There have been many significant landmarks in Fr. Ray Collier’s sixty years of priesthood, but surely none can rival the moment in 2010 when, after collapsing in one of the world’s busiest airports, he was saved just seconds away from death by the intervention of a complete stranger. Even more extraordinary is the reason the stranger happened to be there in the first place!
By 2010, Ray had already had a very eventful life. He comes from Drogheda in Ireland, from a family steeped in Columban tradition. (Two of his uncles had been Columban Missionaries: Kieran, who’d worked in Burma, and Tony, who’d served – and been martyred – in Korea.) Ordained in 1966, he was appointed to the Philippines and was on mission in various parishes in Mindanao, an island long troubled by tensions between Christians and Muslims. Health problems forced Ray to transfer to Britain in 1983 and, after a spell in the East End of London, he found himself in a deprived inner-city parish in Birmingham. On the fateful day in question, he was flying back to England after having visited a Philippine friend in Montana, U.S.A.
Fr. Ray himself takes up the story.
“To get home I changed in St. Paul’s, Minnesota, for a flight to London Heathrow. I arrived, picked up my bag, was walking to the lifts, and that’s when it happened: I collapsed. I was unconscious for over two weeks. Can’t remember a thing. Next I knew I was in bed looking at my brother Paddy. ‘You’re back’, he said. I’d been ‘out of it’ all that time.”
He’d suffered a massive heart attack. After regaining consciousness he was subjected to intensive surgery, involving a triple heart by-pass and the fitting of an inbuilt defibrillator and pacemaker.
One day, while convalescing, a nurse came to his bedside to say he had a visitor. Up came a stranger, a young Japanese lady who smiled and said, “You don’t know me, but I know you.” It was she who pieced together the details of Ray’s near-miraculous escape from death.
It seems she was a nurse herself and was in London to do further studies related to bowel cancer. On the day that Ray was arriving from the U.S., her New Zealand flatmate was to meet someone also coming to Heathrow and asked the Japanese lady to accompany her. She said no, she was too busy.
According to Ray’s account, “once she said that, she felt a little voice saying, ‘go to the airport.’ The more she tried to ignore it, it became more urgent, more persistent. In the end, she got fed up hearing it and finally said, ‘okay, I’ll go’. With that, the voice stopped. Don’t ask me how or why. That’s just how she said it happened. And…she’s not a Christian, by the way!”
Continues Ray, “According to her, they got to Heathrow and were just walking around when she saw me on the floor. She rushed over. Got these Chinese students to help turn me on my side. Then saw I wasn’t breathing! Put me on my back., ripped off my jacket, tried CPR – nothing ! Two policemen were there. One had a bike. Dashed off to get a defibrillator. The other stayed with her. All this was super-quick. She told me ‘You hadn’t breathed for one-and-a-half minutes. A few more seconds and you’d have been a vegetable. Then, the defibrillator arrived. We applied it. You started beathing'”.
Subsequently, both the lady and the two policemen received Certificates of Commendation from the Chief Constable. Ray tells me that the whole episode was captured on CCTV, and the police still use the footage for training purposes.
As for him and his ‘guardian angel’, the hospital meeting has been the start of a lifelong friendship. They exchange birthday greetings. (“Easy to remember”, Ray says, “because our birthdays are only four days apart.”) The lady fell in love with a Scotsman and invited Ray up for the wedding. “She’s not Christian, but still asked me to bless the marriage. So, I went to the wedding and gave them a REAL GOOD blessing, the very best you can do for non-Catholics!” The newly-weds settled in Britain and Ray sees them often.
And that little voice ? “She has no explanation. Never happened again. Says it was totally outside her experience.”
Ray adds, “I ask myself many times, why was she there ? What does it all mean ?” Whatever the ’whys and wherefores’’, he knows that God was in it all, giving him a type of resurrection, extending his life for a purpose. Ray makes full use of that gift, working tirelessly in migrant and inter-religious dialogue ministries in central Birmingham.
His last word on the episode ? It seems that the enduring theme of changing planes gives him a clue. “I’ve been allowed an extended stopover”, he says: He feels he’s been granted a new lease of life “in the ‘Now of God’” before he boards his final, happy, flight.
Fr. Ray’s experience echoes the heart of the Easter message. Just as we celebrate Christ’s passage from death to new life, Ray describes his survival as a kind of resurrection, a moment when life was unexpectedly restored and given new meaning. Pulled back from the brink by the compassion of a stranger, he was granted what he calls an “extended stopover” in the “Now of God.” Easter reminds us that new life often comes in surprising ways, through acts of love, courage and generosity. Fr. Ray’s story becomes a living sign of Easter hope: that even in moments of darkness, God can bring renewal, purpose and the chance to serve others more deeply.
