They say doctors, some of them non-believers, said Lucas's recovery could not be explained.

Pope Francis canonised the siblings on Saturday at Fátima.

Lucas was five when he fell 6.5 metres out of a window. By the time he arrivced at hospital he had suffered two heart attacks and was in a deep coma.

Doctors diagnosed a severe traumatic brain injury and a "loss of brain material" from Lucas's frontal lobe.

They said Lucas had little chance of survival. If he did live, they said he would be severely mentally disabled or even in a vegetative state.

Lucas's father Joao Baptista and his mother Lucila Yurie, appeared before reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on Friday.

They have never discussed their son's miraculous cure with the press before.

After being told their son would be unlikely to recover they began to pray to Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima, to whom they said they have "a great devotion".

They also asked the nuns at the Carmelite convent of Campo Mouro to pray for their boy.

When the nuns got the message, Lucas's father said one of them "ran to the relics of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta, which were next to the tabernacle.

She also felt the impulse to pray the following prayer: ‘Shepherds, save this child, who is a child like you'…she also persuaded the other sisters to pray to the little shepherds to intercede for him.

"In the same way, all of us, the family, began to pray to the little shepherds, and two days later, on March 9, Lucas woke up and began to speak, even asking for his little sister."

On the 11th, he left the ICU and was discharged from the hospital a few days later.

"Since that time, Lucas "has been completely well and has no symptoms or after effects.

"He has the same intelligence (as he did before the accident), the same character, everything is the same."

Source

• Thestar.com
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: ToronotStar

It's a challenging life and young Sister Catherine, a novice, had much to consider as she decided if she could fully leave behind her life in the world.

This coming SUNDAY - Watch TV One at 7pm to hear the decision she arrived at.

Many respected persons made it a practice to rise in the night or in the quiet hours of the morning to seek inspiration that comes in silence, Plato, Einstein, and even Jesus Himself. We all should find a time and a place to be in silent prayer. In the Carmelite tradition, the spiritual life is said to have two aims: the first is about our love of God and the second is about God's love for us. The practice of silence facilitates both of these aims.

The experience of God's love for us

We are meant to taste in our hearts and experience in our minds, not only after death but in this life, something of the power of the Divine Presence and the bliss of heavenly glory. From this point of departure in faith, silence becomes more than a practice. It is a form of prayer - a prayer of listening, waiting, and receptivity. It is a prayer that anticipates and expects intimate communion; it believes in the possibility and holds in high esteem the value of being in relationship with God.

The value of this type of prayer is difficult for our productivity-oriented culture to grasp. It is hard for us to see that a prayer in which "being" predominates over "doing" and that a prayer in which nothing happens is a prayer in which everything happens. It is in silence that we make the interior transition from darkness to light. We become more aware of God's presence within us, of Him speaking to us, of the hidden things which He wishes to reveal to us. Continue reading

• Source: Sister Mary Clare, O.C.D. in Integrated Catholic Life
• Image: The Raw Story