"That was a prayer that I hadn’t said in a long time," said Berretta, as he recalled reading about a message that Jesus gave to St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish nun who said she had a vision of Jesus in which he asked for devotions to divine mercy.
"I remember reading in that little booklet that Jesus said to Sister Faustina that the 3 p.m. hour is the hour of mercy, and whatever you ask of the Father in virtue of my passion during this hour will be granted.
"It sort of hit me as we were going into the water that it was in the 3 o’clock hour. So I asked God to be merciful to us and I said a few Hail Marys and I reconciled myself to the fact that I might not live through it," he said.
In the aftermath of the crash, Berretta said he has been "giving a lot of thought to the power of those prayers."
"When you go through an experience like this — if you have faith — you feel a profound sense of gratitude.
"I try to be very thoughtful of how fortunate I am and we all are," Berretta said. "I feel that almost obligates me to do something … to share that."
Fellow survivor Victor Warnement came away from the experience with a similar sentiment.
"You don’t go through an experience like this without thinking, ‘How do I give more?’" he said.
Warnement, a parishioner at St. Gabriel Church in Charlotte, believes he and the other passengers aboard Flight 1549 were part of a miracle.
"If you look at statistics, this doesn’t happen," he said. "It’s as if we were delivered back on the wings of angels."
Printed with permission from The Catholic News & Herald, newspaper for the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina.
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