Hundreds of people at a time turned out in churches and venues across Perth over the last fortnight all seeking one thing: a miracle.
The miracle they were seeking was healing – either from serious or terminal illnesses, injuries or the deep hurts that life can bring.
Visiting New Zealand priest Fr John Rea SM, a man with an extraordinary reputation for healing, led numerous Masses and prayer services across Perth where he and his helpers prayed over those hoping to be cured, whether of cancer or the guilt of having ended the life of an unborn child, to name just a few of the common problems he has been called upon for his ministry.
Time will tell how many, or whether any, healings occurred during his latest visit, but the reports of healings from previous visits to Perth and around the world are too numerous to write off as just another case of religion blinding the credulous to reality.
The Record has already received several individual statements of healing from Fr Rea’s latest visit.
Around 250 or so people turned up at Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament Parish in Gosnells on Thursday evening, October 25, one of several evenings Fr Rea spent in the southern suburbs parish.
As on previous occasions, his visit to Perth had been organised by the Disciples of Jesus, a Catholic, charismatic, covenant community based in Osborne Park.
And, just as he has on previous occasions, Fr Rea emphasised that if a healing occurs he takes no credit; healings come from the Lord through his priestly ministry and through the prayers of those who assist him by also praying over those who come forward.
During an evening which began with charismatic praise and worship, including speaking in tongues – interspersed with members of the congregation coming forward to offer personal accounts of what they believed to be miraculous healings – Fr Rea and his assistants personally prayed over almost all present after the celebration of Mass.
While he urged members of the congregation to be unconcerned about whether he or his assistants prayed over them for their requests, the majority made it clear they wanted the personal prayer of the priest whose reputation includes the apparently miraculous healing of the crushed hand of child prodigy violinist, Sarah McCracken, the healing of Down Syndrome in another New Zealand girl, problems such as infertility and numerous accounts of healed terminal illnesses, including cancer.
However, in his homily, Fr Rea spoke extensively of another kind of healing – that of the family tree.
As many turned up at the church, they took the opportunity to write down the names of family members going back several generations on supplied schematic diagrams.
Many sought the healing of sufferings that seemed to begin in an earlier generation of their family.
In his homily, Fr Rea spoke extensively of how the effects of events such as suicide, marriage breakdowns, abortion and incest can skip down through the generations and bring suffering to the lives of other family members.
His experiences of talking with those who have been healed from such things had led him to conclude that children who die from abortion grow to adult life in heaven.
He recalled one woman who had told him how, experiencing deep grief for several years after aborting her daughter, she had found peace after experiencing an extraordinary vision of Jesus with her daughter who was several years older.
There were also numerous instances where those who had taken their own lives or who had died without receiving a burial or prayer services seemed, in some instances, to be able to manifest their after-life sufferings to family members; some of these experiences could be very disturbing.
He said he believed these were examples of the dead calling attention to themselves; they were not in heaven and needed prayer and the Eucharist celebrated their intentions.
Among the examples were children inexplicably manifesting the precise symptoms of sufferings or illnesses which had caused the death of someone in a previous generation of their family, even though they had never known the dead person.
He recalled how, once preaching a parish mission outside Wellington, he had been called to a house where all the children in the family had often seen a lady, not a member of the family, walk through the house.
The manifestations had become so common and the children so used to seeing them that they were no longer frightened – but all were convinced they were seeing something not of this world.
The family dog had refused to come inside the house for years. Catholic charismatics believed they had discerned that an abortion had happened in the bathroom of the home when previous occupants had lived there and that the baby was buried in the garden.
He had celebrated Mass for the beings there and, as he did, the family dog entered the house.
“My perception was that the presence was not evil but alien,” he said.
Fr Rea’s naming of the medical problems waiting for healing in the congregation were specific.
Among those he announced were present who needed healing he said, were people with arthritis – one a lady with an arthritic spine and two men with the disease in their ankles, one as the result of a sporting injury, the other the result of falling off the roof.
A man and woman in the congregation also had arthritis in their wrists; in the case of the lady, it interfered with her beloved pastime writing letters, he said.
Three individuals had blood problems, including high blood pressure and diabetes. Another lady suffered from amnesia; two people had cancer of the blood – one a lady aged about 20 and a man who works in information technology.
There was also a man present with kidney stones who wears a ring in his ear and who was wearing a dark t-shirt, he said.
These were just some of the many instances he announced as being present on the evening.
How he knows such things is not clear but it almost doesn’t matter. To those who flock to see him, it certainly matters little. Faced with the biggest problems life can throw up they are looking for hope, looking for relief.
For everyone involved it’s something they can only leave in the hands of the Lord – and the healing hands of his priest.