Following the verdict of paralysis from the neck down, André was overwhelmed with a sense of powerlessness and rebellion. "I certainly entered into a time of suffering," recalled André. "I spent a month and a half in the hospital and ten months in a rehabilitation center. Almost a year living away from everything and everyone I loved."

At the same time, there were brothers [from the Neo-Catechmenal Way, a new ecclesial community of which he was an associate member] who visited me. That touched me deeply. There were some who, even though they had to work the next day, would spend the whole night with me, sitting on a small straight chair, in order to respond to my least needs.

"In the beginning, I did not move at all, not even my head—I who had dreamed of self-sufficiency! I was in a great trial. I had much suffering, but I always had someone with me."

On her part, Elizabeth was completely destroyed by what had happened. "It was the end of the world for me because André was my idol. I believed that he was the source of my life and happiness. Then suddenly I found myself with a rebellious man paralyzed in both arms and legs and four children, one of whom was still in my womb. The first years were horrible!"

Elizabeth had to take responsibility for everything and renounce herself. "A word came to my heart: Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it, but anyone who loses his life for my sake will save it (Mk 8:35).

"Everything in our world leads us to think of ourselves first, but I found myself in a situation where I could not think only of myself. This word of God really saved me by giving me a different message from that of the world."

André was very sensitive to the cold. In order to try to stay warm, he often lay hidden with even his head covered by a blanket. "I was like a caterpillar immobilized in his cocoon before becoming a butterfly."

Despite the terrible distress caused by the accident, André began to believe that he was loved unconditionally. "All the love I was given touched me profoundly.

"It eventually healed my interior paralysis. I could no longer try to impress people by my accomplishments and my good works because I was like a worm. I hardly spoke, and I could not move. Then I understood that love is not something you have to earn. This accident taught me that this is how God loves: unconditionally."

A few months after the accident, Elizabeth received a word which touched her profoundly. My son, do not scorn the correction of the Lord, and do not become discouraged when he reproves you. For the Lord corrects those he loves. …. Certainly, correction does not bring joy at the time, but rather sadness. Later, however, it brings to those who receive it, the fruits of peace and goodness (Heb 12: 5b-6,11).

"This helped me enormously," she said. "I was not revolted by this word, but rather I saw in it his leading me to what is good, like a father who takes care of his son because he loves him. I understood that André’s accident was a correction, although I didn’t grasp right away what needed to be redressed in my life."

The answer came a few years later through another word: the story of the Samaritan woman, the story in which it is the Lord who gives the true living water (Jn 4:1-42).

"Only God could fill the inner abyss that I had sought to fill with André’s love. I finally saw that God was correcting me so that I would stop seeking life in André, and find it in God instead."

From that time on, she has seen that the Lord is teaching her, little by little, to lean on him.

"Even now, in difficult moments, when I am worried about André’s life, when he is sick or occasionally rebellious, I realize that this is the pedagogy of the Lord through which he is teaching me to lean on him alone. My comprehension of this reality is not complete yet. However I do understand it much better than I did before."

Finally, after five years, joy was more present in their home than sadness.

"A priest very close to us had predicted this," André remembered. ‘You will see,’ he told us. ‘The moments of peace will become more frequent, until they join together to become an uninterrupted flow of serenity.’ This is exactly what happened."

"But this peace does not come from our efforts, and it does not come without much prayer," said Elizabeth. "In the morning when André wakes up, an interior spiritual struggle often takes place in him. Each day he has to fight to accept his paralysis. This combat takes place in me as well. That is why we pray Lauds: to find peace again. Prayer always brings us back to the essential.

"In time, the anguish lessened, because I experienced that God was with us," confided Elizabeth. "He provided for everything: material things and concrete help. But most of all, he showed us the meaning of our suffering. Certainly, we have not reached the fullness of understanding, but I am already full of gratitude because seeing the meaning in our suffering helps enormously in accepting it."

During the trial Elizabeth was reminded of this word:
You attached Yourself to my soul (Is 38:17). This is certainly my situation. God has never let us down. I see clearly that the cross is glorious because it was through the suffering, the battle, the purification, that I experienced God. God had given us this cross as a place of encounter with him, so that we could be truly happy and become his witnesses."

Elizabeth spoke about how difficult it is to see correction as something positive. That’s because most of our experiences of correction by people do not resemble those of God.

"When I was young, I did not realize that true love does not resemble the image that is transmitted by television—a pink candy love. Love is red like blood. To love is to lay down your life.

"I believed this lie—that appiness is found in being loved. The correction of God made me realize that, on the contrary, happiness comes from loving.

"I do this very imperfectly with many sins. I need the grace of God in order to love."

In the year 2000, André and Elizabeth went on pilgrimage to Italy with their brothers and sisters in the Neo-Catechumenal Way community.

After eleven years of paralysis, André had reached the end of his rope. On his pilgrimage, he cried out to God: "Lord, give me death, give me healing, or give me something that I do not now have which will help me endure the suffering."

At Loreto, during the rosary, André gave his suffering to Mary. "When I returned from the pilgrimage," André stated, "I was, obviously, neither dead nor cured, but the Lord had answered my third prayer. A new peace had entered my heart."

Some time later, he discovered a woman of early Quebec who had been beatified—Blessed Mother Catherine of St. Augustine.

"She became like a new mother in heaven liberating me from the demon who constantly repeated to me: ‘No one knows your suffering, your doubt. What good does it do to continue on?’ But the story of the life of Mother Catherine of St. Augustine gave me peace."

André’s physical paralysis made him realize that all the things he had desired before and had attained were not sufficient to make him happy. "The desire of the human heart is much more profound, much greater than material things can satisfy. The human heart can attain a happiness that goes far beyond what comes from having a log cabin."

He is now convinced that to enter into happiness, it is necessary to know who you are and who God is. "And that accident—however I shouldn’t say "accident"—that ‘event’ taught me who I am. It humiliated me; it was a trial that I needed in order to discover the unconditional love of God."

Holding on to this hope, this faith, continues to be a battle. "But I do not fight that battle alone," added André. "I live it in community, in the Church, and with the Word of God and the sacraments."

"As for me, I feel myself to be truly cherished by God," agreed Elizabeth. "Now I see that God has loved us very much through this trial and its consequences in our life. I no longer think that it would have been better if this accident had never happened."

What about their life as a couple? "Now our oneness is much more profound," affirmed Elizabeth. "It’s true that we have more quarrels than we did at the beginning of our marriage, but that’s because we are living much more in the truth."

"It was easy to be united when all went well," said André. "By being continually together now, we get on each other’s nerves at times. However, we are closer now than we were before, even physically.

"With regards to our intimacy," he continued, "it’s obviously not like with a normal couple, because my body can no longer function sexually. On the other hand, we live moments of oneness so deep that we feel that we are one flesh. I wonder if many couples come to an intimacy like ours. It’s an incredible gift!"

"After all these years," continued Elizabeth, "what I see is that there have been many challenges in our life, but we have always had the Church. And I think we need both trials and the Church to help us recognize the love of God. And God loved us enough to show us that life comes from Jesus Christ and from him alone."

—Translated and reprinted with permission from the October 7, 2007 issue of Le Nic, a magazine from Rawdon, Quebec.

The End