My house almost caught fire, and I had no idea of the danger until it was over, pieced together by burn marks on a wall and other clues around an old boiler system. I called a specialist to look at it. He said bluntly: he’s come to believe things happen for a reason, and our house is still standing for a reason.
I always try to express gratitude to others and to God. But as we come into the holiday season I thought this story was especially worth bringing to you all.
Today, I’ll tell you how I found out about the fire that could’ve taken my home, and what St. Therese of Lisieux might teach us about gratitude in the face of danger.
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When you know what you’re looking for the clues are obvious: burn marks on a wall, a tripped electrical breaker, and a broken boiler. In hindsight it’s easy. But in day-to-day life, it’s not.
About a month ago I started to run my heating system before winter to make sure everything was working well. My house was built in the 1950s and part of the house has radiant floor heating. Essentially a gas-fired boiler heats up water that is sent through pipes under the floor. When it works, it works well!
The boiler pilot light was out when I went to run my test, so I cleaned and relit it. The system kicked on, and for about two days it seemed to work well, until it didn’t.
I played with the thermostat trying to get the system back on but it didn’t work. Around the same time, randomly, an electrical plug in my garage stopped working. It wasn’t clear the problems were related…(foreshadowing).
I decided to call the heating repair company to do a tune-up on the system and figure out what’s wrong.
It took just a minute to see the problem.
Risk of fire
One of the burners was off its rack, and old fire-proofing material had crumbled. Flames had been shooting out the back of the unit onto the wall, ultimately hitting the wiring harness to the thermostat.
“I’m not sure why they wired it like that,” the technician told me. “But it’s good they did.”
The melted wiring tripped the breaker and shut down the boiler, cutting the flow of gas and stopping the fire. The malfunctioning outlet must’ve been on an adjacent circuit or something.
It’s still sinking in, just how fortunate we are that our home wasn’t taken in a fire, and the way the system was built in the 1950s kept us safe.
Angels and unknown catastrophes
As Catholics, this brought a few things to mind for my wife and me: one about St Therese of Lisieux and the other about angels.
You may remember our episode on St. Aloysius Gonzaga and the holy angels. Fr. Robert Nixon talked about God working through the angels to watch after us, even if we don’t realize it.
Fr. Nixon: Exactly and we’ve each got a a holy guardian angel and this guardian angel is protecting us and guiding us in innumerable ways every single day of our lives. You know we think about it there might be sometimes when we notice that our guardian angels helped us out but there’s for every time we notice there’s a thousand times we haven’t noticed, you know a thousand possible catastrophes that we’ve avoided uh quite without acknowledgement of it. Ultimately of course our help comes from God, our protection our guidance comes from God, but it happens by means of these um of these agents.
Even if we don’t realize that we’ve been saved from a thousand catastrophes, we should give thanks for the life God has granted us, and opportunities to help build His kingdom through our faith and works.
Wisdom of St. Thérèse and the “Story of a Soul”
Over the summer I visited Lisieux in France, and we might gain from the thoughts of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. She takes on this topic of unseen danger in her autobiography “The Story of a Soul.”
The important section isn’t very long, so I’ll read it in full. She writes:
Let us suppose that the son of a very clever doctor, stumbling over a stone on the road, falls and breaks his leg. His father hastens to him, lifts him lovingly, and binds up the fractured limb, putting forth all his skill. The son, when cured, displays the utmost gratitude, and he has excellent reason for doing so. But let us take another supposition.
The father, aware that a dangerous stone lies in his son’s path, is beforehand with the danger and removes it, unseen by anyone. The son, thus tenderly cared for, not knowing of the mishap from which his father’s hand has saved him, naturally will not show him any gratitude, and will love him less than if he had cured him of a grievous wound. But suppose he heard the whole truth, would he not in that case love him still more? Well now, I am this child, the object of the foreseeing love of a Father “Who did not send His son to call the just, but sinners.”
Final thoughts
It’s a powerful parable and I’ve been given the gift of seeing a stone moved from my path: the fire threatened my home, the place that my family considers safe and secure. Even if the fire had started, we have smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers: all things that would’ve likely kept us physically safe, but still would’ve lost property.
I hope that in my journeying toward Heaven that I can use the time, talents and experiences God has given me to show my gratitude. It’s a gratitude that extends beyond just the holiday season, of course, and is rooted deeply in what makes me, me.
I’m just thankful to get to keep going, with a home that’s intact.
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