Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

Even the secular media has been left bewildered after a white-haired priest mysteriously appeared at an accident scene on a Missouri road, prayed with the victim, reassured emergency workers that they would get her out of her crushed vehicle, then promptly disappeared.

USA Today is reporting that the accident occurred on Sunday morning when Katie Lentz, a sophomore at Tulane University, was driving to her summer internship position in Jefferson City, Missouri to attend church with friends. Her car collided with another vehicle on the road near Center, Missouri, reducing it to a twisted wreck with Lentz pinned between the seat and the steering wheel.

Emergency workers quickly arrived on the scene and worked for 45 minutes to free her but were experiencing problems with their equipment. Workers kept Lentz calm, but her vital signs were beginning to fail.

Raymond Reed, fire chief of nearby New London, Missouri, said members of the helicopter evacuation team pulled him off to the side and said that they were out of time. “Her condition looked grim for her coming out of that vehicle alive. She was facing major problems.”

Just then, Lentz asked if someone would pray with her and they all heard a voice say, “I will.”

They looked up to see a silver-haired priest in his 50s or 60s wearing typical priestly garb. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

Reed was instantly struck by the oddness of it because the street was blocked off for two miles around the accident scene. It wasn’t possible for anyone to drive up, nor did any of the rescuers recognize him as being from any of the churches in the area.

“We’re all local people from four different towns,” Reed said. “We’ve only got one Catholic church out of three towns and it wasn’t their priest.”

The priest approached vehicle and began to pray with Lentz while the emergency workers got on their knees and joined them.

“He had a bottle of anointing oil with him and he used that,” Reed said, and described the sense of calmness that came over Lentz as well as the emergency workers as they prayed.

“I can’t be for certain how it was said, but myself and another firefighter, we very plainly heard that we should remain calm, that our tools would now work and that we would get her out of that vehicle.”

Moments later, another fire department showed up on the scene with equipment that enabled them to safely remove Lentz from the vehicle. She was quickly carried into the waiting helicopter and rushed off to the hospital.

Once she was safely on her way, the firefighters turned to thank the priest and were startled to find him gone. The workers assumed he went back to his church to conduct Sunday services, but when they looked at photos of the scene, the priest didn’t appear in any of them.

“I have 69 photographs that were taken from minutes after that accident happened — bystanders, the extrication, our final cleanup — and he’s not in them,” Reed said.

He’s convinced it was a miracle. “I would say whether it was an angel that was sent to us in the form of a priest or a priest that became our angel, I don’t know. Either way, I’m good with it.”

Katie Lentz was critically injured in the crash and has undergone several surgeries to repair broken bones.

“Both of her legs are very damaged,” said her friend Amanda Wiseman. “Her wrist is broken, several broken ribs, so she’s had a lot of broken bones to deal with.”

Lentz’s mother, Carla Churchill Lentz, said she was told by emergency workers that her daughter never should have survived such a serious wreck. Of the priest, she says: “I do believe he certainly could have been an angel dressed in priest’s attire because the Bible tells us there are angels among us.”

The moral of this story is obvious – miracles really do happen.

“But do we see them?” asks Deacon Keith Fournier on his blog. “Do we have the eyes of living faith which can recognize the hand of the Lord at work in our own lives and the lives of others? Do we ask for them? Do we pray ‘out loud’ as Katie asked? If we do begin to see them, how are we responding to these great acts of Love? Are we living our life differently as a result? Are we introducing others to the One who is the source of all miracles?”

These are great questions to ask ourselves after reading such an amazing story as this. Let’s not waste time doubting! The story of Katie Lentz proves that even dramatic miracles are occurring in our day and time.

Believe! And may others see our faith and turn to the God in whom we have placed all of our hope.

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