A Hundred Million Miracles Are Happening Every Day

A man was diagnosed with an expanding aortic aneurysm, the kind that could pop at any minute which would mean almost instant death.

He got in the habit of saying an Act of Contrition several times during the day, just in case. Since childhood, he had a sincere, profound devotion to Our Lady, on whose feast day, Our Lady of Lourdes, he had been born, and he felt a close kinship with Bernadette. A friend who went yearly to the Grotto at Lourdes and helped people into the baths there brought him a bottle of water from the spring Our Lady revealed to Bernadette.

The doctors told him that they could monitor the expansion of the aneurysm and, when it got to a certain point, reparative surgery could be done and his aorta would be good as new – if they got to it in time. There were no other options. Aneurysms never went away, they always got bigger, and, without surgery, odds were very good he would die. They told him to come back in six months to have tests run to determine what was happening and they would let him know if it was time yet for the surgery. Meanwhile, he could not pick up anything weighing over about five pounds and could do nothing strenuous that could “explode” the aneurysm. So much for mowing the yard.

The aneurysm was discovered when he had gone in for some pre-surgery tests to see if his heart could survive some very minor surgery. In doing this they found that he had recently had two heart attacks.  For one of them, as he sat on the ground, the pain increasing, he had said his Act of Contrition and waited to see what happened. He consciously thought about being with his wife who had died some months before. But the pain, which never had gone down his left arm, which had been increasing began to lessen and, after about an hour, he got up.  For both of these ‘cardiac events’  he got better and never told anyone about them, but there they were, shown by the data and results of the pre-surgery testing. Since it was minor surgery, a cardiologist cleared him for it, despite what had happened.

It was during those pre-surgery tests that the aneurysm was documented and measured.

The doctors scheduled the re-testing for six months in the future. He tried to go to daily Mass and every day he made the sign of the cross with the water from Lourdes, including on his chest above his aorta, and prayed to Our Lady and Bernadette for a miracle.

The tests performed six months later were thorough and complete, multiple blood lab tests, ultrasonic imaging of his heart, and multiple CT scans. When he went to get the results, the cardiologist brought in stacks of papers and reports and booklets and data and graphs. He got another doctor on the phone to take part in telling the man the results and explaining what they meant. He paused and then said, “Sir, there is no aneurysm.” The man was quiet, the doctor on the phone was quiet. The cardiologist repeated himself, “There is no aneurysm.”

The doctors were surprised that the man was not surprised. The doctor taking part on the phone asked numerous questions about results of specific tests, about organ function, liver, kidneys, cholesterol levels,  and other things. Each time the cardiologist would turn to the test results and read them and tell the other doctor that these were the results for a young man, not a man who had had multiple heart attacks. Regarding the aneurysm, which was no longer present and which had been clearly shown on the tests months before, they had no explanation.

The man sat calmly through all this. He thanked the doctors and drove home. While he was driving he noticed the contrast between some beautiful trees and the stark gray of the roadway.  He thought about what had happened. Instinctively, he said out loud, “Wow! Just Wow!”

He had passed those same trees, which he had never really noticed before,  many, many times over the years. He knew – the trees and his heart. Miracles.