Fire fails to scorch a little bit of sacred earth

RECENTLY my room was destroyed in a house fire. My family, thank God, were saved from the flames and the toxic smoke.

After years of ‘gathering’, my room had come to resemble a pawnshop. But the day after the fire, my room was a smoky cave. The acrid smell was rather like keeping one’s head in a barbecue.

I searched through the rest of the rubble and was surprised when I came across the remains of a rosary beads from Fatima. It was two feet from the centre of the blaze. The beads had a piece of earth from Fatima enclosed behind a thin plastic cover.

While the beads had melted, the plastic covering the piece of Fatima earth was perfect. This was astonishing. Every other plastic item had been burned or melted away. I had the beads examined by a scientist who told me the earth enclosed by the plastic should have combusted or exploded in the heat.

The ‘saved rosary’ is a great source of consolation to me.

It’s like a signpost in this dark cave — something telling me ceaselessly to seek Our Lady of Fatima’s protection.

Since the fire I have this painfully purifying realisation that material possessions are not essential to the fulfilment of our destiny, nor are they likely to inspire in us a sense of what our legacy ought to be.

Miraculously, God saved the Fatima earth. He did not see fit to safeguard my plastic pearls.

Mary O’Regan

‘Murlough’

18 Firgrove Drive

Bishopstown

Cork