This Lent Discover God's Love In A Retreat - St. Augustine Catholic

A Journey In Faith
He describes an incident when he
thought a patient had about 10 minutes
to live. The priest chaplain at Shands came
in and began praying with the family
around the man’s bedside. Gallagher said,
within a few minutes, the man’s blood
pressure came up and he rallied.
The man died three weeks later, but it
was, Gallagher said, a “pretty powerful
thing to see everyone around his bedside
praying and for that to
happen when there
wasn’t a medical reason
for it.”
Gallagher says there
have been numerous
cases where medically,
people should have
died, but lived. And in
most of those cases the
families were “praying
hard for their recovery.”
Gallagher says the
vast majority of cases
wind up the way you’d
expect them to from a
medical standpoint. He
points out that there is
only so much a doctor
can do. Adding, he
often prays that families
will have the strength to
handle the death of a
loved one.
Acceptance is one of
the fruits of prayer.
Professor Young talks
about the serenity
prayer of Saint Francis
and says people who
pray learn to surrender
and learn that one must
accept things that can’t
be changed.
Another benefit of
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prayer is relieving stress. Having to be in
control causes emotional stress. And
Young points out that control means,
“you must be constantly vigilant.”
Prayer involves “surrender” and one
learns to let go.
Crowell says she reached the point in
her illness when she could accept whatever
it was God wanted for her. She says,
“It was in facing death that I truly
learned to live. I learned acceptance,
forgiveness, and my priorities changed
overnight.”
But what if someone is afraid to pray?
Young says, “The more people pray and
meditate, the less fear they have…
Fearlessness is a quality that people
develop the more they pray and
meditate.”
People may be afraid they will have to
change. And Young says, “You will be
changed by your connection with God.”
But he reassures us that we don’t have to
retire to a cave, like Saint Francis, for
change to occur. “God is in control,” and
we don’t have to worry.
Perhaps healing begins with a call by
God to walk with Him — and with our
response of faith and courage to whisper
that first prayer. While miracles may
prove that God can’t be put in a box,
perhaps it is through prayer, scripture,
the Eucharist, and community that many
healings occur in our lives. Perhaps our
walk with the Lord and all that entails is
the greatest healing of all.
ST. AUGUSTINE CATHOLIC • FEBRUARY/MARCH 2001 13