During my first trip to mainland China in 1993, I kept a diary. Let me read to you several of the entries.

February 9, Tian Jin: An elderly man led us to the church, where we prayed, as he did. There is a large picture of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal above one of the side altars. In fact, the Miraculous Medal motif was present in some form or other in many of the churches that we visited.

February 10, Hangzhou: We visited the church. The outside has the back of the Miraculous Medal inscribed on it, as well as the initials of St. Vincent.

February 11, Hangzhou: I thought of the people of China a great deal today on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. So many of the churches we have visited have been marked with the inscription: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

February 13, Jiaxing: Jiaxing had been the center for the Vincentians in this part of China; the provincial lived here. The church was the biggest in China. It is tragic to see it now. It was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The lowest part is used for apartments. We entered the upper part to find ourselves at the top of the pillars near the ceiling. It had been dedicated to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal.

February 17, Nanchang: The church, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, is quite nice though all of the earlier signs of the Vincentian community have now been deleted. There is a picture of the Immaculate Conception above the main door.

February 21, Nancheng: The priest showed us around his church, which is quite lovely. Above the main altar was a large painting of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, with a painting of the medal itself beneath her. Once again I was struck by how strong the presence of the Immaculate Conception still is here in China.

The Miraculous Medal played a very important role in our Vincentian Mission in China. John Gabriel Perboyre, who went to China just after the apparitions to Catherine Labouré, refers to the medal again and again, asking his friends to send him hundreds more each time.

But the medal occupied a significant place not just in our Vincentian mission in China, it also had an important role in the renewal of our Vincentian Family. Moreover, it had a powerful influence on the Church in 19th-century France and then on the Church throughout the world.

SOME LINKS BETWEEN THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL AND THE BRANCHES OF THE VINCENTIAN FAMILY

The apparitions to Catherine Labouré took place precisely at a time when the Vincentian Family was coming back to life again after having been scattered and, in large part, wiped out, by the French Revolution. In 1830, the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of the Mission were only a remnant, two rather tiny communities made up of survivors of the Revolution. In the succeeding decades our Family experienced a remarkable resurgence. What are some of the links between the Miraculous Medal and the branches of the Vincentian Family?

1. With the Daughters of Charity. Of course the most fundamental link is with the Daughters; the medal was entrusted to one of them, Catherine Labouré. The apparitions took place in their chapel. Many Daughters remain, to this day, enthusiastic spreaders of the medal.
   
2. With the Congregation of the Mission. Catherine’s director, Fr. Aladel, was a member of the Congregation of the Mission. He bore much of the responsibility for convincing others of the genuineness of the apparitions and their message. Many members of the Congregation, like John Gabriel Perboyre, disseminated the medal eagerly throughout the world.
   
3. With the Vincentian Marian Youth Association. This branch came into being because of the apparitions to Catherine Labouré. All the members of the youth groups receive the medal as their insignia and in an act of consecration to the Lord, they declare Mary as their mother and as their model for life.
   
4. With the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Frederick Ozanam is said to have been wearing the medal when he founded the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul in 1833. He also, in 1834, wrote a review of a work that contained the very first printed account of the apparitions to St. Catherine Labouré. On February 4, 1834, Ozanam asked that the newly-founded Conferences be placed under the protection of the Blessed Virgin and chose as its patronal feast the Immaculate Conception. This proposition was unanimously adopted by the members of the Society. Ozanam was very interested in the role of the Miraculous Medal in the conversion of Marie Alphonse Ratisbonne in 1842 and spread the news of it both inside and outside the Society.
   
5. With the Ladies of Charity. The Ladies of Charity, until 1959, made an Act of Consecration, on December 8, in which they invoked Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception. With the Daughters of Charity and the members of the Congregation of the Mission, they were among the most active distributers of the medal after the apparitions to St. Catherine Labouré.
   
6. With the Religious of St. Vincent de Paul. Jean-Léon Le Prévot distributed the Miraculous Medal widely, as did the first members of the Religious of St. Vincent de Paul. Le Prévot chose the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as one of the principal feasts of his newly founded Institute.
   
7. Linkage through the Director General. The Miraculous Medal Association is linked with several other branches through its Director; it has the same Director General as the Daughters of Charity, the Congregation of the Mission, the Vincentian Marian Youth Association and MISEVI (that is, the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission).
   
8. Linkage within a moment of birth and rebirth. The apparitions and the popularity of the medal are part of a rich complex of religious factors that gave rise to the birth or the resurgence of many of the branches of the Vincentian Family.

Here I merely state what happened. I must leave it to historians or to anthropologists of religion to give a more scientific account of why or how so much new life was born in or shortly after 1830.

After the apparitions, as the Miraculous Medal began to spread, our Vincentian Marian Youth groups sprang into being, flowing from the same religious event: the Virgin’s message to Catherine Labouré. But is it not remarkable too that the Society of St. Vincent de Paul came to birth almost at the same time (1833), as too did the Religious of St. Vincent de Paul (1845)? Is it not remarkable that the Congregation of the Mission began to have a new missionary impulse in this same period and that the Daughters of Charity rocketed ahead not only in numbers but in works, spreading throughout the world and becoming eventually the largest community in the Church?

Even though it is difficult to define precisely the relationship between the Miraculous Medal and this dynamic growth of our Family, the apparitions were clearly one of the central elements in this remarkable religious phenomenon.

9. Linkage in spirituality. There is a close link between the spirituality of the Miraculous Medal and the spirituality of the other branches of our Vincentian Family. The Miraculous Medal is mentioned specifically in the Constitutions and Statutes of the Congregation of the Mission, of the Daughters of Charity, of the Vincentian Marian Youth groups.

a. The person of Mary is intimately related with an incarnational spirituality. God’s Word is made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Jesus is flesh of her flesh. The medal is a tangible reminder that God hears our prayer; our works in the Vincentian Family are a tangible sign of God’s love.

b. Secondly, the medal has always had a special relationship with the poor, the humble. More than one billion medals were made in St. Catherine’s lifetime. They were spread to the remotest corners of the world. The people themselves invented the name “Miraculous Medal.”

St. Vincent wrote: “The poor have the true religion.” The poor grasp, through devotion to the Miraculous Medal, that God casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly.

c. Thirdly, the medal is a sign of God’s provident, daily care for us. St. Vincent encouraged all of the groups that he founded to trust deeply in it. Providence is a virtue that enables us to find meaning in life, in good times and in bad, in light and darkness, in grace and sin, in plan and disruption, peace and turmoil, health and sickness, life and death.

SOME CHALLENGES THAT THE MEDAL PRESENTS TO THE VINCENTIAN FAMILY

The Association of the Miraculous Medal is the largest branch in the Vincentian Family. We have no clear idea as to how many members it has. We estimate between five and ten million. And it is expanding rapidly on a worldwide level. Today I suggest some challenges that the medal presents to our Vincentian Family.

1. Rereading the Miraculous Medal today

Every culture, in fact every era within every culture, rereads and reinterprets the gospel. It must do so if the gospel is to remain alive. Marian doctrine has developed over the centuries, with strikingly new emphases in different eras and cultures. In John’s gospel, Mary is “the Mother of Jesus.” For the second and third centuries, reflecting on the Old Testament, she is the new Eve. In the fourth and fifth centuries, in the midst of rather violent Christological heresies, she is proclaimed solemnly as “Mother of God.” Subsequent eras have seen Mary as the Sorrowful Mother, the Black Madonna, the Immaculate Conception, the Queen of Heaven. Our own era has seen her in a renewed way as the Mother of the Church and the Mother of the Poor.

Today there are many well-articulated rereadings of the Miraculous Medal as the medal of the poor. I encourage the members of our Family to continue to reread the medal in this light. The medal’s message is very relevant for the poor. I also encourage the members of the Family to reread the goals of the Association in light of this message. The principal goals of the Association at present are: 1) devotional, 2) apostolic, and 3) fund-raising. The emphasis on these goals varies from country to country. I ask these questions:

a. Can devotion to the Miraculous Medal be revitalized? Marian devotion has an enormous place in the religious culture of many peoples; for example, people living in Latin America and the tens of millions of Latin American immigrants who have flocked to the United States and Europe. It has an enormous place in the Filipino culture, not only among those living in the Philippine Islands, but also among the tens of thousands of Filipinos in North America, in Europe and in Arab countries as well.


b. Can the Association of the Miraculous Medal play a more significant role worldwide in our apostolic service to the poor? In some countries the Association is already very active in home-visits and other forms of service.


c. Can members of the Association also help in raising funds for the poorest of the poor in our various countries? The Association in a few countries has rendered extraordinary help to the poor through fund-raising efforts.

2. Forming the members of the Association

I suspect that we have not yet reflected sufficiently on the enormous challenge that the formation of the members of the Association presents us with. For decades the Miraculous Medal Novena has been “preached” throughout the world; there have been some extraordinary preachers and catechists of the Miraculous Medal since 1830. But the question I pose today is this: The Association has from five to ten million members. Can we, as an Association, organize a systematic catechesis that touches all our members? Can our publications be gradually transformed to achieve this purpose? Can other publications be launched? Can Internet be used as a Miraculous Medal catechetical tool?

This is a huge pastoral opportunity that demands considerable creativity, but if we can seize the occasion, the Miraculous Medal will play in the first century of the third millennium a role even more important than the one it played in the final two centuries of the second.

3. Disseminating the Medal and the Association

The challenge here is simple. Can the Miraculous Medal Association spread to every country where the Vincentian Family is present? Can it be an instrument in those countries for a) reflection on the word of God in imitation of Mary the Mother of Jesus, b) faith-filled intercessory prayer in union with Mary, the first of all the saints, c) profound Christian formation, d) concern for and service of the poor?

4. Collaborating with other branches.

The Miraculous Medal Association does not compete with other branches of the Vincentian Family. One can be a member of the Association and a member of other branches at the same time. A Daughter of Charity, a priest or brother of the Congregation of the Mission, a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul or of AIC or of JMV — all these can be members of the Miraculous Medal Association too. Much will depend on what type of devotion, what type of formation programs, what type of pastoral activities are offered by the Miraculous Medal Association and by other associations within a given country and culture. But today I encourage you to collaboration rather than rivalry. Rejoice when people join one group or another. Let the temptation to compete cede consistently to the desire to cooperate.


5. Being like Mary.

It is easy to overlook the most obvious challenge of all. The purpose of wearing the medal, the purpose of being a member of the Association is that we would be like Mary, the first, the preeminent disciple. Can the Association help each of its five to ten million members to have these characteristics:

a. That each of us be a faithful listener to God’s word. Can we develop a catechesis that offers to our members a “word of God” every day or every week or every month? Can we teach them to make that word their own?

b. That each of us be a faith-filled pray-er. Meditative prayer is very important in the Vincentian tradition. St. Vincent recommended it to all of his followers and he taught them simple methods for meditating. In this busy noise-filled world, quiet peace-filled meditation is very relevant. Can we develop a catechesis that teaches the members of the Association to meditate with great simplicity for five minutes a day, ten minutes a day? The English poet Tennyson once wrote: “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” That is the message that the Miraculous Medal is shouting out to the world: that prayer is extremely important; that those who ask, receive; that those who seek, find; and that for those who knock, the door is opened. Can we teach our members how to pray better?

c. That we live in solidarity with the poor. Mary not only does works of charity. She lives in solidarity with the poor of Israel. In fact, she is their spokesperson in the gospels. She cries out in gratitude to God for his many gifts: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” And she recognizes that God can turn the world upside-down: “He casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly. He fills the hungry with good things and the rich he sends away empty.” Can we help the five to ten million members of the Association, even those who are rich, to stand in solidarity with the poor? Mary not only did so in her lifetime, she continues to do so. She is the mother of the poor today.

Those are my thoughts about the Miraculous Medal and the Vincentian Family. But Catherine Labouré’s role in the Church was larger than the Vincentian Family. She was a precursor. Her visions in 1830 gave popular expression and powerful impetus to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which Pius IX proclaimed two decades later in 1854. Surely without Catherine Labouré, Christians throughout the world would never have prayed so often: “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”

Return to top of page.