As I adore Jesus Christ as a transubstantiated Eucharist while on a forty-two hour silent retreat, the Holy Spirit has instructed me to write this: I stood dumfounded just two weeks earlier as I witnessed the baptism of a non-Christian friend of thirty years. Not in a million years would I have forecasted that this friend would ever want to be baptized, as we behaved like rich prodigals as young men. Perhaps another observer would have never forecasted that I would become a daily communicant. In the room where he was baptized, I experienced, for the first time in my life, the tangible taste and smell of the supernatural.
Three weeks ago on a Sunday, my friend sent me what appeared to be a goodbye message. It was a very gracious and complimentary text about our many years working together and being friends. He was suffering for years with a chronic, debilitating disease, which was culminating in life-threatening breathing challenges.
One of my first thoughts upon receiving this text was of all my deceased friends who I did not properly share the good news with prior to their deaths. Chris (1983); Michael (1989); Glenn & Matt (9/11/01); Steve (2011); Mark (2016); and Rick (2019). I pray for their souls daily. If this friend, who was still breathing, was going to pass to the next world soon, I would need to see him. I couldn’t allow myself to add to this list, whom I know Jesus will rightfully ask me about one day.
On the following Tuesday, I traveled by flight to my friend. That night, for the first time in our life together, I asked him if I could pray over him, and I did. I went on to explain to him the “reason-” based evidence that has led me to believe.
For me such testimony always starts with Doctor Alexi Carrel, who, as an agnostic medical student in 1902 curious about the miracles reported at Lourdes, accompanied a twenty-four-year-old woman stricken with tuberculous peritonitis on a train to Lourdes; she could not retain food and would likely die if surgery were performed. She had a death sentence.
Carrel kept a medical diary (see The Voyage to Lourdes published by Royal Oaks) on the trip and saw her condition worsen. Doctors at Lourdes recommended she not be lowered down the cliff to the Lourdes water because she could die from the effort. But the girl insisted. In front of Carrel, he saw the girl’s stomach condition improve with the application of the Lourdes water. The enormously swollen and hard abdomen appeared healed within thirty minutes. Days later she was fully healed.
Carrel had witnessed the supernatural and was admittedly perplexed. Carrel’s truthful reporting of the factual miracle was not well received by French intelligentsia, and he emigrated to the United States to continue his studies. He received a Nobel Prize in 1912. My surgeon friend explained to me that surgeons still use today the Carrel method of vascular suture during surgery. After relaying the Carrel story, I said to my friend, looking into his eyes: “this ‘sh#t’ is real!”
This was a huge change in our relationship, which as young men had been based on sports, babes, business, and debauchery—and had only grown from there with debauchery eliminated as we aged. Since he was not brought up Christian, the idea of Christian prayer was without foundation. He remembered prayers in Hebrew he’d learned as a child. He said and translated them for me—they were beautiful.
On Wednesday, I saw him struggle for breath. He asked me to pray over him again, and I did. On Thursday, he started responding to the medicine and decided to fly to Washington D.C. to see his son, whose birthday was the next day. I flew with him and asked if I could have a priest who has a healing ministry visit with him while in D.C. I contacted the priest and gave him a very detailed three-hundred-word text about the situation, health challenges, near death possibility, and non-Christian upbringing and life of my friend. I ended my text with a simple question: can you allow me to arrange a meeting with my friend on Saturday? The priest answered: “yes.”
This story requires a pause, a sub-routine if you are a coder. Very few priests are able to live up to the standard established by Jesus: to die for one’s flock (John 10:11). Some priests dodge it by narrowly defining their “flock.” Others don’t know how to die to self (Matthew 16:24). But some hear of one lost sheep (Matthew 18:14) and give it priority over all else (see The Priests We Need To Save The Church, published by Sophia Institute).
On Saturday (two weeks before retreat), having volunteered to chauffer the healing priest to my friend’s hotel room, where he and his wife and two college-age children were waiting, we discussed the patient and the true holy Victim; we wondered what the Spirit had in mind. In the hotel room, the healing priest shared his own experience with chronic pain. Although chronic pain has greatly disrupted the priest’s ability to full-time pastor a church community, it has given him a new understanding of what people with chronic pain diseases go through. He is able to communicate with the patients and lost sheep in a way that wasn’t possible before. Perhaps this priest has been supernaturally converted.
The healing priest said to the patient: I can do one of two things here today. I can pray over you for physical healing or, in addition, I can baptize you and can guarantee you something supernatural will happen to you. The patient was unsure. The priest was reassuring and suggested all of us lay our hands upon him and pray over him for his healing. Some time passed, and the priest asked the patient if he would want to be baptized, which would wash away all of his sins from the beginning of time. The lost sheep said “yes,” and he was subsequently baptized.
When we left the room, I said to the healing priest that something supernatural had taken place there. I could feel it but am dumbfounded. It was like I saw Moses and Elijah with Jesus, and my incomprehension of what I saw was as nonsensical as suggesting we build tents. It had physical attributes. I could smell and taste it, but I can’t describe it with justice.
It was also metaphysical. Not in a thousand years had I ever thought that patient would be baptized, nor that I would have a role in his baptism. Yet I knew I was a pawn of the Holy Spirit. I thought: Wasn’t I the quarterback who called this play? But was I calling a play as if we were on our own twenty? It turned out I was a sideline player watching as the Holy Spirit called a one-yard run and punched it into the endzone. I was perplexed. I treasured the experience and pondered it in my heart (Luke 1:29).
Meanwhile, while on retreat, I see a twenty-six-year-old return attendee. I know this young man’s father, who has attended retreat with me for many years. This young man has autism as an adult—by this I mean he did not have early intervention where he is only slightly affected (one of my daughters treats pre-school children with autism full-time, and it is only a recent phenomenon that early intervention has dramatically changed the adult outcome). His adult job for many years has been picking up garbage for a local business. Recently, he secured a new job as a forklift operator—a huge accomplishment and blessing. In terms of society, this young man is very poor and has little intellectual gifts to offer. Yet I can feel the Spirit’s supernatural presence when I watch him prostrating himself in adoration of the Eucharist.
I wondered if I am more capable of seeing the supernatural after being blessed to witness the supernatural. I ask myself why he can give himself so beautifully to the Lord Jesus Christ while others, who have so much more intellectual and societal acumen, are unable to deny themselves (Mark 8:34).
It’s now three weeks later, and my newly baptized friend is experiencing a level of intimacy with his wife that he didn’t know was available to them: they are praying together.
If I bathe myself in the supernatural feeling manifested in that baptismal place, I must shout to everyone who will listen: Make straight the way of the Lord. Confront everything that opposes the Kingdom of God. Hear the sound of trumpets. Stir up the mighty men.
We are all consecrated priests through our baptism. Then be a priest to a wayward friend. Fight for your brethren. Bring a priest to a Lazarus in your life, so he can bring him back to life. I urge you to help someone to avoid the stone, which might crush them into dust and scatter them into the wind.
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
