A REQUEST OF ST JOSEPH IS DENIED, AND A MIRACLE REVERSED

In the era of Brother Andre Bessette, there was a wealthy man in New York who had a disabled daughter. At the time his daughter was referred to as "a cripple", she could not walk without crutches. Her father was not a Catholic, he was a Jewish fellow, and he took his daughter to the best doctors in Vienna, Berlin and Paris to see if any of these medical experts could find a cure. 

But the medics could do nothing for her, and finally the wealthy man came to believe that his only hope was a miracle. So, he and his daughter went into the mountains of Montreal to seek out Brother Andre. 

Their trip was rewarded with Brother Andre commanding the 15 year-old girl, "Get up and walk!"  The girl disobeyed and clung to her crutches. 

But Brother Andre was stubborn and he said to her, "It's useless to come to see me if you do not do what I tell you. Now, get up and walk!" 

This time the teenager pushed away her crutches and walked as though she had never been hobbled. Brother Andre had a request, that she leave her crutches behind as a memento of the miracle, as a sign for others that they may be edified and have faith in miracles. Over the years, piles and piles of crutches were left by those who had been miraculously healed at St Joseph's statue in the Oratory. 

But her father denied the request, and insisted he wanted to keep them as a souvenir. The very next morning, however, the wealthy man rang in a state of distress. His daughter had woken up as disabled as ever. She was no longer cured. Brother Andre was brought to the phone and he did not indulge the father with sympathy, but in his short-tempered way, he snapped, "St Joseph wanted the crutches left at the Oratory. You didn't want to do it! You wanted to keep them as a souvenir! Very well, then, if you want to keep them as a souvenir, keep them!"

There is something chilling in this account. It occurs to me that would it not have been fairer for Brother Andre to warn the father and daughter that if they took the crutches home, that the miraculous cure would disappear? But far be it for me to suggest a Saint like Andre ought have done or said something, and he may have known that his words would have no influence. There is something a little ungracious even ungrateful about the way the father denied the request; he had paid plenty of money to take his daughter all over the world and the visits to the best doctors had not come cheap, yet when little Andre asked something of him, he refused. And the father did not just refuse Andre, but the crutches would have been a gift of hope to the many pilgrims and sick people who travelled all the way to the Oratory. But Andre felt slighted that a chance was missed for St Joseph to be revealed as extraordinarily powerful in Heaven, as an intercessor whose sway with God meant that the disabled could walk again. 

Brother Andre was a spokesman on behalf of St Joseph, and he knew that Joseph, the father who God-the-Father appointed to be the earthly father of His Son had wished that the crutches be left for all the pilgrims to see so that they might behold the awesome power of God. 

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I learned of this case in C. Bernard Ruffin's The Life of Brother Andre.