The secret of the medal on a wartime hospital's doors

PARIS, autumn 1870 AD — France was at war with Prussia. In September the Prussian armies surrounded Paris and cut it off from the rest of the world. At Reuilly, at the poor eastern end of the city, the Daughters of Charity turned their house into a hospital. They fixed the Miraculous Medal to its doors and windows.

That autumn all of Paris was short of food. On October 8 an official price was set for horse meat. The best cuts cost 1 franc 40 centimes a kilo, and the rest cost 80 centimes. At Reuilly the sick and the wounded ate first, and the sisters went hungry. On some days a sister’s meal, after a day of exhausting work, was a piece of black bread.

One of the sisters was a woman of sixty-four. She worked at the Hospice d’Enghien, an old people’s home the same sisters ran. It stood beside their house at Reuilly, with a garden in between. Through the siege and the hunger she stayed calm. She was Saint Catherine Labouré.

Forty years

In 1830 AD St. Catherine was twenty-four. She lived at the motherhouse, the sisters’ main house, in the rue du Bac. On the night of July 18 that year, the Blessed Virgin appeared to her in the chapel. Our Lady told her that “great trials are about to come upon France.” Later that night Our Lady warned her that “the streets will flow with blood, the entire world will be in tribulation.”

St. Catherine asked silently when this would happen, and she understood that it would be in forty years.

That November the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Catherine again, framed by the words “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” Then Our Lady showed St. Catherine the design of a medal.

In February 1831 AD St. Catherine was sent to the Hospice d’Enghien, and she worked there from then on. She took her turn in the kitchen, the linen room, the courtyard and the poultry yard. She spent longest of all in the old men’s ward. A sister once asked her why she never scolded one very troublesome old man there. St. Catherine answered: “I cannot; I see God in him.”

Each time St. Catherine crossed the garden to Reuilly, she stopped in front of a statue of Our Lady. She stood there with her hands joined. More than once, girls of the Children of Mary hid behind the bushes to watch her.

The medal on the doors

The medal on the hospital’s doors in 1870 AD was the one Our Lady had shown St. Catherine in the chapel forty years before. Only one person knew that she was the sister who had seen it. He was her confessor, the priest who heard her confessions.

Of the war, St. Catherine said: “Mon Dieu, que de sang, que de ruines!” (My God, how much blood, how many ruins!)

With the Medal on the doors and windows, St. Catherine told the sisters: “La Vierge veillera, elle gardera tout. Il ne nous arrivera aucun mal.” (The Virgin will watch; she will guard everything. No harm will come to us.)