I’d like to share a testimony with you that Luisa told me recently. This happened years ago, when she was first coming to our community, but it’s a powerful reminder of what the Lord can do. Here is her story:
This happened when I was 14 or 15 years old. I had just started working with Father Thomas and the community and was hearing about all the miracles that happened here. At the time I went to the doctor [for terrible stomach pain], and he diagnosed me with severe gastritis. In the sonogram that they did, it showed that my stomach was full of ulcers, like it was a colander.
The doctor recommended surgery to treat the worst of the ulcers, and he also prescribed a very restrictive diet. Since I was a little girl, I always loved eating chile peppers – the spicier the better – and those would be off-limits.
My parents were very worried about me. My mother told me, “Ask Father Thomas to pray for you!” I was participating in the ministry of intercession, when we would pray with people who came to us with various needs, and Father Thomas was always there for that. So I told Father what was happening with me, what the doctors had discovered, that they had recommended surgery. Father asked me, “Do you believe you can be healed?” “Yes, of course I do!!” I had already seen so many people healed because of prayer. “That’s why I want you to pray for me,” I said.
He went on, “I can’t heal you, Luisa. Only God can.” I told him, “Yes, Father, I know that.” He said, “We are about to have Mass. It is the Lord who heals, so ask Him. He is there in the Eucharist.”
I left him very disappointed, bummed that he wouldn’t just pray over me. But now I see what a huge lesson this was for me. So at Mass, I asked the Lord, “Jesus, please heal me. I believe you are present in the Eucharist.” In that moment, I felt a deep warmth flood my stomach. At the end of Mass, a woman got up and shared that the Lord was healing someone with severe gastritis and that they were feeling a lot of heat in their stomach. That was exactly what I was experiencing! My mom turned to me and said excitedly, “That’s you. That’s you!”
When we got home after the Mass, my mom told me, “Try to eat a chile.” Before, whenever I ate anything the slightest bit spicy or acidic, I would be in torment due to the pain in my stomach. But after eating the chile nothing happened. I was fine.
I returned to the doctors for another sonogram they had ordered before surgery. Afterward the doctor told me, “I don’t know what happened. Not only is there no sign of gastritis or any ulcers, it’s as if your stomach is that of a baby’s. It looks brand new. It can’t possibly be your stomach.” “God healed me,” I told him, while he kept shaking his head in disbelief.