Testimony of Olivier Giroud-Fliegner (Montréal, Canada), 2020
My name is Olivier Giroud-Fliegner. I am 53 years old. I was born in France and now live in Montréal. I am a piano teacher. My father is a Catholic and my late mother was a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Poland and Austria. I grew up Jewish. My family life, and my emotional life, have been granted a lot of great moments, but also deep wounds.
I experienced what I could call a ''night of the heart'' (a bit like the ''night of the senses'' of St. John of the Cross), from 1987 to 2018. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, unless it led them to the conversion and purification I was granted in 2018 and in the years that followed. |
Olivier Giroud-Fliegner
|
My heart had been increasingly bruised by a combination of several causes. First, the impossibility for me to find an answer to the meaning of human suffering, including the Holocaust, in the Jewish faith. Second, the fact that I had been forced to study music since a very early age. My relationship with my family deteriorated after 1987 because I clung to the feeling that I had learned music against my will. The third was the failure of a few sentimental affairs which led to me being unmarried and childless while facing family and social pressure. Fourth, my parents never completely accepted my two emigrations (first to Israel, then to Canada); both took it very personally, and especially my mother was particularly hurt, which was very difficult for me to understand and to accept as she herself was an immigrant. Although I visited my parents every year (sometimes twice a year), my emigration had poisoned my relation to my family.
All these elements put together crippled my relationship with my family and made me gradually see the family in and of itself as a source of suffering and sorrow. My heart was gradually turning its back to family.
The depth of the wounds reached an abysmal level when, in 2011, my mother passed away; when I was hospitalized in 2012 in emergency for the beginning of a heart attack caused by both a broken heart syndrome and a viral myopericarditis; and again in 2015 when I thought I might never overcome my unhappiness and misery. I ended up contemplating suicide.
The depth of the wounds reached an abysmal level when, in 2011, my mother passed away; when I was hospitalized in 2012 in emergency for the beginning of a heart attack caused by both a broken heart syndrome and a viral myopericarditis; and again in 2015 when I thought I might never overcome my unhappiness and misery. I ended up contemplating suicide.
Saint Sharbel
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In spite of that, after my mother's passing, the only things that mattered were to be there for my father (as he was there for me) and to take care of the salvation of my soul, to work toward its restoration. For years I did not know how to work on saving my soul. I finally opened my heart to Jesus at the end of January 2018 by asking God for the grace of conversion, a huge grace that was granted to me. The moment I welcomed Jesus as the Messiah, my life changed completely. I contacted the Catholic Church immediately, and at Easter 2019 I received the sacraments of baptism, first Communion and confirmation. I was reborn and basically saved, but the path to the restoration of my soul was only beginning.
Graces did not stop there. In 2020, I was granted a major spiritual and emotional healing, a healing which I had not asked for; it was granted to me by the Lord, through the intervention of Saint Sharbel Makhlouf. In the Christian faith, what Saint Sharbel accomplished in my life is usually called intercession. Another characteristic of this healing is that I was granted it in a period of preliminary discernment for the priesthood (which has led, since, to the conclusion that I have a vocation to stay a layman, in celibacy, prayer and penance). |
In my family, Saint Sharbel was completely unknown, his name had never been said. I discovered him in 2019, and if I remember well, it was his feast day, July 24. But it was not until July 24, 2020, that he entered my life once and for all.
As I started preliminary discernment for the priesthood, I was wondering if the ministry would be a good fit for me because it deals a lot with family matters such as baptism, preparation for marriage, marriage and funerals. And in spite of my conversion and the sacraments I had received, I saw myself as a person with no family. I was single and childless, and my parents had no siblings; I believed I was somebody for whom family life was a thing of the past, a person to whom family matters are of not much concern.
As I started preliminary discernment for the priesthood, I was wondering if the ministry would be a good fit for me because it deals a lot with family matters such as baptism, preparation for marriage, marriage and funerals. And in spite of my conversion and the sacraments I had received, I saw myself as a person with no family. I was single and childless, and my parents had no siblings; I believed I was somebody for whom family life was a thing of the past, a person to whom family matters are of not much concern.
As I was reflecting on this toward the end of July 2020, I began, following his feast day, to have the need to pray to Saint Sharbel every day, which had never been the case before. I was compelled to pray to him and to know more about his life; and I started to research if he had said or written anything. At the very beginning of August, I found 20 pages in English on the internet, at the URL https://www.slideshare.net/karim86/words-of-saint-charbel [1], without any reference to an author. I printed the pages and made a booklet.
These pages, called ‘’Words of Saint Charbel’’, contained no other information about their origin, and I was unable to understand who really wrote them; I just acknowledged they contained the thought of Saint Sharbel. I read them and welcomed them into my heart with faith, blindly, eventually thinking they would have been written by some people who heard Saint Sharbel say them.
I was in that state of mind when the reading of the truth contained in those pages burnt me alive like fire burning straw. The entirety of the messages contributed to my healing, but within the global content of these texts, the thing that literally precipitated the healing was Saint Sharbel's thoughts about the family. He says that the family is holy because it is the image of the Holy Trinity. It meant, for the first time for me, that whatever sufferings happen to the family (even to the point of destruction), by nature the family remains holy — the spiritual nature and meaning of the family remain intact. ''Hearing'' this was unprecedented; it was ''showing'' me that the family has a soul which can remain whole in spite of any kind of tribulation and sorrow. All of a sudden, there was so much hope! I was ''seeing'' the family in a way like never before, and what I was seeing was so beautiful!
Saint Sharbel says also that the devil, in order to destroy the work of God, chooses to attack, first and foremost, the family. This struck, destroyed, and dissolved everything I had ever thought about the family in general, including about my own family. After reading that the family is the first target of the devil when attacking God himself, I felt with such a certainty that this thought was truth itself. I had such a bright and clear understanding that all family tribulations are rooted in evil that I thought I was physically going to be sick, and felt very much unwell, unfocused, and lost. I was feeling the gap between the truth and my relationship to the institution of family. Two days later, after amazement, disorientation and fear started to subside, all my emotional wounds so far, including anything painful related to my family relationship and also the very difficult mourning of my mother's passing, were left painless. Since August 11, 2020, I'm a new person, and I experience it every day.
What had happened?
This happened: in the time I was trying, during my discernment for the priesthood, to express my conviction that I am not a family guy, a sort of outsider on family matters, the words of Saint Sharbel not only boldly contradicted me, but eventually destroyed almost physically in me any trace of this conviction. I was wrong about family. As a result of tribulations in my family, I had thought the wrong way, and as a reward for having been wrong about that, I was mercifully granted a complete healing by God. Indeed, I understood immediately this was a grace from God, it was God's will, and I was facing the fact that Saint Sharbel had intervened. I was spiritually and emotionally cured through his word.
Exactly as I had welcomed Christ in the open-heartedness and blindness of a conversion in which I experienced the last chance not to sink into desperation forever, I merely welcomed the word of Saint Sharbel as words inspired by God.
And again: I had asked for the grace of conversion, but not asked for the grace of a spiritual healing.
I wrote to the Annaya monastery in Lebanon (the home of Saint Sharbel), and in this correspondence with the monks I told them everything. Then, although I already belonged to a Latin parish, I joined a second one (I attend both), the Maronite parish of the Monastery of Saint Anthony the Great, here in Montréal. The priests-monks know what happened, and one of them made me welcome the fact that Saint Sharbel is now my patron saint.
Still, I did not understand exactly where these words of Saint Sharbel that had healed me came from, and I was having a very hard time finding out.
It was not until December 27, 2020, that, at my complete surprise, I found on YouTube various conferences by Raymond Nader, some in English or subtitled in English, including one in Arabic that had English subtitles and was given at Annaya in 1995 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UatXxxzk_Y&t=30s). It is also then that I discovered Mr. Nader. The name told me nothing, but I had a vague impression of having seen it once before: I checked in the French-language version of Saint Sharbel's book by Father Hanna Skandar that I had read last fall (under the title Saint Charbel ...l’Intemporel) and found Mr. Nader's name merely mentioned twice (including one footnote). But I had since totally forgotten about it, as the author gives no information about Raymond Nader and, on the contrary, tells the entire story of Nouhad Al Chamy. So, I did not know anything at all about Raymond Nader until December 27, 2020, half a year after my healing.
I was stunned. What had healed me was the messages Raymond Nader received from Saint Sharbel over the last few decades. This was a shock, and it made me realize even more the value of my healing, as R. Nader has on one arm the miraculous fingers burn mark I completely ignored until December 27, 2020. I also had ignored everything about his apostolate (The Family of Saint Sharbel), and although after my healing I heard about Télé-Lumière because they broadcast testimonies of healings, I did not know about R. Nader's involvement in its satellite-sister, Noursat.
At this point, it became necessary for me to contact R. Nader to tell him about my healing. I also wanted to thank him a lot for what he did in his apostolate, about which I now know more. That is when, on December 31, 2020, I contacted the Family of Saint Sharbel in the US, and told them my story. Through them I was also able to tell it entirely to R. Nader on January 7, 2021.
After the conversion that saved me (2018) and the reception of the sacraments that absolved me (2019), Saint Sharbel entered my life in 2020 to change it even more deeply; his intervention and intercession refined my relation with the Lord through a spiritual healing in his name.
I'm really awed and grateful. I taste the graces received every single day. Since the healing, I am a white page again, I am restored. I am able again to enjoy belonging to the family I belong to, both the living and the dead; and I feel happy for the family of others, which was not the case for decades. This unexpected healing dramatically improved the vocational perception I have of my life from now on: living in happy celibacy, prayer and penance for souls so that others would one day be healed too; also, to be there for others, and to share the word of God and the story of my healing. I do not suffer at all anymore from anything that was making me suffer, and I would never have expected that this day would come. I am unable and unwilling to question the graces received. I just bear witness.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever,
Amen.
[1] After I had contacted them on December 31 2020, the Family of Saint Sharbel told me that these pages are identical to the ones figuring on their website, at https://www.familyofsaintsharbel.org/experiences.html , in an updated English translation.
These pages, called ‘’Words of Saint Charbel’’, contained no other information about their origin, and I was unable to understand who really wrote them; I just acknowledged they contained the thought of Saint Sharbel. I read them and welcomed them into my heart with faith, blindly, eventually thinking they would have been written by some people who heard Saint Sharbel say them.
I was in that state of mind when the reading of the truth contained in those pages burnt me alive like fire burning straw. The entirety of the messages contributed to my healing, but within the global content of these texts, the thing that literally precipitated the healing was Saint Sharbel's thoughts about the family. He says that the family is holy because it is the image of the Holy Trinity. It meant, for the first time for me, that whatever sufferings happen to the family (even to the point of destruction), by nature the family remains holy — the spiritual nature and meaning of the family remain intact. ''Hearing'' this was unprecedented; it was ''showing'' me that the family has a soul which can remain whole in spite of any kind of tribulation and sorrow. All of a sudden, there was so much hope! I was ''seeing'' the family in a way like never before, and what I was seeing was so beautiful!
Saint Sharbel says also that the devil, in order to destroy the work of God, chooses to attack, first and foremost, the family. This struck, destroyed, and dissolved everything I had ever thought about the family in general, including about my own family. After reading that the family is the first target of the devil when attacking God himself, I felt with such a certainty that this thought was truth itself. I had such a bright and clear understanding that all family tribulations are rooted in evil that I thought I was physically going to be sick, and felt very much unwell, unfocused, and lost. I was feeling the gap between the truth and my relationship to the institution of family. Two days later, after amazement, disorientation and fear started to subside, all my emotional wounds so far, including anything painful related to my family relationship and also the very difficult mourning of my mother's passing, were left painless. Since August 11, 2020, I'm a new person, and I experience it every day.
What had happened?
This happened: in the time I was trying, during my discernment for the priesthood, to express my conviction that I am not a family guy, a sort of outsider on family matters, the words of Saint Sharbel not only boldly contradicted me, but eventually destroyed almost physically in me any trace of this conviction. I was wrong about family. As a result of tribulations in my family, I had thought the wrong way, and as a reward for having been wrong about that, I was mercifully granted a complete healing by God. Indeed, I understood immediately this was a grace from God, it was God's will, and I was facing the fact that Saint Sharbel had intervened. I was spiritually and emotionally cured through his word.
Exactly as I had welcomed Christ in the open-heartedness and blindness of a conversion in which I experienced the last chance not to sink into desperation forever, I merely welcomed the word of Saint Sharbel as words inspired by God.
And again: I had asked for the grace of conversion, but not asked for the grace of a spiritual healing.
I wrote to the Annaya monastery in Lebanon (the home of Saint Sharbel), and in this correspondence with the monks I told them everything. Then, although I already belonged to a Latin parish, I joined a second one (I attend both), the Maronite parish of the Monastery of Saint Anthony the Great, here in Montréal. The priests-monks know what happened, and one of them made me welcome the fact that Saint Sharbel is now my patron saint.
Still, I did not understand exactly where these words of Saint Sharbel that had healed me came from, and I was having a very hard time finding out.
It was not until December 27, 2020, that, at my complete surprise, I found on YouTube various conferences by Raymond Nader, some in English or subtitled in English, including one in Arabic that had English subtitles and was given at Annaya in 1995 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UatXxxzk_Y&t=30s). It is also then that I discovered Mr. Nader. The name told me nothing, but I had a vague impression of having seen it once before: I checked in the French-language version of Saint Sharbel's book by Father Hanna Skandar that I had read last fall (under the title Saint Charbel ...l’Intemporel) and found Mr. Nader's name merely mentioned twice (including one footnote). But I had since totally forgotten about it, as the author gives no information about Raymond Nader and, on the contrary, tells the entire story of Nouhad Al Chamy. So, I did not know anything at all about Raymond Nader until December 27, 2020, half a year after my healing.
I was stunned. What had healed me was the messages Raymond Nader received from Saint Sharbel over the last few decades. This was a shock, and it made me realize even more the value of my healing, as R. Nader has on one arm the miraculous fingers burn mark I completely ignored until December 27, 2020. I also had ignored everything about his apostolate (The Family of Saint Sharbel), and although after my healing I heard about Télé-Lumière because they broadcast testimonies of healings, I did not know about R. Nader's involvement in its satellite-sister, Noursat.
At this point, it became necessary for me to contact R. Nader to tell him about my healing. I also wanted to thank him a lot for what he did in his apostolate, about which I now know more. That is when, on December 31, 2020, I contacted the Family of Saint Sharbel in the US, and told them my story. Through them I was also able to tell it entirely to R. Nader on January 7, 2021.
After the conversion that saved me (2018) and the reception of the sacraments that absolved me (2019), Saint Sharbel entered my life in 2020 to change it even more deeply; his intervention and intercession refined my relation with the Lord through a spiritual healing in his name.
I'm really awed and grateful. I taste the graces received every single day. Since the healing, I am a white page again, I am restored. I am able again to enjoy belonging to the family I belong to, both the living and the dead; and I feel happy for the family of others, which was not the case for decades. This unexpected healing dramatically improved the vocational perception I have of my life from now on: living in happy celibacy, prayer and penance for souls so that others would one day be healed too; also, to be there for others, and to share the word of God and the story of my healing. I do not suffer at all anymore from anything that was making me suffer, and I would never have expected that this day would come. I am unable and unwilling to question the graces received. I just bear witness.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever,
Amen.
[1] After I had contacted them on December 31 2020, the Family of Saint Sharbel told me that these pages are identical to the ones figuring on their website, at https://www.familyofsaintsharbel.org/experiences.html , in an updated English translation.