The Trumpet of Gabriel by Michael Brown: What's behind all the reports of angels? Does it portend drama in the future? An ecumenical look by Michael Brown at the many reports of supernatural phenomena in our times -- against a backdrop of world events. Was the massacre in Rwanda prophesied? The natural disasters? Are we in 'end times'? Michael is careful not to come to overly dramatic but nonetheless exciting conclusions! From mysterious and vanishing 'hitchhikers' to those who claim prophecy of our times!  CLICK HERE

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PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED WHEN WE FAST AND IMPLORE GOD WITH SPECIFICITY IN THE DESERT

The Blessed Mother once said that with prayer and fasting we can even stop wars and suspend the laws of nature and when we pray in a devout way many are those who have experienced miracles (large and small -- if a miracle can be "small").

Answered prayers.

Ask and you will receive.

Fast and suspend logic.

This Lent, go deep. Be specific. Go to the '"desert."

"When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them," says Matthew 6. "Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you."

Your inner room. Your inner sanctuary. Here, we pray from the heart.

I recall once visiting San Giovanni Rotundo in Italy in 1991 to pray at the tomb of Padre Pio -- the great Lenten saint -- and on the way I had three requests. One, that I find a room for about $22, which is what I had left, in that day's travel allotment. I was running on a very tight budget and it was very late at night -- about one a.m. -- and so I prayed for a room. I also prayed to find a place where I could copy the notes I had taken for the past week or more during research from deep in the former Soviet Union to apparition sites across Italy. The notes were crucial. It would be nearly impossible to recreate them and I wanted a copy because I planned to take a ferry across the Adriatic in the next day or so at Ancona or Pescara (whichever was opened) for there was a war raging in former Yugoslavia, which was my destiny and where enemy forces, the Serbians, were largely in control. I feared they would confiscate my papers.

So there were those three requests, and it wasn't looking very good.

At hotel after hotel, either no one answered the door buzzer or someone came to wave me away, indicating no available room. The main street was desolate.

Finally, I got to the last possible place before resigning myself to a cramped night in the car. It was a medium-sized hotel and the night clerk sauntered to the front glass door, rubbing his eyes -- obviously, I had awakened him, and groggily he also began to send me on my way.

Something made him hesitate, however, and studying me -- perhaps having pity on how pathetic I looked -- he thought a moment and then in broken English explained to me that there were no vacancies (it was a Saturday night) but there was the night clerk's room and he didn't plan on going back to sleep. He said he would give it to me -- for what translated in U.S. currency to $22. I was elated and amazed. He took me to it and it had what I needed: besides a bed, a full bathroom with a shower. But that's not what grabbed my attention. What I noticed on first stepping into the unusual room was a Xerox machine.

We see how prayers sometimes fall into line according to specificity -- sometimes not; when they do, often after a little trial. While on earth, we will not know how God and His angels orchestrate things. As one woman who experienced a near-death episode said, "people need to know that there is life after a trauma. You will never be given anything you cannot handle."

But how those little fillips help!

I have two examples from just last week.

On Tuesday, February 14 (2012), I was heading to the airport in Buffalo, New York, to return home after visiting my parents and had a large piece of luggage crammed with clothes and food. I knew it would be over the weight limit (which I thought was forty pounds), especially once I stuffed my winter coat into it. I prayed that somehow it meet the limit, to avoid the extra costs they would charge. I asked my angel to lighten it on the scale. I also invoked the Blessed Mother. Recalling a man who once was far over the luggage limit in France but kept saying over and over, "Mary take over, Mary take over" at the airport, I did the same as I approached the counter. I clumsily heaved the heavy bag up on the scale at the counter and when the airline agent looked at the reading, he said, "Perfect!" I asked what he meant. He said it was exactly fifty pounds, which was the actual limit.

The next day, Wednesday (2/15/12), I went to a local health-club pool to do laps and as always, placed my sunglasses, which were prescription, on a wooden shelf behind a lounge chair next to the lifeguard's stand. I know I put them there, but when I finished swimming and returned to my car I realized I didn't have them. I went back to where I placed them, searched the counter, the deck, the chair, and my bag (several times). I had already searched the front seat and floor of my car and the glove compartment and everywhere else but did so a second time. I also asked a guy sitting nearby if he had seen them, and then went into a sauna and asked two men in there -- one who seemed a bit suspicious -- if they had found a pair of glasses (where we are, sunglasses are a necessity for protecting aging eyes and cost too much).

No one knew anything. I couldn't confront anyone without any evidence. I informed the lifeguard that I had probably been the victim of a theft but left my number in case anyone found them. On the way out and in the car I asked God to let whoever took them realize they were prescription glasses (useless to anyone without my exact eye characteristics) and leave them at the club. I also asked that whoever took them be blessed. At the same time, I asked that justice be done. I asked St. Michael to take part in the situation. I asked the Lord to somehow unexpectedly restore the money I would need for a new pair.

On returning home, I called my eye doctor -- who said they couldn't give me my prescription without another expensive eye exam because it was more than a year old. I stayed on the line and finally convinced them to Xerox it so I could stop by an optometrist's. When I got off the phone my wife tried to cheer me up, waving an envelope: an unexpected check for the exact amount needed for new glasses.

Cheer me up it did. (We're not rich.) So did the phone, which almost immediately rang. It was the lifeguard. They had found my glasses, he said. I was stunned. I never expected to see them again. They were in the pool, he said -- at the far end and other side from where I had placed them, probably about 75 feet across the way. In the water! (I never wore glasses into the pool.)

Whoever took them, if they had been taken (who knows what else may have happened), apparently had seen they were prescription, found them useless, and ditched in a quiet far corner of this Olympic-sized pool. At least, that's the only thing I could figure.

-- Michael H. Brown

[resources: The God of Miracles]

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