Catholic Fire

This novena begins on November 19 and continues through November 27. (Recite this prayer for nine consecutive days.) O Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord Jesus and our Mother, penetrated with the most lively confidence in your all-powerful and never-failing intercession, manifested so often through the Miraculous Medal, we your loving and trustful children implore you to obtain for us the graces and favors we ask during this novena, if they be beneficial to our immortal souls, and the souls for whom we pray. (Here mention your petition) You know, O Mary, how often our souls have been the sanctuaries of your Son who hates iniquity. Obtain for us then a deep hatred of sin and that purity of heart which will attach us to God alone so that our every thought, word and deed may tend to His greater glory. Obtain for us also a spirit of prayer and self-denial that we may recover by penance what we have lost by sin and at length attain to that blessed abode where you...

Today the Church honors St. Catherine of Laboure, the humble Daughter of Charity to whom Mary appeared, requesting that the Miraculous Medal be struck so that all who wear it would receive great graces. Saint Catherine Laboure was born in Burgundy, France on May 2, 1806. The ninth of eleven children born to a farm family, she felt a call to the religious life from an early age. Catherine entered the community of the Daughters of Charity, in obedience to a vision of Saint Vincent de Paul, telling her that God wanted her to work with the sick. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Catherine Laboure, who was then a 24-year-old novice, three times. On July 18, 1830, the first apparition occurred in the community's motherhouse. St. Catherine saw a lady seated on the right side of the sanctuary. When St. Catherine approached her, the heavenly visitor told her how to act in time of trial and pointed to the altar as the source of all consolation. Promising to entrust St. Catheri...

Today the Church honors St. Catherine of Laboure, the humble Daughter of Charity to whom Mary appeared, requesting that the Miraculous Medal be struck so that all who wear it would receive great graces. Saint Catherine Laboure was born in Burgundy, France on May 2, 1806. The ninth of eleven children born to a farm family, she felt a call to the religious life from an early age. Catherine entered the community of the Daughters of Charity, in obedience to a vision of Saint Vincent de Paul, telling her that God wanted her to work with the sick. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Catherine Laboure, who was then a 24-year-old novice, three times. On July 18, 1830, the first apparition occurred in the community's motherhouse. St. Catherine saw a lady seated on the right side of the sanctuary. When St. Catherine approached her, the heavenly visitor told her how to act in time of trial and pointed to the altar as the source of all consolation. Promising to entrust St. Catherine...

1830. The political panorama in France, and above all people’s attitudes, had changed a lot since the French Revolution of 1789. Still the atmosphere in the country was more and more tense. Amidst all the upheavals, our Lady made her voice heard: “Come to the foot of this altar. Here graces will be poured out on everyone.” Our Lady appeared to Catherine Labouré on that far-off day of July 19, 1830: a young woman of 24 who had just begun her novitiate in the Daughters of Charity. Our Mother’s urgent invitation on her first appearance at the Rue du Bac has since been accepted by millions of people from all sorts of different cultures and backgrounds who have come to kneel at the feet of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in a chapel in the heart of Paris, France. So who was the person our Lady appeared to, and why, on that far-off day of July 19, 1830? St Catherine Labouré was then a young woman of 24 who had just begun her novitiate in the Daughters of Charity, a religious order...

Today, November 27, is the Feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. Devotion to and wearing of the Miraculous Medal is second to the Rosary in popularity among traditional Catholic devotions. History In 1830, the Blessed Virgin Mary revealed the design of the Miraculous Medal to St. Catherine Laboure in an apparition. In Paris, on June 6, 1830, the Lord appeared to the young (age 24) Daughter of Charity novice Catherine at Mass, and again on the nights of July 18-19 when she was summoned to the chapel by a beautiful "child clothed in white" to converse with the Virgin Mary. Catherine was told prophecies and charged with "a mission" that manifested itself on November 27 in an early morning (5:30am) appearance of the Blessed Virgin who was "clothed in white" standing on a globe and "a serpent." Rays of light issued forth from rings on her fingers and Catherine was told to commission a medal of what she was seeing. Then, turning ...