Short story of the interior healing of a Legionary of Christ
I turned it over and over in my head, desperately trying to make heads or tails of my existence. But the conclusion, weighing me down relentlessly, was the same each time: “There is no hope for you; no point in even getting out of bed.”
It was Christmas 2012, and for over a month I had been completely isolated from the world, from contact with any other human being. Barricaded within my own 4 walls during the day, I ventured outside only occasionally, sometime between 1 and 3 in the morning, in order to grab something to eat.
For the past 7 years I had battled with an – at times – pretty severe depression and gone through the successive degrees of a personal crisis, in which I saw myself forced to give up first my job, then my family and finally the whole remains of my self-esteem.
Finally I had hit rock bottom.
Even though I considered myself beyond any reasonable hope, even though I believed myself to be completely despised and rejected by God, my desperation turned into a prayer: “God! I know that I cannot help myself anymore; my will is broken. And I know, too, that no human being can help me anymore – for there have been so many who have tried, who have given me advice and encouragement, but it has not really helped me out of the misery that I am. Now, the only thing that can help me is that You Yourself speak to me, advise me and strengthen me.”
I remembered the elderly American priest who, some weeks before, quite out of the blue, had proposed to lay his hands on me and pray for inner healing. He had not known me personally, but upon seeing me, had felt the urge to offer me his prayers. Then I had rejected his offer, and he had told me he would leave the country immediately after the 15th of December, and that date was well past now. Still, for some reason I decided to get up and out in order to look for him, for now I wanted him to pray over me with all my heart.
Great was my surprise and joy to find him as he was taking a late breakfast. He explained to me that he had caught a bad flu and so had been unable to travel, and that he had just about recovered from the fever.
I told him: “Father Ron, we need to talk urgently”. He grabbed me by the shoulder and firmly directed me to his private room. On the way he told me two things about myself and my family that he could not possibly have known. That made it so much easier for me to open my soul to him, because I sensed that God Himself had taken up my challenge and was speaking to me directly through this priest. He gave me two urgent advices – one of which was this: “You must give up control over your own life and hand it over to the Holy Spirit”.
I resolved in my heart to do this in the most radical way possible and then asked him to lay his hands on me in order to free me from the evil that oppressed me and to ask the Holy Spirit to heal all my interior wounds.
As he prayed over me, I abandoned myself completely to the action of the Holy Spirit and felt a peace invade my soul that I had never before known in my whole life – not even as a child. Since then, that peace has not left me for a single instant.
This tremendous gift has shown me how good God is and marked for me the beginning of a new life. As a first step, I renounced the lofty, but unattainable ideal of myself which I had created in my own mind; then I waited in the silence of my heart for the Lord to lead and, once He started moving me, I have tried to follow that lead. Since that first miracle, I have experienced the daily miracle of His guidance.
In particular: I’m back to my family, the Legion of Christ; I’m back to lecturing on philosophy; and also, I am back to song-writing and -singing… I hope you enjoy the songs I’m posting on this blog…
In “Come, Holy Spirit” I simply tried to put my prayer into song. I’ll post some more songs shortly…
Silverwings2014 