The Final Miracle

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October 14, 2006

Guerin miracle recipient talks about the experience

By SUE LOUGHLIN The News and Tribune Sat Oct 14, 2006, 09:12 PM EDT

Originally published by The (Terre Haute) Tribune-Star.

Fearful that he faced possible blindness in his right eye, Philip McCord went into the Church of the Immaculate Conception and prayed.

“I need some help,” he said in his quiet conversation with God in the fall of 2000.

He also asked Blessed Mother Theodore Guerin to intercede.

“If you see fit and have any influence, maybe you could speak [to God] on my behalf,” he said to the foundress of the Sisters of Providence at St. Mary-of-the-Woods.

McCord, who is director of facilities management for the Sisters of Providence, wasn’t Catholic and didn’t really know what a miracle was. Raised as a Baptist, he hadn’t been very observant of his faith.

Still, he decided to pray to Mother Theodore and ask for her assistance.

McCord had undergone cataract surgery on both eyes that fall, and while the surgery was successful on his left eye, it was not successful for the right eye. He had swelling in his cornea.

He could only see shapes and light with his right eye, which drooped. “It was really not what you would call vision,” he said. It affected his depth perception and gave him headaches.

A specialist in Indianapolis had told him he would need a cornea transplant, which had a 60 percent success rate.

He worried about the risks and feared permanent damage, including possible blindness, in his right eye.

He was upset and afraid. “I was not making a lot of headway in dealing with it,” he said.

One day, when he was returning from a meeting at Providence Center, he heard organ music from the church and decided to go inside and pray.

He told God, “I try not to bother you with a whole lot of things … but I’m not going to get through this. I need some help.”

He also appealed to Mother Theodore and asked for her assistance in finding the courage to do what was necessary.

When he left the church, he had a sense of peace and he believed he had the confidence to proceed with the transplant.

The day after his prayer, his eye began to improve. It wasn’t as red, and some of the droopiness and heaviness was gone.

When he went back to the specialist in Indianapolis about two weeks later, McCord told the doctor he felt much better.

“Hmmph,” the specialist said to him as he checked the medical chart and McCord’s eye. He asked what the local doctor had done. “He didn’t do anything,” McCord replied.

“What did you do?” the specialist asked.

McCord told him, “I said a prayer.”

The specialist told McCord that his eye in fact had improved and the cornea transplant was no longer necessary. The specialist told him, “Whatever happened, it worked.”

Some scar tissue remained that affected McCord’s vision, but it could be removed through simple laser surgery in Terre Haute. Within a few weeks, he had 20/20 vision in that eye, he said.

Later, both his local doctor and the specialist said there was no medical explanation for the cure.

Now, theologians and a group of cardinals in Rome have agreed — McCord’s immediate improvement was a miracle; God healed McCord through the intercession, or request, of Mother Theodore.

And because of that second miracle, documented through a rigorous investigation that took several years, Mother Theodore is likely to be canonized as a saint this fall.

“I still don’t understand why or what happened,” the 59-year-old McCord said late Tuesday afternoon in an interview before Wednesday’s official announcement. “I’m grateful” and thrilled to be contributing to Mother Theodore’s cause for sainthood.

McCord, who has a dry sense of humor, said a friend told him, “Mother Theodore and God talked it over and decided it was easier to fix my eye than to make me courageous.”

McCord had never before prayed to Mother Theodore before his problems with his eye, but since his cure, he has conversations thanking her every day.

He’s spent a lot of time trying to figure out what he did to deserve her intercession and a cure. A Sister of Providence advised him it was an act of love, a blessing and a gift and he should just accept it.

Trained as an engineer, McCord said there’s probably nobody more skeptical by nature and training than himself.

But there is no medical explanation for his cure. “That’s why they call it faith,” he said.