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January-March, 2009

A Long Ago Miracle Retold

Rev. Therese Anne Ward

My husband and I visited our friend of 57 years. I was fourteen and a half when she hired me to clean her house, because her artist hands could not take the hard cleaning solutions. The house was almost new, and every room was decorated with her artistry: china paintings, porcelain dolls, oil paintings, flower arrangements and at Christmas time, 220 hand made beaded ornaments that sparkled on a revolving silver aluminum tree. To me it was a dream home.

Helen Mary is now in her 96th year, as she likes to say, and my husband and I sit and enjoy her telling about making the ornaments from old jewelry and thousands of beads and straight pins; no two alike, with themes of the months and every occasion imaginable. She was pointing out the ones her husband had especially liked; he passed away three years ago, when she remembered how they came to get this house.

“It was St. Anthony who did it,” she says.

It was back in 1950; she and her husband had had a total reconciliation after a four year separation and they were out looking to find a house. Helen Mary had been praying to St. Anthony, the patron saint of finding things, to find them a house that they could afford.

It was the start of summer, when out of curiosity, they drove down a dirt road in Covington, Kentucky, just to have a look, and came upon the only house that was being built there. Though she had been praying to find a house, she never ever was thinking of a new house. They liked what they saw, but didn’t expect to be able to afford a new house.

Helen Mary went back the next day with her mother and her aunt. She “planted” several St. Anthony medals in the lot around the house.

After the workers left for the day, the three women went inside and Helen Mary put more metals in the soft mortar and plaster in the doorways, thirteen medals in all, and continued to pray to St. Anthony to find them a house.

Two days later the women came out and inquired about getting the house. Helen Mary had been saving some money from teaching painting classes; her aunt offered $50.00 and her mother gave another $20.00 and the builder agreed to hold the house for them with a payment of $250.00 “good faith money.”

When the three women were driving back out the dirt road, Helen Mary’s mother exclaimed, “Did you see the name of this road? Indeed Helen Mary had not.
“It is St. Anthony Drive!”

That was 58 years ago and we sit in that same home today. There is more to the story she recounts. Helen Mary was born in 1913, she had “planted” 13 medals in this home and June 13th is St. Anthony’s feast day.

In hearing this true story from her lips, all I could think of and do was to marvel at the power of Focus, Faith and Forgiveness. My husband and I and Helen Mary were all lifted up by her miracle story retold; we left with hugs and kisses and warm hearts filled with the miracle joy of everyday Christ-mas.

© 2009, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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