—Psalm 121:7

He was a busy man. As a hospital chaplain, Father Martin was on call twenty-four hours a day. He ministered at four hospitals, and had witnessed a lot of pain, heartache, and misery during the course of his ten years of service.

To seek solace from a schedule that sometimes wore him down, he would retreat to an abandoned and crumbling Church covered with ivy. Here he would relax and meditate and allow his mind and body to be renewed in the tranquility of this old, deserted sanctuary, now crumbling and in a state of disrepair.

For him, however, it had become a true sanctuary, a place where he could withdraw and renew himself.

Late one afternoon, after a particularly taxing day, Father Martin decided to withdraw to this old abandoned Church where he could breathe, think, and dream alone. He entered the old sanctuary without doors, and sat on a stone seat where the alter used to be. He inhaled its musty odor and smiled as he envisioned the hundreds, indeed thousands, of eager pilgrims who once flocked to this ancient Church for solace and inspiration. He could feel the power of their prayers.

Everything changes, he thought.

Just then, his hospital pager went off. “Oh, no,” he sighed. “Just when I was beginning to unwind.” He tried to retrieve his message, but for some reason it was strangely garbled. “That’s odd,” he thought. “What’s the matter with the pager?” Someone had paged him, but he couldn’t figure out who it was. Which hospital needed him?

He had to leave his beloved sanctuary to make calls to all four hospital, chaplaincy departments that had his beeper number. Everyone he spoke to said, “I didn’t call you. Try the other hospitals.” He tried them all, but the staff in each hospital was as perplexed as he was. No one who had his pager number had given him a call.

The pager must be malfunctioning, he mused, as he returned to the old Church building to continue his disrupted retreat. I’ll have to bring it into the company tomorrow to have it repaired, he thought as he entered the Church.

Then he stopped and stared in total disbelief. During his absence, a wing of the old building had collapsed onto itself. The very wing under which he had been seated a short time before. Had he still been there, he would never have survived.

God created you because He loves you. Out of love He watches over you and will keep you safe from danger as He protected Fr. Martin in this touching story.

—Fr. Hugh Duffy