Time Rhymes

Two Boys Knelt At The Same Altar On The Same Night In 1958. One Became The Most Famous Convert In America. Seven Months Later The Other One Helped Shoot A Man Dead.

Rommel Was Driving Into Egypt And Every Other Missionary Left. She Stayed With Seven Hundred Children And An Empty Store Room. Then The Ambassador Sent For Her.

She Hid A Hundred Orphans In A Brick Kiln While The Bullets Fell. The Mob Came For Her House. A Muslim Farmer Stood In Front Of It And Shamed Them Away.

A Village Priest In Nowhere France Told Strangers The Sins They Had Not Yet Confessed. 100,000 Pilgrims A Year Queued For Days To Test Him.

A Roman Army Was Dying Of Thirst When The Storm Came. Rome Carved The Miracle Onto A Column That Still Stands. Two Religions Have Argued Over It For 1,850 Years.

A Boy Was Born Without A Pulse. The Doctors Worked For 61 Minutes And Were About To Call Time Of Death. Then His Heart Started. The Vatican Investigated For Nine Years.

Five Thousand Trapped Soldiers Dug Up A Buried Painting. That Night The River Froze Around The Enemy Fleet. An Army Still Celebrates It Every Year.

He Fed Ten Thousand Orphans Without Asking Anyone For A Penny. For Sixty Years He Kept Audited Ledgers Of What Arrived When He Prayed.

A Cheap Plaster Madonna Wept For Four Days. Doctors Collected The Tears Mid-Weeping And Sent Them To Three Laboratories. The Report Said: Human Tears.

They Carried Him To Lourdes On A Stretcher, Certified Incurable. He Walked Home And Hauled Coal For Twenty Years. The Pension Office Never Stopped Paying.

The Deadliest Fire In American History Burned A Million Acres In A Night. Five Acres Stayed Green. The People On Them Had Been Walking In Circles, Praying.

The Church Exploded At 7:25. Choir Practice Began At 7:20. All Fifteen Singers Were Late, For Fifteen Different Reasons. It Had Never Happened Before.

In January 1842 A Young Jewish Banker Named Alphonse Ratisbonne, Who Despised The Catholic Church, Agreed As A Joke To Wear A Medal Of The Virgin Mary. Days Later He Stepped Alone Into A Rome Church And Came Out On His Knees In Tears, Saying He Had Seen Her. A Cardinal Investigated Across Seventeen Sessions And Declared It A Miracle. He Died A Priest.

On The Morning Of The Sixth Of August 1945 An Atomic Bomb Erased Hiroshima In A Single Flash Of Light. Less Than A Mile From The Blast, Eight Jesuit Priests Were In Their Mission House. The City Around Them Was Gone. The House Stood, And All Eight Men Walked Out Alive. One Of Them Said Scientists Examined Him More Than Two Hundred Times And Could Not Explain Why He Never Developed Radiation Sickness.

In 1966 A Twenty-Two-Year-Old English Teacher Walked Alone Into Hong Kong's Lawless Kowloon Walled City, Six Acres Ruled By Triad Gangs With More Than Forty Heroin Dens And No Police. Over The Following Decades Hundreds Of Heroin Addicts Who Prayed With Her Came Off The Drug With No Withdrawal At All. No Doctor Could Explain It. She Is Still In Hong Kong, Aged Eighty-Two, And So Are The Men Who Walked Out Clean.

In 1909 Twenty-Eight Doctors Gave Up On A Dying Young Woman, Deaf And Blind With Tuberculosis Destroying Her Lungs, And Sent Her Home To Die. On The Night Of The Fourth Of February 1912, As Sixteen People Gathered At Her Bedside To Say Goodbye, Dorothy Kerin Sat Up, Walked, And Asked For A Meal. London's Newspapers Reported It Within Two Weeks. She Lived Another Fifty-One Years.

For Sixteen Years Multiple Sclerosis Destroyed A Young Woman Until She Was Blind, Bedridden, Breathing Through A Tube And Sent Home To Die. On Pentecost Sunday 1981, As Friends Read Get-Well Letters Aloud, She Heard A Voice Say Get Up And Walk, And Her Sight, Her Breathing And Her Limbs Were Restored At Once. Her Doctors Called It Inexplicable.

For Three Years A Baptist Preacher Could Only Whisper After A Virus Damaged The Nerves Of His Vocal Cords And Sixty Three Specialists Called It Permanent. On The Seventeenth Of January 1993, Teaching Psalm 103 To A Recorded Bible Class In Houston, His Voice Returned Mid-Sentence On The Word Pit. The Moment Is Still On The Tape.

For Eight Years A Belgian Farm Worker Carried A Broken Leg That Would Not Heal, The Two Ends Of The Bone Never Joining And The Wound Never Closing. In 1875, At A Shrine Near Ghent, He Stood And Walked In A Single Minute. His Leg Bones Were Later Dug Up, And A Cast Of Them Still Sits In The Medical Bureau At Lourdes.

In 1982, Three Rwandan Schoolgirls Wept In Front Of Tens Of Thousands And Described A River Of Blood And A Country Torn Apart. Twelve Years Later The Genocide Came. In 2001 The Catholic Church Declared Their Visions Authentic, The First It Has Ever Approved In Africa.

In 1871, As The Prussian Army Advanced On Their Village, Four French Children Saw A Woman In The Night Sky Spelling Out A Message Letter By Letter. The Adults Saw Nothing. That Night The Army Stopped. The Church Questioned The Children For A Year, Then Declared It Real.

In 1898 A Lawyer Was Allowed To Photograph An Ancient Linen Cloth Kept In Turin. When He Developed The Glass Plate, The Negative Showed A Face. Scientists Later Found No Paint And Real Human Blood. One Test Dates It To The Middle Ages. Another To The Time Of Christ.

A Swiss Woman Prayed For Rent She Could Not Afford. While She Was In Cape Town, Thousands Of Francs Appeared In Her Cleaning Cupboard. Four Times In A Month. The Bank Said No One Had Lost It.

A 13-Year-Old American Boy Underwent 30 Catholic Exorcism Rituals In A Locked St Louis Hospital Room In 1949. The Jesuits Who Performed It Kept A 26-Page Diary. The Diary Survives. The Case Inspired The Exorcist.

Four Children In A Spanish Mountain Village Walked Backwards Up Rocky Paths At High Speed For Four Years. Hundreds Of Pilgrims, Doctors, And A Spanish Jesuit Priest Watched. The Church Has Neither Approved Nor Condemned It.

A Bavarian Peasant Woman Bled From The Five Wounds Of Christ Every Friday For 36 Years. She Took No Food Or Water For The Last 40 Years Of Her Life. The Bavarian State Sealed Her In A 14-Day Continuous Medical Watch In 1927.

An Illiterate French-Canadian Catholic Doorkeeper Healed Thousands From A Wooden Hut Beside A Montreal College. Quebec Built One Of The World's Largest Basilicas Around The Hut. The Crutches Are Still On The Walls.

In 1858 A 14-Year-Old Peasant Girl Dug A Spring With Her Bare Hands. It Still Flows. 70 Of Its Cures Are Official Miracles.

A Large Grey Dog Protected An Italian Saint For 30 Years. No One Owned It. It Vanished When He Died.

Twenty-Three Days. One Iowa Convent. Eight Nuns And A Bishop Signed The Affidavits. 1928.

A French Peasant Woman Stayed In Bed For 53 Years. By Her Doctor's Record, She Ate No Food And Drank No Water.

An Italian Soldier Had A Sarcoma That Ate His Hip Bone. He Was Bathed At Lourdes In 1963. The Bone Regrew.

An Aztec Peasant Unfolded His Cloak In 1531. An Image Of Mary Appeared On It. The Cloak Should Have Rotted Five Centuries Ago.

A French Nun Died In 1879. They Opened Her Tomb Three Times. The Face Was Still There.

A Stranger Built A Spiral Staircase With No Central Support. Then He Vanished.

A Future Nobel Laureate Watched A Lourdes Cure He Could Not Explain.

Fifteen Witnesses Watched A Silent Apparition For Two Hours.

An Image On A Cloth That Cannot Be Painted.

The Tomb That Wept Blood For Sixty-Seven Years.

The Spanish Nun The Jumano Said Had Visited Them 500 Times.

The Wooden Statue That Wept Human Blood 101 Times.

The Fire That Has Appeared in Jerusalem Every Easter For 900 Years.

The Sealed Blood That Has Been Liquefying in Naples for 636 Years

150 People Saw the Friar Fly. They Swore To It Under Oath.

250,000 People Saw a Figure Above a Church. The Government Said It Was Real.

250,000 People Saw a Figure Above a Church. The Government Said It Was Real.

He Bled From Five Wounds for Fifty Years. When He Died, They Vanished.

His Leg Was Amputated and Buried. Three Years Later, It Grew Back.

His Leg Was Amputated and Buried. Three Years Later, It Grew Back.

70,000 People Saw the Sun Fall. Nobody Can Explain It.

70,000 People Saw the Sun Fall. Nobody Can Explain It.

She Watched Her Own Brain Surgery. Her Brain Was Off.

70,000 People Saw the Sun Fall. Nobody Can Explain It.

A Piece of Bread Became Human Heart Tissue. It's Still There.