My Healing

​I became acquainted with Blessed Solanus Casey, whose feast we celebrate on July 30, sixty-three years after his July 1957 death and three years after his Beatification ceremony held in Detroit, Michigan, on November 17, 2017. Fortunately, my previous lack of knowledge about the humble and virtuous Franciscan Capuchin friar did not prevent him from hearing my silent yet desperate pleas, or, like he had done so often when he was alive, responding with compassion and healing.
 
Having recently reconciled with the Catholic Church after forty years of self-imposed exile, I was determined to make amends and to relearn all that I had forgotten. In addition to studying the Bible, I pored over spiritual books that spoke of God’s boundless love and mercy, and, hoping against hope that, as Oscar Wilde suggested, “every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future,” I sought inspiration and consolation in the stories of the saints. 
 
Despite my sincere desires and best intentions, there remained a major obstacle to my total surrender to God and His Bride, the Church. An obstacle that had become an idol to me and was slowly but most certainly killing me. An idol by the name of red wine.
 
As many young people do, I began drinking heavily in college. While my problem manifested itself early on, I never truly wanted to stop. Instead, I wanted  the power to regulate my drinking. To enjoy one or two glasses, then stop for the night. Unfortunately, my addiction rendered me physically and emotionally unable to moderate, and by sixty years old, I existed on a nauseating teeter-totter that had me either drinking to the point of intoxication or swearing off alcohol all together. 
 
Once I returned to the Church, I regularly confessed my bouts of drunkenness in the sacrament of Reconciliation, but my physical health and self-respect continued to suffer. I existed in a near continual state of fear and anxiety. Fear that I would drink too much and forget—or worse yet, regret—something I did, or fear that, by not drinking, I would miss out on the alluring fantasy falsely promised by a bottle 
 
On the evening of my healing, October 22, 2020, which is also notable for being the feast day of Pope St. John Paul II, I opened Patricia Treece’s  book Nothing Short of a Miracle, God’s Healing Power in Modern Saints. Chapters three and four detail the life and healings of Solanus Casey. While reading the account of Luke Leonard, “the alcoholic bum” healed in the 1940s after his encounter with then Fr. Solanus, my heart began beating furiously. As I read how Solanus asked Mr. Leonard, “When did you get over your sickness?”, I was beset with a giddy hopefulness. If Blessed Solanus had healed Luke Leonard, why not me?
 
No sooner had  this thought materialized, I heard a voice ask, “Carolyn, when did you get over your sickness?”
 
I whispered, “Tonight.”
 
​And I did. That very night. Just like that. 
 
It has been nearly four years since my healing, the details of which are memorialized in my frenzied journal entries from the hours and days that followed. Since then, I have experienced no alcohol withdrawal symptoms or cravings. There has been no sense of loss or missing out, and the desire to relax or unwind after a challenging day no longer leads me to the bottom of a wine bottle. I am, thanks to God’s merciful love and Blessed Solanus Casey’s intercession, clean, sober, and at long last, healed. God willing, I will remain alcohol-free until He calls me home.
 
Solanus Casey’s elevation to sainthood now awaits the investigation and verification of one additional miracle attributed to his intercession. According to Father Ed Foley, the Vice Postulator for the Cause of Canonization of Solanus Casey, the favor I received cannot be considered an official miracle “because of the difficulty of creating a direct medical cause and effect between [my] sobriety and Solanus’ intercession. Objectively there are other explanations for [my] ongoing recovery.” I, however, know what took place that night. Blessed Solanus knows. God knows. 
 
Wouldn’t it be remarkable if your own healing becomes the final miracle Solanus Casey or another Blessed needs for sainthood? As I experienced, and as the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms, saints desire to help us follow them into eternal life with The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. With untold numbers at the ready to offer their intercession and mediation, why would any of us not cry out to them?