iPadre #398 – My friend, Eileen George

I Padre episode number 398, January 23rd, 2022.

Father Jay Finelli is a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island.

He's been bringing his special mix of interviews, information, and inspiration to earbuds around

the globe since September of 2005.

Now with today's podcast, here's Father Jay, the iPadre.

Hey everybody and welcome to the iPadre Catholic Podcast.

My name is Father Jay Finelli.

Well, it's been over six months since my last episode and I want to fill you in.

So today I'm going to tell you about my voice issue, its progression, and then I'll share

with you a talk I did on my friend Eileen George.

I've been wanting to do this for a while, but I've just not been able to put that episode

together.

But before that, here's my friend John Palsy with Jesus is the Way.

Look here, this is the way to find the truth that you're after.

They say a lot of pretty words, but they don't last.

Just like you fly to die in winter.

Words alone can meet our needs deeper than our hearts.

We can't meet our needs deeper than our hearts.

And we cry for love.

We all need to be consoled.

Everyone, both young and old, is somewhere suffering.

Words and objects cannot feel the pain and sorrow that's so real in our memories.

In our memories.

Something that is not alive, cannot find its way inside, heal our wounds.

There is no life beneath the paper.

There is no breath in golden idols.

There is no life beneath the paper.

The man-made master has no wisdom.

He cannot speak, nor can it eat.

I want to listen to their words.

For a time I even tried to believe in their illusions.

But just like the autumn leaves, falling me and fell from me, there was no life within them.

And I was left there like a barren tree, and the crystal smiles that fell on me.

I was frozen.

Then just like the spring comes to the earth, Jesus came and he gave me birth.

And I was melted by his love.

There is no life beneath the paper.

There is no breath in golden idols.

Man-made master has no wisdom.

He cannot speak, nor can it eat.

I want to listen to their words.

There is no life beneath the paper.

Man-made master has no wisdom, though the Bible Themeí aιands exhorted to istoom and upside down.

Father God, Jesus thoughts are the rice tool.

But pleading divide them as one.

If you want to nature and give Good and invest with your heart, someone gives you that.

He is the only way to the Father.

Jesus is the way.

He is the only way to find the truth you're after.

He's the way, the truth, and the life.

He's the way.

He's the way, the truth, and the life.

Hey everybody, it's good to be with you.

I've been really hesitant to do this for quite a while.

Because of the progression of my voice issue.

But here I am, and I'll tell you why in just a moment.

But finally, I had enough with this voice issue.

This has been going on for, I think now, almost 13 years.

It seems to have started sometime after I had my hernia surgery.

But I'm not sure.

I was diagnosed.

I finally went to Mass Eye and Ear on May 13th.

Mass Eye and Ear is in Boston, Massachusetts.

And as you know, some of the...

The best doctors and hospitals in the world are in Boston.

So, I made an appointment.

It just happened to fall on May 13th.

All of this is coming together.

It's really interesting.

And I was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia and muscle tension dysphonia.

And it's funny.

I self-diagnosed years ago.

If you go to iPadre episode number 302 on May 12th of 2013.

I talk about...

About the whole thing.

And that was before anybody diagnosed me.

I had gone to a voice...

An ENT.

And she looked into my throat.

Sent me to a voice doctor.

A voice therapist.

And I worked with him for quite a long time.

And my voice was getting better.

And I stopped going.

But then it really went downhill again.

There was a point that I could barely...

Speak at mass.

So, what I've come to understand is...

This is a neurological condition that affects the vocal cords.

And there is no cure.

They treat it with Botox injections directly to the vocal cords every 2-6 months.

I'm not doing that.

I'm doing more of a holistic route.

I have two voice therapists.

In fact, one of them has this condition.

And she's the one who said to me...

Father, you start that podcast.

You'll have good days and you'll have bad days.

But you just do it.

So, that's why I'm here.

And I also have a physical therapist.

And he's working with me too.

So, I have a good team that I'm working with.

So, you can thank Connie that I'm back.

Also, I have a new intro and outro.

But I don't have the music yet.

So, I hope to do that and have that ready by next week.

So, let's go to the topic of the day.

And I've been wanting to speak about this topic for a long time.

My friend, Eileen George.

That's actually the name of the talk.

I gave it on Friday night and I recorded it.

So, I don't have to do it twice.

But I think it came out well.

And I think you'll like Eileen.

And we hope to open her cause of canonization very shortly.

So, if you have any need, any pressing need.

If you know someone, gather a group of people together.

And pray the prayer for the intercession of Eileen George.

Which I wrote and her bishop approved.

And I'll have a link to Meet the Father Ministry in the show notes.

And you can find more about Eileen there.

And so now, here is our topic of the day.

Let's begin with a prayer.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that we're here this night.

We thank you for the gift of your Son present in the most blessed sacrament.

We ask you to stir up your grace in our hearts.

Give us a deep and strong and vibrant desire to be holy as you Father are holy.

And we entrust this night to you through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women.

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God.

Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Well, thank you all for coming.

I wish more of the guys would have come up tonight.

Tonight my topic is my friend Eileen George.

You all hear me talk about her all the time.

She was...

She was a very deep influence in my life.

As a seminarian and as a priest.

I met Eileen in, I think it was September of 1983.

I had just entered the Franciscans in Caddybunkport, Maine.

And Father John, our Director of Candidates said,

you want to come to a healing service in Worcester, Massachusetts?

I said, sure.

So, we're sitting there and all of a sudden I see this woman come out.

Oh my God, what did I get into?

I can see her as she was that day.

And as she spoke, my heart was moved.

I said, this woman is real.

See, before that, if I heard a woman at a seminary,

she was usually batting the church for some reason or another,

or pushing women priests to some crazy agenda.

But when you listen to Eileen speak, you knew her love for God.

It was tangible.

And it gave you a desire to become holiness, strive for holiness.

Actually, it was the fourth Sunday of September in 1983.

And that was my first time, and after that, many times.

She was wearing corduroy bibs.

Corduroy bibbed like a pantsuit.

Not pantsuit, it was like a long dress, but corduroy brown.

In those days, she had a big head of hair, blonde hair.

And I don't know when I saw her next.

But I tell you, it was many, many times after that.

I introduced her hundreds of times at St. John's in Worcester and other places.

She was born Eileen Kalkany in Worcester, Massachusetts on July 23, 1926.

But she was adopted.

She was adopted by Louis Kalkany, who was from Rome,

and her mother, May Burke, who was from Ireland.

What a combination that made.

She always talked about her parents.

One could barely speak, they couldn't speak English.

One could barely get out a few words in Irish and the other in Italian.

And usually she said, when her mother said things,

you'd say, oh my God, what is she saying?

She thought she was impressing the neighbors, but she didn't say the right words.

She was married to Earl George in 1951,

and they had eight kids and raised them together.

And she was the very center of their life.

Out of all you'll hear tonight about the great gifts and the great ministry she had,

the very center of her life, of course, was our Lord, but her family.

She said, there's no other way to holiness if you don't live the vocation that God gave to you.

She said, I can preach around the world and I can have all the gifts,

and I can go to hell.

But if I'm a loving wife, a loving mother,

if I wash the pots and pans for the love of God,

and if I clean the toilets for the love of God,

and vacuum the floor,

all in love,

that's my way to holiness.

So I want to tell you about Eileen George.

She grew up in, she talked about an orphanage called St. Ann's in Worcester,

which no longer exists anymore.

She was there back and back there on many occasions.

Still trying to find more information, it's hard to find,

but there is a last book that's to be published after her death,

and it's hidden somewhere.

So it's one of my prayers every day.

Eileen, when are you going to give us that book?

She still has it.

In those days, as Eileen said, it wasn't like today.

People were ashamed to speak about their adopted children.

They kept them secret in those days.

And because of this, she didn't have many friends.

She wasn't allowed by her mother to go to CCD to receive Holy Communion.

She said, nobody's going to find your baptismal certificate.

How are you going to make your first communion?

And one day, a man came up to her when she was playing outside,

with his little son, her age,

and said, this is my son.

You call him Butchie, and he'll call you Slug.

She didn't know who he was at the time.

They played together.

They would go down behind the orphanage,

and they would ride on the swings,

and they would throw rocks and scale them across the pond.

She saw him as a regular little boy.

They'd hopscotch together, jump rope together.

Her mother used to say to her father,

Louie, she thinks she sees someone there.

She's a little Patsy.

A little crazy.

There's something wrong with this child.

There's something not right.

But Arlene and Butchie grew up together.

They played all these games.

They enjoyed life together.

In fact, the neighbor has a picture of her riding on the back of the motorcycle

with her arm around someone who's not there.

She even rode a motorcycle with no hands.

There's a lot of stories about things like that,

especially with priests.

Sometimes, as I said,

they'd skip stones in the water.

And one time, they were behind the orphanage,

and she was on the swing,

and she fell off onto a glass bottle.

And a piece of the glass got stuck into her knee.

She said Butchie came and pulled it out and kissed her knee,

and it was healed.

But the scar remained.

And her mother always asked her,

Where did you get that scar?

What happened to you?

I never saw you get hurt.

Because our Lord healed her.

One day, she used to talk about this.

This is funny.

They were playing by the pond,

and as anybody would do,

they looked at their reflection in the pond

and kissed her on the cheek.

And she said,

If you ever do that again,

you'll never be my friend.

Later on, she said,

You know, as I got older,

I realized he just wanted to be friends.

He wasn't trying to be fresh.

It was a normal relationship,

like two young kids.

And she says,

God, the Father was slowly revealing to her

who this other child was.

It wasn't until her first communion

that Eileen really began to make a connection.

As I said, she was adopted,

and her mother said,

You can't go.

You don't have your baptismal certificate.

What are we going to tell the priest?

So she went into his room

and took her Baltimore Catechism.

And every day,

Butchie would teach her,

from cover to cover,

and quiz her on the Baltimore Catechism.

And she used to hide it

in one of the cracks in her father's garage.

And one day,

the Italian neighbor called her mother and said,

Your daughter is reading a dirty book in the garage,

so she got a good smack.

But when they got to the end,

her little friend said to her,

Now you're prepared.

Go to the priest and tell him you're ready.

Because every Sunday,

she'd be at Mass.

And in those days,

the sisters would be tough.

You know,

they'd click their hands,

and you'd kneel.

They'd click your hands,

and you'd stand.

And every week,

they'd say to her,

Child,

are you going to receive Holy Communion today?

And she'd always say,

No, sister, no.

And this one particular day,

she was ready.

The priest said,

Let me quiz you.

And he quizzed her,

and she knew the Catechism inside out.

He said,

You're ready to receive Holy Communion.

So that day,

when the sisters said to her,

Are you going to receive Holy Communion this week, child?

She said,

Yes, sister,

I'm ready.

So as she went up,

and of course,

those were the days of the altar rail,

you know,

the traditional Mass.

And she gets to the altar rail,

and she looks up where the priest was supposed to be,

and she sees Butchie there,

and she starts yelling,

Butchie,

get out of here.

You're going to get me in trouble.

And the sister came

and slapped her across the head.

And the priest immediately left the altar rail

and said to the sister,

If you ever touch that child again,

you'll face me.

Because he knew something was going on

because of the different experiences that happened,

even as a child,

a thousand stories.

I didn't know what to start.

You know,

I'd sit at my computer,

try to start writing.

What am I going to say?

Nothing would come into my head.

I was at home on my week off,

trying to write.

Nothing would come to my head.

So I said,

Well, let me take my iPad to adoration.

I have six pages.

So that was the beginning of the story.

So that was the beginning,

you could say,

of Eileen having an awakening,

beginning to realize that this Butchie

really wasn't his name.

His name was Jesus.

She saw him as her own age.

They grew together.

They played together until one day

she received what is called mystical marriage.

St. Teresa of Avila writes about this.

He gave her a wedding ring,

a wedding band.

She wore it.

In fact, one day,

nobody could see it.

It was invisible.

One day,

the bishop of Worcester,

her bishop,

was at one of her services.

I think it was in 1982.

It was before I knew her.

Bishop Flanagan,

before he retired.

He was at the service

and she was talking about

what was going on in her life.

And he looked up

and he saw the wedding ring

on her finger.

And he ran over to her,

took her hands,

knelt down,

and kissed them.

So he was privileged to see that

for a reason.

Because he's the one that,

along with a couple of other people,

was the one that was

the one that was

the person

that along with her

spiritual director

that put her under obedience

to go into public ministry.

But before that,

she always,

she had a ministry to priests

from the time

she was about 30 years old.

From the early 1960s,

priests just kept going to her.

Because she would,

she would look at them

and she would tell them

the problems

that they were going through

without them having

to say a word.

And she would tell them

how to overcome them.

She saved many vocations, many priests who were thinking of leaving the priesthood, never

left because of her, and many of them repented of wayward sins that they were committing

and changed their lives forever.

So this mystical marriage took on a whole new dimension, as I said.

Our Lord at that time began teaching her what she called his secrets.

Holy Communion, she would go into ecstasy.

She wouldn't call it ecstasy.

She'd say, I begin to dream her spiritual directives.

Father Raphael Simon, who was a Jewish convert, he was a doctor of theology and a doctor of

psychology at the Trappist Monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts, used to say she was having

mystical union and she would go into ecstasy.

And the way he tested her was he put her under obedience to come to Mass at the monastery

in London.

he'd have a private mass in a private chapel.

And when she'd go into ecstasy after communion,

he'd stick pins in her arms.

And when she came out,

she wondered why her arms were bleeding.

So during this, what she called her love time,

after Holy Communion,

as I said, she would go into ecstasy.

And during that time,

she would go to what she would call her valley.

And the Father was revealing to her

the kingdom of heaven.

Father Raphael said,

Eileen knows heaven like you and I know the earth.

She talked about things that she would...

I forgot to take it with me.

I was going to bring part of a recording,

how she explained heaven.

But she saw fields and brooks and flowers.

And she'd say as she and Jesus walked along the paths,

that the trees would bow down to him,

and the fish would come up to the top of the brook,

and they would bow down to our Savior.

She saw a deer that she'd never seen on this earth.

She saw flowers that she didn't recognize.

She saw fruit that throughout her ministry,

she traveled throughout the world.

She'd always look for that fruit, but never found it.

And it tasted like nothing she'd tasted on this earth.

After many years, she said,

After many years of coming to know our Lord,

she kept saying to him,

How come you don't introduce me to your Father?

And he'd avoid the question.

For years, she begged him and pleaded with him.

Come on.

It says in John that all who come to know you

will come to know the Father.

How come you're not revealing the Father to me?

What did I do wrong?

And he let her go on for years of pleading and begging.

Offering sacrifices in prayer.

Reading sacred scripture.

That was the only book she read.

One day after Mass, she said,

I was really ticked off.

She said, I got home and I took my chair

and I went to the back of our property.

And I sat under one of the big pine trees.

And she said, I fell asleep.

Before I left, she said, I tied the dog on the porch

and said, if you see any priest come, fight him.

Suddenly, she heard a voice.

I lean.

She said, oh no, one of my priests came.

She said, I kept my eyes closed tight.

Maybe he'd go away.

Kept saying, I lean, open your eyes.

She said, I kept them closed.

And finally, the voice said, I lean.

Stop being silly.

Open your eyes.

She said, I opened my eyes.

And there I see this man standing before me.

I didn't recognize.

She said, who are you?

He said, I'm the father.

She said, you don't look like your son.

And he went like this.

Because he didn't have a beard.

And she said, no.

He went like this.

Because he didn't have a mustache.

She said, no.

Finally, he said, something deep and theological.

The reason the son doesn't look like me

is because he only has the genes of Mary.

He only looks like the Blessed Virgin Mary.

So then, as I said, after that, her ministry began.

The public ministry began.

The bishop and her spiritual director, Father Raphael Simon,

put her under obedience with the permission of her husband

to go out and do talks and healing services.

But always, her family came first.

She always said to me, Father, I have a long mission.

I hate to leave my family.

But people say, Father, I have a long mission.

I hate to leave my family.

So before I go, I spend the week cooking,

and I fill the freezer with food.

And when I come back, there's nothing there.

The sink is filled with dishes.

The house is a big mess.

And I have to start again.

Our Lord and Father and several saints

taught her the deep, deep, and deep mysteries of our faith.

Katharine Siena would teach her how to suffer.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught her about the Eucharist.

St. Bernard of Claverne.

She knew.

them all. They all came to her. St. Gemma of Galgani was a good friend of hers. And after this,

when Father Raphael and Bishop Flanagan commanded her to start a ministry, Father Raphael

incorporated what we call Meet the Father Ministry. It was in 1982 in September. It was a new chapter

that began, and as soon as they started the ministry, she started getting calls. It began

throughout New England. And then she started going all over the country, then started going

to Canada. It was the beginning. Then the charismatics said to her, well, you know the

Son, and you know the Father. You need to know the Holy Spirit. You need to go through Life in

the Spirit Seminar. And she said, oh, I went through 10 of them, and nothing happened. She

said to the people, how can I love a bird? You all talk about a dove. I can't be in love with a bird.

She said it wasn't until after many years

that she came to know the Holy Spirit. But she talked about it as a mystical cycle.

First, you have to fall deeply in love with our Lord Jesus Christ. Once you fall deeply in love

with our Lord Jesus Christ and give yourself over completely to him,

he opens the door so that you meet the Father. And once you fall deeply in love with the Father

and come to know him in a deep and intimate way, then the Father leads you to the Holy Spirit.

And then after the Holy Spirit, the cycle begins again. It's always a constant deepening of unity

with the three persons. So she said one day her family had gone away. They used to go camping

every summer in that particular week. She didn't go because she had some ministry,

and she was praying in her living room. And suddenly she heard the sing of the angels.

And she said then before her, she saw in the form of a person, but as a silhouette,

no face, just almost like a shadow of light, came and entered her but didn't go through.

And she said then it was like a light came on. And with that, her ministry went worldwide.

Father Raphael Simon said it was the fastest growing ministry in the church.

It's water.

The ministry, Meet the Father ministry, took her throughout the United States, Canada,

South Korea, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and several other places.

When she was in South Korea, they snuck her into North Korea and China.

She went everywhere to bring the love of the Father. That's what her ministry was all about.

What she could not do, could not be achieved by a person,

can only be achieved by the grace and the movement of God and the Holy Spirit.

I'm going to tell you what happened with her many times.

She came into this church and it happened to her, but everywhere she went, the whole church would go to confession.

And one time, I can't remember the specific time, many times she came and everybody went to confession,

but one specific time I had eight priests. We were all around the church.

After her service was over, we had coffee in the hall, but us priests were stuck.

We were stuck in the church hearing confessions. I think it was four hours straight.

Everybody went to confession, but I don't know any priest that can do the same.

I can preach till I'm blue in the face and they don't all go to confession.

And I don't know any priest that can do that either.

It's a special grace, a special gift of the Holy Spirit that can stir people up to go to confession,

to become active in the life of the sacraments.

And I want to tell you a few things about healings that took place.

One of them was in, a good friend of mine, Father Jim Caldarella from Worcester was with her in Korea.

And she had been in the Olympic Stadium in Seoul.

I forget how many thousands of people can fit in there.

Finally, the end of the service came and she was leaving.

And she sees a woman with a baby. It had some kind of mental disability,

where the head is all sunken in.

The woman grabbed Eileen's hand, placed it on the baby's head.

Immediately, she felt the pop.

The baby's head came back into shape and the baby was totally and completely healed.

There was an old man in her town, his name was John, in Millbury, Massachusetts.

One day, he calls Eileen up.

Now, she said, this guy, you had to have patience when he was walking down the street.

He was so crippled and he had two canes.

And whenever he crossed the street,

you had to stay there with your calf, sometimes 20 minutes or half an hour.

One day, he calls Eileen and says,

Eileen, you have the gift of healing, heal me.

And she said to him, John, I can't heal anybody.

It's God the Father that does it.

Eileen, heal me.

She said, do me a favor.

When was the last time you went to confession?

She said, it was many, many years.

Do me a favor. I'm going to call my priest.

Will you go to confession if I pick you up and take you to the church?

He said, okay.

So, she got ready, she went to John's house,

picked him up and drove him to the church.

They went inside and Father was already waiting in the confessional.

She sat in the church and she prayed a rosary.

And while she was waiting, she was waiting and waiting and waiting,

she said, oh my God, he's going to kill me after he leaves

because he was in there so long.

He comes out of the confessional with his canes up in the air.

He went up to the altar rail and knelt down.

And he had hearing aids.

And she heard them ringing.

He touched them and they fell out of his ears.

And she said, John.

And he turned around and looked at Eileen.

Not only could he walk, he was healed of whatever was wrong with his legs.

But his hearing came back immediately because he went to confession.

Eileen said, the purpose of her ministry is to bring us to God the Father

through the sacraments and the life of the church.

That's the way to grace.

That's the way to healing.

We can find healing when we go to confession.

We can find healing in all these sacrifices,

because of course we're touching God.

He's coming down on our tongue and entering our very bodies.

And we go to people and we heal.

That's what she always said.

You don't need to come to me.

It's our Lord himself that heals you.

The way that Eileen did these healing services,

everybody thought she was a big charismatic.

She wasn't a charismatic.

She was a mystic that her bishop recognized

and used the charismatic renewal to get her all over the world.

Because these people were open.

She conducted these healing services and she said there were two ways that God would heal.

One, she would see Jesus and the Father walking among the people.

And stand behind them and put their hands on their shoulders and say,

Eileen, this one is being healed of whatever.

Or this one over here has a pack of cigarettes in their pocket

and they want to quit, but they won't.

And she'd say, you have a pack of cigarettes in your right hand pocket.

And they're camels.

Get rid of those and God the Father will heal you.

Or she would hear what charismatics call a word of knowledge.

She called them a locution.

That's the old way of understanding it.

A locution is when a person says,

when God speaks directly into your soul

and you can hear him like we hear one another.

But she had many supernatural gifts.

One of them was by location.

I'll tell you a funny story about that.

I had gone to St. Antoine Nursing Home up in Northern Rhode Island.

My aunt and uncle were there.

So after visiting them, I said to my father,

I'm going to go see Archbishop Pierce because we were on Eileen's board together.

And he used to pick me up and we'd drive up to the monastery for our meetings every year.

And so I walked in the room and he's sitting in the middle of the,

in the middle of the room on a folding chair and he's praying his breviary.

And I said, oh, hi Archbishop, how are you?

And he knew me well.

Good.

Not how are you.

Nothing else.

Oh, what are you doing?

Oh, not much.

I'm like, what do I say to this man?

He doesn't want to talk.

I said, well, have you seen Eileen lately?

Because Sister Grace used to drive him up there every once in a while.

And he said, yeah, I just saw her.

I said, oh, you went to Whistell last Sunday?

He said, no, no, I just saw her.

I said, oh, my God, he's losing his mind.

Well, good to see you, Archbishop.

Have a good day.

So I left.

In the next week, we had our annual priest retreat up in Still River at the Benedictine Monastery.

So all of us priests, we'd gather around outside and wait for Eileen to arrive.

One of the bishops would be there also.

And when she'd come, we'd carry her home.

We'd take her bags and bring her to our room.

And we'd just all hang out.

We'd be sitting on a bed, on the desk, all around the room.

And she's sitting there.

And I'm sitting here on the corner of her bed.

And she looks at me.

And she said, so you thought he was losing his mind, didn't you?

She said, you almost caught me, but I heard you coming.

I said, oh, you sneak.

I said, what were you doing?

She said, well, he used to like my baked bread.

And he used to like my jam.

And he used to do that every now and then.

I'd bring him some.

One of the other gifts she had is called, I had to look this up because I never knew what it was called.

It's called hieroniosis.

It's the ability of someone to discern the difference between a consecrated host and an unconsecrated host or a relic and one that's not a real relic.

One day years ago, I was on the priest retreat.

That's when we used to meet in Putnam, Connecticut.

And there was a friend of mine that knew someone that was getting these relics off of eBay.

And one of the women had a relic of the true cross.

And I said, I wouldn't trust that.

Oh, no, Father.

Come on.

So and so got it for me.

It cost $200.

I said, well, you got ripped off.

I said, here's what I'll do for you.

I'm going on retreat with Eileen.

I'll take it with me.

And I'll ask her what she thinks.

So I took it.

And I went to Eileen.

And I said, this is a relic of the true cross.

She took it like this.

She said, Father, I hate to tell you this, but it's not the true cross.

I don't know what it is.

So God the Father gives these people these gifts to protect us, to protect the church.

The reading of souls.

She never did that to me.

She always said to us at our priest retreats, I won't read your soul if you don't want to.

But a bunch of us used to say, I'm going to confession before I go to that retreat, because I don't want to reading my soul.

She had the gift of transverberation.

One year, she was at the Easter vigil at St. Joseph's Monastery in Spencer.

And one of the sisters went with her.

I interviewed the sister a couple of years ago, just after Eileen died.

And at the end of communion, as the priest was purifying the chalice and ciborium, a light

came from the ceiling near the cross, went down in the ciborium, and came and hit her

in the heart.

And she went, mm!

And the sister looked up and thought she was having a heart attack.

That's what St. Teresa of Avila calls the gift of transverberation.

It means that the Lord pierces you with a special gift of his love, but then after that,

you only function on his love.

You need his love.

And you do everything for him.

You do everything for him.

You do everything for his love.

She had the gift of prophecy.

More often, we think of prophecy as somebody saying the earth is going to come to an end

on January 30th.

They're usually wrong.

Most of the time, a prophecy is something that will be supportive, encouraging, telling

us to go back to our roots, what we're forgetting.

And on other occasions, it might be something, if you have earth.

Conversations 3, there are a few prophecies in there, one that she said came true when

the towers, the twin towers were destroyed.

There's a prophecy in there about missiles reaching New York City and being destruction.

There are some, too, that aren't revealed yet, and I'm not telling you.

The gift of tongues.

Well, we think of the gift of tongues, sometimes people babbling, but she actually knew about

13 or 14 languages that she never studied.

So, when she went to Korea, it's funny, she always had a translator because she wouldn't

use these gifts publicly, and that was the specific reason.

And sometimes, the translator would go on and on for nothing, and she'd say, you're

saying more than I'm saying.

So, she knew what they were doing.

Why?

So that God the Father would be sure that the message that he wanted her to present

came through as he wanted it to come through.

Not someone adding to or taking away from what was said.

She had another one, too, that she never talked about.

She had the invisible wounds.

One time, one of her kids actually told me this one thing.

She'd tell me a lot because, first thing, I was the youngest priest on the retreat all

the time.

But in my second year of priesthood, her spiritual director called me and said, and this is

how Father Rayfield, he had a very deep voice, hello, Father Jay, this is Father Rayfield.

I said, oh, Father Rayfield, how are you?

Good.

Will you be a member of the board of directors of Meet the Father Ministry?

I said, I think I need permission to be a bishop.

He gave it.

Will you accept?

Yes.

Click.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Father.

So, Father Rayfield, he would verify all of these gifts, like I said, when he entered

the monastery.

He would stick pins in her and do all of these things, strict discernment.

Any time the newsletter would come out, he would read it with a fine combed tooth before

it went out.

Any of her tapes that were released, he went through them, listening to them in detail

and saying, I don't want this in there.

Even if it wasn't something that was off the wall, he'd say, I don't want this in there

because I just don't want that released.

So, Father Rayfield put me on the board so she would tell me a lot more.

So, one day.

I asked her about this stigmata and she said, oh, I won't tell you, but one day on a good

Friday, one of my children walked into the bedroom on me and slammed the door shut and

ran away because of what they saw.

See, she would never say anything directly.

She always spoke in riddles.

That's kind of all the mystics are.

They never tell you anything directly.

And there were a few things that I'm still trying to figure out that she told me years

ago.

Another one is called The Odor of Sanctity.

Remember Padre Pio?

He almost smelled like a tobacco, they said.

Eileen had the gift of roses.

That's why I use the roses, rose incense.

And I remember one of the early times I saw her, I was a novice in the Franciscans in

Kennebunk, Port Main.

I already knew her about a year or so.

So, I was waiting outside for the car to come and the driveway, the road was with a stained

glass window behind the organ there.

And when they drove into the driveway, the window was open this much.

And from there, I could smell the roses.

And when she got out of the car, I couldn't smell them any longer.

And sometimes we'd be at her service and I'd say to my mother or whoever was with me, I'd

say, wow, the roses were strong today.

And they'd say, what are you talking about?

I couldn't smell anything.

Or they'd say to me, wow, didn't you love the smell of the roses?

I couldn't smell them at all.

See, that's how God is.

See, that's how God confirms the gifts of the saints or the gifts of his mystics.

And as I said, she was allowed to see the kingdom of heaven beforehand.

She talked about her horse, Midnight.

When she was younger, she used to have a beautiful black stallion.

And she prayed that the horse wouldn't die because it was very sick and it died.

She said, Father, why did you take away my horse?

He said, don't worry, child.

Your horse is in your valley waiting for you in the kingdom.

And so she would see this horse sometime when she would go into ecstasy after communion.

One time, a good friend of mine, Father, one of the priests from Maine, I can't remember

his name now.

Oh, my gosh.

Father Rice, Father Richard Rice, he had a dog called Shakina after the Shakina glory

of God.

And his dog was sick.

And the dog died.

He called Eileen.

And she said, Father, your dog is a show off.

I just saw it riding on top of Shakina through my valley.

Four days before she died, some of you remember my first dog, Mickey.

He was another golden retriever.

And he had cancer for four years.

And every time I'd see her, she'd ask me, how's Mickey doing?

I'd pray for him every day.

And when it came to the end, I didn't want to put him down.

But one day, I knew I had to do it.

So I brought him.

And that day, I was supposed to bring her Holy Communion.

So I had one of the priests call her and say, I'll be late.

So when I got there, I had the horse that I had consecrated at my morning mass at home

on my day off.

And I get to her house, and she's sitting in a wheelchair.

There's a cat on each corner.

I'm like, ugh.

Get those cats away from me.

And I end up on the side of a wheelchair.

And I said, Eileen, I'm sorry I'm late.

She said, oh, don't worry about it, Father.

I said, no, I'm sorry I'm late, because I had to put my dog down.

She said, oh, I've done that many times.

How terrible.

And she's looking at me like this.

And suddenly, she looks up and closes her eyes.

And she looks back at me.

And she said, he's running around in the kingdom, wagging his tail.

He's very happy.

And the sun is petting him.

See, our animals were created by God, as she always said.

They're not there because they deserve it.

They're there because we love them.

God will give us anything that is good in the kingdom.

In fact, if you look at the book of Revelation, the lion lies down with the lamb.

You see all of these animals and flowers in the book of Revelation in the kingdom.

So it's not beyond God.

Everything St. Paul says.

Will be renewed by the redemptive power of Christ.

So there were many other gifts that she hid that will only be known in the future.

But you know, everyone wants these dramatic gifts, don't they?

I know so many people who say, oh, somebody said to me, not here today.

Oh, you know, I have the gift just like Eileen George.

And you're going to be going around talking about her.

And then I'll be doing the healings, they said.

I don't think so.

We want the gifts.

But like Eileen said, with the gifts, the ministry, you have a cost to pay for ministry.

It doesn't come for nothing.

If it's true ministry, it's about salvation of souls.

From the time I knew her, she had indolent lymphoma of the regional lymph nodes.

Now, sisters and nurses, they know what that is.

It means, she always used to say it, play tic-tac-toe.

It jumps from one lymph node to the other.

When they cut it out here, it goes there.

And you should be dead in two weeks.

She lived over 30 years with that dreaded disease.

She had eight or ten surgeries.

They sent her home to die every time.

She had one of her kidneys removed.

She had neuropathy in both feet.

She had diabetes.

She had a bad heart.

She always said she was a walking time bomb, ready to explode.

But she lived all those years, and she always used to say,

Father, I offer my suffering, especially for priests, and the salvation of souls.

That's the cost of ministry.

It doesn't come for free.

And I say, same with a priest.

It's a ministry.

I wonder about this voice.

We have to have something to suffer because a priest is another Christ.

Our Lord is not only a priest, but he's a victim.

But all of us, aren't we, by our baptism, are configured to Christ.

We're going to all have some suffering in our lives.

And suffering can be one of two things.

It can be a curse because you turn against God,

or it can be a grace that you offer for your salvation,

and the salvation of souls.

But don't ask for a big ministry because if you get it,

you're going to get big suffering that comes along with it.

Some of the other suffering she had,

especially if you desire to grow in holiness,

you're going to suffer.

Every Lent, she was deprived of the sense of smell and taste.

And she'd say,

the Father and Butchie take a powder.

She'd say they hide on her.

And she felt just like when you read about the mystics.

She'd go through this dark night.

And she'd pray, oh, I want to die.

I know you're there, but where are you?

You're hiding.

She said her food tasted like she was eating sand.

But she would offer it all for the salvation of souls.

So my title tonight was,

My Friend Eileen George.

Don't we all want to meet a saint?

We all, don't we?

Because when you meet someone holy like,

I remember meeting Mother Teresa once, John Paul.

I remember John Paul walking by me from here to the opening of the gate.

And I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit as he went by.

I'm not saying he was perfect.

Nobody's perfect.

We're not perfect until God saves us.

We're not perfect until God sanctifies us and gets us to heaven.

And I always used to wonder, you know,

Eileen knew Jesus as a child.

From the time she was like three years old.

But then I came to realize after she died,

she had to be purified throughout her life.

And as we accept those sufferings, we're purified.

We go into the crucible of fire.

Like gold that's tested in the fire to become purer and purer with time.

It doesn't mean any day.

I remember what she used to say.

You know, I had an Italian father and an Irish mother.

That means I had two tempers.

When I calmed one down, the other one kicked in.

She'd say my husband used to put a pasta pan over his head

because he knew I would be throwing things.

Reminds me of a funny story.

She was filled with them.

That's why I believe in her holiness.

Because she was not just some prude that walked around with her head bowed all the time.

She had a real sense of humor.

She said she had these beautiful bath towels.

And she said they really needed to be washed because her washing machine,

no, her washing machine was working.

Her dryer wasn't working.

Or maybe both weren't working.

So she put them in the garbage bags and put them near the door.

And she said to her father,

Hey Daddy, will you please take those to me?

Take those to be washed.

And he left them there.

Like a month or two went by.

And one day he gathered everything up to bring to the Salvation Army.

And he brought them to the box in Auburn Mass near the Auburn Mall.

And he said to her that afternoon,

Hey hon, I did you a favor.

I took everything you told me to take to the Salvation Army.

He said, Oh, you're such a good boy.

Thank you, honey.

I love you so much.

She went out there and she saw that her towels were gone.

She went back to him and said,

What did you do with my towels?

What towels?

The ones I had by the door.

He said, Uh-oh.

She said, You're going to get them.

So he said to her, Will you come?

So she said, Okay.

So she drove and they drove to the Auburn Mall and they came up and found the box.

And they got out.

And they're looking in and they can see them in the box.

In those days, they weren't like the ones now.

You can't get in.

So they see them and she said, Okay.

You got to get them out.

He said, I can't reach them.

She said, I'll hold you.

So she's holding him.

He's reaching for them.

All of a sudden she sees a state trooper car coming.

She pushed him in.

And he's in the box.

So she gets in the car and drives off.

And she goes around the block once.

And she sees them again.

She goes around it twice.

A third time she goes around.

Finally, they're gone.

So she pulls up and she gets to the box.

And she says, Honey, are you still in the box?

He said, Where did you think I was going to go?

Help me out of the box.

She said, First, give me the towels.

She takes the towels, puts them in the car.

And then she pulls them out of the box.

And she said it was winter.

So it was shivering.

Gets in the car.

They start to drive off.

All of a sudden, what happens?

The state police car comes.

The lights go on.

And she said, There's a big car.

She said, Big cop gets out of the car.

And he comes to the window.

And she said, Yes, officer.

Can I help you?

And he said, Did you get him out of the box?

She said, You dirty dog.

And the other one gets out.

And she said, He's throwing kisses.

They laughed it off.

But that's a sense of humor.

It shows that holiness is an ordinary life.

We do the ordinary things in our daily life.

And we try to do them to perfection.

Doesn't mean we have no faults and failures and sins.

It means that when we have sins and faults and failures,

we get to our box, our confessional.

And we turn them over, as she said.

We recycle them.

Sin for grace.

You become transformed by God's grace.

So, as you know, she was a good friend of mine.

We're hoping to open the cause of canonization for Eileen.

Hopefully soon.

It's been five years.

As of, it will be May 14th.

It'll be five years.

Funny thing, coincidence is, I was baptized on May 14th.

She died on May 14th.

So, she needs miracles.

And I need a miracle.

That's why I'm praying to her.

And we all know someone who needs a miracle.

And the person that you pray to,

you gotta get a gang to pray for that person or that intention

and not go through everybody.

Because if you go through everybody,

there's no way to prove that it didn't come through

Saint Jude or Saint Joseph or Padre Pio or whoever.

You gotta go through one specific one.

So, if you know someone that needs a miracle,

get a gang of people together and pray.

Ask Eileen's intercession.

And some people might say,

well, how can you do that?

She's not a saint.

Well, you'll never know if you don't.

And that's how every cause is started.

So, I invite you to join me.

I don't have the prayer with me,

but they're back there.

Take them home with you.

Join in the prayer for Eileen's canonization.

We have a prayer group every fourth Sunday of the month.

In fact, it's this Sunday, 3 p.m.

If you'd like to join us after benediction,

if you want to, I will bless you with the relic of Eileen.

I have some of her here.

And since our Lord's exposed,

I won't take questions tonight.

If you want to ask me after or come back on Sunday,

I'd be willing to do my best to answer,

but I don't know it all.

I'm still learning.

But I'll tell you, God gave me a gift.

I knew from the day I met her

that the Lord had a plan for me in her life,

but I didn't know what it was.

And every year at her priest retreat,

we could sign up for a 15-minute time period

to talk to her one-on-one.

And every year, I would take the last one

because I'd say, I'll get more time.

But every year, I'd never get a word in

because Father Raphael had died,

and she'd want to talk to me about issues

going on in the ministry and in her life,

and she'd say, what do you think I should do about this

and that and the other thing?

Then I'd never get a word in.

So we'd come to the end of the time,

and I'd say, Eileen, just pray with me.

And she'd usually get a word from the Father for me.

One specific time, the Father said,

and she always called me Father Jay,

but she said this,

I have brought Eileen and Father Fennelly together

for a purpose that will not be known until it's time.

So remember the thing I told you

about the four days before that I went to see her?

I went to see her and gave her communion,

and she saw Mickey and the kingdom.

I kind of pushed it.

I said, Eileen, you know, years ago you told me this.

Can you tell me more?

And I knew she didn't want to.

So she looked up and she said,

you'll have a lot of influence.

I said, thanks a lot.

But the Lord brings everybody into our lives for a purpose.

And I thank God for that woman

because I know that woman

has helped to make my priesthood deeper

than it would have ever been

in all of my life or anybody else's life.

Because when you meet someone

who is a true model of holiness,

you have that desire, even though you fail,

you have that desire.

And I know to this day, as she said,

I'll be closer to you

when I leave this life

than I am right now.

God love you.

God bless you.

God bless her.

Ed 몽

to meet the Father Ministry.

It's been great spending this time with you.

I look forward to next time.

And until then, God love you.