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
The Feast of the blessed Virgin's Immaculate Conception is the most solemn of all those which the Church celebrates during the holy time of Advent; and if the first part of the cycle had to offer us the commemoration of some one of the mysteries of Mary, there was none whose object could better harmonize with the spirit of the Church in this mystic season of expectation. Let us, then, celebrate this solemnity with joy; for the Conception of Mary tells us that the Birth of Jesus is not far off.
