Early Priesthood
Two years before my ordination, I was stricken with a serious illness. I was forced to leave the seminary. In the infirmary at Notre Dame, I learned the three lessons that have directed me on my journey.
The first lesson was my total dependence on my neighbor—the doctors, nurses and their assistants. How I learned that famous line from literature: "No man is an island." We are all one family, all one in Christ, all members of His Body. We form with Him a Mystical Body that is closer even than the branches and leaves of a tree are to the trunk that gives them life.
The second lesson was about the precious gift of Jesus' mother, given with His dying breath on the cross. In the infirmary, I deteriorated until the doctors said, "Try prayer. Our remedies are useless." One of my former teachers heard the bad news and hurried to visit me. He saw me at my worst—discouraged, depressed, hopeless. His words were the most important ever spoken to me. "Mary is alive," he said. "She will be as good to you as you think she can be. It all depends on you and your faith."
That night, he activated my dormant faith. It was like setting a match to a haystack sprinkled with gasoline. Thanks to the family that always prayed the Rosary, I had come to know who Mary was and that Jesus Christ, her Son, had entrusted me to her love and care. I asked her with all my heart and soul to pray to her Son for my cure.
Like the dark night that is replaced by dawn and the dawn by the sun, she brought me back to life. I was certain Our Blessed Mother was taking part in my healing. I am not describing a miracle. I'm giving witness to the power of Mary's intercession and the quiet, unsensational way she works. I begged the doctors to examine me once more and received their report in a letter. Like a prisoner waiting for the verdict of the jury, I opened the letter and saw my freedom, my new lease on life, my second spring.
The first words I spoke were, "Mary, I hope I will never disgrace you."
My superiors sent me back to the seminary. On June 15, 1941, I knelt beside my brother in Sacred Heart Church on the campus of Notre Dame and was made a priest. I remembered my father's words on seeing a photograph of us both wearing priests' garments: "I cry with joy to see what God has done for our two boys."