Part A
Jesus Made Me a Witness
Father Émilien Tardif and José H. Prado Flores
ÉDITIONS INTER / CAHIERS DU RENOUVEAU, 450 est, rue Sherbrooke, Montréal / 31, rue de l'Abbé-Grégoire, Paris 75006 / imprimatur: Nicolas de Jesús López, Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 30-V-1984 / Cum permissu Superiorum: Dario Taveras, Provincial, M.S.C. / Cover layout: Réalisations de Palma / Photography: Mia and Klaus / Canadian distribution: QUÉBEC LIVRES, 4435, boul. des Grandes Prairies, Montréal (Québec) (514) 327-6900 / European distribution: ÉDITIONS CAHIERS DU RENOUVEAU, 31, rue de l'Abbé-Grégoire, Paris 75006 / All rights of reproduction, translation and adaptation reserved for all countries, without the written permission of the author. / 1984 Éditions Inter Enr. / Legal deposit: 4th quarter 1984, Bibliothèque nationale du Québec / Printed in Canada
PRESENTATION
I Pulmonary tuberculosis
II - Nagua and Pimentel
A. Nagua
B. Pimentel
a) First meeting
b) Second meeting
c) Third meeting
d) Fourth meeting
e) Fifth meeting
f) Palm Sunday
g) Holy Week
III - Jesus is alive
IV - Word of knowledge
V - Healing
A. Sickness of the body and physical healing
a) Jesus
b) The Church
c) The Signs
d) Miracles and Healings
e) Prayer for the sick
B. Sickness of the heart and inner healing
a) Root of the problem
Prayer of healing of memories
b) Prayer -
1) In the name of Jesus
2) By the blood of the Lamb
3) By the wounds of Jesus
4) Praying in tongues
5) Mary's intercession
C. Sickness of the spirit and reconciliation
D. Convalescence
a) The sacramental life
b) Prayer
c) Reading of the Word
d) Community
e) Service
VI - Liberation
A. Oppression
B. Obsession
a) The prayer of liberation
b) Self-liberation
C. Possession
VII - Aids to healing
A. Evangelization
B. Faith and expectation
C. Repentance
D. Forgiveness
E. Prayer in community
F. Prayer of the sick person
G. Mary's intercession
H. Abandonment
I. Prayer in tongues
J. Renunciation of Satan
VIII - Five letters
IX - The last journey
I PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS
PULMONARY
Father Émilien Tardif
In 1973, I was the provincial of my Congregation of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, in the Dominican Republic. During my sixteen years of mission in the country, I had worked very hard and abused my health. I spent a lot of time on material tasks, building chapels, seminaries, centres of human development and catechesis, and so on. I was always looking for money to build houses and to feed our seminarians. The Lord allowed me to live through all that activism, and because of the excess of work, I fell ill.
On 14 June of that year, 1973, during a meeting of the Christian Family Movement, I felt unwell, very unwell. I had to be taken immediately to the National Medical Centre. I was so ill that I did not think I would make it through the night. I truly believed I was going to die very soon. I had often meditated on death, but I had never experienced it, and this time I did, and I did not like it. The doctors gave me very precise tests and detected acute pulmonary tuberculosis.
Seeing how ill I was, I thought of returning to Québec, in Canada, my country, where my family lives. But I was then so weak that I could not do it. I had to wait fifteen days and take a treatment of tonics in order to make the journey. In Canada, I was admitted to a specialized medical centre, where the doctors re-examined me to verify the nature of the illness. The month of July passed in tests, biopsies, X-rays, and so on. All of this scientifically confirmed that the acute pulmonary tuberculosis had produced serious lesions in both lungs.
To give me a little courage, they told me that perhaps, after a year of treatment and rest, I could go home. One day, I received two very special visits. First came the priest who directs R.N.D. magazine (Revue Notre Dame). He asked my permission to photograph me for an article entitled “How to live with one's illness.” No sooner had he taken his leave than five lay people from a Charismatic Renewal prayer group entered.
In the Dominican Republic, I had made a lot of fun of the Renewal, claiming that Latin America did not need the Gift of Tongues but human development — and here they were, coming to pray for me in a disinterested way. They were two totally different points of view: the first, to get me to accept my illness; the second, for my healing. As a missionary priest, I thought it would not be very edifying to refuse their prayer. But, sincerely, I accepted it more out of good manners than out of conviction. I did not believe that a simple prayer could bring about health.
They said to me, very convinced: “We are going to do what the Gospel says: 'They will lay hands on the sick, and they will be healed.' So we are going to pray, and the Lord will heal you.” Immediately, they came right up to the chair where I was sitting and laid hands on me. I had never seen anything like it, and I disliked it. I felt ridiculous under their hands, and I was annoyed, because the people passing in the corridor could see us through the open door.
So I interrupted the prayer and suggested to them: “If you like, let's close the door.” “Yes, Father, why not,” they answered. They closed the door, but Jesus had already entered. During the prayer, I felt a strong heat in my lungs. I thought it was a new attack of tuberculosis and that I was going to die. But it was the heat of Jesus' love, which was touching me and healing my sick lungs. During the prayer, there was a prophecy.
The Lord was saying to me: “I will make of you a witness of my love.” The living Jesus was giving life, not only to my lungs, but also to my priesthood, to my whole being. Three or four days later, I felt perfectly well. I had a good appetite, I slept well, and I had no pain. The doctors were ready to begin the treatment immediately. However, no medication corresponded to the illness they had detected. So they brought in special injections, made for people who do not have a normal metabolism, but there was no reaction.
I felt well and I wanted to go home, but I was made to stay in the hospital so that the doctors could search everywhere for the tuberculosis that had slipped away from them and that they could not find. At the end of the month, after many tests, the head doctor said to me: “Father, go home. You are perfectly healed, but this goes against all our medical theories. We do not know what happened.” Then, shrugging his shoulders, he added: “Father, you are a unique case in this hospital.” “In my Congregation too,” I answered him, laughing.
I left the hospital without a prescription, without medication, without injections. I went home weighing 50 kilos. The hospital that was going to cure my tuberculosis was starving me to death.
Fifteen days later, issue number 8 of R.N.D. magazine appeared. On page 5 there was my photo at the hospital; I was sitting on the famous chair with tubes, a sad face and a pensive look. At the bottom of the photo was written: “The sick person must learn to live with his illness, get used to veiled allusions, indiscreet questions... and to friends who will no longer look at him the same way.” But my recovery made their issue obsolete. The Lord had healed me.
To be sure, my faith was very small, perhaps the size of a mustard seed, but God was so great that he did not consider my smallness. That is how our God is. If it depended on us, he would not be God. In this way, I received in my flesh the first fundamental teaching for the healing ministry: the Lord heals us with the faith we have. He asks nothing more of us. Only that. On 15 September, I attended the first charismatic prayer meeting of my life.
I did not know what it was, but I went, because I had been healed and the people who had prayed for me had asked me to give the testimony of my healing. In that month of September, I began to work a little, and I wrote to my Superior to ask permission to spend that year, which I should have lived in the hospital, studying the Charismatic Renewal in Canada and the United States. He gave me the permission, and I went to the most important centres: Québec, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and Arizona.
I remember a day when I was in Los Angeles, celebrating Mass with my niece and a friend. After the reading of the Gospel in French, I wanted to comment on it, but something very strange happened. I felt my cheek go numb, and I began to say words that I did not understand. It was neither French, nor English, nor Spanish. When it stopped, I exclaimed in surprise: “Don't tell me I'm going to receive the gift of tongues.”
“That is exactly what it is, Uncle,” answered my niece, “you were speaking in tongues.” I had made so much fun of the gift of tongues — well, the Lord offered it to me at the very moment I was about to preach. That is how I discovered this beautiful gift of the Lord.
II
NAGUA AND PIMENTEL
A. Nagua
After that year which I should have spent in the hospital, I returned to the Dominican Republic. My superior sent me to a parish in the town of Nagua. On my arrival, I called together about forty people to give them the testimony of my healing. I remember that I then invited the sick to come forward so that we could pray for them. To my great surprise, there were more sick people than healthy ones. That night, the Lord healed two sick people. The assembly burst with joy, and those who had been healed gave their testimony everywhere.
Thus, humbly, began a story which we did not think could be so wonderful. Through the healings the Lord was working, our group resembled the Banquet of the Kingdom of Heaven: the guests were the lame, the deaf, the mute and the poor. Every week the Lord healed the sick. In August, he healed Sarah, who had cancer of the uterus. She had been condemned to death and had left the hospital to go home and die. She was brought to the meeting, and during the prayer for the sick, she felt a deep warmth in her abdomen and began to weep.
Little by little, she realized the disease was disappearing. Fifteen days later, she was completely healed and came back to the prayer group carrying her burial shroud in her hands: the clothes her children had bought for her funeral. People came in great numbers. Everyone sang with joy and praised God spontaneously. At the healings and wonders, they burst into sobs; these were tears of happiness, and they told everyone what was happening in the parish.
After these meetings, so happy and so beautiful, some priests began to say sarcastically: “Father Émilien was healed of tuberculosis, but he is sick in the head.” Because I prayed in tongues and believed in the healing power of Christ, they claimed I had gone mad. The Lord told us through a prophecy: I work in peace. I give you my peace. Be messengers of peace. I am beginning to pour out my Spirit upon you. It is a devouring fire that will invade the whole town.
Open your eyes, for you will see signs and wonders that many longed to see and did not see. I am the one who tells you this and will do it.
We were certain that we were before the work of the Lord. The miracles were always so numerous that I could not count them. Couples who were living in concubinage got married, young people were freed from drugs and alcoholism. It was the miraculous catch of fish. After long casting the hook, the Lord was filling the nets so full that I almost imagined the boat would sink. Jesus was setting his people free from the chains of slavery. Young people who no longer cared about the Church or the faith began to live and to proclaim that Jesus was their liberator.
During a parish retreat we proclaimed Jesus, and then we prayed for the health of the sick during the Eucharist. The first word of knowledge I ever received was: “There is a woman here who is being healed of cancer. She feels a strong heat in her abdomen.” I kept praying; there were other words of knowledge that were confirmed by the testimonies. However, no one responded to the first word. The next day, a lady, before the microphone, said to everyone: “Perhaps you will be surprised to see me here.
I am a sinner, a public woman; for many years I have been prostituting myself. Yesterday, I came to the healing Mass, but because of my life, I was ashamed to go in, and I stayed a little apart, behind the fence. I had cancer.
I had two operations that did not stop the disease, but when the priest said that a person was being healed of cancer, I felt that it was me. “The Lord healed her not only of the cancer of her body, but also of that of her soul. She repented and received Communion the next day. When I saw her receive Communion with such joy and such tears of happiness on her face, I remembered the return of the prodigal son, who eats the fattened calf his father had killed. She was receiving the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, purifying her soul and changing her life.
She went back to the brothel to testify before her companions, with tears in her eyes: “I have not come to tell you to give up this life. I only want to tell you about my friend Jesus, who redeemed me and changed my life.” She told them about her healing and her conversion. Then she asked permission to start a prayer group in the brothel, and every Monday they closed the doors to sin there and opened them to the Heart of Jesus. There was Prayer, the Reading of the Word, and songs. The Lord did not finish his work there. A year later, a retreat was organized for 47 prostitutes of the town.
It was there that I saw the mercy of God act with the greatest power. There was repentance, conversion and confession: 27 gave up their former life, and according to recent information, 21 have persevered on the path of the Lord. Some have even become catechists; others lead prayer groups, testifying that God's merciful love has transformed them. Of the 21 houses of ill repute on Mariano Pérez street, only 4 remain. Members of the same prayer group went there, and the Lord transformed them.
We should recall here the case of another of these women, of whom Jesus said that they would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the scribes and Pharisees. Diane was touched by the love of God and gave herself to the Lord. However, her recovery was slow and painful. She even had a relapse because of economic problems. When she had drifted away from the Lord, he spoke to her and said: Diane, whoever follows me walks in the light and lacks nothing. She repented and returned to the Lord.
She even became a catechist, and today she gives powerful testimony in the retreats of the Lord's mercy. She belongs to an evangelization group, and many priests would like to have the power she has, to proclaim new life in Christ Jesus. According to official statistics, in Nagua there were 500 brothels. More than 80% closed their doors. Not all the women were converted, but all were reached by the message of the living Jesus. Many of these houses that were at the service of sin and selfishness have become houses of prayer groups.
The change was so clear that people even said: “Nagua was the town of prostitution, but now it is the town of prayer.” Today, there is no street in Nagua without its prayer group. These are groups that evangelize, proclaim, and bring people to a personal encounter with the living Jesus. The case of Nagua gives us an idea of what the charisms of evangelization are. They are not accidental ornaments, but vehicles of evangelization. There are many people who reject the charisms, saying that they have no importance.
I simply remind them that Nagua was shaken by the Gospel and lost its reputation as the “Town of prostitution” thanks to a retreat of prostitutes. That retreat was carried out thanks to a woman who, like Mary Magdalene, followed Jesus and then gave testimony. Why? Because she was healed of cancer. A poor physical healing brought about a social transformation. That is how the Kingdom of God is established, through events as small and simple as mustard seeds, which, when they germinate, give abundant fruit.
Who are we, we human beings, to look down on the ways of God?
B. Pimentel
I was happy in Nagua, working with the prayer groups, but the Holy Spirit had prepared a great surprise for me. In truth, the ways of God are different from our own (Is 55:8), but much better than anything we could ask for or imagine (Ephesians 3:20). The Father Provincial asked me to temporarily replace a priest who was going on holidays. Sincerely, I was very sad to leave Nagua. We always want to make ourselves secure in what we have; that is what greatly harms the surprises of the Spirit.
Life in the Spirit is a life of surrender; it consists in not making God's things one's own, not even what we call “our ministry.” We are called to be eternal pilgrims who live in provisional tents, always ready for the journey without a return ticket. It is when we possess nothing that we are capable of having everything. On 10 June 1975, I arrived at my new destination: Pimentel is a pleasant village in the centre of the country, framed by a fertile plain, rich in rice, potatoes, cocoa and oranges, thanks to the waters of the Cuaba river.
The village is crossed by only one unpaved street, along which pass donkeys, horses, and an automobile and a bus from time to time. The national flag flies over the town hall, and it is saluted by the slender palm grove and the acacias of the public garden. On the other side stands the parish of St. John the Baptist, whose name made me think that my mission, like that of every person who evangelizes, was that of a forerunner preparing the coming of the Saviour. The Holy Spirit had brought me there to be a witness of the light of the risen Christ. On my arrival, I went to see the parish priest, who had already packed his suitcases.
I asked him only for permission to organize a small Renewal group, because without prayer, I could not work. This displeased him; he was afraid. He did not refuse it, because I was going to replace him so that he could take his holidays, but he told me: “All right, make the group, but without charisms.” “Fine,” I told him, “but the charisms are not mine to give. They come from the Holy Spirit. If he wants to give charisms to your people, what can I do about it?” “Do as you wish,” he answered me, and he took his leave. That year's summer was very hot, like a foreshadowing of the Spirit who would invade us.
He who does not believe that we have a living Jesus who works wonders today must not read what follows, because it will seem unbelievable.
a) First meeting
During the Mass of the first Sunday, I invited people to a conference on the Charismatic Renewal, promising to tell them the testimony of my healing. At that first meeting, two hundred people attended, and these people had such faith that that night they brought a paralysed man on a stretcher. His spine had been broken, and he had not walked for five and a half years. When I saw them arriving with him, I thought they were too daring, but they made me think of those four others who brought their paralysed friend to Jesus (Mark 2:1-12).
We prayed for him and asked the Lord, by the power of his holy wounds, to heal this paralysed man. The man began to sweat profusely and to tremble. Then I remembered that when the Lord had healed me, I too had felt a great heat. So I said to him: “The Lord is healing you; rise up in the name of Jesus!” I gave him my hand, and he looked at me, very surprised. With great effort, he rose and began to walk slowly. “Keep walking in the name of Jesus,” I cried out to him, “the Lord is healing you.” He was taking one step, then another.
He came to the Blessed Sacrament and, weeping, gave thanks to God. Everyone praised the Lord, while the one who had been healed left carrying his stretcher under his arm. That day, ten other people were healed by the love of Jesus Christ. How people thirst for prayer! They come up to us asking us to teach them to pray. Like Jesus, we owe it to them to teach them by praying with them. We cannot let this wonderful opportunity pass by. If we spoke less about the Lord and spoke to him more, how quickly our world would change.
Surely, the Lord loves that we speak about him, but he loves much more that we speak with him.
b) Second meeting
The following Wednesday, 3000 people came. So we held the second meeting in the street, because the church could not contain us all. Since one cannot run a prayer group with such a crowd, I preached for half an hour before celebrating the Eucharist for the sick. There was a woman there named Mercedes Dominguez. She had been blind for 10 years, and during the prayer she felt a great coldness in her eyes. She went home, very moved, telling everyone that she could see a little. The next day, when she woke up, she was completely healed. The Lord opened her eyes, and she opened her mouth to testify everywhere to her wonderful healing, which impressed many people in the village.
c) Third meeting
Imagine what happened at this third meeting. We went to the public park, in the open air, to celebrate the glory of the Lord. It was like when Jesus came to Capernaum or Bethsaida. The same Jesus, alive, was coming to our village. The park resembled the Pool of Bethesda, “full of sick people, blind, lame or paralysed, waiting for their healing” (John 5:1-2). Bethesda means “House of Mercy.” Pimentel, the smallest of villages, had become the place chosen by God to show his mercy. The healing ministry is the ministry of God's mercy.
That night, there were more than 7000 people. We did the same thing: we preached the love of Jesus, who is alive in his Church and continues to act through signs and wonders. We celebrated Mass, and the Lord began to heal the sick again. It was almost excessive. As at the wedding at Cana, when the Lord changed water into wine, so much remained that one could have organized other weddings. When we ask him for something, he gives us everything, because his power has no limits, any more than his love. He does not heal only two or three people, but an immense number.
The police were very annoyed, because they had to work overtime to manage such an enormous amount of traffic for so small a village. So the officers asked the police chief to ban these meetings. He opened his hands and answered them with a smile: “I too would have liked to ban them, but my wife was healed at one of these meetings. She had been ill for twelve years. She was touched by the love of God.” A few days later, they received the sacrament of marriage.
Since the Lord had planned everything, instead of banning the meeting, the police gave us 18 additional officers to organize the traffic during the following meeting.
d) Fourth meeting
It was 9 July, the anniversary of my return to the Dominican Republic. From 9 in the morning, buses and pick-up trucks arrived with people from all over the country. Even the taxi drivers were advertising us, because it was to their advantage too. That afternoon, there were some 20,000 people at prayer. There was so much crowd that we had to climb onto the roof to set up the altar and the loudspeakers at that fourth meeting. Do you know how God “took revenge” on the police who wanted to put an end to these meetings?
That night, he healed a policeman who suffered a cerebral haemorrhage that had half-paralysed him. From that moment on, all the police were on our side. In truth, the way God puts an end to problems is better than ours. A lady, known to the whole village, had been deaf for 16 years, and she was completely healed. She first felt a buzzing, then realized she could hear the preaching perfectly.
The next day, she went to the market, and an employee said to his companion: “Here is the deaf woman; let's play a trick on her by moving our mouths without saying a word.” But she heard what they were saying and answered them happily: “No, gentlemen, I am no longer deaf, for Christ healed me last night.” Thus she testified not only to her healing, but also to the power of God. A man who could only move on all fours was also healed that day. There was a profusion of healings and wonders. We saw everything.
It was living, in colour, vividly and live, what the Gospel says. It was the risen Jesus walking among us and saving his people. That night, there were more than a hundred healings, according to the testimonies received.
e) Fifth meeting
For the fifth meeting, our sound equipment proved insufficient. The police did a calculation to estimate this multitude, based on the square metre. There were 42,000. People came from Puerto Rico, Haiti, and from all the parishes of the country. The streets were full, the rooftops crowded, and the little street congested with buses, cars and pick-up trucks. People came in such great numbers, quite simply because the Lord Jesus has not yet changed his methods of work.
While we are looking for more effective pastoral methods, more in tune with our times, the Lord continues with his own: he travelled through Galilee healing the sick, so the multitudes followed him, and he preached the Word of Salvation (Luke 6:17-18). Today, he still does the same. He heals the sick, people gather by the thousands, and we proclaim the Kingdom of God. It is simply the Gospel repeating itself. I was beginning to be a little frightened, because these poor people wanted to touch me and for me to pray for each one of them.
That night, they tore off all the buttons of my shirt and almost crushed me. There was also a problem: the people who had travelled all day could not find food in the village and left hungry, but full of the love of God. So we prayed and asked the Lord for his light, to know what to do with all these people. It was he who had placed us before these problems; he had to get us out of them. During the prayer, he gave us a message in tongues through Evaristo Guzman.
So that there would be no doubt, it was to me myself that he gave its interpretation: “Evangelize my people. I want a people of praise.” We must not be afraid of the great crowds. The Lord sends them to us so that we may proclaim to them his Word of Salvation. Those who fear the wonders of the Lord are afraid of the “Lord of wonders.” Some are surprised that the Lord answers prayers so quickly.
As for me, I tell them that it would be surprising that he, being so good, should not answer: “Before you even call me, I will answer, and while you are still speaking, I will listen to you” (Isa. 65:24). “Ask, and you will receive... Seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...” (Luke 11:9-13). What did Monsignor Antonio Flores, bishop of La Vega, think about all this? He was open, but worried before such publicity in the press, the radio, the television. I went to visit him, and I found him in the chapel.
We prayed together and we agreed to divide the immense assembly into small groups, as we had previously done in Nagua. I returned happy, because the Holy Spirit, the bishop and I were in complete agreement. We immediately issued a statement that was broadcast on radio and television, explaining that the great assembly was suspended and that people were invited to gather in their own parish to pray.
The Lord had his plan regarding the events of Pimentel: to awaken his people, to shake up his Church, and to show by signs and wonders that he is alive and gives his life in abundance to those who believe in his name. Then began another type of work, deeper and more delicate: training leaders of small prayer groups. We had a retreat at the end of the week with the most committed.
We explained to them what the prayer meeting is, the Charismatic Renewal, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the Charisms, and “we commended them to the grace of God” (Acts of the Apostles 20:32). Three days later, they were leading the 45 groups scattered in various places in the parish. There were groups under the trees, in the church, in the houses, and everywhere. The whole town had become a house of prayer. So that people would fix their gaze on Jesus and not on a man, I, that night, left the parish.
As for the Lord, he stayed and continued to heal the sick. During a visit we made in 1984, so that this book could be published, we were offered a notebook in which were noted 224 testimonies of healings carried out in one of the groups that met in the house of Guara Rosario on Columbus Street. In just one night, 13 November 1975, there were 22 testimonies of healing. Soon after, they became so numerous that people stopped recording them in writing.
We asked whether the Lord was still manifesting himself as much as before, and they answered us with a wonderful simplicity: “No, no, but that is because now there are not so many sick people anymore.”
f) Palm Sunday
The Lord entered triumphantly not only into the little town of Pimentel, but into the whole country and well beyond its borders. Everything was so wonderful that it seemed like a dream. Never had my missionary vocation appeared to me so fascinating and beautiful. The Lord entered the media by healing the mother of a television presenter. It was he who took it upon himself to give testimony before the cameras. He also entered the Chamber of Deputies by healing a woman parliamentarian of pains in her neck.
Later, I learned that the publishers of the French magazine “Il est Vivant” (“He Is Alive”) wrote to the bishop to ask him questions about the authenticity of what had happened in Pimentel. The bishop answered their letter on 15 October 1975, saying verbatim: “The testimony of Father Émilien Tardif is authentic.” His letter was published in issue 6-7 of the magazine. In those days, we were as at the top of Mount Tabor, contemplating the glory of the Lord.
We shared with Jesus what his Father had said: “You are my beloved Son, in whom I have placed all my love.” On 16 July, the Lord warned us through a prophecy, announcing that we would be attacked and ridiculed, but that we must not fear, because he had already overcome the world. Three months later, the parish priest returned from his holidays. He was very surprised by what he found and by what people told him. Everything was so extraordinary that he could not believe it.
The Lord had visited his people, raising up a saving power in his parish, showing mercy to his own, lighting a light in the midst of darkness, so that, freed from all fear, we might serve him in holiness and justice all the days of our life. The Lord had healed men and women, a policeman and a child, people who came from afar and incurably sick people. The Lord had evangelized his people by announcing to them the Good News of the Kingdom, even making use of the media such as the press and television.
It was Palm Sunday: the Lord was entering triumphantly into his town. When I left the parish of Pimentel to return to Nagua, the street was deserted. The wind blew gently, rocking the palm trees and caressing the flag that had witnessed the wonders of the Lord. I felt the nostalgia of those crowds I had seen. Then a little donkey passed by, trotting merrily, and looked at me with his big eyes.
He began to bray, showing all his teeth in a broad smile, as if to tell me: “You are only the donkey that brought Jesus to this village, and now you must return to Bethphage. The glory, the palms and the gratitude are for him of whom you were in charge, and not for you. Like John the Baptist, you must decrease so that he may increase. Émilien must die so that Christ may live in him. Your glory is that Christ be glorified; your privilege: to announce the Gospel.” The donkey moved his tail, telling me: “Goodbye, farewell,” and he went off. As for me, I returned to Nagua, leaping with joy.
g) Holy Week
Everything had been like a thousand-coloured twilight, and the Lord had been splendid, far more than we could have imagined. We had not yet sobered up from the intoxicating wine of his love when black clouds swept across the sky. Suddenly everything darkened and the sun hid itself in this Holy Week. Although I knew that the Lord was with me, the winds of the storm began to blow with fury. The Secretary of Health accused me on television of having abused the ignorance of the people, making them believe that he was healing.
He said I was a charlatan, that I was deceiving the people; he asked why I did not go and do the same thing in a developed country like Canada. Others attacked me, saying that, as a foreigner, I did not know the people, and that all these healings and all these miracles would lead the people to spiritism and sorcery. As for me, I answered them that surely I did not know the people as well as they did, but that I knew Jesus very well, and that he never leads to spiritism and sorcery. Quite the opposite.
When it is he who acts, he does things well, and we must not be afraid. On the radio, in the press, on television, there were many attacks. In a few days, I had become a sorcerer and a liar. Because I believed and proclaimed that Jesus was alive, that he saved and healed his people, people said I was mad, a fanatic, and so on. In less than 24 hours, the press that previously admired me was now fighting against me. Then I understood the fragility of the glory the world offers, and what folly it was to seek the opinion of others. In a few hours, the foam of glory is destroyed.
But my confidence was in Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and always. And since I had not paid attention to them when they spoke well of me, when they began to criticize me it affected me little. I had in my heart a peace, a deep peace. Some who called themselves psychologists came to tell me that these healings, caused by the mass effect or by collective hysteria, were natural and had nothing miraculous about them.
I answered them simply that there was then a great injustice in the fact that, knowing all this, they did not organize a meeting every evening to heal all the sick people of the country. Others accused us of being “emotionalists.” As for me, I answered them that emotionalism seeks emotion for emotion's sake, but that we were seeking the Lord, which was always moving. Finding the Hidden Treasure is moving and exhilarating. The sign that shows that someone has found the Treasure is the Joy it gives him.
Others attacked the immaturity of the people, saying: “All this crowd comes only out of curiosity and because of the healings.” As for me, I answered them: “What does the reason for their coming matter? What counts is that they are there so that we may evangelize them.” Surely Zacchaeus did not climb the sycamore to recite his rosary, but out of pure curiosity, because “he wanted to see Jesus.” They even went so far as to ask me whether I had not gone mad. Then I answered them: “I wonder about that myself, because now I can only speak about the Lord.” The neighbouring priests became jealous.
A group of them asked my Provincial to have me sent out of the country, because, they said, with all these foolish things I was going to destroy the structures of pastoral ministry. As for me, I answered them that Jesus had not been sent to save pastoral structures, but to save his people, and that was the only thing he was doing in our midst. They accused me of emptying the parishes, but I was not inviting anyone. I was only proclaiming the Gospel. A priest told me that we were exaggerating and that we had to go more slowly.
His argument was the following: “If you spoke to me of 2 or 3 healings, perhaps I could begin to believe. But you charismatics are mad; you speak of so many miracles...” “It is because you do not really know Jesus,” I told him. “Yes,” he answered me, “but at Lourdes, there is a medical centre to study healings, and it is said that there are very few miraculous healings there. But you...” “But,” I answered, “the criterion of our faith is not the medical centre of Lourdes, but the Gospel, and that one speaks of so many miracles...”
Saint Mark, the oldest of the four evangelists, tells us of 18 miracles and healings of Jesus in 16 chapters. If we removed these signs of God's power from the Gospel of Mark, only a few pages would remain, one or two. Many are those who, for having eliminated this aspect, have only a mutilated, poor Gospel, reduced to doctrine and theories. The Gospel is a Life to be lived, which must be experienced and witnessed to. The first time the Acts of the Apostles refers to Christianity, it defines it as “Life” (Acts 5:20).
I was attacked so much, from all sides (even by those of whom one might think they were on Jesus' side), that I had to publish an article in the magazine “Amigo del Hogar” in August 1975. It was entitled: “It is Jesus' fault.” Among other things, I said there: Faced with the real dangers of falling into fanaticism because of the miracles, we fall into the opposite extreme, sometimes graver than the first, which is to forget that God is the master of the impossible. Healing is truly the answer to a prayer of faith, as we see so many times in the Gospel.
This prayer may be that of the sick person or of those who accompany him, of the community, or of an individual. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and always. He is the Master of history, and he acts as he pleases, without asking our opinion or permission to perform his wonders. Who then are we to oppose or to try to set a limit to the work of our God? We are convinced that he does not oppose medicine, but very often thousands of people do not have the money to pay the doctor, the clinic, the medication.
What is surprising about God taking care of the poor and coming personally to their aid? Why close the door to those who have believed in this Word of Jesus, which says: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Would it be that we have settled for a Christianity made to our own measure? Through these signs, the Lord comes to show us that he is alive, and he comes to challenge us, because if he is alive, all his demands are valid.
The problem is that “Jesus is alive, not dead.” Shortly afterwards, I realized that in that article I had made a double mistake: proving the healings by giving the names and addresses of healed people, thinking that it would be the evidence of the facts, and not the grace of faith, that would transform their hearts.
I gave them the sign from heaven they were asking for, but they did not convert, because signs are only signs: only faith makes us recognize what they mean — that God loves human beings, that Christ is alive, and that the Church has the power of the Holy Spirit to raise the dead. The Lord permitted me to correct myself and to realize that I must not defend myself against attacks, any more than he defended himself against those who accused him. If I defended myself with my own means and my own arguments, I was not letting him be my defender, with his means and his arguments.
On the other hand, defending myself came down to renouncing the purification the Lord wanted to work in my life. Through so many attacks and misunderstandings, the Lord wanted to fashion us in the image of his Son, passing through the night of Calvary to attain the glory of the Resurrection.
Time has convinced me that flatteries are more dangerous than criticism, for criticism can be the fire that purifies and burns away the impurities of our heart, while flatteries have been the object of one of Jesus' harshest words: “Woe to you when the whole world speaks well of you, for that is how the false prophets were treated” (Luke 6:26). Unconsciously, we can forget that we are simple earthen vessels, but the Lord sees to reminding us of it through the cross of misunderstanding.
The Lord, in his mercy, purifies us and humbles us, so that we might not steal the glory that belongs to him alone. The cross is the desert where the living God manifests himself. But one must take off one's sandals to approach the burning bush. Criticism is like the court of the Temple, which prepares us to enter limpid and pure into the Sanctuary of the living God, free of every attachment — and the most dangerous attachments are those we call our merits and “our apostolic activities.” The attacks became so violent and constant that at times I thought I could no longer resist.
I was persecuted from every side. I myself felt alone, on a new path. It was then that I asked a sister full of God to pray for me. She did, and gave me a prophecy that comforted me. The Lord said to me: “After having savoured the joy of Palm Sunday, does it not seem normal to you to taste a little of Holy Week?” That word healed me interiorly; since then, I see problems in a different way, in complete peace.
When things go well, I say: “We are at Palm Sunday.” If there are difficulties, I simply state: “It is Holy Week.” In any case, Easter is not far away, glory to God. Before leading me to Calvary, God made me taste the glory of Tabor. But he did not let me pitch my tent up there; he made me come down and share in his cross. Before the suffering, the Lord gives us his love, and when he loves us, he always offers us his cross. The cross is God's gift to those he loves.
The cross, before the experience of God's love, can be neither understood nor accepted. In God's plan, before Calvary comes Tabor. After the glory comes the cross that saves and leads us to the Resurrection. Our life unfolds like the mysteries of the Rosary: there are the Joyful, the Sorrowful and the Glorious, but each and every one ends with the “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” Each day we live a mystery. Our whole life cannot be joyful, glorious or sorrowful, but the mysteries intertwine for the glory of God.
The cross and the Resurrection are like the paintings of Rembrandt, where shadows and lights combine to express beauty. Our people were asleep, plunged in a lethargy and passive. The Lord came and shook everything. People consulted the priests to ask them questions about what was happening. So the priests had to read and inform themselves in order to give adequate answers. There was even a meeting of the Episcopal Commission to make a declaration. That was very important for me. I was sure it was the work of God, but I needed the discernment of the Bishops.
For me, they were the voice of God. They published a declaration entitled: “The Pope approves and encourages charismatic prayer meetings.” Then came the following subtitle: “Monsignor Pepen (National Secretary of the Episcopal Conference) approves the work of Father Tardif.” When I read that, I was very happy, but I also felt like laughing, and I said: “But this is not my work...” Like Saint Joseph, I had only one certainty: that this life that had come to birth in the bosom of the Church was not mine.
Without knowing how or why, I received an invitation from Monsignor Carlos Talavera to preach a priests' retreat in Guadalajara, in Mexico. From then on, other invitations arose to proclaim the wonders of the Lord in other countries of Latin America. I am beginning to perceive that a glorious era is dawning for the Church. I believe the time has come to preach from the rooftops, outside the sacred enclosures, for there is not enough room in our temples. The Lord takes us to the ends of the earth to bear witness that he is alive...
After a trip to Panama, I took up my parish duties again. The next day, I was preparing to visit a community lost in the mountains. I had to travel on a donkey. While he walked slowly, I thought: “How different my donkey is from the big Pan Am Boeing 747!” How wonderful are the ways of God. By plane or on a donkey, we are always his messengers. Ten thousand or sixty people, they are always his children. And these “little ones” of the mountain are the true poor of Yahweh.
The Lord is so wonderful that when we fly in a plane, afterwards he makes us climb onto a donkey, to spare our humility. On my donkey I learned a great lesson: we are called to be like the donkey that carried Jesus to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Our vocation is to be bearers of Christ Jesus. We are earthen vessels carrying a precious treasure in their hearts. On every side, it is the same thing.
The signs confirm that Jesus is the Messiah: “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor” (Luke 7:22). Before, we strove to feed a people who were not hungry for God. The worst was that we ourselves had not savoured the Bread of Eternal Life. And now, we cannot manage to feed everyone. The harvest is abundant, too abundant, but the Lord is even greater and more powerful.
The Lord has lit the wick, and now there is a fire that no one can extinguish. It is also a river of Living Water that is flooding the Church, purifying it, renewing it and sanctifying it. Several couples who were living in concubinage became aware of the fact that they could not go on living that way. Having discovered the importance of the Sacrament, they prepared themselves seriously to receive it and live it. In one year, we celebrated 306 marriages, a quite unusual figure.
The greatest miracle I witnessed during these years is that the Lord raised up workers for his harvest. The catechists are numerous now. We have so many that our first responsibility is to form them and make them capable of transmitting the Good News. At the Pentecost of the year 1976, there were 120 of us catechists asking for a new outpouring of the Spirit upon us all. The Spirit was no longer only a gift for the joy of our heart, but a special strength to proclaim to the world that Christ lives and gives life to those who believe in his name.
I began to receive letters from France, from Latin America, from the Philippines. Others write to me from countries that I cannot even locate on the map; sometimes I receive correspondence in languages and with signs that I do not understand. Since I do not understand what these letters say, I simply place them in the hands of the Lord, and I ask him, who understands them, to be so kind as to answer them. I have no memory of ever having had such good health as now. I eat anything, I sleep well.
The Lord has given me back perfect health, and I am happy to put it at the service of the evangelization of his people.
However, I believe the greatest gift he has given me is that of joy. I am happy full-time. I had never lived my priesthood as fully as now.
III JESUS IS ALIVE
During the month of June 1981, after an evangelization tour in Algeria and Morocco, God gave me the grace of visiting the Holy Land. The day after my arrival, I rose very early, before sunrise, and I entered those old winding alleys of the city of Jerusalem, always retracing the path of Mary Magdalene on the day of the Resurrection. Arriving at the Holy Sepulchre, I met a Mexican friend who had gone to get married in Cana to a pretty Puerto Rican girl.
As we entered, he pointed out to us an inscription in Greek that said: “Why do you seek among the dead the one who is alive? He is not here; he has risen.” I have not yet come out of the stupor of that early morning, which is like an echo of Easter Sunday. He who died on the cross has abandoned his tomb and is alive. From the darkness of that tomb a light has sprung forth that illuminates all human beings, to begin a new creation. If Jesus is not in the empty tomb of Jerusalem, certainly he is everywhere in the world.
The only place on this earth where Jesus is not found is that tomb cut in the rock that one of his friends, Joseph of Arimathea, had once lent him. Jesus did not send his apostles to teach theories or abstract ideas, but to bear witness to what they had seen and heard. But, unfortunately, it seems that we are more concerned with teaching a doctrine than with communicating life. To grow in the Life of God, one must first be born by the power of the Holy Spirit.
An evangelizer is above all a witness who has a personal experience of the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, and who transmits to others, more than a doctrine, a living person who gives Life in abundance. Afterwards, only afterwards, and always afterwards, must one teach catechesis and morality. Sometimes we worry that people may fulfil the commandments of God before they even know the God of the commandments. We must not forget that these were given after the theophany of Mount Sinai.
No one can be an authentic messenger of the Gospel if he himself has not experienced the new life that Jesus Christ brings. When we give witness to what the Lord has done since his Resurrection, then everything changes. The preaching is accompanied by the signs and wonders the Lord has promised. At Janico, one day, the parish priest invited us to give a retreat, warning us that the people were hard of heart and did not like going to church. When we arrived, the first evening, there were not many people.
But lying prostrate on the ground there was a man who looked like a rag doll, who could not stand upright. Moreover, he was paralysed in both hands and could neither eat nor walk by himself. In truth, it was pitiful to see. This man, here! In my soul, I thought: but why do they bring this man here? As I considered his so pitiable appearance, I said: “We are going to pray for this man, so that afterwards you may take him away with you. At the beginning of the prayer, he began to sweat and tremble.
Seeing him, I remembered that I too had felt a great heat when the Lord healed me. So I said to him: “Rise up, the Lord is healing you.” Then I took his hand and ordered him to walk. He walked as far as the tabernacle. There he gave his testimony and said that it had been 19 years since he himself... I said to myself: “Fortunately I did not know that he had been immobile for so long, for otherwise I would not have dared to tell him to get up.” That afternoon, after everyone had left the church, we crossed the street and sat down on the church square.
As he sat down, the man added: “But the Lord has also healed my hands; I can move them...” Thanks to this paralysed man, our hall was filled the next day. Not everyone could get in. Several stood behind the shutters and at the door of the church. The day we accept the power of witness, our preaching will change. Before, I prepared my homilies a great deal. I studied the classical authors and read the modern theologians. My readings were so good and so deep that I wanted to lose nothing of what I meant to say.
So I wrote everything on a piece of paper and read it, to make the most of this richness I wanted to transmit. However, the Lord transformed me on this point too. One Sunday, before my well-drafted homily notes, the Lord said to me: “If you, who have studied so much and read so much, are not capable of engraving this in your memory simply to repeat it, how do you want these simple people, who do not have the preparation you had, to engrave it in their hearts in order to live it?” From then on, I changed my preaching.
Now I do nothing but give witness to the power of God and to what he is doing, and I tell examples of God's love. I also learned another very important thing: the essential thing is not to speak well of Jesus, but to let him act with all the power of the Holy Spirit. What is the use of wanting to speak wonderfully about Jesus if we can let him act through us? The Kingdom of God is power and strength that come from on high and manifest themselves among us. Once, I preached a very long time, more than an hour.
At the end of my homily, a priest came up, a little irritated, and said, showing his watch: “I did not like Father Tardif's conference, for in 67 minutes he spoke about miracles, and more miracles, without referring to any of those in the Gospel.” Another person who heard him answered: “Why speak of the miracles of 2000 years ago, if one can speak of those Jesus worked last week?” As for me, I would not have enough of all the rest of my life to tell everything God has done in these last ten years, so numerous and countless are his wonders.
That is why, when I only have an hour, I must tell the most recent blessings. I have already preached on the 5 continents, always saying the same thing, because I have nothing else to say. I always repeat the same thing: the merciful love of God. I am a witness of God's love for human beings, for all human beings of every country and every language. The power of the Holy Spirit has transformed me into a witness of the living Christ. Sometimes one does not even have time to eat. After several hours of travel, with fatigue, one begins to work directly.
But the Lord manifests his strength through our weakness. At the retreat of Lourdes, in France, there were priests from various European countries. It was very tiring to begin hearing confessions after the conferences, then to give another one or celebrate a Eucharist. After a conference, some priests came to confess. The first was a Dutch priest who did not speak French well. After his confession, he asked me: “Father, can you pray for my healing? I am mute in the left ear.”
It was so odd that I was on the point of bursting out laughing because of his “mute ear,” and I said: “Lord, if you heal this one, it will be the greatest healing in the whole world.” As for me, I was only waiting for one thing, that he leave so that I could laugh to my heart's content, but immediately afterwards another priest came in and found me laughing... I did not forget that expression, “mute in the left ear,” and I smiled all the while the confessions lasted. Then the priests said of me: “How happy Father Émilien is; although he has so much work, he is always cheerful.”
Others said: “How pleasant it is to go to confession with a priest who always has a smile to welcome you.” The Lord made use of this “mute in the left ear” to show me that he is a God of joy, who is happy to receive us when we draw near to him. Our God has a lot of humour, there is no doubt about it. One day, as I was preaching before a crowd in a stadium, a person asked me: “Father, do you not feel fear or timidity speaking before so many people?”
As for me, I answered him with a smile: “When one is sure of transmitting good news, one can climb onto the rooftops, give witness in the prisons, and preach in the stadiums. I do nothing but simply give witness to what I have seen; and otherwise, I assure you, it would bore me to speak, even with you.” The tiresome thing is that, when someone does not have the experience of the living Christ, he has to speak of a thousand things, except Jesus.
In our day, we do not need a new Gospel but a new evangelization: to proclaim with power and effectiveness that Christ lives — not by repeating theories we have heard or read, but by giving our own witness. Today, we must evangelize with the power of the Spirit, accompanying our preaching with the signs and wonders that must be normal in the preaching of the Gospel.
At the congress in Montreal in June 1977, there were more than 55,000 people filling the Olympic Stadium at the closing Mass. There was Cardinal Roy, 6 bishops and 920 priests. There was also the mayor of the city, and near the altar more than 100 sick people in their wheelchairs. We led the prayer for the sick. The whole stadium was praising God, when suddenly a woman, Rose Aimée, who had suffered from sclerosis for eleven years, rose from her wheelchair and began to walk before everyone's eyes. On the other side, a man stood up, then another further away, then yet another!
12 paralysed people rose from their wheelchairs and began to walk. The people applauded and wept, filled with emotion. The mayor of the city in person sobbed like a child. When God manifests himself, there is no man who is great: all are small. He wept with happiness and emotion. The next day, the city's main newspaper said: “Astonishment at the Olympic Stadium: the lame walk.” The Montreal newspaper said: “those who were prostrate on their beds rise up and walk.” What is surprising is not that the sick were healed.
What would have been astonishing is that they were not healed. What would be strange is that Jesus does not keep his promises. I remember that, the next day, I was interviewed on television and asked: “Do you not believe that all these healings are due to the mass effect, to emotion, to the applause of the people?” As for me, I answered: “Well then, you should explain to me why, in no football or baseball game, has any paralysed person ever stood up, nor any cancer victim been healed, when his favourite team wins.”
The only answer is that Jesus has risen and that he is alive today in our midst. Let us not seek any other explanation, for we will always go astray. One day, I was eating when someone asked me an indiscreet question: “Father, are you sure you have the gift of healing?” As for me, I could not answer on the spot, and everyone looked at me, awaiting my answer. Then I said: “Well, I am sure that I have the mission of evangelizing... and that signs and healings always accompany the preaching of the Gospel.
As for me, I only preach and pray, while God heals the sick. That is how we have formed a good working team, and we get on well together. The Lord's plans sometimes make me laugh, for he has a lot of humour when he places a country priest before the theologians of various countries so that he may preach the Good News. As for me, I teach them nothing. I only give them the witness of the mercy of the Heart of Jesus. In 1981, I preached a retreat for 320 priests in Lisieux, France, with Father Albert de Monléon.
There were many very intelligent priests there, others very critical, and even the sceptics were not lacking. After a wonderful exposition by Father de Monléon, it was my turn to speak. I felt very small before these learned men who had so many titles. I felt poor before Cardinal Suenens and the other bishops. So I prayed to the Lord and said to him: “Lord, what is a priest doing here, who has come from such a small island, before these learned men who do not even know where his country is situated? Do not leave me alone, Lord, I beg you.”
Fortunately, the first night, the Lord healed a priest who suffered from phlebitis, and thanks to that all the discussions came to an end. I remember how the next morning, in the dining room, he lifted his trousers and showed his two legs completely healed. That testimony served more to manifest the glory of God than my poor conferences.
One day, after a conference I gave to the clergy in Lyon, Cardinal Renard, surprised by the wonderful healings of the Lord, stood up and said: “It is difficult for us to accept the mysterious action of the Holy Spirit, because we are so rational and so rationalistic — all of us, more or less, sons of Descartes, and each one of us even has a little Voltaire within him. That is why it is so hard for us to assimilate the action of the Spirit, who blows where he wills, without confining himself to the logical moulds of our reason. We lay down rails for him to follow, and he flies outside them.
We offer him a conduit through which he may blow, and he does it alongside. The Holy Spirit does not follow our pastoral programme. Certainly, we need a pastoral method. But the basis of all pedagogy of faith consists precisely in the acceptance of the fact that it is not we who direct his action, but he who directs ours. Every methodology must be sufficiently permeable for the Spirit to be able to use it and, even more, to transform it. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are different and present.
Perhaps because of our rationalism or our lack of faith, we think that these gifts are stories from the past. Today's world is in search of men of the Spirit, of Christian prophets inspired by the Spirit. But if it does not find them, it will follow the demented, which is very, very dangerous. The Church is a permanent Pentecost, not a permanent rationalization. These last words of the Cardinal remind me of an anecdote.
One day, Jesus was with his disciples and he asked them: “And you, who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter stood up and answered: “You are the eschatological theophany that ontologically nourishes the intentionality of our subconscious and interpersonal relationships.” Jesus opened his eyes wide, surprised, and asked: “What, what?” And Peter could not repeat it, for he had forgotten his definition. That was not something he had in his heart, but only in his mind. The world is tired of listening to theories and literary anthologies.
It is hungry for living and effective words that bring about what they contain. “Today's world is tired of following masters. It lets itself be carried away only by witnesses,” Paul VI said. Witnesses who have experienced the new life brought by Jesus. The Gospel of Saint Luke tells that on Sunday evening, two disciples of Jesus were returning from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They were sad and dejected, for with the death of their master all their hopes of restoration had vanished.
Jesus himself joined them on the way, and one of them, named Cleophas, began to give a course in Christology to Jesus himself, whom he was not able to recognize. He recalled forcefully each of his deeds, his miracles and his words. He told of his cruel death on the cross, of which a whole people had been witness, but when he came to the Resurrection, he could not speak of his own experience and contented himself with repeating what some women said the angels had said.
Thus, in the Church, some preachers only repeat what the theologians have written or what their masters taught in their courses, but they themselves have no personal experience of the resurrection of Christ Jesus. As long as one has not had that personal encounter with the risen Jesus, one will repeat theories and teachings that others said they had lived. We are called to be witnesses of what we preach. But, in order to be an authentic witness, one must have made the personal experience of what one proclaims, have lived it in one's own flesh.
One day I was taken to visit the magnificent hydroelectric complex of Itaipú, in Paraguay. It was impressive. The men and even the trucks seemed to be insignificant ants before the gigantic concrete curtains of the dam. So much energy is produced there that it covers the needs of the whole country, as well as part of those of Brazil and Argentina. At nightfall, we were on our way back, and I noticed that some of the houses of the workers of the thermoelectric plant had no electric current and were only dimly lit by little wax candles.
A few metres from the largest turbines and generators in the world, there was no electricity but candles. That is because the necessary wiring had not been done to bring the energy to their houses. This is what also happens to us sometimes. Our life, instead of being lit by electricity, is lit by candles, because we are not connected to Jesus, who is the light of the world. There are even people who work in the Church's services, but the light is not in their hearts.
We are like those tourists who, before a beautiful landscape, use their Polaroid camera to take a photo and then, instead of admiring the real landscape and being captivated by it, look at the paper photograph. There are many Christians who have kept the static photograph of Jesus and do not know him “face to face,” because they have never had a personal encounter with him. They only repeat what they have seen and heard, but they have not experienced the new life.
Eternal life consists precisely in knowledge, that is, the experience of God and of his envoy Jesus Christ. The true evangelizer is the one who presents his personal witness, his own experience of salvation, and can testify that Jesus is alive, because he has had a personal encounter with him, like the apostles who declare: “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). The true evangelizer is not the one who speaks about Jesus, but the one who is able to present the living Jesus to the evangelized people, so that they may say to him like the Samaritans: “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the saviour of the world” (John 4:42).
But no one will be able to transmit the life of the risen Christ if he has not first himself experienced the living Jesus today.
IV
WORD OF KNOWLEDGE
Much has been said lately about the word of knowledge, which some, by a more exact translation, call the “word of knowledge.” It is a very beautiful charism through which God reveals and communicates what has happened, or is happening, in the history of the salvation of persons. Thanks to this revelation, one can reach the root of a problem, or the cause of a blockage, or the knowledge of a healing. One day a lady arrived, very distressed because of her daughter, whom a strange illness had obliged to give up her studies.
I was told that the young girl suffered very strange attacks. She often fainted, as if suffering from epilepsy. They had consulted several doctors with no result. They went to psychologists without obtaining improvement. They even made the mistake of going to sorcerers. It was then that they arrived at the obvious conclusion of the need for an exorcism. The mother spoke, but the young girl kept silent. She did not even answer my questions. Having no information and not knowing what to ask for her, I prayed in tongues.
Then there came to me a word that kept hammering my mind continuously: “abortion.” I opened my eyes and asked her whether she had had something to do with an abortion. She was surprised and asked me:
“Who told you that?”
With tears in her eyes, she told me that she had had relations with her fiancé and had become pregnant. Being from a very well-known family, she was very afraid and decided to have an abortion. But since then, she had burdened herself with a double sin, and at that very thought, she fainted. She repented, went to confession, and we prayed for her inner healing. The Lord forgave her and healed her, and she no longer fainted. The Lord had given us “the knowledge” of the root of the problem. She was neither possessed nor suffering from any illness whatsoever.
Through this gift of “knowledge” or “word of knowledge,” God can also reveal the healings he is working in the midst of the community. Then what the Lord is doing is communicated to the whole assembly. In 1975, I was appointed delegate of the Dominican Republic to the Conference of leaders of the Charismatic Renewal in Rome. When I communicated this to my superiors, they answered me: “Give your place to someone else, for it is better that the country be represented by someone who is a native of the country.”
I had much difficulty accepting it, because I thought I was losing a wonderful opportunity to get to know the Renewal better, although, in faith, I discovered the will of God through the decision of my superiors. The day I was supposed to go to Rome by plane, I went on horseback to visit a community lost in the mountain. I celebrated Mass and prayed for the sick. While I was praying in tongues, a very strong word came to my mind: epilepsy. I continued to pray, then I kept silence, and at last I took the risk of faith by asking: “Is there anyone here who suffers from epilepsy?”
“The Lord is healing you.” There were a few moments of a very intense silence that seemed to me an eternity, then the school principal raised her hand and said: “Father, it is my daughter; look at her.” Beside her was a young girl of about fifteen, who was sweating and trembling. She had been ill since her birth. But the Lord healed her completely, and she had no more attacks. It was the first time the Lord gave me a word of knowledge.
On the day I obeyed my superiors, the Lord made me a gift that served me much more in my ministry than all the conferences I could have listened to in Rome. The word of knowledge is a charism of the Spirit that greatly surprises those who live this experience. It is the communication of an inner certainty, a certainty that is acquired neither by reflection nor by deduction. It is like an idea that invades our mind with intensity. It seizes us like a word without sound, a word that comes from within our being and remains present in our mind for a long time.
And the result is that, with this thought in our mind, we are sure of something which we know does not come from us, but through us. What is certain is that it exists. I believe Nathan had a word of knowledge when he discovered the secret of David's heart (2 Sam 12:1-15). Peter also had a word of knowledge in the case of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11). The word of knowledge seems to be of the same order as prophecy.
One day, I was preaching a retreat in Samaná, in the Dominican Republic. In the middle of the exposition, there came to me a word of knowledge that I turned over insistently in my mind. To concentrate on my conference, I stopped and said: “There is a man here who came to the retreat defying his wife. She invited him, guaranteeing him that if he came, he would change his life. He answered: 'I will go to your retreat, but I will not change.' This man is here, and the Lord tells him that he respects his freedom. But let him remember what Saint Augustine said: 'I fear God who passes by and does not return.'
At the back of the church, a tall, strong man fell to his knees and began to weep. After Mass, he came up to the priest and confirmed all the details of the word of knowledge. He went to confession, gave his life to God, and added: “Father, if you need me for something, I am available.” It is therefore a clear idea that comes to our thought. As we communicate it, details appear.
This experience is similar to reading a message written on the tissues of a box of Kleenex: on the first tissue are the words I must read; then I remove that tissue and read what the second says. One cannot read or understand what is written on the third without having read the other two. In the same way, one communicates the first message, and immediately afterwards one completes it as it is being transmitted. How can one recognize the authenticity of a word of knowledge? Only by the results.
The testimonies are the thermometer that determines whether the word comes from the Lord or not. Some ministries will only bear fruit if they are accompanied by testimonies: thus, for example, if healings are announced by a word of knowledge but these are not confirmed by testimonies, it would seem dubious and could arouse criticism rather than praise to God. In November 1982, I preached a series of retreats in French Polynesia. A Mass for the sick was prepared on the grounds of the archbishopric of Tahiti.
That evening, there were more than 5,000 people on the esplanade, under a sky full of stars that reminded me of God's promise to Abraham. After Communion, I said a prayer for the sick. That whole crowd was praying in tongues. It was a moment full of fervour and faith. While the Spirit was singing in us, words of knowledge began to come. These messages are facilitated by prayer in tongues, because the channel of our mind is empty and therefore more available to receive the Lord's Word. Among these words, there was one that surprised me by its precision.
I transmitted it as it came to my mind: “There is a person here who comes to Mass for the first time. She has come from very far. She suffers in her spine, at the height of the fourth vertebra. Her pain was caused by the fall of a coconut. At this moment a great heat invades your back. The Lord is healing you. You will soon give testimony of your complete healing.” The next day we had another eucharistic celebration. The assembly had grown even more.
There we lived an unforgettable experience of the power and mercy of God. Before finishing, we took advantage of the opportunity to ask for the testimonies of the people healed the day before. We heard wonderful testimonies. Among others, there was that of a lady who told us: “As for me, I have been a Protestant since my birth. I had never attended a Catholic Mass until yesterday.
As I suffered a great deal in the spine, and learning that the Lord had healed several sick people during the previous day's Eucharist, I let myself be convinced by a friend, and I came last night to ask God for my healing, even though I had to make a long journey to come here. When the priest announced that a person suffering in the spine was being healed, I felt an intense heat rising in my back. When he added that it was at the level of the 4th vertebra, I understood that it was me.
But what astonished me most was when he affirmed that this pain had been caused by the fall of a coconut. A year and a half ago, while I was selling coconuts to tourists, I knocked them down from the coconut tree with a stick. And one of them fell on my back, wounding my fourth vertebra. As I was pregnant then, I could not be operated on. The doctor preferred to wait for the child to be born before operating on me. He told me he did not know very well how to operate, because the vertebra had become as if welded.
As for me, I suffered a great deal, especially at night, looking for a more comfortable position in my bed to fall asleep. Last night, when I felt that heat and that trembling, I wept a great deal. I felt a great presence of the Lord in me. When I got home, I realized that I was completely healed. As for me, I no longer have any pain in the spine, and I want to give thanks to the Lord publicly.
I too gave thanks to the Lord, for the details were all exact, which helped me myself to believe even more in the word of knowledge as a word that comes to us from the Spirit, and not as a physical sensation or psychological knowledge, because the details are too exact to be the fruit of imagination. In this precise case, I was able to verify, by the cassette of the recorded testimony, that all the details coincided. When this lady gave her testimony, everyone praised the Lord, and the faith in the presence of the Risen Jesus grew even more in the Christian community.
The same thing happened to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, when Jesus revealed to her through a word of knowledge: “You are right in saying that you have no husband, for you have had five, and the one you have now is not your husband. In this you have spoken truly.” After her conversation with Jesus, the Samaritan woman ran out of the town and said to the people: “Come away, and see a man who told me all that I ever did.
Can he be the Messiah?” (John 4:29). Thus, just as the people of Samaria were converted through a word of knowledge, so through this charism of the word of knowledge the community is built up, faith grows, and the assembly praises the Lord. One day, Cardinal Suenens asked me to write an article explaining how this word of knowledge comes to our mind. I answered him: “Your Eminence, I do not know very well how to explain this charism. It is as difficult as if you asked me to write an article on how a distraction comes to our mind.”
In the summer of 1982, I was asked to make 9 television programmes on the Charismatic Renewal for station CHOT in Ottawa. These half-hour programmes were recorded on videocassettes, to be broadcast at the end of the following autumn. During the prayer for the sick in the last programme, I had certain words of knowledge announcing the healings the Lord was working. I said: “At this moment, there is a man who is alone in a hospital. He is sick in the back, but the Lord is healing him. He feels a heat invading his back. He can get up and walk.”
As I was returning home, I remembered that the programme was not going out live, but that it would be broadcast several months later. I was a little perplexed, and I even thought: “Perhaps this man has not yet entered the hospital, and I have already announced his healing in the Name of the Lord.” I laughed a lot at the humour of our God. At the end of January, I received a letter from B.G., who had had a delicate problem, and he wrote this to me: “16 January 1983: because of an illness, I stopped working; I had two displaced vertebrae in my back. The exercises and the therapy were useless.
In December, I underwent a surgical operation that lasted 4 hours, and I regained the movement of my right leg. On the day of my operation, 9 December, my heart was torn by a terrible trial for me and my family. On 18 December, I was in hospital, weak physically and morally. My faith seemed dead. At 6:35 p.m., I switched on the television. The programme “Amour sans frontières” (Love without Borders) was ending, and you were saying: “A man alone in his hospital room suffers in his back, and at this moment Jesus is beginning to heal him. He feels a great presence of God in his whole being.
Later he will testify to his healing.” That is how the programme ended. There was not enough time left for the final song. As for me, I was all in tears, deeply impressed. How, I said to myself, could Jesus unite himself to a heart so wounded, so frustrated, so closed? But is it not for these hearts that he died? Today, a month later, I am telling you this. My healing is progressing wonderfully. For the first time in my life, I know the peace of unconditional forgiveness. As at Tahiti, all the details were verified.
The only thing, a little special, was that the Lord had announced to me in June a healing that was going to take place the following 18 December, and I had said “at this moment...” Through this testimony, I learned something much more important. The Lord is not limited by time: he could give a word that announced what would happen later, by saying “at this very moment.” From this, I conclude that God has neither clock nor calendar. He is the eternal present.
V
HEALING
There are three types of illness, and each of them requires a special prayer for its healing. 1) Bodily illness, caused by multiple causes, requires a simple prayer of physical healing. 2) Sickness of the heart, caused by an emotional wound, calls for a prayer of inner healing. 3) Sickness of the spirit, due to sin, is healed by Jesus through faith, in converting us. We only want to stress 2 essential points: 1) The unity of the human being: Although composed of a body, a soul and a spirit (1 Thess. 5:23), the human being is one and indivisible. We have divided him only for pedagogical reasons. 2) Interdependence: The body, the soul and the spirit are connected at levels that cannot be specified. But they always depend on one another.
A. Sickness of the body and physical healing. First of all, we did not think of going deep into the theme of physical healing, since the whole book is a living testimony of the “healing” action of the Lord. Moreover, many and very good books and articles have already been written on this theme, so fascinating for the Charismatic Renewal. We only want to witness that the Gospel is true in the 20th century, by adding certain considerations that seem relevant to us. All of God's saving activity has been manifested in two forms: by deeds and by words.
Saint Luke wonderfully summarizes the action of Jesus when he says: “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1). Vatican Council II shows us the two faces of the same coin when it affirms: “Revelation is made through deeds and words intrinsically bound up with each other. Just as the deeds manifest and confirm the doctrine, so the words in their turn proclaim the deeds and explain them” (Dei Verbum, n. 2). At the end, it concludes how Christ Jesus (Event and Word of God) is the fulness of revelation.
There are some who affirm that what matters is spiritual healing and not physical healing. Others think that the healings are accidental; that the charism of healing is not essential, and that above all must come charity. I believe that this distinction of “essential-accidental” does not appear in the New Testament. Rather than making divisions, we must ask ourselves: Does God want to heal his children?
As for the fact that Charity is the charism par excellence, I completely agree, but who can deny that healing is a wonderful vehicle through which charity towards those who suffer is revealed? Charity is not ethereal or abstract, but concrete, like a healed person. The gift of healing is fundamentally a gift of charity. In the Gospels, the verb “to heal” appears 40 times, and moreover, in about a dozen occasions, the verb that is usually translated as “to save” also means “to heal.” That is, the act of “saving” includes the action of “healing.”
“Take heart, daughter, your faith has saved you” = healed you. And from that moment, the woman was healed, saved (Mt 9:22). “And all who touched the cloak of Jesus were saved,” healed (Mt 14:36). “Do not fear; only believe, and your daughter will be saved” = healed (Luke 8:50). See on this subject: (Matt. 14:36) (Mark 3:4; 5:23-28; 6:56; 10:52) (John 11:12) (Acts 14:9). The salvation brought by Jesus seizes the whole human being. Jesus did not come to save only souls. The whole human being interests him: body and soul.
a) Jesus. It would be superfluous and exhausting to offer biblical quotations on the healing ministry of Jesus. The whole Gospel is only an endless chain of merciful acts of Jesus, who heals the sick. We only want to present a few texts that have a special significance. First of all, the presentation of Jesus' ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour” (Luke 4:18-19).
Thus we see that the mission of Jesus was to heal both physically and in the inner man, and to free from every bond that makes man a slave, especially sin (cf. Mt 4:23-25). Jesus says elsewhere that the physician did not come to call the healthy but the sick, not the righteous but sinners. His mission is not to be debated; the problem is that we recognize the necessity of his salvation.
That is why he makes us a recommendation which is a word full of mercy and confidence: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).
His name in Hebrew, Y'shua, means “God saves.” He is the integral salvation of the whole human being and of all human beings.
b) The Church. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). The 12 apostles continue, in time and space, the saving work of Jesus. They are responsible for spreading the fruits of the redemptive work of Christ Jesus. They are sent to preach and to heal at the same time. They are not only those who transmit a word, but also the bearers of Jesus' salvation. The Church is not only the one that proclaims the Good News that has saved us, but also the one that bears that salvation (the sacrament of salvation) (Texts: Mt 10:5-8, Luke 9:16).
This mission is not reduced to the twelve, but extends to the seventy-two disciples. “Heal the sick who are there, and tell them: 'The kingdom of God has come near to you'” (Luke 10:9). And, at the end of the Gospel of Mark, we see that this mission extends not only to the 12, not only to the 72, but also to “all who believe.” “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.”
“And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:15-18). The last sentence of the Gospel of Mark is not the end of the Gospel; it extends to us. “They went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it” (Mark 16:20).
One of the characteristics that distinguishes the authentic apostle is the presence of signs, wonders and miracles (2 Cor. 12:12 and Romans 15:19).
c) The signs. Curiously, we find in the 4th Gospel that John does not speak of miracles or healings but of “signs.” A sign always leads us to the signified. Thus, as smoke shows us the existence of fire, so a miracle or a healing signifies to us that God is there, acting and saving. These are visible signs of the invisible action of God. Healings are lighthouses that indicate to us: 1) That Jesus is alive today and that he has the same power as in Samaria and in Galilee to heal the sick.
2) That God loves us and wants the integral salvation of the human being, of his body and his soul. 3) That Jesus is the Messiah. When the disciples of John the Baptist went to ask Jesus whether he was the Messiah, he did not answer, but began to heal the sick. Often one does not admit the miracles and healings, because they also imply the acceptance of Jesus and of his demands. Because accepting the signs implies recognizing their signified. That is why they are denied.
After a retreat, I returned home and told the wonders of the Lord. There was a French priest who listened to me attentively, but incredulously. I told him how, during the healing Mass, the Lord gave back speech to the wife of the leader of the prayer group. She had just publicly given her testimony before the crowd, whereas for four and a half years she had been unable to utter a single word. But the priest told me, very sure of himself: “The miracle is not where you think.”
“What,” I asked, “what are you saying?” And he answered: “The miracle is not in the fact that she can speak, but in the fact that a woman spent four and a half years without speaking...” Healings are not demonstrations of the truthfulness of a doctrine. It is God who saves. Jesus does not heal to prove that he is God, but because he is God. Every sign serves to manifest something. Such is the purpose of the healings the Lord works.
They come to remind us, in this time governed by efficiency and pragmatism, that our God is present in our midst and is capable of working wonders. They demonstrate the power of God, so that we may abandon ourselves fully to him, in all the aspects of our human life. That the miracles are signs, the following testimony shows it: One afternoon, I was visiting a policeman, Captain Muñoz. He was dying in his bed. He had not eaten for 50 days. He only drank alcohol every 3 hours.
We prayed for him, and the Lord freed him from his inclination to alcohol in an extraordinary way. He immediately stopped drinking and did not even need to go through the hospital for his detoxification. I remembered that word of Wisdom: “It was neither herb nor salve that cured them, but your word, O Lord, which heals all things” (Wisdom 16:12). The next day, he replaced the bottle of rum with the Bible, and he read it weeping and said: “How good the Lord is!”
However, this brought me a lot of problems, because the next day there were shouts and quarrels outside the church. The women whose husbands drank formed a queue and tried to hold back their husbands so that we would pray for them. It was curious to see more drunkards in the church than in the taverns and bars. The Lord wanted to free this policeman in this way, to awaken faith in his NAME, but this did not happen that way in every case. The sick who have confidence in Jesus should also put something of their own into it. Just as not all policemen are drunkards like Captain Muñoz, so not all drunkards receive health in the same way. But what matters is that through such a case, faith may grow in the saving power of God, who can change our life in whatever way pleases him.
d) Miracles and healings. All healings are not miracles of the Lord. There are healings obtained through prayer that should not be considered miracles. We speak of miracles when it is a matter of a healing that no medical science could obtain and that God works. In the cases where the Lord accelerates the healing process, which could have been obtained by an operation, rest or other means, we say simply “Healing.”
Thus, not every healing received in prayer can be called “miracuous.” At Lourdes, among the many healings obtained in a century, very few have been accepted as “miracuous,” as the following statistic indicates: “Since Catherine Latapie, healed in March 1858, up to Serge Perrin, healed in 1978, 64 miraculous healings have been confirmed by the Church. However, it must not be forgotten that in 1972, 5,432 known cases of healings had already been recorded in the archives.” An example of a miraculous healing would be the case of Anita Siu de Sheffer.
There, the Lord did what medicine could not do. During a car accident, ten years earlier, in Chile, a brain lesion made her completely lose her sense of taste and smell. Being of a well-to-do social class, she went to the best hospitals in the United States, hoping to recover her health. After examinations and therapies, the doctors informed her of the impossibility of operating, because the transmission fibres of these functions were finer than a hair. Literally, they had told her that only a “miracle” could make her recover these two senses.
She lost hope of ever again tasting flavours and smelling scents and flowers. During the Mass for the sick in Chitré, Panama, the Lord gave us several words of knowledge about what he was doing in the assembly. One of them said: “There is a lady here who suffers from a very serious illness. She is going to be healed during the night, and tomorrow she will testify to her total healing.” The next day, Anita realized that she had recovered her sense of smell. She woke up with the sweet smell of the roses that were near her window, and the aroma of the coffee in the kitchen.
She jumped up and told her husband the wonder. She had breakfast, with tears in her eyes, and immediately realized that she could savour the food for the first time since her accident. What no doctor in this world could do, the Lord Jesus, master of the impossible, had done. Then, weeping with joy, she said to the whole assembly: “I have 2 children, but I had never been able to smell their scent. You mothers, you know what it is to smell your children's scent.
Well, this morning, I went up to them, I kissed them and I began gently to smell their scent.” (1) cf. “La guérison dans la mission de l'Église,” p. 132, by Abbé G. Seigneur, Éditions S.O.S., rue du Bac, Paris. Another very beautiful testimony of miraculous healing was written by the person herself, in her letter of 25 August 1981: “I suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. It is not a disease that can be confused with arthritis or rheumatism, illnesses proper to people of a certain age, without serious consequences.
Rheumatoid arthritis has unknown causes, and one does not know how to cure it. It attacks the joints, producing great pain, and the body rejects them. The person's body hardens, becomes deformed, and she ends up in a wheelchair. It began last October with pains in the ankles, the knees and the wrists, with a general fatigue. Thinking it was not serious, I went to the doctor, who had me undergo tests that allowed the arthritis to be detected. The laboratory recommended that I go to the United States to seek treatment.
In the arthritis centre where I was treated, I was very impressed by the different phases of the disease. Doctor Alonso Portuondo, the specialist, confirmed the diagnosis and told me that this disease was incurable. One could only make it stationary with gold salts. The remedy has negative effects: I had eruptions over my whole body, lost my hair and the nails of my feet. My count of blood platelets and white cells became abnormal. Then Father É. Tardif came to Paraguay. I listened to him for the 1st time in the church of Saint Alphonsus.
At the moment of the healing, I felt that my heart was going to explode; it beat so strongly that I could hear its palpitations. The second time was in the church of Colonel Oviedo. Again, at the moment of the prayer of healing, I felt a trembling through my whole body. The Father said that at that moment, two women afflicted with arthritis were being healed. He told them to kneel down. In truth, I did not have the courage to do it, because I was not convinced that he was speaking of me, and I did not believe in this type of healing, perhaps for lack of faith. I went to a third Mass.
Then, my pains had disappeared and I was no longer taking medication. My mother asked Sister Marguerite Prince what was the day of Father Émilien's departure, and we were able to meet him again at the airport. He then said, with Father André Car, a prayer for my healing. When he finished, he told me: “Do not say anymore, 'I have arthritis,' but 'I had arthritis,' because you are healed.” My pains disappeared and I was no longer taking medication (whereas I had reached the dose of 12 Ascriptin a day and weekly injections of gold salt). I had tests done and saw that I was truly healed.
Doctor Nicolas Breuer, a very believing man who is my doctor in Asunción, told me: “One must admit that beyond Science, there is something superior, and nothing is impossible for it.” The doctors explained to me that the person who suffers from this disease never loses, even in the hypothesis of her healing, the arthritest, a mark that remains his whole life. It is like the sick person who has had an infarct; he keeps its scar in his heart. Whereas I, I no longer have any trace of the arthritest. The only explanation is a miracle of God (Marie Thérèse Galeano de Báez).
Those who think that healings are something superficial in the ministry of Jesus are completely mistaken. Those who believe that healings are no longer needed today, and that the essential thing is to announce the Gospel, forget Jesus' pastoral method. We plan and seek a thousand ways to attract people who come less and less to church. We organize feasts, concerts, sharing, and so on, and the results are poor. Jesus, he healed the sick, and the people came in masses.
So numerous that one day, a paralysed man was let down through the roof of Peter's house, because there was no way of getting through the crowd. The same thing happens when Jesus heals. Today, the sick are crowds who come, crowds that do not even fit in the stadiums, and it is then that we announce to them the Kingdom of God. The consequences are much greater than the simple physical healings. For the signs of God's power are not only a spectacle; they effectively help the renewal of the life of faith.
This is what the letter of the archbishop of Tahiti to my provincial superior says, of which we transcribe integrally the first part: “Papeete, 30/11/80. Reverend Father, Absent from the diocese during the whole stay of Father Tardif, from 21 October to 14 November, I noticed on my return, on 26 November, the change resulting from his visit. I will not go back over the description that Father Hubert, my brother, has already given you; I would simply like to tell you: 1 - The number of those practising on Sunday has considerably increased;
2 - A certain ecumenical climate has been established;
3 - Spiritual life is everywhere being born or reborn;
4 - The conversions have been important, and the confessions extremely numerous;
5 - The clergy, the religious sisters, the brothers... greatly appreciated the preaching of Father Tardif;
6 - The marriages being prepared will allow the regularization of a quantity of illegitimate unions, and certainly a renewal of family life. Never has the diocese known such a surge of faith. We have had 2 Synods, an Apostolic Visitation, retreats given by excellent priests in the last 15 years... we have known great religious manifestations... but no popular and deep result comparable to this one. Michel Coopenrath, Archbishop of Papeete.” One example among a thousand of what happened. The healings have a very clear objective of which we must take account.
The Archbishop of Brazzaville manifested it in a magnificent way. Tahiti suffices: During the Mass for the sick, a blind man began to weep during the elevation of the Holy Host, and while he was drying his tears he began to see. In meeting Jesus, the light of the world, he recovered the light in his eyes. This greatly impressed Gabilou, a famous singer of the Pacific, 2nd prize in the Eurovision contest. He signed up for the second retreat, during which he repented, went to confession and received Communion.
At the closing Mass he testified, saying: “There have been many healings here, but the greatest one is the one I received, because the Lord has healed me spiritually. It had been 16 years since I had been far from the Christian life and the sacraments, but during this retreat I met Jesus, and I no longer want to live or sing except for him.” He repeated his testimony on television, and then in the Stadium before 20,000 people. Today, he evangelizes with charismatic songs, challenging the young. Jesus is also the Lord of singers and artists.
in a circular letter to all the parishes of his Archdiocese, of which we transcribe a part here:
“Brazzaville, 7 October 83. We have been very happy with the preaching of Father Tardif, who took up the theme of the centenary of the evangelization of the Congo: the renewal of faith. These preachings were often accompanied by spiritual, moral and physical healings. The most striking spectacle in these healings was to see, during the prayer, the sick healed, the paralysed walking, the mute speaking. It was reliving the times of the primitive Church with Jesus.
But let no one forget the objective of these miraculous signs of Jesus: they are a testimony to awaken the faith of those who do not believe, and to strengthen the faith of believers. “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matthew 13:16-17). Father Tardif preached to us a Gospel of truth and not of lies.
To have seen these signs and not to believe, that is what Jesus calls “sinning against the Holy Spirit.” For one refuses to see the truth... which is very serious. The powerful preaching that we have lived through will leave a deep mark that Congolese generations will talk about for a long time, just as people still speak of Jesus Christ, of his sayings and his signs. Monsignor Barthélémy Batantu, Archbishop of Brazzaville.” I believe that the biblical texts, and even the testimonies of the saints in the life of the Church, are so numerous that it is not necessary to justify or to attack the healings.
But the fundamental question should be: “Do I believe that God can heal me? Do I have faith in the healing power of Jesus, which can pass through me to heal other people?” Sometimes we fear the wonders of God for the simple reason that we do not understand them. The bishop of Sangmélima, in Cameroon, had invited me to a priests' retreat. He summoned all his priests, but one of them told him: “I do not want to go, because there they will only speak about miracles, and more miracles.” The bishop answered him: “Go; do not be afraid.
The theme of the retreat is not healing but prayer.” This priest agreed to go, rather on the bishop's suggestion than out of conviction. Thus the retreat began. But on the 3rd day, he stood up before the others and said: “I was suffering from a deforming arthritis in my hands that prevented me even from tying the laces of my shoes. Moreover, I must tell you that I did not want to come to this retreat, for fear that they would only speak about miracles. But during yesterday's Mass, I felt, as it were, a great heat in my hands.
I want to give glory to God, because I am perfectly healed. I can move my hands...” Then, laughing, I added: “You did not want to hear about miracles, and now it is you who never stop proclaiming the wonders of the Lord.” Everyone was laughing and praising God, while he moved his hands and showed them. Our attitude must be one of complete abandonment into the hands of the loving Father. He has a wonderful plan for us.
e) Prayer for the sick. On 8 February 1984, we celebrated a Eucharist for the physical health of the sick people who will read these pages. May they unite themselves by faith to this prayer, placing their life in the hands of Jesus. “Lord Jesus, we believe that you are alive and risen; we believe that you are truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar and in each one of us. We praise you and we adore you. We give you thanks, Lord, for coming to us, as the living Bread come down from Heaven. You are the fulness of life. You are the Resurrection and the life. You are, Lord, the Health of the sick.
Today, we want to present to you all the sick people who read this book, for with You there is no distance, neither in time nor in space. You are the eternal present, and you know them. Now, Lord, we ask you to have compassion on them. Visit them through your Gospel proclaimed in this book, so that all may recognize that you are alive in your Church today, and that their faith and their confidence in You may be renewed.
We beg you, Jesus, have compassion on those who suffer in their body, on those who suffer in their heart, and on those who suffer in their soul, for they pray and read the testimonies of what You are doing through your renewing Spirit throughout the world. Have compassion on them, Lord. From this very moment, we ask it of you. Bless them all, and grant that many may recover their health. May their faith grow, and may they open themselves to the wonders of your love, so that they too may be witnesses of your power and your compassion.
We ask it of you, Jesus, by the power of your holy wounds, by your holy cross and by your precious blood shed for us. Heal them, Lord. Heal them in their body. Heal them in their heart. Heal them in their soul. Give them life, life in abundance. We ask it of you through the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, your Mother, the Virgin of Sorrows, she who was present, standing, near the Cross, she who was the first to contemplate your holy wounds, and whom you have given to us as a mother.
You have revealed to us that you took upon Yourself all our pains, and by your holy wounds we have been healed. Today, Lord, we present to you in faith all the sick people who have asked us for a prayer, and we ask you to relieve their illness and to give them back Health. We ask you, for the glory of the Father in heaven, to heal the sick people who are going to read this book. Grant that they may grow in faith, in hope, and receive health for the glory of your Name, so that your reign may continue to spread more and more in hearts, through the signs and wonders of your love.
We ask all this of you, Jesus, because You are Jesus. You are the Good Shepherd, and we are all little sheep of your flock. We are so sure of your love, that even before knowing the result of our prayer, in faith, we say to you: Thank you, Jesus, for everything you are going to do in each one of them. Thank you for the sick people you are healing at this very moment, whom you are visiting by your mercy. Thank you, Jesus, for everything you are going to do through this book. We place it in your hands from this day on, and we ask you to plunge it into your holy wounds.
Cover it with your divine blood, and may, through this message, your heart of Good Shepherd speak to the hearts of so many sick people who are going to read it.
Glory and praise to You, Lord!
Part II
https://émilientardif.rcmission.net/2016/index.php?Lng=FR&mod=Publications&fct=Ecrits&pag=Jesus_ma_fait_temoin_II.html