Dear Sir, Greetings from the Society of St. Paul Generalate in Rome! I am Fr Celso Godilano, Vicar General of the Society of St. Paul, founded by Blessed James Alberione. A fellow religious from the US has asked me to get in touch with you with regard to a favor you have received through Blessed Alberione. My interest is simply to know if you are inclined to share your "miracle" story after asking the intercession of our Blessed Founder for a particular need of yours that was answered. If not, I beg your pardon for initiating this communication. And for whatever worth is this email I really thank you. God bless you and all your dear ones. In Jesus our Divine Master, Fr Celso Godinano, SSP Reverend Father, Thanks very much for getting in touch with your query. I will relate to you what happened and you can decide for yourself whether or not it was in fact a miracle. My name is Padraig Caughey and I run a Catholic site, the Mother of God Forum ,dedicated to Our Lady and dealing with matters spiritual, loyal to the teachings of the Church and loyal to the holy Father. Here is a link to it here. http://motheofgod.com/ Because the forum was growing in size and because of complaints about inappropriate advertisements placed by our 'free' server I decided we should emigrate and upgrade to a new site. I was assisted by this by a member ,Dan Laird from the State of Oklahoma in the USA and a hired IT professional from India, Sadik Buhami. I was very much aware of the need for prayer in this process for it, as you will know carries its own risks. Dan recommended prayers to your founder Blessed James Alberione, whom I had never heard of before. But I checked him out on the internet saw his relevance to communication and the internet and began to pray to him for help. A short while later the site crashed to an error of misdirect and there appeared to be no way for either myself ,Dan or Sadik to reestablish communication with the site. It was, in fact lost. I began at once to invoke the intercession of Blessed James through prayer and was overwhlemed with a strong sense of his presence and a sense of his working hard for the forum. That he had in a real way adopted the forum as his own and was taking a huge interest in the project. Also a complete assurance that everything wold work out all right. As indeed it has. The forum came back on line the next day as good as new. I got a message later from my original server that one of the staff who happened to be inspecting my setting found the mistake and rectified it , 'by chance'. Anyhow I do indeed very much ascribe this to the intercession of Blessed James and still feel is presence helping us here I hope this information helps, Padraig Caughey
Wonderful Padraig - God and his holy angels and saints are protecting this site. It is a work of God through the intercession of Our Lady.
A couple of "coincidences" to add to the story. I had just started a 30 day novena to the Holy Souls in Purgatory as outlined in a little book by Susan Tassone. I was surprised that the opening prayer each day was written by Blessed James Alberione. I had known about Blessed James from the SSP monastery not far from my house in Ohio. Since I remembered him winning an online vote as patron of the internet, I made my intention for the 30 day novena for the forum. Day 1 was the first day Padraig and I started to try transitioning the forum. As Padraig mentioned above, we had terrible problems that made no sense to us, our consultant Sadik, or the tech support groups from the forum hosting company. After a flurry of anxious emails, Padraig was suddenly calm and reassured that the forum "would be down but back to life on the 3rd day" as a result of the efforts of Blessed James. I thought this was a neat story of the saints interceding so I decided to stop by the SSP bookstore and tell them our little story. I had not been to the monastery in 5 years or so (my family used to go to daily Mass there but with a 1 and 2 year old it is tough getting all 9 of us rolling by 6:30 am). I was surprised to see Brother Paschal behind the counter as he is usually the Maintenance-Man/Gardener but he is the brother I know best. It turned out that the towns in Oklahoma and Texas the week before on business were where he was born and raised. Also, "coincidentally" the vicar general of the order was on his way in from the airport that day. Having the vicar general cross the Atlantic to visit is something very rare indeed, especially with all of the orders Blessed James founded throughout the world. Anyway, thanks to Blessed Mother and Blessed James.
Thank you indeed Padraig! You are most kind to have replied with your story. In John's Gospel "miracles" are instead referred to as "signs". Indeed you had your own "sign" from God as you have believed through the intercession of our Blessed Founder. Jesus always challenged his would be disciples or the disciples themselves: "Fear not. Just have faith." Your story will be passed on to our Postulator General who collects "miracle" stories through our Founder's intercessions. This is one way to build up testimonies that people indeed receive graces while praying to God by invoking the help of Blessed Alberione. Congratulations for your "motheofgod.com" site. Good apostolate using the means of today. God bless you with "abundant riches" in Jesus our Divine Master. Fr Celso
His name isn't familiar to me either, so I just read up on him. I have a better understanding of why he's associated with modern communication. http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20030427_alberione_en.html
