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Beginning on Monday, January 16, 2012 Fr. Duffy’s blog will post messages every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.
These messages will consist of true real-life miracles every Monday and Wednesday; and two scriptures meditations every
Friday and Sunday.

Miracles happen to those who believe.

If you have experienced such a miracle in your life or know someone who has, please send your story (about 400 words)
to the following email: hduffyheart@earthlink.net.

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“Jesus told Him: Go and do likewise.”

Gospel of Luke chapter 10:37

Allen Falby, an El Paso County patrolman, and Alfred Smith, a businessman, met for the first time on a hot June night when Falby crashed his motorcycle.

He was racing down the road to overtake a speeding truck when the vehicle slowed down to make a turn. Unaware that the truck was slowing, Falby slammed full throttle into its tailgate. The crack-up demolished the cycle and nearly amputated one of Falby’s legs. As he lay in agony on the pavement, a pool of blood began to form beneath his shattered limb. He had ruptured an artery in his leg and was bleeding to death.

It was then that providence brought Falby and Smith together.

Smith had been driving home along the road when he saw the accident. Shaken but alert, he was out of his car and bending over the badly injured man almost before the sound of the impact died on the night air.

Smith wasn’t a doctor but could see what had to be done for the dying patrolman. Whipping off his tie, he quickly bound Falby’s leg in a crude tourniquet. It worked. The flow of blood slackened to a trickle and then stopped entirely. When the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, Smith learned for the first time that he had saved Falby’s life.

Five year later, around Christmas, Falby was on night patrol when he received a radio call from headquarters to investigate an accident along U.S. 80. A car smashed into a tree. A man was in serious condition, and an ambulance was on the way.

Falby reached the wreck well before the ambulance. Pushing his way past a group of frightened bystanders, he found the injured man slumped unconscious across the torn car seat.

The man’s right pants leg was saturated and sticky with blood. He had severed a major artery and was bleeding to death. Well trained in first aid, Falby quickly applied a tourniquet above the ruptured artery. When the bleeding stopped, he pulled the man from the car and made him more comfortable on the ground.

That’s when Falby recognized the victim. He was Alfred Smith, the man who have saved his own life five years before.

Providence had brought the two men together again – and both meetings had been for the same purpose: for one man to save the life of the other in exactly the same way.

“Well,” Falby told Doug Storer of the National Tattler, who first reported the story, “you might say, it all goes to prove that one good tourniquet deserves another!”

Comment:
If you see someone in need while driving along the highway, you might be tempted to keep going like the Priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). But, what if you are the one who needs help? Your time, perhaps, just hasn’t come for you to see that so clearly!

Fr. Hugh Duffy

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