My Life is a Miracle

9 The Healin I spent three days in the belly of the whale. I’m talking about Jonah’s whale—Jonah, the prophet in the Bible. You don’t know Jonah? He was thrown overboard because he was a hin- drance. The biblical account tells us that the sea monster swallowed him in one gulp, but the man survived for three days hidden in its bel- ly! That time of darkness saved him. Far from crushing him, his time inside the whale—a sort of “marine grotto”—completely restored him. For God holds the secrets of the labor of child- birth. From nothingness, he creates fullness. From something bad, he makes something new. Jonah emerged from the fish a new man. I’m not Jonah, just a little old nun who was se- verely handicapped and disabled, like so many others. I found myself thrown out of the boat of life, a castaway. But I was healed, miraculously. I emerged from a damp grotto in Lourdes total- ly restored. Don’t ask me how. Or rather, yes, I will tell you. Because I must tell you everything. Not to convince you with intricate arguments: I am a Franciscan, a dis- ciple of Saint Francis of Assisi; I’ve never been and never will be a theologian. But I write this book to witness to you to what I experienced. Bernadette, to whom the Virgin appeared in Lourdes, told her detractors: “I wasn’t sent to make you believe it, just to tell you about it.”