The Miraculous Medal

The Miraculous Medal is one of the best loved sacramentals in the Catholic Church. Millions of people wear it around their necks, carry it in their pockets, or keep it near the sick and the dying. Its full title is the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, but people gave it a simpler name after so many favors were reported by those who wore it. They began calling it the Miraculous Medal, and the name has stayed for nearly two centuries.

The design of the medal did not come from an artist or a committee. According to the witness of St. Catherine Laboure, the Blessed Virgin Mary herself showed the pattern and asked that it be struck. What follows is the story of those apparitions in Paris in 1830, the meaning of the images on both sides of the medal, and the prayers and novena that grew up around it.

The Apparitions of 1830

In 1830 a young novice named Catherine Laboure was living at the convent of the Daughters of Charity on the Rue du Bac in Paris. She was a farmer's daughter, plain spoken and hardworking, with a deep and simple love for the Mother of God. On the night of July 18, she was woken and led to the chapel, where she knelt and spoke with the Blessed Virgin for a long time. Mary told her that God wished to give her a mission and that she would suffer for it, but that grace would be given to those who asked.

The most famous vision came on November 27, 1830. Catherine saw the Blessed Virgin standing on a globe, dressed in white, with rays of light streaming from rings on her fingers. Around the vision she saw an oval frame with golden words written in a curve: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." Then the picture seemed to turn, and Catherine saw the reverse side, with the letter M, a cross, and two hearts. A voice told her to have a medal struck according to this pattern.

Catherine reported everything to her confessor, Father Jean Marie Aladel. He was cautious at first, as a wise priest should be, and he made her wait. In time he brought the account to the Archbishop of Paris, who gave permission for the medal to be made. The first medals were struck in 1832, the very year a cholera epidemic swept through Paris.

The Front of the Medal

The front of the medal shows the Blessed Virgin Mary standing upon a globe, with one foot crushing the head of a serpent. This image recalls the promise made in the Book of Genesis, where God says of the woman that her offspring will strike at the head of the serpent. Mary's hands are open and turned toward the earth, and from her fingers stream rays of light.

Catherine asked in prayer why some of the rings on Mary's fingers gave no light. She was told that the rays are the graces Mary obtains for those who ask her, and that the rays which do not shine stand for the graces people forget to request. It is a gentle lesson: the graces are ready and waiting, but we must ask for them.

Around the figure runs the inscription that Catherine saw in golden letters: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." These words are themselves a short prayer, a plea for Mary's help that acknowledges her Immaculate Conception, the truth that she was preserved free from sin from the first moment of her life.

The Back of the Medal

The reverse of the medal is rich with symbols, and each one carries meaning:

• The letter M: The large letter M stands for Mary, and it is joined to a bar from which rises a cross. This shows how closely Mary is united with the cross of her Son and with the whole work of redemption.
• The two hearts: Below the M are two hearts. One is crowned with thorns, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The other is pierced by a sword, the Immaculate Heart of Mary that a sword would pierce, as the old man Simeon foretold in the Temple.
• The twelve stars: Around the edge are twelve stars. They call to mind the woman clothed with the sun in the Book of Revelation, crowned with a crown of twelve stars, and they also recall the twelve apostles who form the foundation of the Church.

The two hearts side by side on the medal are a small catechism of their own. To read more about this devotion, see our page on the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Prayer of the Medal

The aspiration written around the front of the medal is a complete prayer in itself. It can be said at any time, and many people repeat it often through the day:

The Conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne

One story did more than any other to spread the medal's fame. Alphonse Ratisbonne was a young man from a wealthy Jewish family in Strasbourg. He had no interest in the Catholic faith and a real hostility toward it. While traveling in 1842, he met a Catholic friend who challenged him to wear the Miraculous Medal and to say a simple prayer each day. Ratisbonne agreed, half in mockery, sure that nothing would come of it.

On January 20, 1842, he stepped into the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte in Rome while waiting for his friend. There he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary, exactly as she appears on the medal. He fell to his knees, wept, and rose a believer. He was baptized soon after and later became a priest, spending his life working for the conversion of his own people. His sudden change of heart was studied carefully by the Church and accepted as genuine.

The Spread and the Name

The medal spread with remarkable speed. Within a few years of the first striking in 1832, millions had been made and distributed across France and beyond. During the cholera outbreak in Paris, the Daughters of Charity handed out medals to the sick, and the reports of favors multiplied. People spoke of protection, of conversions, of dangers turned aside.

Because so many graces were linked to it, the faithful began to call it the Miraculous Medal, and the name stuck. St. Catherine Laboure, for her part, kept her role a secret for almost her whole life. She lived quietly as a Daughter of Charity, caring for the elderly and the poor, and only near her death in 1876 did she confirm that she was the sister who had seen the visions. She was canonized in 1947.

The Novena and Praying the Rosary

A novena is nine days of prayer for a particular intention, a practice that goes back to the nine days the apostles and Mary spent in prayer before Pentecost. The Novena of the Miraculous Medal is prayed by many, either over nine days or, in the form kept at some shrines, every week in what is called a perpetual novena. Its prayers are built around Mary's title as the Immaculate Conception and lean heavily on the trusting, pleading tone of the Memorare.

A simple way to keep the novena is to say the medal's prayer three times each day, add a Memorare, and pray a decade or a full rosary for your intention. There is no fixed formula that must be followed word for word. What matters is steady, trusting prayer to the Mother of God.

The rosary and the Miraculous Medal belong together. Both draw the mind to the life of Christ seen through the eyes of his Mother, and both are simple tools that anyone can use. If you would like to pray the rosary in Mary's honor as part of your devotion to the medal, our guide to the Mysteries of the Rosary walks through each set of mysteries in turn.