Life’s tragedies often lead us in new directions of hope.
“You ought to be dead.” Not a day has gone by since my near-death experience last August when I haven’t recalled those words of my doctor, spoken in the blunt manner doctors are sometimes known for. He immediately followed those words with the only explanation he could come up with for my survival, a reason that ought to have been more obvious to me than to him: “I can’t explain it,” he said, “except for the power of prayer.”
Does God hear our prayers, and can he bring good out of suffering and tragedy? Absolutely. And if I needed to be persuaded of this before, I sure didn’t need it after my hospitalization.
Perhaps because I consider Pope John Paul II to be my spiritual mentor, I see in a very humble way a certain parallel between my near-death experience and the assassination attempt on his life in 1981. John Paul II saw his miraculous survival as a mystery of the “Divine Mercy,” and I believe that was also the case for me. Like the bullet that miraculously zigzagged around every major organ in John Paul II’s body, a number of zigzagged events undoubtedly contributed to my survival.
It was May 13 when John Paul II was shot, the anniversary of the first apparition of the Blessed Mother in Fatima in 1917. It was the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary on Aug. 15 when I was hospitalized in such dire straits last year. John Paul II attributed the altered path of the bullet to Our Lady, and I can now see how the Mother of Mercy’s maternal arm drew me away from danger at all the right moments.
I had traveled to Fort Lauderdale to see my dear friend, retired Maronite Archbishop Francis Zayek. He was gravely ill and preparing to return to Lebanon. My spur-of-the-moment decision to visit him placed me within two and half minutes of the only hospital in the area that had the necessary equipment, trained physicians, and technicians to treat the condition I had suffered as the result of an abscessed tooth, which led to diabetic ketoacidosis and cardiogenic shock. It wasn’t even minutes that put me within the reach of death but seconds.
On hand were all the right doctors, nurses, and technicians, but even then, they did not expect me to pull through. I know that as word quickly spread of my hospitalization, so many of you dropped to your knees and prayed fervently for me. For your prayers and sacrifices on my behalf, I am forever grateful.
When John Paul II later visited his would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca, in jail, Agca asked him, “So why aren’t you dead?” As John Paul II carried those words with him for the rest of his life, so I shall also carry those words of my doctor: “You ought to be dead.”
On Aug. 22, as I was being driven to the airport for my medical flight back to Knoxville, Father David Boettner and Deacon Sean Smith, who were at my bedside during my hospitalization and were accompanying me home, looked up above the airport entrance and saw the word Jesus written across the sky. As hard as we searched, we couldn’t see the airplane we supposed had written those letters in the sky. It was the memorial of the Queenship of Mary, and I had been given another marvelous sign of the Divine Mercy in my life. I felt as though Our Lady had written that name above all names in the sky so I would never forget that Jesus had a plan he expected me to fulfill.
Why did I survive? As a bishop, a successor of the Apostles, I feel I have been called in a more intense way to be an apostle of prayer, having been the miraculous beneficiary of so many prayers. I also have come to understand that my sufferings were the key that unlocked doors not only in my life but also for this diocese that otherwise might not have opened.
The “mystery of Mercy” I experienced last year prepared the way for the new convent of the Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich. The loving arm of Mary that saved me from death has grown into an extension of her embrace with the establishment of another religious order in our diocese, the Evangelizing Sisters of Mary. These and so many other things that have transpired in the past year have convinced me that sufferings have purpose.
Since that most special day of Aug. 15, I am reminded every time I look at a crucifix that in our earthly life we do not share so much in the resurrection of Christ as we do in his sufferings upon the cross. But because Christ redeemed suffering by experiencing all our earthly pain in his own body, I know that suffering has meaning and purpose.
I pray none of us will lose sight of this most important lesson. God does bring good out of our sufferings and the tragedies of life.
