Healing through the Intercession of St. Sharbel

My husband, Jerzy, and I were coming out from Sunday Mass. It was October 16, 2016. My husband suddenly felt very ill. We quickly got into the car and drove to the hospital. The paramedics immediately took Jerzy to the cardiology ward (it turned out he was suffering his third heart attack) and they took him in for a heart coronagraphy. At that moment it was the hour of Divine Mercy. The children and other family members prayed the Chaplet of Divine Mercy with me. The doctor came out of the operating room and said: “I’m very sorry, his heart function stopped, your husband is being resuscitated.” Tears rolled down my cheeks. I called on the Holy Spirit to guide the hands of the doctor who was resuscitating Jerzy. I asked the Blessed Mother and all the saints for help. I also prayed: “Jesus I trust in You! May Your will be done, just be with me and all of us here.”

After spending 15 minutes resuscitating my husband and connecting him to the medical equipment, they moved him to the intensive care unit (ICU). When the resuscitation team approached us, we overheard: “the patient is alive, but he is 100% dependent on the respirator.” I thanked the doctor, and my daughter asked: “What’s next?” The doctor replied: “We’ve done everything we as a team can do. The rest is in God’s hands.” The doctor also warned us that my husband’s condition was critical. If he were to survive, he might not recognize us, and would likely be a very different person, that is, physically and mentally disabled, and he would most likely be a “vegetable”… Jerzy was in a medically induced coma in the ICU from October 16th to November 8th. The doctors tried to wean him off the medical equipment four times, but each time his lungs started filling with fluid, and he had to be reconnected to the respirator. Additionally on November 1st, the doctors also decided that they needed to operate because an arteriovenous fistula (a kind of a short circuit in blood circulation, where blood bypasses capillaries and flows directly from the arteries to the veins) had formed in his thigh. 

Before the operation I called on St. Sharbel, making the sign of the Cross on my husband’s forehead. At seven o’clock that evening the doctor approached us and said that I and my daughters should go in and say our farewells, since he was “failing to respond” to their treatments. There lay Jerzy connected to all the equipment, with water sprinkled over his entire body like drops on the window in the rain. He was cold, and jaundiced, and the nurse was having trouble drawing his blood. Silently I asked St. Sharbel, St. John Paul II, and the children whom we had lost over the years, as well as all the saints, for a miraculous healing for Jerzy, if it was God’s will. A moment later, we received a sign of God’s love. My husband began to warm up, his color returned, and the nurse managed to draw some blood for testing. But he was still breathing with the respirator. They gave us just a moment longer to stay by his bed. We blessed him with St. Sharbel’s oil and prayed the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. My husband was alive, but the results and the outlook were very poor. He had also suffered a stroke, and sepsis had set in.

When Jerzy had entered the ICU on October 16th in a critical condition, I told my daughter that I very much wanted to get some of the St. Sharbel’s oil. I asked many people that day to pray for my husband’s recovery. Among those who responded was Sister Miriam, who came to the hospital to see us immediately. Tears were streaming down my cheeks, when, to my surprise, Sister gave us some St. Sharbel’s oil. I told her what I had just been saying to my daughter. Sister replied that God’s Providence was watching over us, and that He had sent her to us. From that moment, I anointed Jerzy with the oil every day. When I prayed the Chaplet at his bedside in the hospital, even though he was in a coma, he was praying along with me; his lips were clearly moving. When his sister saw it, she burst into tears. Day after day, many people joined me at Mass. I would also like to add that after one of the Masses which was offered with the intention of my husband’s recovery, I received a relic of St. John Paul II from a friend. With the doctor’s concurrence and with great respect, I brought it into the ICU. I touched the relic to Jerzy’s lips, and blessed him once again with the St. Sharbel’s oil.

On the evening of November 8th, my husband woke up from the induced coma. He could breathe on his own, with just a bit of additional oxygen supplied through his nose. When he opened his eyes and looked at me, I was overcome with joy! I could feel that he recognized me, and it looked like he was smiling slightly. The next day Jerzy was moved to the cardiology ward. We started blessing each other with the St. Sharbel’s oil and praying together. After a certain time he started speaking with some difficulty, but I could understand him. He was aware that he had been in a coma, but he couldn’t grasp the time frame. He understood everything that we said to him. More or less a week after he woke up, he was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital, and after a period of rehabilitation, he was able to walk unassisted. The doctors were amazed. They knew that what they were seeing was not humanly possible. One of the doctors told my husband very frankly that when he had arrived at the ICU, he was convinced that he would not live more than four days. But we know that the Lord God cured Jerzy through the intervention of St. Sharbel.

After returning from the hospital my husband began to tell us about what he had experienced when he was in the coma. At first, he felt like he was lying crushed under a tractor trailer with very low suspension. After a little while longer, he escaped from that, and lying in a bed, he noticed a bearded old man in a hood. The man came every evening and laid down across from him, looking after him. All the medical personnel walked around him so as not to step on him. Beyond that, on the right side of his bed there lay two newborns (we think these must have been the children that we had lost some years prior). When Jerzy recounted this unusual story, I picked up a copy of Love One Another! that had a picture of St. Sharbel on the cover. My husband looked at him and, without hesitating, confirmed that that was exactly the old man who had been visiting him every evening. I should mention that Jerzy had not previously known or heard anything at all about St. Sharbel.

My husband is now in good health. We are aware that he was miraculously healed thanks to the prayers of many people and above all through the intercession of St. Sharbel.

Magdalena