by Laurie Oswald Robinson
Because a Japanese Mennonite man was healed from leukemia after Mennonites and Catholics prayed, a new round of ecumenical dialogue on prayer is stirring up the faithful.
Exactly how God said “yes” to prayers for the healing in 1987 of Jun Yamada, a 24-year-old university student in Japan, will always be shrouded in mystery.
But that isn’t keeping participants in Bridgefolk — a group of Mennonites and Catholics united by their faith in Christ — from more deeply exploring the connection between God’s family on Earth and in heaven.
This past July at the annual Bridgefolk gathering, Alan and Eleanor Kreider — longtime Mennonite teachers on church history, worship and mission — shared the account that Jun Yamada’s brother, Nozomu Yamada, had passed on to them in Tokyo.
Nozomu Yamada, leader of a Mennonite house church and dean of policy studies at Nanzan University, said the family had been silent about the story because some Mennonites had been critical of their close relationship to Catholics.
For Catholics, the heart of the story is the communion of saints — the spiritual union of Christians, living and dead, on Earth and in heaven. All are part of a single mystical body, with Christ as the head, in which each member contributes to the good of all.
On Feb. 16, 1987, Jun Yamada was admitted to a hospital in Nagoya with aggressive leukemia. Treatments proved ineffective. His condition deteriorated, and by March 11 a doctor predicted he had only hours to live.
Takashi Yamada, Jun’s father and a Mennonite pastor, summoned Nozomu Yamada, who was studying at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind., to be at his brother’s deathbed.
Takashi Yamada asked Alfonso Fausone, one of his son’s major professors at Nanzan University and a Catholic priest, to perform his son’s funeral.
Fausone agreed. But first he would pray.
Other teachers of Jun Yamada joined with the Yamada family and friends in praying for him. Those who prayed included priests of the Society of the Divine Word, or SVD.
Not until several years later did the family learn all the details of how Fausone and his colleagues prayed.
They called on the communion of saints.
Specifically, they prayed that Josef Freinademetz, a German SVD missionary to China who died in 1908, would intercede and ask God to heal Jun Yamada.
Freinademetz was a candidate for sainthood, having been beatified by Pope Paul VI in 1975. Beatification requires one miracle attributed to the person after his or her death. To be a saint, a second miracle is required.
Fausone, along with other SVD priests and two Catholic students, began a novena — a series of prayers for nine successive days — in the monastery’s chapel.
One of the priests, Alfonso Fausone, arranged to turn on the light in the chapel tower of the monastery next to the hospital every night in Jun’s crucial days.
“Through Jun’s hospital room window the Yamada family could see the light of the chapel tower, … which reminded them that they were being prayed for,” Nozomu Yamada said.
“Meanwhile, elsewhere, the Mennonite members of Kirishima Christian Brotherhood were also praying for Jun. From Kobayashi, Fukuoka and Gifu, members of the Brotherhood traveled hundreds of kilometers to Nagoya to pray together for Jun and to encourage the family.”
Fausone came to Jun Yamada’s hospital room and asked whether he could give him the anointing of the sick. Takashi Yamada replied that his family was Mennonite and did not have a sacrament of this kind but that they had no reason to reject the offer.
Before Fausone anointed Jun Yamada, the family recited the “Our Father” prayer together. Jun’s mother, Yoshiko, wept as she recited the phrases.
“We [the Yamada family and Fausone] were united in the same faith that entrusted Jun completely into God’s hand,” Nozomu Yamada said.
Jun Yamada’s condition improved. His bone marrow began producing normal cells. Fausone reported that the doctors were astonished and could not explain his recovery.
More than six months later, on Sept. 30, 1987, Jun Yamada emerged from the hospital. Doctors and other patients called him “the miracle man.”
A new saint
Fifteen years later, in 2002, after a three-year investigation, Catholic officials judged Jun Yamada’s healing “a true miracle … rapid, complete and enduring.”
Josef Freinademetz would be a saint.
On Oct. 5, 2003, Pope John Paul II canonized Freinademetz in a ceremony in the piazza of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Jun Yamada, who today teaches art history at a university in Japan, and Nozomu Yamada attended the ceremony and met the pope.
Fausone told Nozomu Yamada: “Pope John Paul remarked to cardinals attending the ceremony, ‘This miracle will be one of the bridges between Roman Catholics and Mennonites.’ ”
God’s ‘amazing things’
It is a bridge that many Mennonites may feel uncomfortable crossing. But Alan Kreider and other Bridgefolk participants encourage Mennonites to be open to sharing gifts and understandings among believers from different faith traditions.
Kreider doesn’t think the miracle occurred only because Catholics prayed novenas.
“Mennonites were also praying in expectancy that God can do amazing things,” he said. “And it is in this dimension — the belief in God’s power and goodness — that can most deeply connect Mennonites and Catholics… .
“If Catholics pray and someone gets well, or if Japanese Mennonites pray and someone gets well, we need to listen to that. We are often reluctant to see God doing things we don’t understand.”
Other Bridgefolk participants — including Marlene Kropf, Mennonite co-chair of Bridgefolk and a former professor at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, and Ivan Kauffman, a former Mennonite and Catholic convert — agree.
“There are good reasons for Mennonites and Catholics having gone separate ways during the Protestant Reformation, but our world and the church have changed since then,” Kropf said. “Catholic spiritual practices and sacramental theology can strengthen our Mennonite commitment to peace and discipleship.”
Kauffman said Catholics believe in the communion of saints partly because they’ve seen many examples of miraculous healing — medically verified in careful ways — after requests for heavenly intercession.
“The Catholic belief that there are people who are no longer on Earth who can intercede for us in heaven is not just based on a theory,” he said. “These experiences of healing miracles have been repeated again and again.
“Whether what Catholics believe is based on superstition or on fact is another issue. People can draw their own conclusions. But just because you or I may believe something is impossible doesn’t mean that it is.”
Click for a longer account, “The Healing of Jun Yamada: Mennonites and Catholics in Friendship,” by Nozomu Yamada, edited by Alan Kreider, via bridgefolk.net.