The Healing of Sister Mary of the Presentation

I stood at the end of the long corridor that night, the one that runs past the sacristy stairs, when Sister Mary Theodosia passed me on her way back from the crypt. Her left arm hung stiff at her side, the way it had since the surgery two years before. She carried a folder of proofs under her right arm, the paper already marked in places where she had worked earlier at knee height because the abdominal tumor would not let her sit at a desk. The folder slipped once and she caught it with her good hand. She gave no sign she had stopped at the tomb.

She had gone down after confession, as she sometimes did when the day left her too restless for sleep. The lights in the house stayed low after Compline. I heard the soft scrape of her shoes on the stone steps as she climbed again. She did not mention anything when we met. She only nodded and continued toward the room where the proofs waited under the single lamp.

We both knew the weight she carried. The tumor in her left breast had been removed in Terre Haute in 1906, and the nerves on that side never recovered. The second growth sat lower in the abdomen and pressed harder each month. She could not kneel at prayer. She ate standing when the pain allowed. Her eyesight had dimmed enough that she held the pages close even in good light. None of us spoke of it as anything but her ordinary burden. She had written the life of Mother Theodore anyway, the book finished and printed the year before.

That evening she stayed at the table until the clock in the hall struck one. The proofs for the printer needed another reading. I passed her door once and saw the lamp still burning, her right hand moving slowly across the margins. When the house went dark she rose and went to her cell without speaking to anyone.

The bell rang at four as it always did. I was already in the corridor when her door opened. She stepped out with both hands free, the left one moving at her side the way a healthy arm moves. She reached up without hesitation and smoothed the collar of her habit. Then she turned and made her bed, the sheets pulled tight and the corners tucked in one motion after another. I watched her comb her hair with the same hand she had not used for two years. The motion was ordinary, but it stopped me where I stood.

She did not call out. She finished the task, set the comb down, and walked the length of the corridor to the refectory. Her step was even. The stiffness that had forced her to turn her whole body to look left was gone. At breakfast she remained seated the entire time. No one asked her what had changed. She ate without standing once.

By midday the change was known through the house. Bishop Chatard had already been informed. He asked for a written account from her own hand. She began it that week, the same hand now steady on the page. The letter reached Mother Mary Cleophas on November 21. In it she described the stop at the tomb, the two inner answers she heard while praying only for Sister Joseph Therese, and the sudden strength that met her when the lights came on at four.

Her own physician examined the sites where the tumors had been. He found no trace of either growth. An independent doctor from Terre Haute repeated the examination and reached the same conclusion. Later she traveled to the Mayo Clinic for a third review. The records were forwarded to the congregation and kept with the letter.

Sister Joseph Therese recovered from her own illness in the months that followed, though no one connected the two events at the time. Sister Mary Theodosia resumed her full schedule of teaching and writing. She lived another thirty-five years at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods and died on March 23, 1943. Eighty sisters who had entered after the healing were still in the congregation on the day of her funeral.