Posted on 09/03/2002 12:16:14 PM PDT by Aliska
Miracle Cure: Priest's recovery brings sainthood to Polish nun
By Caryle Murphy/The Washington Post In 1995, the Rev. Ronald P. Pytel, just 48, had resigned himself to an idle life and early death. His heart was so damaged that simply walking made him winded. His complexion was pallid, his weight a gaunt 140 pounds. His quality of life, he recalls one doctor saying, "wasn't worth a plug nickel." But the pastor of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Baltimore, like many of his parishioners, had long been devoted to Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun and mystic who died in 1938. At a healing service in October 1995, he and a dozen church members were praying to her for his health when Pytel fell to the floor and, although conscious, couldn't get up for 15 minutes. "I could talk, but I couldn't move a muscle," he recalled. "It was as though I was paralyzed." When he finally stood up, he felt so fit he began laughing. Nowadays, the blond Pytel has the rosy cheeks of a choirboy, weighs a hearty 170 pounds and swims with abandon. His pumping machine is so robust he jokes of having "the heart of a 19-year-old." He and his parishioners call what happened a miracle. And so does the Catholic Church.
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Honestly,I've never thought about this.It's not a bad question.I know someone I can ask.I'll let you know what I find out.
Mary Sawyer
I am making a grave. In my clean morning kitchen, I pour onto a platter the mix of boiled wheat berries, nuts, and dried fruits. I pat it into an oval mound, and it rises like a newly made grave. My grandfather died two years ago, and I am making this dish, called "kolliva," to bring to a memorial service.
In the Orthodox Church, at regular times of the year, we hold a group memorial service. Members of the church give the priest a list of the names they'd like remembered at the service, and each family brings a dish of kolliva as well. The wheat berries, small nut-like grains with a satisfying crunch, symbolize the hope of new life; as Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). Once it has been mixed with fruits, nuts, and honey, the concoction is heaped on a platter and shaped into a mound. It is then covered with white powdered sugar to symbolize purity--the state of the soul newly received into Heaven. Candy and fruit decorations mark the kolliva with a cross.
Before the memorial service begins, all the plates of kolliva are placed on a table near the front of the church. Candles are plunked into each mound, one to represent each person you are remembering. The candles represent light and resurrection. At Christ's death on Holy and Great Friday, darkness covered the earth, but we know that he rose again; he is the light that extinguishes all darkness.
At the end of the service, the sweet kolliva is served up for everyone to eat. When everyone has been served and there are still leftovers, women start going around with their platters, doling out extra helpings. Before long, there is an assortment of different kinds of homemade kolliva on your plate, representing several different families' prayers. Everyone's kolliva is mixed together, just like everybody's loved ones, who are now acquainted and "mixed" together in the Place of Eternal Rest.
After many, many years of waiting and hoping, I am now four months pregnant for the first time in my life. Early this morning as I patted my little mound of kolliva, layer after layer of patting, smoothing, feeling the curvature of its little grave-like mound, I could not help but notice that it feels exactly as my budding belly feels these days. I am just beginning to swell, and the shape, at the end of four months, is the same as my little kolliva. The firmness was like the strange firmness to my stomach. The curve of one imitated the curve of the other.
The kolliva beneath my hands was being offered for my grandfather, who passed from this life two years ago. For him, I was making the mound of the grave. The swell in my hands was the shape of death. But the swelling stomach beneath my nightgown early this morning was the swell of new life. And yet, as a friend pointed out last night while we were preparing the ingredients, "Your grandfather is alive. You are the one that is dead."
How very right he is. They, the ones beneath the smooth, snowy mounds of graves, are the living. We, yet to be perfected, are the dead.
In doing this we blur the boundary between the mortal and the immortal. We blend the physical and the spiritual. We dissolve the barrier between the living and the dead. How beautiful is this mixing of this life and the next life, of this world and the next world; of things visible and things invisible! Whether we know one another or not, we share, materially and spiritually, in our kolliva, our prayers, our loss of loved ones, our grief, our hope, our expectation of the resurrection, our light, our joy. This simple act of preparing food, attending church, and sharing what we have made resonates with profound meaning. I am four months along, waiting for a birth that will change my life. But I look forward to another birth, one my grandfather has already undergone, that will change it for all eternity.
Moses talked to Jesus, and from what I know of the old testament, it was unprecedented, except in the case of I believe it was Saul and Samuel. In that particular situation, Saul went against the established rules by calling up the dead through a medium.
If your other question was if there is mention of that in the bible, I don't think there is anything specific regarding that practice, although there are hints of it in Revelation.
My turn to ask a question. If you don't answer it, I don't want to talk to you because you sound very intolerant.
If you had the power, would you knock that priest back on his sickbed because you don't believe those catholics prayed right?
At a healing service in October 1995, he and a dozen church members were praying to her [Faustina]Yeah, I get it. You're incapable of understand dictionary definitions, even more uncapable of understand when someone tells you they don't worship a saint because they ask patronage of them. I know...you being elect and all don't need any extra help or guidance. Yeah...I got it all right...
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