. After a very difficult month I was awakened at 4:00 AM one morning by a phone call telling me that I had to come in to work unexpectedly that day. It felt like the last straw.  I couldn’t take it. I was so overwhelmed, I couldn’t even cry. I paced back and forth for a while, literally groaning. Then I sat down and grasped my hands into a posture of prayer, something which, at that time, I never did. I prayed to Mary, the Mother of Christ.

I prayed with all my heart, “Mary, I don’t believe in you. I don’t even know what you are or where you could possibly be. But if you are anything, please, please help me, because I cannot keep going like this!"

In the blink of an eye the whole tortured state of being drained out of me, like water going out of a bathtub. I felt it go, out of my head, down and out of my body. For the next hour I sat there in a state of calmness and peaceful joy, completely restored. I felt God’s presence strongly and also a loving presence that I now know was Mary. I was given to know that this present period of difficulty was God’s purifying work, that periods of pain and emptiness are part of the path and no matter how dark things are, God is ever present. 

Then I remembered the commitment I had made to trust all to God, and I felt gratitude in seeing that my offer had been accepted. After an hour of this rest I was able to acknowledge that, with God’s help, I could take it and if it was part of God’s plan for me, I wanted it.  The very moment I acknowledged that to my-self, unbelievably all the pain came right back – rising from below as if the bathtub was filling with the same dirty water again. Everything was exactly as before, exactly as painful and terrible, not a bit different or less, but the knowledge that this was somehow God’s mercy, through the prayers of Mary, made all the difference. I knew I could take it, that I wanted to live through it, no matter what. Though I did not feel any less pain than before, there was now this tiny space of empty distance from it, even in the midst of it. 

This was what the Church means when it talks about Mary’s Yes. I could now rest in God’s hands. I still had no idea what or where Mary could possibly be, but I never again doubted that she, like God, IS, and is always there to help us, if we ask. But don't ask me how, I cannot explain it. It was a miracle.

From the Zafu to the Kneeler