Brothers of the Eucharist, this month I want to tell you a story that I think is a more powerful testament to the Eucharist than anything I can write. It’s about a young Irish girl extraordinarily favored by God.
Ellen Organ was born in the married quarters of the Royal Infantry barracks in Waterford, Ireland on August 24, 1903. At the age of only two, Nellie, which is what she was called, already looked forward to going to Mass, talking about Holy God as they walked. In that year she also learned to say the Rosary.
After the family was transferred to an island fort in Cork Harbor, Nellie’s Mother’s health, already poor, deteriorated. She died of tuberculosis in January of 1907. Initially, a neighbor helped with the care of the four children, the oldest of which was nine. The father soon realized this arrangement was not working out, especially with the discovery that Nellie was painfully delicate because of a crooked spine and needed special care. Sitting upright was painful as was holding her body still for any length of time.
Mr. Organ, realizing that he could not care for four young children, especially with the youngest requiring additional attention, asked a priest friend to find a home the them in some convent. All of the children were found homes in various charitable institutions. Mary, the second youngest, and Nellie were placed at St. Finbarr Industrial School managed by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. The two girls arrived in May of 1907. Nellie, three years old when she arrived, called all the Sisters, Mudder.
Nellie adapted quickly and was truly happy there. Because she cried and coughed much of the night, little Nellie was transferred to the infirmary. One day while playing with a string of beads, she partially swallowed them and they became lodged in her throat. After having them removed, a doctor discovered she had tuberculosis. Nellie remained two months in the convent infirmary. Her nurse, Miss Hall, would often stay throughout the night with her and Nellie was grateful for the care. She would say, “Holy God took my Mudder, but he has given you to be my Mudder.”
During her stay in the infirmary, a statue of the Holy Infant of Prague attracted her attention. Miss Hall explained that the statue was an image of Our Lord when he was a child. Miss Hall went on to tell the story of Jesus’ birth and his great love for us. Nellie delighted in hearing this story “of Holy God when he was a child.”
From then on she turned with the sweet simplicity of childhood and spoke to little Jesus regularly, and at the suggestion of the nuns, made a novena to him, asking him to make her well. When the novena was ended, she became recovered well enough to walk in the garden while holding someone’s hand. This inspired great confidence in the Holy Child, with whom she began to chat with in a most familiar way, often making extraordinary demands.
As months passed, Nellie became ill again. Often the nuns would bring flowers to Nellie to brighten her days. “Isn’t Holy God good,” she would say, “to make such lovely flowers for me?” She wouldn’t accept artificial flowers, insisting “bring me some of Holy God’s flowers.”
Mary Long, with her many household tasks, did not always feel up to rising for Mass each morning. On one occasion, Mary occupied herself until she heard the children come into the refectory after Mass, then she opened the door to Nellie’s room and said, “Well, how are your today?”
To her surprise, Nellie answered reproachfully, “You did not get Holy God this morning. Mary, thinking to test Nellie, on the next day pretended to go to Mass, but when looking in on little Nellie, she got the same reproach.
On a morning sometime after this incident, Nurse Hall carried Nellie down the the chapel. Nellie had never before actually seen the Sacred Host exposed in the monstrance. To her surprise, she heard Nellie whisper: “Mudder there he is, there is Holy God!” After which she never took her eyes off the Host, while an expression of ecstasy transfigured her face.
In another account of this same first visit, Reverend Mother writes: “It was on the First Friday of the month, (October), I was passing along the corridor, when the chapel door opened and Nellie, holding Nurse’s hand, toddled out softly. Remembering how ill the child had been, I stooped down, one knee on the floor, and said: “Well, how is Baby today?” For answer the little child laid her face on my shoulder and wept silently; but her tears were not sad, they were all sweetness; it was a holy emotion, the happiness of which overflowed in wordless weeping. In that moment,” she continued, “it was made known to me interiorly that God had some special designs on the child, and that I, then Superior, was expected to cooperate with him in accomplishing them.”
From that day onward, by some interior warning, without a single exterior sign to guide her, Nellie always knew when there was Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at the convent.
Having been born in the army barracks where the prison was called the lockup, she regarded Jesus in the tabernacle as the “Prisoner” in the “lockup”. Thus on Exposition days she would say; “Take me down to the chapel. I know that Holy God is not in the lockup today”. Oftentimes she would call the Eucharist “the hidden Jesus”.
Mother Frances Xavier used to come over to visit Nellie every evening and kneeling by Nellie’s bed, would take out her crucifix and explain Our Lord’s life.
Tuberculosis was wasting away her frame, and her jawbone began to crumble away from the disease known as caries. The odor was extremely unpleasant, even unbearable, and the nurses would use a syringe to rinse out the child’s mouth with disinfectant. Even though this process was painful, Nellie did not resist. When the nurse took out the syringe, Nellie took out her crucifix.
One day Sister Immaculata and Nurse Hall went together to visit Nellie who had spent a very restless night. They relate the following conversation.
“How are you doing today, darling. I thought you would have been with Holy God by this time.”
“Oh no,” answered Nellie, “Holy God says I am not good enough to go to him yet.”
“What do you know about Holy God?” Asked mary.
“Him did come and stand there,” replied the child, pointing to the side of her bed, “snd him did say that.”
She had a remarkable devotion to the Passion of Our Lord, and when they exhorted her to unite her sufferings with those of Jesus she seemed to grasp the idea immediately and endured the most atrocious sufferings without a murmur. She kept a crucifix on her bed beside her and when her sufferings became almost unbearable she would take it, stare at it, and whisper, “Poor Holy God. Oh, poor Holy God.” If others sympathized with her she would smile and remark, “What is it compared with what he suffered on the cross for me?”
Not long after Nellie was completely bedridden, she expressed a strong desire to be carried down for Mass to adore Jesus in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, and what’s more she soon expressed sighs of longing for the then unheard of privilege of receiving Communion at such a young age. The normal age then was 12. She was often heard repeating to herself “Oh, I am longing for Holy god. I wonder when he will come. I am longing to have him in my heart.”
After some time of wanting to receive Holy Communion and not being able to, she devised a clever way of bringing some solace. “Mudder” she whispered to the nurse one morning, “when you get Holy God in the chapel, will you come back and kiss me” then you can to back to the chapel again.”
This kiss was not for the nurse. It was for the Blessed Sacrament. In profound reverence the little lips would touch the lips of the communicant, then in strictest silence she would wave the nurse back to Mass.
As December came, the sisters had begun a ten day retreat and told the director about the longing for Holy Communion by this extraordinary child. While questioning Nellie to determine her readiness, he asked her what is the Blessed Eucharist. “It is Holy God,” she replied, “it is him that makes the nuns and everybody else hoy.”
Impressed with her understanding, Fr. Bury wrote to the Bishop, requesting special permission to give her Holy Communion. When the Bishop responded that she could, Fr Bury ran to Nellies’s room to tell her the good news. With joy, she repeated over and over, “I will have Holy God in my heart!! I will give Holy God my heart!”
On the day of her First holy Communion, Fr. Bury relates, “The child literally hungered for her God, and received him from my hands in a transport of love.”
Another priest who was there described Nellie’s thanksgiving after Communion. “The happy moment will long be remembered by those who had the privilege of being present. Nellie seemed in an ecstasy, and all remarked the heavenly light that lighted up the child’s countenance.”
Then a strange thing was noticed. The disagreeable odor that previously had exhaled from her diseased mouth and jaw was never experienced again.
At the new year of 1908, it was evident that Nellie was in her last days. She could hold nothing down, not even a spoonful of broth, She seemed to live on the Blessed Sacrament alone as her only source of food. Her suffering was so great that the sisters wept for her, but Nellie admonished them, “You should be glad that I am going to Holy god.”
As she had predicted, she died on a Sunday. It was on February 2, 1908, The Feast of the Purification of Mary and of the Presentation of the child Jesus in the temple that Nellie “flew to Holy God.”
It was the story of this extraordinary little child that Pope Pius X took as the sign that he should lower the age for First Comunion to age 7.
Little Nellie of Holy God was four years, five months and eight days old when she died.
Would that we, as Knights of the Eucharist, had such a simple yet profound devotion to Our Lord in the Eucharist.
For the more detailed telling of the story of Little Nellie of Holy God, go to www.mysticsofthechurch.com