MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS

Day 246: January 13

Mary Help of Christians, Philippsdorf, Czech Republic



Philippsdorf is a village in North Bohemia, founded in 1681 by Count Philipp Siegmund of Dietrichstein. Maddalena Kade was a thirty-one-year-old woman born in this village. Orphaned, she lived with her 34-year-old brother Giuseppe, his wife Cecilia and their five children.

On January 13, 1866, the Blessed Virgin appeared to Magdalena Kade (1835 – 1905). Magdalena was a weaver and had been ill for 12 years due to a succession of illnesses, so much so that she was repeatedly considered to be dying and received extreme unction. She was a shy woman and devoted to Our Lady. With wounds all over her body similar to leprosy, she was bed-ridden for a month.

On January 13, 1866 at two in the morning, Magdalene was in bed and could not speak because of her extreme weakness. She was watched over by a dear friend of hers, Veronika Kindermann, who assisted her by sleeping next to the bed. The sick woman paused to contemplate the portrait of Our Lady of Sorrows on the wall in front of the bed. At four o'clock, Magdalene suddenly saw a very bright light illuminating the room and in the center of the increasingly brilliant splendor, in front of the low headboard of the bed, she saw a Lady. She woke her friend up with an elbow and said, agitated: "Look at what splendor! Look at what splendor!"

Veronika saw only the light of the oil lamp. Magdalene was the only privileged one: in the center of the splendor she saw a Lady dressed in white, with a golden diadem in her hair, very close to the bed. She told her friend to kneel because the Blessed Virgin was there. Unable to bear that radiance, she covered her face with her hands and wept. After a while her friend found out: Magdalena then saw without disturbance. She recited the first two verses of the Magnificat, then Our Lady moved her lips and silently said to her: "My daughter, you are healed from now on!"

Having said this, she disappeared. The visionary was immediately able to get up and see that she was completely healed. Here is the testimony given by Mary Magdalene, before the episcopal commission, on March 12, 1866: "I tore off my blood-filled bandages, and surprisingly no wound appeared in my body..."

Two days later, she was able to return to work. On January 20, she went to pray at the nearby church in Georgswalde. The mayor and aldermen of Philippsdorf testified to this inexplicable healing. A 46-page report was drawn up. The diocesan bishop therefore allowed the faithful to go and pray in Magdalena's house. In May 1866, the seer's room was transformed into a chapel. From that moment on, Magdalena dedicated herself to serving the elderly and the sick.

The episcopal commission recognized the supernatural character of Magdalena's healing following the miraculous event and between 1870 and 1885 a neo-Romanesque church was built, later elevated to a minor basilica by Pope Leo XIII, who officially consecrated it and dedicated it to "Mary Help of Christians." Even today this sanctuary is an important place of pilgrimage.

In the meantime, in 1884, the foundation stone of the Redemptorist monastery had been laid, and the following year they took over the custody of the church and the care of the many pilgrims.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"Be always mindful of us, O Queen of All Saints, O Mother of Divine Love, O Mediatrix of All Graces, remember us always, now that you are in your Glory."

(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 153)

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