Fr Pedro Arrupe’s Vocation Story

Some weeks after the death of my father, I had gone to Lourdes with my family since we wished to spend the summer in quiet, peaceful, and spiritual surroundings. It was the middle of August. I stayed at Lourdes for a whole month. As a medical student, I was able to obtain special permission to study closely the sick who came seeking a cure.

One day I was in the esplanade with my sisters, a short time before the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. A wheelchair pushed by a middle-aged woman passed in front of us. One of my sisters said, “Look at that poor boy in the wheelchair.” He was a young man of around 20, all twisted and contorted by polio. His mother was reciting the rosary in a loud voice, and from time to time she would say with a sigh, “Maria Santissima, help us.” It was a truly moving sight, and it brought to mind the plea the sick man in the Gospels spoke to Jesus: “Lord, cleanse me from this leprosy!” The mother hastened to take her place in the row the bishop was to pass carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance.

The moment came when the crippled young man was to be blest with the Host by the bishop. He looked up at the monstrance with the same faith that the paralytic mentioned in the Gospels must have looked upon Jesus. After the bishop had made the sign of the cross with the Blessed Sacrament, the young man rose from the wheelchair, cured, as the crowd, filled with joy, cried out, “Miracle! Miracle!”

Thanks to the special permission I had, I was later able to assist at the medical examinations of the young man. The Lord had truly cured him. There is no need to tell you what I felt and thought at that moment. I had come from the Faculty of Medicine in Madrid where I discovered so many professors (some truly renowned) and so many companions who had no faith and who always ridiculed miracles. At Lourdes, I had been an eyewitness of a true miracle worked by Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, by that same Jesus Christ who had, during the course of His life, cured so many who were ill and paralytic.

I was filled with an immense joy. I seemed to be standing by the side of Jesus; and, as I sensed His almighty power, the world that stood around me began to appear very, very small.

I returned to Madrid. My books fell from my hands. The lessons, the experiments which had so thrilled me before, now seemed so very empty. My companions asked me, “What’s happening with you this year? You are like one who has been stunned!” Yes, I was like one stunned by that experience, which every day grew more disconcerting. The one thing that remained fixed in my mind and in my heart was the image of the Host as it was raised up in benediction, and of the paralyzed boy who had leapt from his wheelchair. Three months later, I entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Loyola.

Pedro Arrupe, SJ – A Priest Forever. Loyola University Press, 1986.