The Healing Journey

December 8, 2023

Barney spent the last years of his life in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he went to live in retirement after 50 years in construction. It hadn’t been an easy life, but it paid the bills and put his kids through college. It had also been a path to alcoholism. When he was a young man, it was easy to drink on the job every day with the guys. But one thing led to another, and the excuses for drinking and getting drunk piled up. Money problems. The kids got into trouble. Arguments with the wife, not to mention arguments with the boss. But most painful of all, after the death of his son, booze helped him forget the grief.

Pretty soon the so-called solution to his problems became the cause of his problems, and he had to do something. So he prayed. When he lived in Ireland, he had a devotion to Our Lady of Knock, and he prayed to her when life overwhelmed him because the Blessed Mother always seemed to have his back.

He prayed to her for help, but he was convinced it wouldn’t come. Getting sober was just too hard, and he was sure he would die from alcoholism. But then, help came and it came in the form of another alcoholic who had gotten sober and showed him how to stay away from a drink one day at a time.

The man became Barney’s sponsor, who always watched over him. It wasn’t easy, but he got sober, and after a year, he stood up in front of his group, and they gave him his one-year coin. Only then, after so many months of struggling, did it occur to him that his anniversary date — the day he finally stopped drinking — was December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The Blessed Mother had been watching out for him all along. Barney went to Mass that day a new man, and when he looked at the image of Our Lady, with rays of grace coming from her hands, he realized she had sent some of those graces his way.

When he died, he had been sober 50 years, and his family was convinced that his true sponsor, Our Lady, was there to greet him.

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