Did you ever think about or realize what the power of one Hail Mary can do?
John Petrovich and Father Joe Freedy have, after a recent, convincing incident.
“When I heard it, I was struck — how incredible that story is,” Father Freedy senior parochial vicar at Divine Mercy parish in Pittsburgh and president of Dry Bones Ministries, said after he listened to Petrovich recounting the details to him at the end of a retreat.
Shortly before, on a Saturday morning, Petrovich was running, as usual, in a Pittsburgh neighborhood. On his route, he passed a house where there was an ambulance in the driveway. The house’s front door and garage doors were open.
“Growing up, every time you heard any type of siren — ambulance or police car — you made the Sign of the Cross and said a prayer for those in need and protection for those involved. That was second nature to me,” Petrovich told the Register.
“One thing different on that occasion was I always said that prayer but never felt compelled to say a [particular] prayer. That was the one thing that was different than anything else. And the first prayer that came to mind [that day] was the Hail Mary.”
Petrovich thought of stopping and helping, but since he has no first-aid training, he decided to keep running, although he wondered if he was wrong not to stop. Yet he prayed: “God, if that ambulance is still parked in that driveway, I will stop and see if I can give assistance.” On his run back, he reported, “The ambulance was not there, there were no lights in house, the garage door was shut, and the front door was shut.”
The following Thursday, after work, Petrovich was running in the same neighborhood.
Approaching the house where he had seen the ambulance, he saw a lady “at the edge of the driveway of that house, and she started waving her hand, and she said, ‘Stop. Please stop,’” Petrovich recalled.
“So I came to the edge of the driveway, and she said, ‘Thank you for stopping, sir. I need to talk to you. I have to thank you because you saved my life.’”
Puzzled, Petrovich asked, “How did I save your life?”
“Then,” he related, “she tells me, ‘Let me tell you what happened to me last week.’” Alone at home, she suddenly started feeling strange and blacked out. She knew she was dying.
She told Petrovich how, before finding herself in a hospital bed and about to regain consciousness, “she got a vision of Jesus who came to her, and said, ‘It’s okay. Everything is going to be fine. You’re going to be fine because this person prayed for you.’”
“On the palm of his hand was your face — on Jesus’ hand,” she told him, recounting what went through her mind. “And I thought, ‘I have to thank you for saving my life.’”
“And how do you react to something like that?” Petrovich told the Register. “I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say, except, ‘Thank you.’”
