I believe that God healed my damaged right eye through the power of the Holy Eucharist. I have no proof of how my eye was healed, but I believe that God used his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Blessed Sacrament to accomplish this healing.

In 2004, about a year before a problem with my mitral valve damaged my right eye, I felt called to start spending an hour each week praying before our Lord in Eucharistic Adoration. One morning in 2005 I could not get a bright object to disappear before my right eye, but I felt grounded in a practice uniting me more closely to Christ. Later that day, doctors found an unknown object in this eye, and it was later connected with my heart’s mitral valve. I will never forget the expression on the face of the retina specialist I saw in an emergency appointment — a look of shock combined with gratitude that my optic nerve had not been affected.

A couple of weeks later, it was while praying the Rosary in the waiting room of a cardiologist that the bright light disappeared from its constant presence in my right eye. I can see the damage even today sometimes when the sun is shining brightly in the summer. And any ophthalmologist can see it during an eye exam. But its ever-present glare disappeared that day thanks to Our Blessed Mother’s intercession, which allowed me to drive again shortly after this malady happened in my eye.

I am also grateful that during this same time frame, bottles of holy water from Lourdes were handed out at a prayer service by one of the friars at the Shrine of St. Anthony in Ellicott City, Maryland. I blessed myself and made the sign of the cross with this water each day before going to work. This water was a gift from God — why not try to obtain any blessing from applying it whether related to my eye or not?

But overall throughout the next couple of decades was the peace of Christ in me from attending weekly Eucharistic Adoration and also daily Mass as much as possible. The situation with my eye never presented itself to me as a tragedy or something that would hinder my lifestyle. It is this reassurance which I believe only can come from God and which was growing in me during Adoration throughout the year before the incident. I continued working full-time at my job with many accomplishments, volunteered at my parish, and was a homeowner who took care of my house together with a succession of adopted dogs over the years.

I am surely aware that I am blessed particularly when the retina specialist determined that I no longer needed to make an appointment to see him every six months. God has different reasons for healing people entirely or asking them to continue to carry the Cross for him in redemptive suffering. And yet, why not believe that he can heal us from physical ailments, that miracles still do happen? Why not take advantage of every opportunity to get well through the blessings of the Church, particularly in the Eucharist, and allow Christ’s light to shine even more brightly in our world?

After moving to a different part of the country, I recently checked in with a new ophthalmologist, who nearly 20 years later can see the damage in my right eye. Praise God for his grace which allows me to continue to function and rise above this obstacle. “I believe, Lord, please heal my unbelief!”