My Life is a Miracle

18 My Life Is a Miracle In the meantime, back in Bresles, it’s 5:00 in the evening and I have to get up and go to the chapel. The rosary in my hand hangs there like a lifeline. With its help, I manage to lift myself up, to overcome this disease I’m nailed to as to a cross. I’ve been back for three days. I’m crushed with fatigue. Nothing, or hardly anything, has happened since the pilgrimage, except that my morale is very good. I even feel at great peace, though I’ve had to increase my dose of medica- tion because I’m in great, very great, pain. But what inner peace! It’s like an ocean swell. My bones are screaming, but my soul is singing. I’d never felt such spiritual intensity. In Lourdes, something had indeed happened very deep within me, something invisible but very real. It was as though I was inhabited by something. It’s very personal and intimate and so a bit difficult to explain. It happened at Lourdes, at the end of a busy day, on Friday, July 4. We had just been to confession. This sacrament, which used to be called penance and is now referred to as the sacrament of reconciliation, still gets bad press. Many outside the Church say it feeds feel- ings of guilt. But it’s the complete opposite! It’s profoundly liberating: through this priest, we receive the forgiveness of God. And that gives