Our Lady of the Rue du Bac and the Miraculous Medal

The farm girl from Burgundy

Catherine Labouré, baptised Zoé, was born on 2 May 1806 at Fain-lès-Moutiers in Burgundy. The chapel's biography calls her the eighth of ten children of Pierre and Madeleine, farmers. Other sources count differently. Her mother died in 1815, when she was nine. The chapel tells that the child stood on a chair, kissed a statue of Mary, and said that Mary would now be her mother.

She and her younger sister Tonine went to an aunt at Saint-Rémy, and returned home about two years later. She made her First Communion on 25 January 1818. From about twelve she ran the household: the farm work, the meals, and the care of her brother Auguste, disabled after a fall.

In a dream an old priest told her that God had plans for her. At eighteen, still unable to read or write, she went to a school in Châtillon-sur-Seine. There, among the Daughters of Charity, she saw a portrait of St Vincent de Paul and recognised the priest of her dream.

Her father opposed her vocation. In 1828 he sent her to Paris to work in her uncle's eating house, hoping she would forget. A year later he gave way. She began as a postulant in January 1830, and on 21 April 1830 entered the seminary of the Daughters of Charity on the rue du Bac.

Before the apparitions

In those first weeks she reported seeing the heart of St Vincent above a relic of his, and seeing Christ in the Blessed Sacrament during Mass. She told her confessor, the Vincentian priest Jean-Marie Aladel. He told her to forget such things.

The night of 18 July 1830

It was the eve of St Vincent's feast. Catherine asked him to help her desire to see the Blessed Virgin. About 11.30 at night she heard her name called. A child at her bedside, who shone with light, said: "The Blessed Virgin is waiting for you."

She dressed and followed him to the chapel. Near the priest's chair she heard a rustling like a silk dress, and the child said: "Here is the Blessed Virgin." She hesitated, and the child said it again more firmly.

Catherine ran forward and rested her hands on the knees of the Mother of God, who was seated in a chair. She later wrote of "the sweetest moment of my life". Mary told her how to act with her confessor, and spoke of other matters. Then she pointed to the altar: "Come to the foot of this altar. There graces will be poured out on all who ask for them with confidence and fervour."

She said that Catherine would have a difficult mission. According to one account she spoke also of troubles coming to France, and days later the July Revolution broke out in Paris. She asked for a confraternity, which later became the Children of Mary.

27 November 1830: the medal

It was a Saturday, about 5.30 in the evening, during the novices' prayer. Catherine saw the Virgin near a painting of St Joseph, where a statue now stands. Two pictures passed before her. In both, Mary stood on a half globe, with her feet upon a serpent.

In the first she held a small golden globe topped by a cross, and Catherine heard: "This globe represents the whole world, France, and each person in particular."

In the second, rays of light streamed from rings on her open hands. The voice said: "These rays are the symbol of the graces that I pour out on those who ask me for them." One account adds that some jewels gave no light, for the graces people forget to ask.

An oval formed around her, with golden letters: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you." The voice said: "Have a medal struck on this model. Those who wear it with confidence will receive great graces."

Then the picture turned, and she saw the other side: a cross above the letter M, and below it two hearts, one crowned with thorns and one pierced by a sword.

December 1830: the last time

Once more, during prayer, Catherine heard the rustling, this time behind the altar. Mary appeared near the tabernacle and confirmed the mission. She said: "You will no longer see me."

The medal is made

Father Aladel, cautious, told Catherine to stop thinking of such things. On 5 February 1831 she was sent to the hospice of Enghien at Reuilly, a poor district of Paris. There she kept hearing an inner urging about the medal, and went on telling him. In 1831 or early 1832 Aladel and the Vincentian priest Étienne spoke to Archbishop de Quélen. The archbishop saw nothing contrary to the faith, and had no objection.

Then in February 1832 cholera struck Paris and killed more than 20,000 people. The work was delayed until June. The goldsmith Adrien Vachette made the first medals. Aladel's own book says 2,000 were struck on 30 June 1832, and other sources say 1,500. The Daughters of Charity gave them out among the sick. Reports of cures and conversions followed, and Parisians began to call it the miraculous medal. The name stuck. The medal's own title is the Medal of the Immaculate Conception.

The inquiry of 1836

Archbishop de Quélen ordered a canonical inquiry in 1836, under his vicar general, Canon Quentin. Catherine would not appear and asked to stay unknown. Aladel told the inquiry that she said she had forgotten the details. Reports say the tribunal found the visions to be credible, based on her confessor's steadiness and her good character and on the graces flowing from the medal.

Forty-six years of silence

The rest of her life is the marvel. Catherine served the elderly at Enghien for 46 years. She worked in the kitchen, the laundry and on the farm, and kept the door. She made her vows on 3 May 1835. Her father died in 1844. During the siege of Paris in 1870 the hospice cared for the wounded. Few of the sisters guessed who she was, and some superiors found her dull. She received a medal in 1832 with the rest of the community, and said nothing.

In May 1876 she told her superior, so that a statue of the Virgin with the globe could be made. She died on 31 December 1876, aged 70. She was buried in a crypt at Reuilly in the first days of 1877.

A medal is a sacramental, a sign that prepares us for grace through the prayer of the Church. It works no effect by itself. To trust in a mere object would be superstition (CCC 1670, 2111). The promise said "with confidence", and that confidence is in God.