Episode Details

Old St. Patrick's Podcast Series Currents: Awakening to the Flow of Spirit in our Lives

John Blake is a 64-year-old father of four and a proud grandfather of four.  He currently works in the maintenance department here at Old St. Pats. As a recovering alcoholic with 27 years of sobriety, John is grateful for the gift of each day and attributes his success to the Blessed Mother and all of the saints. In this episode, John reflects on his life-changing trip to Medjugorje and how the power of prayer helped him find peace with God and his fellow man.

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Text from reflection:

Hi, my name is John Blake. My mom always said that Christ is the hound of heaven. Now, I think she thinks she made  that up, but I'm almost sure that somebody else said it before her. Anyway, she would bother everybody with that notion who would, would listen to her, and then she'd go on to explain what she meant by that. I really think that in addition to Christ, my mom is a hound of heaven, uh, in so many ways. In 2001, my mom called me up. It was in the fall and it was a Thursday night and she said, " your father and I are going to mass, we're going to come and pick you up." I said, "Ma, I'm not going to mass on Thursday. I mean, I don't go on Sunday. Why would I, what, what are you doing? Why are you going to mass tonight?"  So she puts my dad without saying anything else, she puts my dad on the phone, he says, uh," We'll be there to pick you up in the", in his radio voice, "we'll be there to pick you up in a couple of minutes," which meant that, uh, these were, this was one of the few occasions where my dad was serious and he was going to come and pick me up.

So, I got ready. I got out in the car when I got there, my siblings were all there. I go, "what's going on?" I felt like there was going to be an intervention of some kind, although,  I had quit drinking years before and I wasn't sure exactly what I was doing wrong, but I got into the car and I found out we were going to St. Jerome's in Bridgeport, St. Jerome's Croatian, where one of the visionaries from Međugorje  was going to have the vision of the blessed mother on that Thursday, that, that night. And, um, my mom was inviting us to go with, so when I got in the car, my bro, my brother rolled his eyes right away and I'm like, okay, all right, this, okay, mom, we'll, we'll do this. So we get to St. Jerome's and the place is absolutely packed. The cars are triple parked out on the street. There are people all over the sidewalk. There's a line to get in the door. And in fact, once we do get in, we're confined to the hallway, pretty much, we could hear the mass, we couldn't see much of anything at all in there.

So I spent a lot of my time out on that deck, smoking cigarettes and, finally, when it was time for communion my Mother came out and said, "get in this place here, what are you doing out here?" So  I went in the following, her commands. I went in the door and, um, she said, "I have something serious to ask you." I said, "what?"

She said, "there's a man, who's taking a group to Međugorje who's in this mass right now. I spoke with him on the phone, there's room, on his trip for you guys to go, you and your brother Jim, and I would like you to go with them." And I said, "Ma, I can't take 10 days off of work to go on this trip to Međugorje, and nor do I want to."

She looks in the mass and says, "If I can find this guy, will you go?" And I looked at him brother and I, I laughed. I said, "yeah, man, if you could find him, I'll go to Međugorje." So she goes down the aisle and she goes to communion. Uh, she comes back, she stops, she looks, she starts stepping over all these people in the pew and she gets to this little old guy who shakes his bald head, "yes, yes." And she comes back and she points at us and she says, you two are going to Međugorje."

I said, "Mom, was that the guy there? Or are you, are you kidding me? That that's the guy that's t