In 1830, on November 27, Mary appeared to Saint Catherine Labouré, of the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity, at 140 Rue du Bac, in Paris. On that occasion, the Mother of Jesus showed the model of the medal that She wanted to be minted as a sign of the great graces that she would obtain from her Divine Son.
This Medal brings numerous messages, and the first of them concerns the Immaculate Conception of Mary, a dogma that would be proclaimed on December 8, 1854, by Pius IX, in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus. The open hands of the Mediatrix of all graces is another great lesson. It is the summary of the role of the Virgin Mary in the history of salvation, in the Gospel.
Add the cross of Christ, sacrificed by men, and Mary, an example of faith at the foot of the cross, represented by the “M” in her name. The heart of Jesus and Mary attesting to the immense love of the Savior and His Mother for all the redeemed. The twelve stars remember the woman of the Apocalypse (cf. Rev 12:1). She is the one who gave birth to the human body of Christ and the Church, who gives birth to the baptized who form the Mystical Body of Jesus.
As the 12 stars also remember the 12 tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles, the miraculous medal also has a profoundly missionary aspect. It should be added that, in the 19th century, the denial of God prevailed everywhere with the deification of science, which intended to answer all religious and philosophical questions.
What are the messages of the miracle medal?
The literature of the time was permeated with atheism, leading minds to the irrational and fantastic. Furthermore, when, in 1830, an anti-religious political regime was about to be installed, developing a particularly materialistic form of liberal capitalism, the Virgin then proposed not a scientific object, but a simple object, a medal speaking of celestial realities. The dissemination of this piece also occurred at the time of a renewal of social Catholicism with Frederico Ozanam and the Conferences of Saint Vincent de Paul. There was a vitality in Catholic university and literary reflection. All of this was reinforced with the medal that showed God’s intervention in the history not only of France, but of the entire world.
The Archbishop of Paris, to whom Catherine Labouré took Our Lady’s request for the medals to be minted, realized the doctrinal richness it contained. In 1832, these pieces were first distributed during the cholera epidemic, which decimated the French capital. The first 20,000 medals were made in 1830, the year in which this epidemic, coming from Russia through Poland, broke out in Paris on March 26, claiming lives in an immense funeral song. In just one day, there were 861 deaths. In total, 18,400 deaths were officially registered; however, in reality, there were more than 20 thousand. The descriptions of the time are terrifying: in four or five hours, a man, in perfect health, was reduced to the state of a skeleton.
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Medal miracle
As if in the blink of an eye, young people full of life took on the appearance of worm-eaten old men, and soon after they were nothing more than corpses. In the final days of May, the epidemic seemed to be receding. In the second half of June, however, a new outbreak of the disease redoubled the people’s panic. But finally, on June 30th, Casa Vachette delivers the first 1,500 medals, which are distributed by the Daughters of Charity and open the endless procession of graces and miracles: wonderful cures took place and the epidemic was defeated.
There was then the conversion of Alfonso Ratisbona from Judaism to , and he set to work to bring Judeo-Christians closer together.
The Church spoke of the holy medal, but the people soon called it a miraculous medal. When Santa Catarina Labouré passed away, on December 31, 1876, one billion medals had already been distributed. The Holy Church always calls certain objects blessed by the priest “sacramental”, such as: the miraculous medals, the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and the rosary. They do not in themselves transmit grace like the sacraments, but they pledge divine blessings and help Christians to progress in faith, hope, the practice of other virtues and the life of prayer.
Canon José Geraldo Vidigal de Carvalho
Professor at the Mariana Seminary for 40 years