Queen of Peace Catholic Church recently issued the following announcement.

It was my 24th year of life when this happened. I was in the Chapel of St. Patrick’s College, Thurles, County Tipperary. As far as I know I was by myself in the chapel and of course the Blessed Sacrament, Christ, is always present.

 I was upset in my mind at the time, there was a storm going on, I was going through some trauma, just what I don’t know, guilt or something about the death of my father which had happened some six years earlier. I read the following story and it crawled off the pages of the Bible into my mind. “Later on that same day Jesus said to his apostles ‘Let us cross over to the other side’, meaning the Sea of Galilee, and they took him just as he was in the boat and there were other boats with him. When they were some distance from the land a terrible storm arose on the sea and the waves were breaking into the boat so that they were almost swamped. Jesus was in the back of the boat, his head on a cushion, asleep. They woke him and they said, ‘Master, do you not care? We are going down.’ Jesus stood up, rebuked the wind and he said to the sea, ‘Quiet now, be calm’ and the wind fell and there came a great calm. And he said to them ‘Why did you doubt, you men of little faith’ and they said to one another ‘What manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him?’” Indeed, what manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him? Well you know who he is, he’s God and off I popped into sleep and in ways beyond my understanding while I was asleep the Lord Jesus stood up in my soul, calmed my soul and mind about the death of my father or whatever was making me anxious at that time. 

This next, same article, is from The Confessions of St. Augustine, bishop. “The day was now approaching when my mother, Monica, would depart from this life. You knew that day, Lord, though we did not. She and I happened to be standing by ourselves by a window that overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house. At the time we were in Ostia on the Tiber. We had gone there after a long and wearisome journey to get away from the noisy crowd and to rest and prepare for our sea voyage. 

I believe that you, Lord, caused all this to happen in your own mysterious ways and so the two of us, all alone, were enjoying a very pleasant conversation, forgetting the past and pushing on to what is ahead. We were asking one another in the presence of the truth, for you are the Truth, what it would be like to share the eternal life enjoyed by the saints, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, which has not even entered into the hearts of men. We desired with all our hearts to drink from the streams of your heavenly fountain, the fountain of life. That was the substance of our talk”, Augustine says, between himself and his mother though not the exact words. “But you know, O Lord, that in the course of our conversation that day the world and its pleasures lost all their attraction for us. My mother said, ‘Son, as far as I am concerned nothing in this life now gives me any pleasure. I do not know why I am still here since I have no further hopes in this world. I did have one reason for wanting to live a little longer, to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died. God has lavished his gifts on me in that respect for I know that you have even renounced earthly happiness to be his servant. So, what am I doing here?’” 

In a way what is any of us doing here.

Original source can be found here.