Video Screengrab by EWTN / YouTube
CV NEWS FEED // “We have Him and no one can take Him away from us,” Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart told the some 50,000 Catholics gathered at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Thursday night.
In a riveting speech given on the second night of the National Eucharistic Congress, Mother Olga, who is the founder and servant mother of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth, shared stories of the “many Eucharistic miracles in our midst.”
The religious sister began with the story of Boston’s “Mighty Quinn,” a five-year-old boy with cancer who prevailed through chemo and radiation after receiving the Eucharist. Although Quinn was not yet considered old enough to receive his First Communion, Mother Olga said she felt Jesus was asking her to bring Himself to the boy.
After consulting with a canon lawyer and receiving permission from the Archbishop, Quinn was able to receive the sacrament before going into radiation treatment.
“His doctors and medical teams, they were surprised [sic] that 33 days of radiation had very little effect on him in terms of side effects,” she said. “But you and I, we know who was taking all that from him: it was Jesus in the Eucharist.”
“Today, our dear Quinny is free of cancer.”
Mother Olga also shared the story of David, whose lifelong struggle with drug addiction eventually led to his untimely death. Despite his grapple with addiction ending in the tragic end of David’s life, Mother Olga insists that he rests in Christ.
“In the year and a half that I got to know David, he never missed a Sunday Mass,” she remembered, noting that he also attended a weekly bible study and adoration, and was even a confirmation sponsor for another recovering addict.
“Eucharistic Adoration and masses became like a lighthouse for David,” she concluded: “Yes, David didn’t receive the Miracle of Life on this side of heaven, but I do believe in faith through the mercy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus [that] David received abundant Life on the other side of Heaven.”
Born in Kirkuk, Iraq, Mother Olga’s journey from the Assyrian Church of the East to the Catholic Church, and the United States, was preceded by the experience of numerous wars, and trauma within her own home.
“I was brought up in a very troubled home,” she said, “and I experienced a lot of abuse; physical, emotional, and mentally as well.” From early childhood and throughout her teenage years, Mother Olga lived through four wars, during which she said, “I found myself in positions [where] with my two hands I have to bury a lot of people who died during war [sic].”
As a laywoman in 1993, Mother Olga founded a lay movement called Love Your Neighbor, where she invited Muslim and Christian men and women in the surrounding area gathered to serve the poor in war-torn areas.
During this time, she recalled ministering to people who suffered full-body burns, or lost eyes or their limbs to bombings and missile strikes.
“Experiencing the trauma of my own household and the trauma of war,” she reflected, “it’s easy for all of us when we are faced with tragedies and difficulties [that[ we doubt why God allowed such things to happen. Why me?”
In Mother Olga’s experience, the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus are the ultimate means by which suffering may be contextualized by love.
The brokenness of Jesus on the Cross, she said, “is where I encountered him to heal my own brokenness and the brokenness of the people that I’ve been blessed with my community to be able to serve.”
Watch the full speech here.
