Deacon Ed

My wife and I were trying to have a kid, and we weren’t having any luck. We were going to the doctor, but nobody knew. My wife is very private. I have a great devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes. So I said, “Let’s say a novena to Our Lady of Lourdes to have a baby.” 

In nine days we said the novena. The morning of the tenth day, my wife’s best girl friend’s husband, who is a lawyer, called us. He knew nothing about our situation. He said, “We have a little baby boy that needs to be adopted, and they want him to go to a good, Catholic family, and we thought about you two. Would you adopt this baby? The only problem is, he’s three months early. He’s 1lb 15oz.”

So I said, “Sure, we’ll take him.” 

And then a year later, they call again, the mother was pregnant again. Would we take that baby? And so that was our son, Rafael. 

So we got two babies for one novena. 

A year ago, last April, [my oldest son, Damian’s] liver shut down. He was in Wisconsin where he lives with his wife. He was gonna die. 

So we rushed up there. We had tons of prayers, convents of nuns praying for him, tons of Lourdes water. Now, he keeps saying, “The doctors saved me.” The doctors, they were amazed.  They were like, “His liver just jumped back.”

While he was in the hospital, he was holding onto the rosary, praying and all that stuff. Once he got out, he went back to being cynical.

He kept saying, “Well, Dad, you get all the signs. I don’t have any signs.”

I said, “Damian, the way you were born was your sign.”

“No, I want my own sign.”

So I started praying for Mary’s intercession that She would manifest herself to Damian in a special way that he would know the love of Jesus for him. That was my prayer, every day, all last year. 

Well, three months ago, I was at the altar at mass during the consecration, and I get this message. And the message was, “Damian needs to go to Medjugorje for Mary to manifest herself.”

I said, “Okay God, you’re gonna have to make it happen because I don’t have the money.”

So I just kept praying. And then three weeks later, I’m at mass, and I said the same prayer again. Then Marilyn comes up to me, who knows nothing about Damian, and she said, “Something’s been on my heart for months now, but I’m able to tell you today.”

And I said, “What?”

She said, “I’m sending you to Medjugorje. Free.”

I said, “Okay.”

So I told Damian, and he’s here. And he’s getting signs.

I said, “God wants you to accept the truth. You have so many gifts. Once you accept the Lord, you will be a great evangelizer. And you will go out there, and you can help people.”

And I told him about Catherine of Siena who was so bold she told the pope, “Get out of Avignon. Get back to Rome. That’s what God’s telling me. You’re hurting the church.”

That was the pope! And she was just a lay person. I always thought she was a nun. She wasn’t a nun. 

I said, “You have that leadership power to challenge with respect.”