Draft

Hope all is well with all!

Just wanted to share a little Christmas “miracle.”

For months, since I lost my kayak (it fell, unnoticed, out of an old truck I use), I’ve been driving my wife Lisa a bit crazy, telling her repeatedly how much I miss kayaking. Since relocating to north-central Florida (a small city near Saint Augustine), I’ve kayaked at more than a hundred launches, reveling in God’s Creation, including (and often especially) tree, birds and, yes, alligators (I’ve seen several thoughand in the past two decades).

I kept thinking about where to get a new kayak, and figuring it would be about $1,000. We are living closer to the vest and really are not in a spending mood these days (who is?). Should I even bother, with a new boat, when some of those close to me worry about how far I often paddle?

Two weeks ago a viewer of Spirit Daily sent Lisa and me Christmas gifts, as do a number of folks who follow the site. She’s a very generous and spiritually “in-tune” reader from Pennsylvania (I came to learn Philly area; I’ve never spoken with her).

Anyway, below I attach her gift for me. She knew NOTHING about my kayaking let alone that I’d lost my kayak.

Her gift?

A navigation compass, (exactly like one I had used on my little kayak), and in the pouch, a check for–$1,000.

Her note, also out of the blue, said simply, “Go back to what you love.”

She later explained that she was told to do and say what she did and never questions what comes from the Lord, neither adding or subtracting. She just “goes with it.” (“Go back to what you love.”)

That was it.

I thought of kayaking almost instantly, before even seeing the check.

I will now replace the one I lost, which was aging badly anyway.

–Michael Brown

Is i “long covid” (effects from that virus that can last years) or in some cases, vaccines?

A recent social media post:

“Doctors say more Americans are using the same phrase in clinics in 2025: ‘I don’t feel sick, but I don’t feel right either.’ It’s not one symptom, but a mix—low energy, brain fog, poor sleep, digestive discomfort, or emotional flatness. Health experts say this vague feeling is becoming common, especially among working-age adults juggling constant mental and digital load.”

Let’s hear your experiences (spirdaily@aol.com).

When it comes to illness and healing, far more uplifting was a recent article in the London Mail, detailing the case of Rosemary Thornton, 66, who had been pleading in prayer for a miracle after the devastating loss of her husband.

Instead, she soon faced a devastating crisis of her own.

In 2018—two years after her husband died by suicide—the Midwestern writer experienced abnormal vaginal bleeding that sent her urgently to a gynecologist. Tests soon confirmed the worst: Thornton, then 59, was diagnosed with stage-two cervical cancer, a disease that strikes roughly 13,000 women in the United States each year and claims about 4,000 lives.

During emergency surgery for it, Mrs. Thornton “bled out” and with a plummeting blood pressure, was soon clinically “dead.”

Of course, she was anything but—in fact more aware and alive than ever, at total peace, if now looking down at the doctors, nurses, and her body.

It was such a pleasant experience—leaving the earthly body—that she didn’t want to return but as in so many of these cases, she allegedly was told by angels she must.

‘I felt disappointed. I even argued with the angels not to send me back,” she told the London tabloid. Tests apparently concluded that Rosemary had suffered a heart attack, which caused her to cross over to the other side. But she was more surprised that four days later, she had no evidence of cancer and that her blood work was textbook perfect.

“The surgeon said my tissue was so pink and perfect she would have never believed I’d had cancer,'” Thornton said. “The cancer was gone, but more than that, my soul was made whole again.”

(See our book, The Other Side.)

Speaking of medical issues, curious it is how some conservatives (including Christians), especially in the podcast business, are now promoting psychedelics as a panacea for all sort of mental issues.

Don’t listen. LSD, psilocybin, cannabis, and the like are great gateways for evil spirits.

Kudos, however, to the increasing number of such podcasters who are informing their viewer/listernerships of demonology in general.

We had two articles recently on the famous and controversial writer-priest, Malachi Martin.

In it was mentioned the fact that after leaving the Jesuit order, he had lived with a woman named Kakia Livanos (widow of a shipping magnate) for thirty-seven years and allegedly had trysts with others. [scroll for more:]

But were he and Mrs. Livanos really “living together” in the common use of that term or simply room-mates (and apparently soul-mates: they share the same tombstone).

A Father Brian Harrison of Australia knew Malachi Martin well. Here is an excerpt from a recent email regarding our column:

“I met the Greek lady, Mrs. Livanos, who is mentioned here, several times when visiting Malachi. She was well advanced in years (and a superb artist who made beautiful little icons). They lived in separate parts of her big apartment, where he had his little private Oratory right there in the house, with the Blessed Sacrament reserved. I offered Mass myself there at least once. He said the Traditional Latin Mass daily, went to frequent Confession (I met his confessor once), and I don’t believe there was anything immoral at all between him and Mrs. Livanos.

“I’m afraid I can’t remember exactly all the details about Malachi’s canonical situation in the time I knew him. ‘Faculties’ normally means the local bishop’s approval for public ministry, that is, celebrating Masses and hearing confessions at scheduled times in parish churches or religious houses. And as far as I know he never had that in New York, although I could be wrong. I never heard of him exercising public ministry as a priest, since, as he told me, Paul VI had ‘secularized’ (not laicized) him back in the 1960s.

“As is well known, he dressed after that as a layman and was usually known as ‘Dr.’ Malachi Martin. But I think he told me he had some sort of recognition from the Archdiocese—perhaps for doing exorcisms. [See his books, Hostage To the Devil and a novel about the Church called Windswept House; he was no fan of modernism.)

St. Mary of Victories Chapel - Congtatulations to Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S. who became a Catholic 50 years ago today! | Facebook

“For purely private Masses and occasional private Confessions for people who show up and ask for that sacrament you don’t need faculties from the local ordinary anyway, at least under the 1983 Code. (I’m not sure about the old Code.) When I retired back here to Australia in 2022, I was from ‘Day One’ saying Masses privately in my apartment for a couple of months prior to receiving diocesan faculties from the Bishop of Wollongong for the purpose of supplying for other priests if they were away from their parish. But right from my arrival I informed the Bishop and Vicar General I was here, and they knew I was celebrating privately while the paperwork and background checks, etcetera, were being processed in response to my application for diocesan faculties. (The V.G, even offered to give me some sacramental wine if I needed it.) As I understood it, the special dispensation that Malachi said he received from Paul VI meant he had the direct approval of the Holy See for continuing to celebrate purely private sacraments. (He never said anything to me about being a secret bishop and then cardinal in pectore.)

“As regards your other question, he did tell me that in the mid-1960s, with all the crazy stuff going on in the Jesuits, he felt he was in danger of losing the faith by staying with them, and for that reason asked Paul VI for this special dispensation. He may have lapsed into some irregular behaviour at that turbulent and unsettled period of his life. It was widely reported that around that time he had an affair with the wife of a [Time Magazine] journalist covering Vatican II. I do remember Malachi telling me that he had been defamed as having civilly married that woman, and he vehemently denied that. However, I remember thinking at the time that if he had never even had an affair with her, he would very probably have denied that with equal vehemence in the next breath. But he didn’t mention that other accusation—and I didn’t ask him about it. (He wasn’t coming to me for Confession, so it wasn’t my business to ask him about possible sins of his past life.)

“However, when I knew Malachi from 1989 to his death in 1999, that was all water under the bridge from decades earlier. I knew he was regularly celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass in his little private Oratory, where I myself celebrated once or twice, using his vestments, chalice, and paten.

“And once when we were walking on the street, we came across another priest whom Malachi knew and they chatted for a minute or two after he introduced me. When the priest went on his way, Malachi said to me, ‘That’s my confessor.’ And I think he said he went to him weekly, or every two weeks.

“In any case, he had a regular confessor. I see no reason to think he was lying to me about that priest we met. And so I also see no reason to believe there was any sexual intimacy with Mrs. Livanos. For it seems hard to imagine that a priest who’s saying daily Mass in a little oratory with the Blessed Sacrament reserved there, and going regularly to Confession, would be so hypocritically seared in conscience as to be living in sin with a woman at the same time. He and this elderly widowed lady were certainly the closest people to each other in their later years, and there was clearly a bond of affection there; but the fact that they share a headstone doesn’t prove that it was something more than a brother-sister-type relationship. (Just a couple of months ago my 85-year-old sister and I, who have lived together in our old family home since my retirement, finalized our funeral arrangements; and we too have opted for a joint headstone over a grave where we’ll buried with one coffin on top of the other.)”