The sound of the evening Angelus bells
floated across the fields and vineyards of Burgundy. It was the second day of
the month of May in the year of Our Lord 1806. In the little village of
Fain-les-Moutiers a child of destiny was coming into the world, a tiny
instrument of God, who would one day be the confidante of the Queen of Heaven to
usher in the age of Mary. Her name was Catherine Labouré, the ninth child of a
family of eleven.
The following day, the Feast of the
Finding of the True Cross, the small child was baptized. All her life she was to
have a deep devotion to the Cross of Our Lord. It would not be long before she
was to feel the weight of sacrifice with the death of her mother at the age of
nine.
Early one morning shortly after her mother's death, a family
servant came silently upon the little one standing on her tiptoes, stretching
upwards, impelled by love, until she reached the statue of the Blessed Virgin.
As she leaned her head against the Madonna, the servant heard the child say: From now on, You will be my Mother!
Catherine received her First Holy
Communion at the age of eleven on January 25th, 1818. From that day on, she rose
at four o'clock each morning and walked several miles to assist at Mass and to
pray for grace and strength before the start of her day's work. Her only desire
now was to give herself without reserve to her dear Lord. Never was the thought
of Him far from her mind.
By this time Catherine's elder sister,
Marie Louise, had left to join the Sisters of Charity, and the little girl who
had always been obedient now had to direct and supervise the homestead. She
looked after everything: she made the bread, cooked and did the housework,
carried daily meals to the workmen in the fields and cared well for the animals.
A Sister of Charity
Once, when she was in the village church,
she saw a vision of an old priest saying Mass. After Mass the priest turned and
beckoned to her with his finger, but she drew backwards, keeping her eyes on
him. The vision moved to a sickroom where she saw the same priest, who said: "My
child, it is a good deed to look after the sick; you run away from me now, but
one day you will be glad to come to me. God had designs for you. Do not forget
it!" At that time, of course, she did not understand the significance of the
vision.
As is the European custom, Catherine's
father invited various suitors to seek her hand in marriage and always her reply
was: "I shall never marry; I have promised my life to Jesus Christ." She prayed,
worked, and served the family well until she was twenty-two, when she asked her
father's permission to become a Daughter of Charity. He flatly refused, and to
distract her, sent her to Paris to work in a coffee shop run by her brother
Charles. During the entire year spent there, she maintained her resolve to
become the bride of Christ.
Her aunt, Jeanne Gontard, came to
Catherine's aid and enrolled her in the finishing school she directed at
Chatillon. Since Catherine was a country girl, she was miserable at this
fashionable school. One day, while visiting the hospital of the Daughters of
Charity, she noted a priest's picture on the wall. She asked the nun who he
might be, and was told: "Our Holy Founder, Saint Vincent de Paul." This was the
same priest Catherine had seen in the vision. Later, after much persuasion from
her Aunt Jeanne, her father granted permission for Catherine to enter the
convent.
In January of 1830 Catherine entered the
hospice of the Daughters of Charity at Chatillon-sur-Seine. This was just after
the Reign of Terror in France, where sacrileges were committed in the name of
freedom. Licentious women danced on the main altar of Notre Dame. Even the body
of St. Genevieve, the Patroness of France, was desecrated. Saint Vincent de
Paul's body had been hidden, but four days after Catherine's entry into the
Mother House, his remains were transferred back to his own church with joyous
processions and ceremonies.
Shortly after her entrance, God was pleased to grant
Catherine several extraordinary visions. On three consecutive days she beheld
the heart of Saint Vincent each time under a different aspect. At other times
she beheld Our Divine Lord during Mass, when He would appear as He was described
in the liturgy of the day.
First Apparition
In 1830 Catherine was blessed with the
apparitions of Mary Immaculate to which we owe the Miraculous Medal. The first
apparition came one the eve of the feast of St. Vincent, July 19. The mother
superior had given each of the novices a piece of cloth from the holy founder's
surplice. Because of her extreme love, Catherine split her piece down the
middle, swallowing half and placing the rest in her prayer book. She earnestly
prayed to St. Vincent that she might, with her own eyes, see the Mother of God.
That night, a beautiful child awoke her
from her sleep, saying: "Sister Labouré, come to the chapel; the Blessed
Virgin is waiting for you." When Catherine went to the chapel, she found
it ablaze with lights as if prepared for Midnight Mass. Quietly, she knelt at
the Communion rail, and suddenly heard the rustle of a silk dress. The Blessed
Virgin, in a blaze of glory, sat in a chair like that of Saint Anne's.
Catherine rose, then went over and knelt,
resting her hands in the Virgin's lap, and felt the Virgin's arms around her, as
she said: "God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be
contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace. Tell your spiritual
director all that passes within you. Times are evil in France and in the world."
A pained expression crossed the Virgin's
face. "Come to the foot of the altar. Graces will be shed on all, great
and little, especially upon those who seek them. Another community of sisters
will join the Rue du Bac community. The community will become large; you will
have the protection of God and Saint Vincent; I will always have my eyes upon
you." (This prediction was fulfilled when, in 1849, Fr. Etienne received
Saint Elizabeth Seton's sisters of Emmitsburg, MD, into the Paris community.
Mother Seton's sisters became the foundation stone of the Sisters of Charity in
the United States.)
Then, like a fading shadow, Our Lady was
gone.
The Second Apparition
Four months passed until Our Lady
returned to Rue du Bac. Here are Catherine's own words describing the
apparition:
"On the 27th of November, 1830 ...
while making my meditation in profound silence ... I seemed to hear on the right
hand side of the sanctuary something like the rustling of a silk dress. Glancing
in that direction, I perceived the Blessed Virgin standing near St. Joseph's
picture. Her height was medium and Her countenance, indescribably beautiful. She
was dressed in a robe the color of the dawn, high-necked, with plain sleeves.
Her head was covered with a white veil, which floated over Her shoulders down to
her feet. Her feet rested upon a globe, or rather one half of a globe, for that
was all that could be seen. Her hands which were on a level with Her waist, held
in an easy manner another globe, a figure of the world. Her eyes were raised to
Heaven, and Her countenance beamed with light as She offered the globe to Our
Lord.
"As I was busy contemplating Her, the
Blessed Virgin fixed Her eyes upon me, and a voice said in the depths of my
heart: 'This globe which you see represents the whole world, especially
France, and each person in particular.'
"There now formed around the Blessed
Virgin a frame rather oval in shape on which were written in letters of gold
these words: 'O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to
Thee.' Then a voice said to me: 'Have a medal struck upon this model. All
those who wear it, when it is blessed, will receive great graces especially if
they wear it round the neck. Those who repeat this prayer with devotion will be
in a special manner under the protection of the Mother of God. Graces will be
abundantly bestowed upon those who have confidence.'
"At the same instant, the oval frame
seemed to turn around. Then I saw on the back of it the letter 'M', surmounted
by a cross, with a crossbar beneath it, and under the monogram of the name of
Mary, the Holy Hearts of Jesus and of His Mother; the first surrounded by a
crown of thorns and the second transpierced by a sword. I was anxious to know
what words must be placed on the reverse side of the medal and after many
prayers, one day in meditation I seemed to hear a voice which said to me: 'The
'M' with the Cross and the two Hearts tell enough.'"
The
Miraculous Medal
The Mother of God instructed Catherine
that she was to go to her spiritual director, Father Aladel, about the
apparitions. At first he did not believe Catherine, but, after two years,
approached the Bishop of Paris with the story of the events that had taken place
at Rue du Bac. Our Blessed Mother had chosen well Her time for the apparitions
as the Bishop at that period was an ardent devotee of the Immaculate Conception.
He said that the Medal was in complete conformity with the Church's doctrine on
the role of Our Lady and had no objections to having the medals struck at once.
The Bishop even asked to be sent some of the first.
Immediately upon receiving them, he put
one in his pocket and went to visit Monseigneur de Pradt, former chaplain to
Napoleon and unlawful Archbishop of Mechlin who had accepted his office from the
hands of the Emperor and now lay dying, defiant and unreconciled to the Church.
The sick man refused to abjure his errors and the Bishop of Paris withdrew in
defeat. He had not left the house when the dying man suddenly called him back,
made his peace with the Church and gently passed away in the arms of the
Archbishop, who was filled with a holy joy.
The original order of 20,000 medals
proved to be but a small start. The new medals began to pour from the presses in
streams inundating France and the rest of the world beyond. By the time of St.
Catherine's death in 1876, over a billion medals had been distributed in many
lands. This sacrament from Heaven was at first called simply the Medal of the
Immaculate Conception, but began to be known as the Miraculous Medal
due to the unprecedented number of miracles, conversions, cures, and acts of
protection attributed to Our Lady's intercession for those who wore it.
The most remarkable miracle was the
conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne, a wealthy Jewish banker and lawyer and also a
blasphemer and hater of Catholicism, in 1841. A Catholic friend gave him a
medal, daring him to wear it and say a Memorare. Not long after, he went to a
church to make funeral arrangements for a friend. There he saw a vision of Mary
as on the Miraculous Medal. This converted him on the spot and he immediately
begged for Baptism. Afterwards, he became a priest and spent 30 years laboring
in the Holy Land as a missionary to his own people.
Conclusion
On the last day of 1876, St. Catherine
passed to her eternal reward. For the forty-six years from the year of the
apparitions until her death, only she and her confessor knew who it was to whom
the famous Miraculous Medal was revealed, despite many pressures she received to
reveal the secret. The years passed by, Catherine performed daily her mundane
and very ordinary tasks of sewing and door keeping, unknown to the world around
her, which was buzzing with the miraculous effects of the medal. Because of this
humility, she is often called the Saint of Silence. When her body was
exhumed for beatification 57 years after her death in 1933, it was found as
fresh as the day it was buried. Her incorrupt body can still be seen today
at the Mother House of the Sisters of Charity, 140 Rue du Bac in Paris.