(LifeSiteNews) — A man who was forced to drop out of seminary after being cripplingly injured by COVID shots was miraculously healed by Jesus Christ after prayer, as he shared in a recent testimony.

Julian Young, a Catholic convert, was studying to become a priest when two successive COVID mRNA shots in 2021 led to severe inflammation and neurological dysfunction that came to be diagnosed as complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a rare autoimmune disease. Young and others say the sensation of burning that comes with CRPS is so extreme that it feels like the body is on fire.

Young eventually made much progress at a Neurologic Recovery Program in Arkansas with the help of LifeSiteNews readers’ donations and began to function much like he had before his disease. However, after overexerting himself, he had a bad relapse. He became bedridden for three months with nerve pain so extreme that it flared up when he completed tasks as simple as tapping his phone. When he stood up, the burning sensation spread from his feet through his entire body.

One day in September, Young said in a testimony given at his parish church, he unexpectedly “felt God’s closeness” in a way he hadn’t before. That evening, he did his prayer devotions and spiritual reading as normal and watched a video by Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen called “God knows your suffering.”

“It felt like God was speaking to me, and it felt like God was listening to my suffering,” Young said. He explained that Sheen told how Our Lord, when he healed someone, would often “let out a deep sigh,” “because the Lord was taking that suffering onto himself out of love for that person.” 

“So I just started crying because I felt like God was speaking to me as I was watching that video,” Young said. He went on to pray his nighttime devotions, including one to the Precious Blood of Jesus. 

“As soon as I said ‘Amen,’ I felt this deep peace come over my entire body, and I felt like something was happening. I was asking the Lord, ‘Is something happening to me?’” Since it was late, he went to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning to receive Holy Communion from his aunt, he remembered that “something had happened” to him the previous night. “I said to the Lord, ‘Did something happen to me?’ 

“After that I received Holy Communion and my aunt left, as I was praying my thanksgiving prayers…I heard the Lord speak in the depths of my soul… I know I heard him say, ‘Get up and walk. You are healed.’”

He got up and “took a few hesitant and careful steps,” because walking, for a while, resulted in a burning sensation. “And there was no nerve pain, there was no burning, there was nothing,” Young said.

“I just started crying and thanking the Lord,” he said, adding that he kissed a relic of the True Cross that he had been lent. 

Since then, Young told LifeSiteNews, he has been “walking around and doing many things with no pain or health complications.” 

“Glory to God. Our Lord and Holy Mother raised my body to new life in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit!” Young said.

“I am working on regaining my muscle strength since the period of being bedridden led to significant atrophy. I am also working on regaining weight since my food sensitivities caused me to be severely malnourished, but all of that is healed as well!” he told LifeSite.

He hopes to soon enter the seminary again so that he can become a priest, an aspiration inspired by “a strong desire to unite myself to Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

“I am waiting on His Divine Providence and taking it day by day.”