My Life is a Miracle

17 The Healin wouldn’t be me. And then, for four decades, I’d so intensely lived my illness, I’d so totally iden- tified with it. I was certain I’d end my days with my disease. For me, healing was unthinkable. And then, nuns don’t travel around just like that. Lourdes is far away, and we Franciscans are sworn to a vow of poverty. It had however been proposed that I could go to Lourdes for my fif- tieth jubilee of religious life. But that was still some way off. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get the doctor’s sug- gestion out of my head. The idea grew and grew to the point of obsession. Lourdes—why not? It started to seem obvious. I spoke about it to the superior general of the Oblate Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart, my congregation. Without hesitation, she told me, “Go! While you’re still able to!” It’s true, the wheelchair awaited me, my body would only become more and more disabled, until the end. Why wait? The closer the departure date came, the more I felt compelled to go. I felt that this pilgrimage as a Church—and, I insist, as a Church , because this wasn’t an individual undertaking—really made sense, even if I would never have thought of it myself. After all, I had always let myself be guided by Providence and the Church, even when God’s ways were impenetrable—only this time God was calling me through my dear old doc!