“This is a resurrection!”: Msgr. Flanagan grateful for prayers
“May the Lord take a liking to you …”
The priest smiled back and gave the rest of the old Irish salutation.
“… but not just yet.”
Monsignor Michael T. Flanagan was ruminating on the prayers and favors that had lifted him up from life-support and back to the community of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Columbia.
“This is a resurrection!” he said.
“Jesus came that we may have life and have it to the full,” he continued. “That’s always my favorite Scripture passage. And I believe I am having it to the full! In union with him.”
Msgr. Flanagan, 84, is senior priest in service at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, where he served as pastor from 1990 until retiring in 2015.
His health hadn’t been quite right since he returned from presiding at his brother’s funeral in Ireland last in January.
He caught a cold that kept getting worse.
Weak and tired, he soldiered through concelebrating Mass and helping to administer the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick with Father Michael Penn in Lake Ozark on Feb. 12, the World Day of the Sick.
“Fr. Penn could tell something was wrong and told me to call him when I got back home, just to make sure I was okay,” Msgr. Flanagan recalled.
“I made up my mind driving back from the Lake that I was going straight to the Emergency Room,” he said.
Tests at Boone Hospital Center in Columbia showed that he had an intestinal ulcer and needed a blood transfusion.
A few days later, he was getting dressed to go home when a doctor brought test results saying he had an infection and needed further treatment.
“He said, ‘You stay put while we do one more test,’” the priest recalled.
Msgr. Flanagan sat down on the bed and started feeling a chill.
“And then, I got freezing cold!” he said. “I called the nurse, and she brought me hot blankets — three or four of them, right after another! — and she made me hot tea, trying to warm me up.”
Then, he passed out.
“I was having a stroke,” he said.
Fighting back
Msgr. Flanagan spent the following week fading in and out of consciousness.
He remembers hospital staff counting to three and moving him from one bed to another.
He recognized Father Christopher Cordes, diocesan vicar for priests, who is also his successor as pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish; Monsignor Gregory Higley, pastor of neighboring Sacred Heart Parish; Danielle Freie, wellness coordinator for the priests of the diocese; and his own nephew, who came from Ireland to be with him.
“I said, ‘Fr. Chris, what’s going on?’” Msgr. Flanagan recalled. “He just said, ‘You’re very sick.’”
That was a prudent understatement.
“The next day, they were trying to stabilize me and deal with the infection, and my kidneys quit!” said Msgr. Flanagan.
The doctors placed him on dialysis to filter his blood.
Fr. Cordes notified parishioners on Feb. 24 that Msgr. Flanagan’s condition had declined and that he had been placed on life-support.
“The hope is that he will pull through, but he needs our prayers,” he said.
“The bishop came and gave me all the absolutions,” Msgr. Flanagan noted. “Later, he told me, ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.’”
Fr. Cordes sent out a prayer request to fellow priests and parishioners.
The children of Our Lady of Lourdes Interparish School, many of whom had been baptized by Msgr. Flanagan, prayed for him several times each day.
“All the parishioners and all the kids and everybody!” he stated with awe.
“Huge difference”
Groggy but somewhat cognizant, Msgr. Flanagan recognized people coming and going. He was vaguely aware of how sick he was.
“But I didn’t think about dying,” he said. “I didn’t think about dying at all. It maybe crossed my mind a little bit. But mostly I thought, ‘I’ll get out of this.’”
“It wasn’t time,” he said. “No. It wasn’t.”
He couldn’t concentrate enough to pray.
“But you do think about Jesus,” he said.
He knew other people were praying for him.
“I somehow could feel it,” he said. “I could feel an energy beyond myself.”
Several hours into dialysis, his kidneys started working.
“And that’s the miracle, you know?” he said.
The kidney doctor told him afterwards, “When your kidneys picked up, we knew you had made it. ... It means your body has decided to fight.”
Msgr. Higley, who had been visiting Msgr. Flanagan at the hospital each day, attended the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion in Our Lady of Lourdes Church the afternoon of the First Sunday of Lent.
“Keep the prayers up,” he told a friend. “He’s fighting.”
Fr. Cordes wrote to fellow priests the following Tuesday: “We have positive news regarding Msgr. Flanagan. He began making some progress over the weekend, and continues to make steady progress. His breathing is assisted by a ventilator, and other medical interventions are being administered. He is now responsive and aware. Please continue to pray for him and the dedicated medial staff caring for him.”
The progress continued. The ventilator was removed on March 4. Msgr. Flanagan left the Intensive Care Unit on March 12 and entered the hospital’s rehab on March 7.
He moved back to the Our Lady of Lourdes Rectory, which had been his home for a quarter-century, on March 23.
“Prayers made a huge difference,” he noted weeks later. “And people realize that. And I could feel that there was powerful prayer going on.”
Seeing is believing
The kindergartners and first-graders of Our Lady of Lourdes School gathered in the parish hall that bears Msgr. Flanagan’s name to welcome him home and thank God for his ongoing recovery.
He joined in with their rousing a cappella rendition of “Our God Is An Awesome God.”
“It was very emotional,” the priest stated.
He continued with rigorous therapy, strengthening his legs and trading his walker in for a cane.
“I hope I’m able to walk up to the altar and do Mass!” he said.
He lauded the medical team at Boone Hospital Center that worked together to help him.
“My heart doctor is a regular parishioner here,” he noted. “He’s always very prayerful.”
Another specialist told him, “I tell you one thing: you made me a believer!”
“He said, ‘What happened to you is miraculous. No question about it,’” the priest recalled.
Abundant gratitude
Msgr. Flanagan returned to Boone Hospital on Good Friday so he could heal from an infection under close observation from his medical team. He was back home by the Monday of Easter Week.
He humbly asks for further intercessory prayer — the kind that through God’s goodness has given him hope to continue ministering to the people he loves.
“I thank the priests and all the parishioners and people all over the place, all the people who are praying,” he said.
He’s at peace with the fact that death eventually comes to everyone.
“I’m not afraid of it,” he said. “You know, nature’s taking its course, and that’s okay. ‘The Lord is kind and merciful! Slow to anger and rich in compassion and love.’ Whenever that time comes, I will say to the Lord, ‘I did my best. I know I made mistakes. I know I fell short, but you are the Compassionate One.’”
But for now, as he lives on to continue his priestly ministry, his heart overflows with gratitude.
He prayed: “Lord, Jesus, we thank you for the gifts you’ve given your people through the power of prayer, through your calling us to ask and we will receive. Give us the strength always and the faith always to ask and to be open to your gifts, whatever they may be. And keep us healthy and strong, and help us to celebrate in this wonderful time of year, this time of your death and resurrection. We pray in Christ Jesus. Amen.”
