‘It was the most black spiritual experience I’ve ever had in my life. I had no sense of God’s presence at all,’ Burke said.
By John-Henry Westen, LifeSite News, April 17, 2020
April 17, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Dan Burke, the former president of EWTN News, sat down with me this week to discuss his recent diagnosis and recovery from the COVID-19 virus. Although we discussed a wide range of issues, including liturgical abuses, what stood out to me from our conversation was the “spiritual darkness” he said he experienced while suffering from the virus in the hospital.
“I don’t claim to be a mystic or any of that,” he told me, “and what I’m about to say could be audacious — and I don’t want it to be — but if it’s possible for a human being in any way to understand what Jesus suffered in the garden or what he suffered when he said, ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me,’ that darkness for me was a sliver of a sliver of whatever that was for Jesus.”
Dan has had chronic asthma for many years. “I’ve had more surgeries than I can count. My body has never been my friend,” he said. He informed me that he told his son that if he got the coronavirus he was going to die, and that he was okay with that. ….