The Catholic Truth Society (UK) today publishes a new pamphlet: Cardinal Newman, Intercessor and Special Friend: The Story of a Miracle.
At the heart of this valuable new publication is a striking account, in Jack Sullivan’s own words, of his healing at Cardinal Newman’s intercession culminating in August 2001.
Speaking of the morning of August 15 2001, a few days following major surgery on his back in which there had been significant complications, Deacon Sullivan writes:
I will never forget the simple words that I said … ‘Please Cardinal Newman help me to walk so I can return to my Diaconate classes and be ordained.’ Suddenly, I felt a very warm sensation all over my body and a sense of real peace and joy … Then I felt a surge of strength, confidence … and I was completely free of the crippling pain. My healing became remarkably and unexplainably accelerated in one moment of time – the doctors had previously estimated that my recovery would take anything between eight months and a year … From that moment, on the Feast of the Assumption 2001 to this day … the pain has never once returned and I continue to walk normally with no restrictions and with full mobility.
This is the miraculous healing which was recently accepted by the Vatican and will lead to Newman’s Beatification next year.
After a Preface by the Archbishop of Westminster, the pamphlet offers a lengthy Introduction by Father Paul Chavasse, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory and Actor of Newman’s Cause. Fr Chavasse writes: “A miracle which happened in the twenty first century is what we are considering here. People will ask: does God still work miracles in the age of computers, the internet, space travel and all the other wonders we accept so easily? The answer would seem to be ‘Yes’. Such an answer challenges our ideas of how the world goes and perhaps that is no bad thing.”
Fr Chavasse continues: “The miracles of modern saints have only been declared after the most painstaking medical and scientific investigations which earlier centuries could not have imagined possible.” He then gives a detailed account of the process of Beatification and concludes with an exhortation for people to continue their prayers for Newman’s Canonisation.
The pamphlet also contains an interesting section on Pope Benedict XVI’s special interest in Newman’s thought.
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