I hope I am not the only one that had a devotion to the Miraculous Medal for years before learning that the real name is the Medal of the Immaculate Conception. It makes sense when you read the prayer encircling Our Lady, “O Mary conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee.”
Our Blessed Mother herself requested that St Catherine Laboure create the medal during an apparition in 1830 with the promise that “Those who wear it with confidence and recite this prayer daily will receive great graces, especially if they wear it blessed around their neck.” And unsurprisingly the Our Lady delivered. It did not take long for reports of miracles both physical and spiritual to surface to the extent that the medal earned the nickname “miraculous”.
What’s in a name?
It does make you wonder, of all her many titles, why did the Blessed Mother choose to foster devotion to her Immaculate Conception? My belief is that it stems from her desire to remind us of God’s infinite mercy. This was a gift pure and simple. Mary played no active part nor did anything to merit it. Rather, God chose in his unending love to preserve her from original sin so that one day she would be found worthy to bring His son, Jesus, into the world. It is a reminder to us all that we can receive this same unmerited mercy through the sacraments of Baptism and Confession.
Untapped Graces: The gifts heaven longs to give
That wasn’t my only Miraculous Medal miss. It turns out that the rays you can see extending from Mary’s hands represent the graces that Jesus bestows on the world through her. However, more interesting arethe gaps in the light. Mary told St Catherine that “Those are the graces for which people forget to ask.” How foolish is it of us to leave heavenly gifts on the table! But I know that I am guilty of that very thing.
Trusting in Mary’s Victory
So here is my challenge: let’s fill in the gaps. Not only by wearing the Medal of the Immaculate Conception and reciting its prayer, but following all of her requests, namely, wearing a brown scapular, praying a daily rosary and completing the First Five Saturdays devotion. And let us trust that as St Maximillian Kolbe says, “The Immaculate will conquer, through us, the whole world and every single soul.”