A
RIDE ON ROLLING THUNDER
My
reflection at Christmas: what it means for Christ to come to us, for Mary to
bring Him to us, and for their Love to be present in Power to our lives…
The night was August 27th,
the night I suffered a myocardial infraction, a heart attack. It was a
frightening experience, a painful experience. But it was also an incredible
experience of the power of Christian Faith in the face of the imminent
possibility of one’s passing from this life.
I awoke around 2:00 AM
with a pulsating pain in my upper chest. I didn’t know what it was, this pain
unlike anything I had ever experienced before. On a scale of one to ten I gave
it a 7.5 – that’s what I told nurses and doctors throughout that night. It was
immediately a pain so acute that I awoke my son Tim and asked him to take me to
the Steward Hospital in Norwood, the next town over from us.
Back in my bedroom I
dressed quickly and grabbed my rosary from Medjagore. Before leaving I gazed up
to the wall above my bureau and focused on my awesome picture of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus. I gave my heart to Him, as I have done every day of my life.
The whole way to the hospital I kept the names of Jesus and Mary constantly
upon my lips.
Upon entering the
emergency room the attendant immediately saw my duress and put me in a
wheelchair. I was taken with dispatch to a room in the emergency ward. I noted
right away that the bed on which I was placed had a crucifix on the wall right
next to it. For the next seven hours the Cross was right above my head within
the reach of my arm.
Though the pain did not
abate during those hours I felt the presence of the Lord and the comfort of
Mary’s embrace ever so intensely. As I gazed at the Cross and called upon the
name of God, images came to me that carried Power to my soul and spirit, the
Power that comes from true prayer when the ‘fiery ordeal” comes upon us.
In my meditation under
duress I saw myself traveling through time and leading all over again the
dozens of Antioch Weekends that I have led over the years. I saw myself once
more telling the thousands of youth I have evangelized over forty years of
teaching that in union with Jesus the Son you are a child in the loving arms of
God your Father and Mary your Mother. I told them that this experience is real,
something that your human heart has the power to actually feel and know as
present to your life – an experience of being held by God made powerfully alive
to our awareness through the gift of Christ’s Spirit, Christ Risen and still
with us and in us. As I relived this proclamation of the Gospel, so many faces
of the youth I have taught and served passed before me. I once more saw their
Joy in the Lord as they heard and heeded the Word and thus were filled with His
Love.
More time passed that
night as tests were done and x-rays taken. In the many hours before surgery
other images came to me in my prayer. In fact images bearing Grace, sacramental
images, kept on coming and coming throughout that dark night. Through them all,
the Lord touched me, consoled me, and strengthened me.
I remembered the ride
on “Rolling Thunder” at Six Flags in New Jersey. It was the first ride on a
“big” roller coaster for my seven year old daughter Bernadette – and it was a
special gift that she wanted to do that ride with me. I chose the front seat
for us. This was going to be a great experience!
I began to put my
father’s arm around my daughter’s shoulders, but Bernadette spurned that idea
and pushed my arm away. At least at first she did that. But when that coaster
began to move and she now saw looming before us the long climb up the huge
first hill, she grabbed my arm, put it around her, and snuggled up closely and
tightly by my right side. The “Unknown” loomed before her, and the fear of the
unknown was all too soon to follow. Only now, in the arms of her father, did
all fear disappear.
Reliving the image of
that event on my hospital bed, there was such a powerful communication of
Grace. In my communion with Christ I suddenly could feel and experience as
present in power the loving embrace of God my Father and Mary my Mother. Now
too I was again about to move forward into a ride on “Rolling Thunder”, into
the “Unknown” that lay ahead. Yet like Bernadette long ago I was safe, secure,
knowing no fear in the powerful arms of my loving Father.
Seven hours of
throbbing pain… Even within the first hour it was made clear to me that this
was a heart attack. Was I to pass on this night from this life? Yes, the
Unknown, and the fear of the unknown, stood tall and silent before me, staring me
down, even advancing toward me with each hour. It was a fear and trembling that
threatened to overwhelm me and consume me, but for God present in power through
my communion with Christ.
More time passed,
waiting for what seemed to be forever, for what I now hoped would be
life-saving surgery. During this time I would look up at the Cross on the wall
right beside me. It seemed that each time I did so another memory would surge
into my soul. And much like a sacrament, the reliving of that God-given memory brought
Grace, peace, solace and strength into my struggling soul and spirit.
So as I gazed up at the
Crucified Christ, another memory surfaced from my treasury of cherished moments
from the past. And like the reliving of my ride on “Rolling Thunder”, once more
the Lord would use my recollection of that moment to console and empower me
further in the face of my “fiery ordeal”.
The memory was of a
dawn long ago, and I was walking on a wide open fairway of an abandoned golf
course. It was adjacent to the grounds of Franciscan University in
Steubenville, Ohio. The early morning was beautiful, cool crisp autumn air,
clouds of gorgeous colors announcing the advent of a rising sun. As I always
do, I prayed as I walked, and my soul filled with joy, love, and peace before
the awesome glory of God’s creation.
Suddenly from over a
hill, perhaps a hundred yards ahead of me, two large dogs appeared. Immediately
they focused on me, and began to race toward me, barking and growling at a lone
figure standing out all too clearly in a wide open field before them.
Fear took hold of me.
Panic really. It seized hold of me and held me tightly in its grip. Like the
operation for which I was now waiting, a dark Unknown was overwhelming me. What
could I do to escape my plight, to flee from the image of fear and terror now
racing toward me?
Then it happened,
something like what I believe will happen at the moment of death for every
person of Faith. A most lovely woman rose up over the hilltop ahead of me. She
was the owner of the dogs. When she saw what was happening, she called out to
her dogs to stand down, to stop their advance. And they did! The barking and
growling stopped. Now about thirty feet away from me the dogs stood their
ground, totally still, but staring intently at me all the while.
The woman then called
out to me and said, “Don’t worry, they’re really friendly!” Then, with what was
nothing less than a total “leap of faith” on my part, I called out to the dogs
to come to me, with the welcoming gesture of hands reaching forward to them.
Now with tails wagging
they advanced toward me, and it was as if they were happy, dancing and skipping
as they approached. When they reached me, they lowered their heads for me to
pet them. Then they leaped up with paws on my chest to lick my face, neck,
hair, and any other part of me they could. I felt I was in the movie “Sandlot”,
watching before my very eyes the transformation of Hercules, the “Beast”, the
“Gorilla Dog-ding”, into the most friendly mascot of the Sandlot gang.
Soon the beautiful
woman, smiling and gracious, was at my side, petting the dogs as well with
effuse affection, and the dogs shifted their paws and licks to her in response
to her love. With leashes once more attached to their collars, the dogs were
off again, moving forward down a beautiful open fairway under the full control
of their lovely master. My fiery ordeal was over, the storm had passed, and the
dark clouds of night were now alive with light, once more radiant with the
magnificent colors of a dawn sky.
Since that day long ago
on the fairway, “my lady of the golf course” has always been for me an image of
Mary, our Heavenly Mother. The dogs ever since that day have become an image of
death, darkness, even the demonic. Yet , as Mary demonstrated so powerfully at
Lourdes, with just a word or a wave of her hand, death must give way to life,
darkness must recede before the Light, and all demonic cries, growls, and
shrieks must cease.
So surgery was at 10:00
AM on August 28th. In my last meditative dream before the operation
it was now Mary coming over the hilltop of a wide open fairway and advancing
toward me. As I fell into a medicated stupor it was she taking hold of me,
telling me not to fear. As the induced sleep took hold of me I heard her words
to Juan Diego at Guadalupe now addressed to me: “Why do you fear. Are you not
within the folds of my cloak? Are you not in my arms?”
At those words I moved
forward once more into a ride on “Rolling Thunder”. But there was no fear in
the face of the fiery ordeal before me. In union with Christ her Son I moved
forward in her arms without fear into the Unknown, into “the valley of the
shadow of death”.
At 11:30 AM I awoke
from my anesthetic stupor in a room on the third floor of the hospital in the
cardiac unit. A nurse was opening the curtains of a wide and spacious window to
my left. My room was so high up in the hospital that the treetops were all I
could see out that window on a beautiful summer morning. No other buildings in
that area beside the hospital were all that high – with one exception. There in
the middle of that very wide window was a magnificent white church steeple
rising high above the treetops. A large gold cross crowned its summit, and that
cross was now shining in the full strength of a midday summer sun.
For the four days
remaining of my hospital stay, that’s all I could see in the exact center of my
window: a large shining gold cross rising above the treetops, framed against
the beautiful deep blue of a summer sky.
For five hospital days
then I had lived in the shadow of the Cross of Christ. I had let the Breath of
God’s Life given up from the Cross fill me. I had let the Love that radiates
from the pierced Heart of Christ consume me. I had let the Blood of Christ fall
from the Cross and touch me, touch me and transform me.
So for five days then
perhaps I began to know with Jesus and in communion with Him the Power of the
Love that endured the nails which pierced Him. I began to know the Power of the
Love by which Jesus raised Himself up on those nails, raised Himself up at the
end of the third hour to breath forth His Spirit upon the world and so set us
free; raised Himself up to shock the world really, with a loud and shattering
cry, with a loud roar like that of “Rolling Thunder”, in order to make a “new
earth”, to make a new and redeemed earth come alive once more with God’s
Love.
