by Fr. Tommy Lane
Catherine Labouré was born on May 2nd 1806 to the Labouré family living about 200 miles south of Paris. Catherine was the third youngest of ten children. When she was nine years old her mother died. Then she turned to Mary, her heavenly Mother, for consolation. One day she was seen standing on a chair embracing the family statue and saying, “From now one you will be my mother.” Some time afterwards her elder sister entered the Daughters of Charity. Catherine rose at 5am each day and walked two miles to the next village for daily morning Mass since there was no priest for their parish church. She prayed in their local church every evening.
One night she dreamt she was in a church and a strange priest was saying Mass. Still in her dream after Mass she called to a sick person and the priest was in the house. He said, “It is good to look after the sick” and he also said that though she would go away from him then she would come back to him later because God had special plans for her. Sometime later Catherine visited a convent of the Daughters of Charity, the congregation her sister had entered. On the wall of the parlor she saw a picture and realized it was the priest in her dream, St Vincent de Paul, who founded the Daughters of Charity 200 years previously.
At the age of twenty-one she asked her father’s permission to enter the Daughters of Charity. He refused but relented a few years later and in January 1830 she joined the congregation. A few months after she entered she was moved to the congregation’s mother house in a street called rue du Bac in Paris to begin her training. At 11.30 pm on July18th, the eve of the feast of St. Vincent de Paul, she was wakened by a child of four or five whom she took to be her guardian angel and who led her to the convent chapel where Our Lady appeared to her at midnight. Our Lady sat on the priest’s chair for two hours and invited Catherine to kneel beside her. She gave Catherine a message for herself and all the world, “Come to the foot of this altar. There graces will be poured out for all who ask for them.” Our Lady told her God had a special mission for her but did not tell her what it was.
In 1831, the year after her apparitions, Catherine was appointed to another convent. No one knew which Daughter of Charity had received these apparitions of Our Lady although Catherine was suspected because of her piety. In 1876 she felt her life was drawing to a close and she told the mother superior of the Daughters of Charity that she was the sister. When she died the sisters released the news that the sister who had seen Our Lady had died, and though unknown throughout her life she was now the most talked about person.
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At the time Our Lady appeared to Catherine in 1830, the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, although widely believed, was not a dogma required to be believed. Pope Pius IX is thought to have been influenced by the apparitions to Catherine in the rue du Bac when he decided to consult with the Church if the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady should be declared a dogma. He received overwhelming support and on December 8th 1854 declared Our Lady to have been free of sin from the moment of her conception. Four years later in 1858 Our Lady appeared to Bernadette at Lourdes and when asked who she was she replied, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” So the apparitions in the rue du Bac in 1830 and the Miraculous Medal prepared for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to be proclaimed in 1854 and the apparition at Lourdes in 1858 confirmed it.
Every day we have to overcome temptation and sin. We ask Mary immaculate to help us overcome all temptation and sin in our lives. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
Copyright © Fr. Tommy Lane 2013
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