Pope John Paul Il present in the chapel of Reuilly on May 31,1980 prays to Mary

Let us listen to the teachings of our unforgettable Pope John Paul II

Mary, conceived without sin
Pray for us who have recourse to you
Mary, such was the prayer that you inspired in Saint Catherine Labouré, in this same place, now, one hundred fifty years ago; and this invocation, thereafter engraved on the Medal is now worn and recited by so many faithful throughout the whole world! You are blessed among all women!
Blessed are you who believed!
The Almighty has done marvels for you!

The marvel of your Divine maternity!
And,in view of it,
The marvel of your Immaculate Conception!
The marvel of your fiat!
You have been so intimately associated with the work
of our Redemption,
associated with the cross of Our Saviour; your heart was transpierced by it, along side his heart. And now, in the glory of your Son you intercède continuously for us, poor sinners.
You watch over the Church, of which you are the Mother. You watch over each one of your children.
You obtain for us, from God, all these graces which the rays of light radiating from your open hands symbolize,
With the one condition that we dare ask you for them, and that we draw near to you with the confidence and the simplicity of a child.
And it is, in this way, that you lead us constantly towards your Son Jesus.

The message of Our Lady,how we can perceive the Medal

A message of Faith

We find there, in brief, the essentiel beliefs of Christianity.
The Son of God became man to save us by His Death and Resurrection.
Into the world, the work of God, entered "sin", the work of man. Christ saves us by His cross.
The Church is the "People of God":
The Church, founded upon Peter and the Apostles (twelve stars), is on its way to the Kingdom where all human beings, without distinction, are invited to enter.
Mary has a privileged place in this Divine plan:
She was conceived without sin.
She is inséparable from Jesus whom she gives us and to whom she leads us (M).
She suffered with Him for us (transpierced heart).
She appeared to us in her Glory,
·as a pre-eminent effect of the Redemption 1 saw her beautiful and in the perfection of her beauty").
·as interceding for us (rays).

A message of Hope

In reality, Hope is:
The virtue of Christ's growth in us:
Amid all our sorrows, we live in joy and radiate joy: "The persons who wear this Medal will receive great graces."
Our Hope is Christ, and through Mary's hands, we place ourselves in Christ's hands: "We have recourse to You."
The virtue of prayer, and especially the prayer of petition:
Mary is Mother of "ardent Love, of holy Hope" and instructs us on the object of our prayer: the reign of God within us.
Mary, totally under the influence of God, also tells us what must be the "driving force" of our prayer: the Spirit of Christ.
0 Mary, Mother of God and Mother of ail humankind, you know our earthly needs and you know Gods plan for us, teach us to conform our desires and our actions to the will and the love of your Son.

A message of Charity

The "Miraculous Medal" tells us again of:
The Love of God, our Father, for us:
He bestows on us his innumerable graces: "Come to the foot of this altar; there, graces will be poured out on you."
The Heart of Christ, pierced by the lance and crowned with thorns, is the very source of this Love.
The love which God expects of us in return:
The Medal was given to us at the dawn of a scientific age and an epoch of dechristianization.
It reminds us that, in this technological world, we must never lose sight of the divine destiny of humanity:
"You have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and you have revealed them to the humble."
The love which we should have for one another:
In Jesus Christ, we are all sons and daughters of the same Father and have Mary as Mother.
Mary, who is only interested in our good and our salvation, teaches us to "carry each other's burdens."
The great obligation we have to be Apostles:
The Medal is a catechesis within everyone's reach, a privileged instrument for the apostolats. It should be distributed with faith and love.
To wear the Medal is to confide ourselves to Mary knowing that she intercèdes for us and always leads us to our Lord.

28 November : Feast of Saint Catherine Labouré

Saint Catherine Labouré Daughter of Charity, Servant of the Poor
"I was only an instrument,it was not for me that the Blessed Virgin appeared.If She chose me,who knows nothing,it was so that we could not doubt her."
Sister Catherine Labouré

Who was the seer the Blessed Mother entrusted with such a great revelation? At the time of the apparitions, Catherine Laboure was a simple, devout French peasant girl of 24 who had been in the novitiate of the Daughters of Charity in Paris for only three months. There seemed to be nothing remarkable about her. When she had entered the Order as a postulant seven months earlier, she could barely read, and it was only because a sympathetic sister undertook to tutor her that she became literate.
Catherine had been born in a tiny village near Dijon, France, on May 2, 1806, the ninth of eleven children. Her father was a prosperous farmer who had once studied for the priesthood. Her mother was a former schoolmistress. When Catherine was only nine years old, her mother died; in the midst of her terrible grief, Catherine turned to Our Lady. Climbing up on a chair one day, she reached for a statue of the Blessed Virgin that stood high on a shelf in her mother's bedroom and throwing her arms around it cried, "Now, dear Blessed Mother, you will be my mother." That incident, with its hint of irrevocable dedication, symbolic of the eventual turning of humanity towards Mary, might be seen as the real beginning of the Marian Age.
At the age of 12, Catherine had to take over the running of her father's household, then comprising six family members and 14 hired men. She carried out her heavy responsibilities capably while finding time for her spiritual life. Every morning she walked six miles to Mass in the predawn darkness, and throughout the day she managed to slip away to the village chapel across the lane form her home, there to pray before a weatherworn old painting of the Annunciation.
When she was 18 she had her first mystical experience, a dream in which an elderly priest beckoned to her and told her that God had plans for her life. In her dream, Catherine, fearful, ran away from the priest. Some time late, while visiting a hospice run by the Daughters of Charity, Catherine saw a portrait of St. Vincent de Paul, the Order's founder, and recognized him as the priest in her dream. She knew then that God wanted her to enter the Daughters of Charity. When Catherine was 22, having turned down several marriage proposals, she asked her father for permission to enter the religious life. At first her father refused, even sending her to Paris to work in her brother's cafe to dissuade her, but two years later he relented.
In the novitiate Catherine began to have a number of extraordinary experiences- visions of the heart of St. Vincent de Paul and of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. She reported these mystical experiences to the confessor, who advised her to keep silent about them.
Then on July 18, 1830, the Eve of the feast of St. Vincent she saw the Blessed Mother for the first time. Just before midnight Catherine was awakened by an angel resplendent with light, who appeared as a young child. She followed him to the chapel, where all the torches and tapers were burning brightly. The angel led her to the sanctuary and announced, "Here is the Blessed Virgin; here she is!" There was a rustle of silk and suddenly Catherine saw a beautiful lady seating herself in the blue velvet chair reserved for the director of the sisters. When the angel said again in a loud voice, "Here is the Blessed Virgin," Catherine immediately fell to her knees on the altar steps, and resting her hands on the Virgin's lap, looked up into her eyes. For the next two hours, the sweetest moments of her life she later wrote, Catherine and the Blessed Mother had an intimate conversation. Catherine was told about her mission and about future events, some to take place very soon, some many years off. The times were evil, she was told, and great sorrows would befall France and the whole world. The French throne would be overturned; there would be religious persecution. "But come to the foot of the altar," she was encouraged. "There graces will be shed upon all, great and small, who ask for them."
A week after this apparition Charles X, the King of France, was deposed, the palace of the Archbishop of Paris sacked, and priests and bishops beaten and killed.
Four months later, on November 27, 1830, Catherine was praying in the chapel with the community when Blessed Virgin appeared for the second time. Clothed all in white, she stood in the sanctuary near a painting of St. Joseph, holding a small golden globe surmounted by a cross. Her feet rested on a white globe, around which was coiled a serpent, green in color with yellow spots. Brilliant rays radiated from gemstone rings on her fingers. Her face was of indescribable beauty.
Catherine had an inner locution, an explanation of the vision. The globe represented the entire world, especially France, and it also represented each person in particular. The rays of light streaming form her hands represented the graces Our Lady sheds on those who ask for them, Some of the rings gave no light, however, representing graces that people neglected to ask for.
Suddenly the globe in the Virgin's hands disappeared and she lowered her hands, brilliant rays still streaming from them. An oval frame formed around her, within which was written in letters of gold: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee."
Catherine heard interiorly the direction to have a medal made on this model. Then the tableau seemed to turn and Catherine saw the reverse of the medal, the M, the Cross, and the two hearts.
Suddenly the vision disappeared from Catherine's sight, "like a candle blown our," she later wrote. Then began Catherine's lifelong task of fulfilling her mission while guarding her identity, for she understood that in giving the medal to the world, she herself was to remain unknown.
After the apparitions finished, Catherine lived out her life quietly and humbly as a Daughter of Charity at a hospice for elderly men outside of Paris. She worked in the kitchen, washed and repaired clothes, nursed and saw to the spiritual needs of the men. During the forty-six years that Catherine worked at the hospice, not one of her charges died without receiving the last sacraments.
Although there was some suspicion in the community that Catherine might be the "sister of the apparitions," the seer just laughed at such suggestions when they were brought up. She performed many daily duties humbly and obediently.
In describing her prayer life during those years she related that each day she put herself before the Lord saying, "Lord, here I am. Give me what you wish." If He gave her something, she was happy and thanked Him. If He gave her nothing, she thanked Him still. She would then tell Him all that came into her mind, her sorrows and her joys; then she would listen.
In 1876, a few months before her death, Catherine- knowing she had not much time left on earth and following the Virgin's instructions- admitted to her superior that she indeed was the "sister of the apparitions." Up to that time she had told no one except her confessor.
Catherine died peacefully on December 31, 1876. She was buried in a small chapel at the hospice. When her body was exhumed in 1933 as part of her beatification process, it was found to be incorrupt. Today Catherine Laboure's body, still beautifully preserved, can be seen and venerated in the chapel of the Daughters of Charity at 140 Rue de Bac in Paris.
Catherine Laboure was canonized on July 27, 1947, by Pope Pius XII, who declared her the "saint of silence and the duties of her state." Her feast day is November 28. The preceding day, November 27, is the feast of the Miraculous Medal, which received liturgical approbation when a Mass and Office were assigned in its honor in 1895, one of only three sacramentals in the history of the Church to be thus liturgically honored. (The others are the Rosary and Brown Scapular.)
There are two theological doctrines associated with the Miraculous Medal apparition. The first, Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces, has not yet been defined by the Church but is considered certain by many theologians.

The second, the Immaculate Conception, was infallibly defined by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854, twenty-four years after the apparitions. The definition of the doctrine, which had been developing over many centuries, was most certainly hastened by the Miraculous Medal revelation- specifically the words Catherine Laboure saw encircling the image of Our Lady in 1830: "O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." Indeed, the Pope himself asserted that the impetus for his pronouncement came from France. In "Defining the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception," Pius IX decreed:
We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.
Four short years after Pope Pius IX's pronouncement, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception would be confirmed by the Blessed Mother herself in apparition to St. Bernadette of Lourdes