Healing soul and body

Artist: Buck McCain

"The author of The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis lived to the age of 92.  Of the 63 years he lived as a monk, 58 were spent as an ordained priest.  In his Chronicle of Mount St Agnes he relates two miracles of the Holy Eucharist.  Regarding the first of these he tells us:

One of our brethren commenced to say Holy Mass at the altar of St Agnes.  For a long time he had been obliged to make use of two crutches in order to go there.  After having said Mass he found himself, through the power of Jesus Christ and the intercession of St Agnes, so much strengthened that he was enabled to leave his crutches behind, returning to us in choir with a joyful heart. 

One of the brethren asked him of what he had done and thought during Holy Mass; he replied, 'I considered the words of the Evangelist St Luke, who himself relates of Jesus, "And all the people sought to touch Him, for there went virtue out of Him and he healed them all." Therefore the Most Holy Sacrament, in union with the prayers of the saints, is able even now to heal the sick in soul and in body." 

SOURCE: Eucharistic Miracles, Joan C Cruz

 

St Agnes

Virgin, Martyr

291-304 AD

FEAST DAY - January 21

 

 

 

A Roman maid of tender years … St Agnes died for Christ … Steadfast in faith, and ever chaste … She could not be enticed … Although the pagans tortured her … Their efforts were in vain … As piously and patiently … She gloried in her pain … Not even all their insults and … Humiliating acts … Could cause her vigil of the soul … To lessen or relax … When she was only thirteen years … She died beneath the sword … True to her vow to be a spouse … And virgin of our Lord … And now her soul is honored as … The little lamb of Christ … This Roman maid who kept the faith … And nobly sacrificed.

O little lamb, I pray to you … That you will pray for me … To keep steadfast in my faith … And in true chastity … That I may bear each cross that comes … And every pain endure … And all my thoughts and words and deeds … Forevermore be pure. 

Excerpt from: Poem Portraits of the Saints, James Metcalfe (pg 28)

St Agnes, ora pro nobis!