OUR LADY OF THE MIRACLE

Day 253: January 20

Our Lady of the Miracle, Church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, Rome



Alfonso Ratisbonne, a graduate in law, a Jew, a fiancé, a twenty-seven-year-old pleasure-seeker, to whom everything was promised by the love, promises and resources of his rich bankers, his derisive of Catholic dogmas and practices, the mocker of the Miraculous Medal, decided one day, to distract himself, to travel and visit some cities of the West and the East, excluding Rome, which he hated, being the seat of the Pope.

Something mysterious happened in Naples. An irresistible force led him to book a place for the new trip, instead of Palermo, he booked for Rome. Arriving in the Eternal City, he visited many of his friends, including Teodoro De Bussière, a fervent Catholic.

The latter, knowing him to be a non-believer, managed, in various conversations, to make him take the medal and promise to say the prayer to Our Lady of St Bernard, to whom, however, with a mocking smile and indignation he said: "It means that it will be an opportunity for me, in my conversations with friends, to ridicule your beliefs." "Do as you wish", replied De Bussière, and he began to pray with all his family for his conversion.

On January 20, they both came out. They stopped in front of the church of St Andrea delle Fratte. The Catholic friend went to the Sacristy to register a Mass for a funeral, while the Jew preferred to visit the temple, curious to find art there, but nothing attracted him, despite the works of Bernini, Borromini, Vanvitelli, Maini and other illustrious artists collected there. It was in the south. The deserted church gave the image of an abandoned place; A black dog jumped past him and disappeared. Suddenly, something extraordinary happened.

In his own words, "As I walked through the church, and had come to meet the preparations for the funeral, I suddenly felt seized with a certain disturbance, and saw as a veil before me, the church seemed to me all dark, except for a chapel, almost all the light of the same church had been concentrated in it. I raised my eyes to the chapel radiant with so much light, and I saw on the altar of the same, standing, alive, large, majestic, beautiful, merciful, Holy Virgin Mary similar in act and structure to the image seen in the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception. At this sight I fell on my knees in the place where I stood; I therefore tried several times to raise my eyes towards the Holy Virgin, but I made my reverence and splendor lower, which, however, did not prevent the evidence of that apparition. I fixed my gaze on her hands, and saw in them the expression of forgiveness and mercy. Although she said nothing to me, I understood the horror of the state in which I found myself, the deformity of sin, the beauty of the Catholic Faith. I fell a Jew and got up a Christian."

Later the convert made a beautiful journey that led him to the priesthood and to leave as a missionary in his land of Palestine, where he died as a saint. In fact, on January 31 he was baptized with the name of Alfonso Maria. He broke off his engagement to Flora and entered the Society of Jesus, becoming a priest in 1848. He then passed into the Congregation of the Religious of Our Lady of Zion, founded by his brother Théodore Marie Ratisbonne and was established for the conversion of Jews and Muslims, founding a see in Palestine.

This last fact has had a profound impact on the history of this central church, making it rise to a Marian Sanctuary. In 1848, on January 18, the altar on which she appeared, already dedicated to St Michael, was consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary with the title Our Lady of the Medal, in memory of the Miraculous Medal that Ratisbonne had at the time of his conversion.

The people, however, called the Virgin who appeared in St Andrew the "Madonna of the Miracle", since the conversion had resonance all over the world. In the span of a few years, it has become one of the most famous and renowned sanctuaries. Everyone from every nation thought they were too lucky to have visited this place. The devout competition of priests who flocked and the edifying devotion of not a few prelates and bishops in wanting to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at that altar were such a moving and at the same time grateful spectacle for the hearts of the Roman devotees.

Because of this devotion and the many conversions that were recorded, Pope Benedict XV called this Shrine the "ROMAN LOURDES". Pope Pius XII, in 1942, elevated the Church to a Basilica. John XIII, in 1959, gave the title of cardinal.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"The Father unites Himself totally and completely to you, and thus, He enables you to say truthfully to Him to the Son: "You are my Son, today I have begotten you!" Glory to you, O Mary and glory to God the Father in you, O Mary."

(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 154)

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