PRAYERS TO OUR LADY

How the Miraculous Medal Changed My Life by +Fr. John Hardon, S.J.

http://acatholiclife.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-miraculous-medal-chan...

Below is from a talk Fr. Hardon has given various times.

One of the most memorable experiences that I ever had was with the Miraculous Medal! It changed my life.

In the fall of 1948, the year after my ordination, I was in what we call the Tertianship. This is a third year of Novitiate before taking final vows.

In October of that year, a Vincentian priest came to speak to us young Jesuit priests. He encouraged us to obtain faculties, as they are called, to enroll people in the Confraternity of the Miraculous Medal. Among other things, he said, "Fathers, the Miraculous Medal works. Miracles have been performed by Our Lady through the Miraculous Medal."

In February of the next year, I was sent to assist the chaplain of St. Alexis Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. I was to be there helping the regular chaplain for two weeks.

Each morning I received a list of all the patients admitted into the hospital that day. There were so many Catholics admitted that I could not visit them all as soon as they came.

Among the patients admitted was a boy about nine years old. He had been sled-riding down hill, lost control of the sled and ran into a tree head-on. He fractured his skull and X-rays showed he had suffered severe brain damage.

When I finally got to visit his room at the hospital, he had been in a coma for ten days, no speech, no voluntary movements of the body. His condition was such that the only question was whether he would live. There was no question of recovering from what was diagnosed as permanent and inoperable brain damage.

After blessing the boy and consoling his parents, I was about to leave his hospital room. But then a thought came to me. "That Vincentian priest. He said, 'The Miraculous Medal works.' Now this will be a test of its alleged miraculous powers!"

I didn't have a Miraculous Medal of my own. And everyone I asked at the hospital also did not have one. But I persisted, and finally one of the nursing sisters on night duty found a Miraculous Medal.

What I found out was that you don't just bless the medal, you have to put it around a person's neck on a chain or ribbon. So the sister-nurse found a blue ribbon for the medal, which made me feel silly. What was I doing with medals and blue ribbons.

However, I blessed the medal and had the father hold the leaflet for investing a person in the Confraternity of the Miraculous Medal. I proceeded to recite the words of investiture. No sooner did I finish the prayer of enrolling the boy in the Confraternity than he opened his eyes for the first time in two weeks. He saw his mother and said, "Ma, I want some ice cream." He had been given only intravenous feeding.

This Experience Changed My Life

Then he proceeded to talk to his father and mother. After a few minutes of stunned silence, a doctor was called. The doctor examined the boy and told the parents they could give him something to eat.

The next day began a series of tests on the boy's condition. X-rays showed the brain damage was gone.

Then still more tests. After three days, when all examinations showed there was complete restoration to health, the boy was released from the hospital.

This experience so changed my life that I have not been the same since. My faith in God, faith in His power to work miracles, was strengthened beyond description.

Since then, of course, I have been promoting devotion to Our Lady and the use of the Miraculous Medal. The wonders she performs, provided we believe, are extraordinary.

In teaching theology over the years, I have many semesters taught the theology of miracles. And I have an unpublished book manuscript on "The History and Theology of Miracles." My hope is to publish the manuscript in the near future.

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Permalink Reply by 35nd93pnh50uu on December 2, 2016 at 4:00pm

A wonderful account, thank you Cathleen. You have reminded me of a story I read by a lady who's blog I follow and her story of applying the Miraculous Medal to her Daughter. Here is an excerpt:

https://finerfem.wordpress.com//?s=miraculous+medal&search=Go

This same day, Rosie, who as some of you know, has been recovering from an intense illness, had been battling a threatening headache all day. Her headaches, once they get full-blown, are no joke. She took a Tylenol and came to the Senior Legion of Mary.

That evening, the pain of the headache was increasing and she had to take a major dosage of Tylenol (something we very much dislike to do but have had to rely on through this illness).

A couple of hours later she woke me up, it was around midnight, and said her headache was not lifting. I told her to give it another half hour and then I said if she was desperate she could take the max dose of Ibuprofen (I have had to do research on this to see if it was okay, because of the intensity of these headaches).

At this point I will tell you a little bit about Rosie. She is a good sufferer. She doesn’t complain for the most part and seems to be able to take a lot. We have had to battle these headaches throughout her sickness and they are very difficult to overcome. When they are beyond her endurance, and she is voicing it, I know they are bad….

So… when I was woken up by sobbing this same night at 3 am, I knew it wasn’t good. She was on the couch in extreme pain, bad enough she couldn’t get up to get me. It seemed nothing was working and I couldn’t give her anything else as we had exhausted the amount of painkillers she could take. She couldn’t talk or move her head because of the pain.

I thought of using Epiphany water or the Padre Pio prayer cloth I have…..

Then I thought of Father’s story about the little boy with leukemia and I took my scapular off that had the Miraculous Medal pinned to it and, with a confidence that surprised me, I placed it on Rosie’s head. The sobbing quickly decreased and within seconds Rosie was quiet and laid there with her eyes closed.

In trepidation I asked her if her headache was gone. She said…..yes.

Tears started to roll down my cheeks as I sat there rubbing Rosie’s head. A few minutes later I got up to get something from the other room. I started to hear crying again and I thought, “Oh no! It’s back!”

I went to Rosie and she looked up at me and said through her tears, “Do you realize that as soon as you laid the medal on my head my pain disappeared??!!” We both were crying by this time. Afterwards she told me she felt a soft brushing go across the side of her cheek to the back of her head, taking the headache with it.