I want to catalog some of the stories surrounding this relic which has become such a touchstone of grace in our life and the lives of others.
On June 15, 2022, the relic's custodian told us about a little boy named Patrick who was in desperate need of prayers. He was 4 years old and undergoing some intense internal bleeding that required emergency surgery. The last words of his poor mother to him as they wheeled him to the OR were, "if you need to, go with Jesus". We still had the relic at that time after Zelie's blessing. She wrote:
Patrick is out of surgery but they can't find the source of the bleed. They've told his parents to make a list of family members who need to see him. At this point they're praying for a miracle. Jason, I hate to ask, but when you get a chance we'd like to offer for Patrick to be blessed with Father McGivney's relic too. Besides Zelie he was the other special intention we had brought to Blessed McGivney's tomb on our pilgrimage.
Today (7/18/2024) she wrote to me with an update:
Patrick - 4yrs old- Patrick was diagnosed with leukemia the same week Joe came home from the hospital (week of Feb 8 2022). He went through 2 rounds of chemo but it did so much damage they needed to stop, it destroyed his small and large intestines. Joe and I made a Thanksgiving Pilgrimage to the Michael McGivney shrine in Connecticut in May and brought the prayers of others with us (***most especially Zelie and Patrick** we prayed particular hard for these two cases). That weekend of our visit to the tomb of M.M., Patrick suddenly and unexpectedly went into remission. His cancer was gone and doctors couldn't explain it. However, over the course of the next two months after treatment, he kept bleeding internally and doctors kept having to find the bleeds and fix them. One day they couldn't find the source of the Internal bleeding and they told the family they needed to gather their family to say their goodbyes to Patrick. There was nothing more they could do. You all overnighted the relic to them, he was blessed the next day and the internal bleeding miraculously stopped. He made such a sudden drastic recovery afterwards doctors were at a loss of how to care for him. Not a single doctor on his care team at children's hospital in Philadelphia thought he was going to leave that hospital alive with the condition his body had deteriorated to after the chemo. Two weeks after his sudden improvement doctors felt the need to sit the family down and apologize for not having a care plan for his future and what markers would need to be met for his discharge to be possible, because they didn't think it was going to be possible so they were still working to figure out what that would look like. They kept expecting him to get bad again but it wasn't happening. They requested further testing to make sure the cancer wasn't hiding somewhere else in his body and when those all came back negative they wanted to run them again and look harder. Then those came back negative too. After a lot of rehab and relearning how to walk and be tube fed, Patrick has been home from the hospital for over a year and a half, is back at school making friends and thriving as a cancer free 6yr old.
I'd written the following the day I sent the relic on June 16, 2022:
Fr. McGivney will be there tomorrow. It was unexpectedly hard saying goodbye, kind of snuck up on me.
She responded:
I know! I did the same when the vice postulator came to get it from us. He's a part of your family now.
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