The Story of Stanley Villavicencio (Part 1)

Do you know that there is a man among us who has already meet Jesus face to face? I didn’t until I read the story of Stanley Villavicencio in the Kerygmafamily magazine, and later in a booklet entitled, “Stanley C. Villacencio: His Personal Encounter with Jesus Christ of the Divine Mercy.” No less than Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal, the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cebu affixed his signature confirming that his miraculous encounter with Jesus is authentic, and endorsing his testimony to rest of the Church, and to the world. I am writing here an excerpt of his long testimony.

Stanley is a Filipino who lived in Mambaling, Cebu, and who had 10 children by the time his encounter with Jesus occurred. Nowadays he is actively touring the country, and to other parts of the world proclaiming the Mercy of God.

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It was around 8 o’clock in morning on the 2nd of March 1993, Stanley would not wake up in his house in Mambaling. His mother in-law heard him moaning in his room so she went in to check on him, and to her horror she saw Stanley lying and trembling in his bed, blood forcefully coming out of his mouth. Soon the sister of his father-in-law who happened to be a nurse attended to him. First she checked his pulse but could not find one. Then she listened to his heartbeat, and was alarmed to find out that it was slow already. When they check his eyes they were even more worried to see that life was sucked out of these – they were white! Right away, they brought Stanley to Chong Hua Hospital in Cebu City where four specialists were hired to attend to him.

“His chance of survival is one in a million,” one of the doctors said, “his heartbeat is already very, very low.”

Stanley was brought into the Emergency Room where nurses and doctors did their best to revive him. When he couldn’t breathe anymore, even with the help of oxygen, he was rushed to the I.C.U. or Intensive Care Unit. Even at this time, Stanley did not stop trembling nor did the blood stop coming out from his mouth. The team of doctors decided to inject him with Valium to relax his muscles.

Stanley labored hard with every breath he took until he could not longer breathe on his own anymore, ambubagging or forcing the oxygen into his lungs was done. His chance of survival was very close to zero.

The next day, the team of doctors, talked to Stanley’s wife, a nurse herself, to ask her permission to take the life support apparatus off Stanley because there was no more chance of survival. His wife agreed sadly, and informed at home to prepare a long sleeve shirt for Stanley. Stanley’s mother-in-law even volunteered to transfer her memorial plan to his name. The final shirt, the coffin, and the burial place in the Queen City Garden cemetery were all ready for Stanley. But God had a different plan.

While Stanley was fighting for his life the I.C.U. of Chong Hua hospital, his relatives from Negros which includes his father and sister, both doctors, arrived to support him. They refused to take Stanley off the life support apparatus, and instead took turn in bagging him; manually forcing oxygen into his now clinically dead body.

Stanley could no longer make sense of what was going on around him for his consciousness was drawn towards a light, a very bright light that was not glaring to the eyes.

“You can stare at it, it is like a fog as it slowly evaporates, until I noticed someone is standing in front of me. And when I look at his face, I recognize him as Jesus.”

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