When Eric and Andrea Paul took their newborn, Bruce, born in September 2022, for early checkups, the pediatrician found a persistent heart murmur. An echocardiogram revealed that the baby had a large hole in his heart, requiring surgery.

“I believed God wanted this to happen for a reason,” Andrea reminded the Register. “Without the surgery, he would not have lived. He would have eventually died of congestive heart failure.”

In February 2023, Andrea flew from their home in southwest Alaska to C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Michigan for the baby’s open-heart surgery. Being in the Air Force, Eric had to serve in Alaska.

Bruce was not yet 6 months old. During the operation, doctors found a second hole. They also discovered that the baby’s mitral valve “was not seated properly because the valve was too stretched to repair itself,” Eric said, and Bruce would need another open-heart surgery when he was 6 or 7; otherwise he would have died of congestive heart failure.

A year later there was no improvement in his condition.

Meanwhile, Eric said, “I was beginning my walk with the Catholic Church.” He was raised Protestant and was taught to be suspicious of Catholics. “On that walk I realized the power that Christ gives to the relics of the saints.” He came across the podcast in Eric’s personal work Exorcist FilesAlong with Father Carlos Martins, president of Church Treasures, he heard him speak on “why relics are scripturally sound theology and why they work primarily to bring people to Christ.” talked about Traveling branch of St. Jude through the United States.”

Eric arranges for Andrea to fly to Oklahoma, stay with her family, and return to St. He wanted Jude to wait for his branch coming to Oklahoma City. This turned out to be useless for a baby undergoing open heart surgery. “Obviously God didn’t plan for us to go to Jude,” Eric said. But he had a “dull feeling,” he said, “like I was being called to do something; no words, no sights, nothing spectacular, just nagging.”

That’s when Andrea’s sister, Natalie Neff, who lived near the Paul family with her husband Dalton and their children, came across an article from the diocesan newspaper: North Star Catholicabout a statue of Our Lady of Beauraing just an hour’s drive north. Natalie, who is also Bruce’s godmother, tells Eric “about the Marian apparitions of Beauraing, Belgium, how the Virgin Mary touched a hawthorn tree there, how a World War II soldier brought a piece of that tree home, and how her terminally ill son had a miraculous miracle.” He explained that he was somehow healed. ”

Father Madison Hayes, who baptized Bruce two months after he was assigned to three parishes and two missions in this area, said Father Madison Hayes at St. George’s Church in Talkeetna. Bernard shared the story of the five-foot statue of Our Lady of Beauraing on the grounds of the Catholic Church. It is at the foot of Mount Denali, the highest peak in North America. The statue was brought there by the priest in the 1980s, but its story remained a mystery for 25 years until a visiting priest shared the history.

This replica of Our Lady of Beauraing was one of several made in Minnesota after World War II in 1955 by George Herter, a US soldier who married a Belgian woman. Father Hayes explained: “After the war, his sons were among the 70 children who came to America by ship. All the children caught typhus. His mother took a piece of the hawthorn tree from Beauraing and put it under the child’s pillow. He got better. Other children died. In gratitude for his son’s miraculous healing, Herter made the statues and placed a splinter of the Hawthorn tree of the Virgin Mary inside each replica. One of the still known was in Talkeetna.

“I firmly believe this was Mary extending her maternal love to me and our family,” Natalie recalled, explaining that the family wanted to pray for “Mary to intercede for Bruce’s recovery as she did for the soldier’s young son.”

Eric immediately decided: “We should go as a family. It has to be the whole family” – so off she, Andrea, Bruce, Natalie and Eric’s best friend Dalton, plus the Pauls’ two dogs, set out.

“Mary was a big point of contention for me because growing up Protestants don’t respect Mary. They look at her as a holy woman who is instrumental in God’s will. That’s it,” Eric explained.

But for all his study of the Catholic faith, Eric “absolutely did not discredit” Mary’s intercession and looked forward to their faith-filled journey.

in the temple

“I remember everything being quiet and peaceful,” Eric said of his pilgrimages, which included praying in front of the Marian statue outside. “As a family, we knelt before Mary and asked for her intercession and told her about the circumstances and how we asked Christ to heal our little boy and prevent him from having to undergo another heart surgery. “I was on my knees praying fervently with the rest of the family.”

“Bruce touched the heart of his statue and you could really feel that he was with us,” Andrea said. “That in itself was truly miraculous.”

“Bruce was touching the heart and not being led,” Eric said. “We didn’t touch her. He had been touching her for a (long) time for a toddler. He was fascinated by this heart. … It felt like I was standing there.”

The family’s experience is linked to Beauraing ghosts. Mary revealed her heart, which was illuminated like a golden heart surrounded by great rays. For this reason, she is also known as the “Virgin with the Heart of Gold”.

“The first thing I said was, ‘Praise Jesus and Hail Mary,'” Eric emphasized. “Everything happened exactly according to God’s will.”

He remembers the gradual build-up of things that felt different. Then the dogs started acting unusual. The old dog jumped up onto the pedestal of the statue and was looking directly at the Virgin, “the same way he does when he greets you when you enter the carriage. He knows what a man is to a statue. He doesn’t jump on statues. ‘What’s going on?’ I thought.

Andrea admitted that she was a little skeptical, saying “at first I didn’t have the faith I should have had.” “But then when we went and stood by the statue, the dogs started behaving like before, and our big dog, Bear, acted like he (Our Lady) was there and was saying ‘Hello’ to her. ” he added, “I felt his presence and it was truly miraculous. My faith clearly changed at that moment.

Surprisingly, the two dogs began to “garden” around the statue. They began to pull out a native plant full of sharp thorns called devil’s club. They didn’t stop until they had cleared everything around the statue. Andrea checked their mouths to see if they were injured, but they were fine.

“We came to the conclusion that they knew the Queen of Heaven and Earth was there,” Natalie Neff recounted.

After Hajj

Bruce’s “loud and clear” murmur disappeared after he prayed at the Shrine of Our Lady of Beauraing. Next exam, same results.

“Praise be to God and thank you Mary!” said Eric. Bruce is scheduled to have his echocardiogram in March 2025; “Here we will be able to visibly see the healing powers of Christ with our own eyes and have concrete evidence of this miracle. … His heart is now working well. He runs quickly and is always on the move.”

Andrea felt “healed” but also admits she was “like the apostle Thomas” and looks forward to seeing the echocardiogram next year.

Eric said he “understands exactly why God didn’t let us go to St. Jude and sent us to Mary because of the way I viewed him in the past.” Now I see how much more grace comes from him. He literally brought me to him to say, ‘I forgive what you said.’ ‘I will intercede for your son.’”

Andrea also believes that “there is definitely a connection to the story of the World War II soldier, especially since Eric was in the army. “I was in the military too, in the Air Force.”

“From the healing of a soldier’s son after World War II to the healing of an airman’s son in today’s world, the intercession of Our Lady of Beauraing remains a powerful sign of great hope,” Father Hayes told the Register. “But this touching story of Our Lady of the Heart of Gold is not quite over. Remember that Our Lady’s message is to ‘transform sinners.'”

“It literally took a miracle to open his heart to the truth, beauty and goodness of Catholicism,” said Father Hayes of Eric. Eric is now officially a member of the OCIA group at Our Lady of the Lake in Big Lake, Alaska, and “will enter into full communion with the Church next Easter, God willing.”

“At the center of every apparition of Mary is transformation. to Jesus through Mary,” Father Hayes added. “If Bruce’s physical healing is truly a miracle, the even greater miracle is the spiritual healing of his father Eric and his attainment of full communion with the Catholic Church.”

It has truly been a blessing to grow closer to our Blessed Mother individually and as a family.

“We both became close,” Andrea said, speaking of her own experiences as well as Eric’s, adding that they remain close to Mary. “We pray for him a lot.” Eric puts on the Miraculous Medal and says the Rosary. Andrea continued: “We both wear his scapula. We talk about him often. We pray to him. I always say Our Father and Hail Marys with Bruce at night. I said Rosaries. I need to say more than these. “I absolutely believe in Our Lady and her work, so I don’t know why I was skeptical at first.”

Eric added: “That only pulled me deeper.”

Andrea gives the following advice to parents facing difficulties: “Absolutely with every decision, do not forget to pray about it first. Be sure to have faith in the power of God and these very powerful trusts. Believe and have a strong faith, God will take care of you.”