Miracles at Martha's Kitchen

      I want to keep the name of the person who told me anonymous, but I felt this an important enough story to share especially as we get closer to Christmas.  This is quite a beautiful story.  This woman (a catholic) and her husband (a non catholic) were living in southern France around the time of WWII and their first born daughter was born with an injury.  They doctors, in trying to pull her out, tore one of her muscles in her neck.  The only way to fix the muscle was to undergo surgery because if they didn't do anything, then her daughter would grow up unable to lift up her head properly.  You can imagine how scared the mother was: her first child, having a serious injury at birth, and requiring surgery at a time when it was not a very safe procedure.  So they had to make appointments with doctors throughout France who had experience with this.  They recommended that she do exercises to rehabilitate while they were waiting for the surgery to take place.
      Her daughter was constantly crying because of the pain that this tear was causing.  As it turned out, her sister was going to Lourdes on a religious pilgrimage.  She was getting quite desperate with the pain it was causing her little baby, so she told her husband that she was going to accompany her sister to Lourdes on a religious pilgrimage.  So she took her baby to Lourdes, gave her to drink of Lourdes water, and prayed some prayers to the Blessed Mother.  She then forgot about all of this...
      A couple of weeks later she went to see the doctors who were preparing to do the surgery in a few days.  They examined her daughter and started asking her questions about what had happened.  They started asking her...'what did you do?' 'did you do the exercises we told you about?' 'did you take her to another doctor?'  She had done nothing of what the doctors had prescribed.  She started feeling terribly guilty...'I've ruined my daughters life forever'...she thought to herself...The doctors then went on to say that they couldn't do the surgery any more as the daughter was completely fine.  'We want to know what you did because we've never seen anything like this,' they said.  She immediately realized that the Blessed Mother had healed her daughter.  She was so afraid, however, that she did not tell her husband or anybody else for fear that she would be ridiculed.  She kept this mostly a secret for all these years.  As I was looking in her eyes, you saw both that she had experienced the great love of the Blessed Mother as well as her miraculous healing.  Yet you also saw in her eyes, her desire to keep this secret.  It's very difficult to describe the surprised that she expressed in her eyes when telling the story.  You know, simply by looking at her face, that Our Lady had interceded in her life in a way that was beyond her expectations or imaginings.  So ever since then, she and her daughter have had a great love for Our Lady... 
      I had the great privilege of hearing this after she saw my Miraculous Medal and I told her that the writing was in French...just one of the many great graces I have received since wearing this medal.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception: thoughts from St. Maximilian

St. Maximilian has helped me profoundly in understanding our Blessed Mother.  He is so right, when he says that we cannot know her from books but ultimately only through prayer and holiness.  The Immaculate Conception is not a 'thing' or 'event' that happened to Mary, it is in fact who she is and her proper name.  Just as we say, that Truth is not an idea, it is a person, and his name is Jesus Christ.  The Immaculate Conception is not an idea, it is a person, and her name is Mary, the Blessed Virgin.  Here are some of his wonderful thoughts. 
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Excerpts from the Writings of St. Maximilian


Immaculate One, Virgin Mother, to Thee I turn in humble prayer: "Grant that I may praise Thee, O holy Virgin; give me strength against Thine enemies!" (Bl. John Duns Scotus)

The Immaculate One appears in this world without the least stain of sin, the masterpiece of God's hands, full of grace. God, the Most Holy Trinity, beholds the lowliness (that is, the humility, the root of all Her other virtues) of His Handmaid, and does great things for Her, He the Almighty (cfr. Lk. 1,49). God the Father gives Her His own Son to be Her Son; God the Son descends into Her womb; and God the Holy Spirit forms the body of Christ in the womb of this pure Virgin. And the Word was made flesh (Jn. 1,14). The Immaculate One becomes the Mother of God. The fruit of the love of God in his Trinitarian life and of Mary the Immaculate One is Christ the God-Man. (Sketches for a Book, SK 1295)

Who is the Immaculate One? To this abrupt question it is not possible to give a satisfactory answer because this mystery transcends our human intelligence. She is the Mother of God, and Her name is the Immaculate One. When God showed Himself to Moses, He said of Himself: I am the One who is (Ex. 3,14)—in other words, I am Being itself. When St. Bernadette asked the most blessed Mother Her name, Mary replied: I am the Immaculate Conception. Such is the Immaculate One defined by Her own words.

But what does the expression Immaculate Conception mean? The word conception tells us that She is not eternal, that She had a beginning. Immaculate tells us that from the first instant of Her existence there never was in Her the least conflict with God's will. The Immaculate One is the most perfect of all creatures...She was immaculate because She was to become the Mother of God; She became the Mother of God because She was immaculate.

Mother of God! The human mind cannot grasp what God is. Neither can we comprehend the dignity of the Mother of God. It is easier to understand a title like servant of God; daughter of God is more difficult to grasp; but Mother of God transcends our minds completely.
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