Posted on 09/08/2010 9:36:39 AM PDT by marshmallow
Two or three years before Keble's Assize Sermon, on Saturday 27 November 1830, a young French nun, (S) Catherine Laboure, beheld her second and third visions of the Mother of God in the Sanctuary of her Convent Chapel in the Rue du Bac in Paris. Our Lady appeared to her, radiant, standing on a globe, and with her arms stretched out in a compassionate gesture. From her fingers rays of light fell upon the globe at her feet. An oval frame then formed around her with gold lettering that read: O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
Our Lady promised great graces to those who wore this design with confidence; she showed the Saint the design which now appears on the back of the Miraculous Medal: a large M surmounted by a bar and cross, with two hearts beneath it, one crowned with thorns, the other pierced with a sword, all encircled by twelve stars. .
In 1836, Abbe Desgenettes, who had taken over the Church of Our Lady of Victories (a church degraded and desecrated during the Revolution and with a minute congregation), dedicated his parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and founded a Confraternity of Prayer, which had the Miraculous Medal as its badge. In the days before Newman's conversion, intense prayer was offered for him in this Church by the members of that Fraternity. Back in Blighty, it was on the Octave Day of the Assumption in 1845 that Newman first began to wear the Miraculous Medal. I find this interesting; sometimes one can get the impression that, unlike Fr Faber, Newman had a haughty English and 'Anglican' approach to such 'foreign' devotional instincts. Well, such a judgement would need to be qualified.
On January 20, 1842, a wealthy Jewish banker called Alphonse Ratisbonne had, in the Church of S Andrea delle Fratte in Rome, a vision of our Lady just as she appeared on the Miraculous Medal. Rattisbonne asked to be baptised and later became a Jesuit ... here my attention has wandered to a recollection of Waugh's Fr Rothschild, SJ, with his 'Asiatic features' ... the train of thought sparked off less by thought of Fr Martin D'Arcy than by a visit the other day with daughter and granddaughter to the great Rothschild wonderhouse at Waddesdon ... we digress ... as so often ...
After his reception into full communion, Newman and St John visited the shrine in Notre Dame des Victoires in thanksgiving for the prayers offered for him there. Weeks later, the two priests, awaiting admission to the presbyterate of the Latin Church, were lodged in the Collegio di Propaganda in Rome. Newman makes clear in a number of letters that their windows looked down on the Church of S Andrea delle Fratte; it clearly made some considerable impression upon him. On June 9 1847, his long-time woman friend, Maria Giberne, painted a picture of Newman and St John in a room at Propaganda, with our Lady, as she appears on the Miraculous Medal , between the two of them.
Looking back, Newman realised that he had been under the protection of the Mother of God during his years as priest of her church in Oxford ... which, even in the days before the Ritualist Revival, two centuries before Keble's sermon, possessed a great Roman Baroque porch a la Bernini from the 1630s, with a Laudian staue of our Lady above the entrance.
Continuities, discontinuities, graces.
I thought freerepublic was supposed to be about conservative politics, rather than long boring essays on Catholicism and Mormonism.
And if he believes that fanciful tale he’s also being deceived by the god of this corrupt age or system. (2 Cor. 4:3,4)
You can modify your account settings so you don’t see items from the Religion forum.
1Cr 3:19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.
Who would have thunk that a religious article would be in the Religion forum?
Just sayin'.
It's all through the eyes of faith.
The Bible is unique, and even those who were fanatically opposed to Jesus could not deny what he did.
But today the so called “higher critics” want to judge what they refuse to understand.
The Conservative Movement decoupled from religion is Libertarianism. So fuhhhget about it!
I believe there is a special anointing on these medals. I have encountered special anointing on certain medals myself.
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