I laughed when someone suggested that I am extraordinary. Doing the dishes and sweeping the floor, I don’t feel extraordinary, but I did have an extraordinary day.
My Miracle Cure
On the third of September 1989 I was on a stretcher as part of a diocesan pilgrimage to Knock, Ireland’s most famous site of religious pilgrimage.
For seventeen years I had been in the chains of physical illness, struck down by Multiple Sclerosis and a proliferation of ailments. My kidneys no longer functioned, I was blind in one eye, paralysed down one side, had epilepsy, slurred speech and thyroid trouble. I had to eat my food either liquidised or cut into small pieces. It was as if my entire body was giving up, abandoning a drowning ship. My local priest had already written the homily he would deliver at my funeral Mass.
When we got to Knock they brought me into the nurse. I was too sick to be brought to the Basilica immediately, so I was taken to the rest and care centre. Eventually, just before Mass, we went over to the Basilica and they put me under the statue of Our Lady of Knock and when I looked up, I thought she was the most beautiful and friendliest statue I had ever seen in my life.
I had been thinking about dying, about my husband Jimmy, and my children Cora and Anthony. Being a young mother myself, I knew that people would give Cora and Anthony an extra bit of love and attention, but I was worried about Jimmy because we were only three months married when I got sick, and Jimmy built his whole life around me. He very well could have run out on me because all of a sudden he was caught in every way: he was caught mentally, physically and financially. He was very quiet, he never went out with the lads, and if he wasn't at work he was with me. That's the way we were.
It was at that time I got this magnificent feeling - a wonderful sensation like a whispering breeze telling me that I was cured. I was overcome with the notion that if the stretcher was opened I could get up and walk. Being very practical, I laughed it off.
Standing there that moment I saw my own heart right in front of me. And it was so full of joy and peace and a love without end, like looking directly into the sun, and rays of light came towards me bringing all of these gifts of joy and peace and love and a lot of other things.
Then came a miracle.
I got up and walked.
Over 30 years later I still enjoy perfect health.
An extraordinary moment that has changed my life and that of my family.