Found Miracles

We make our own way, but there are many signs along the path

I saw it, but kept walking. It glistened on the wet, dirty sidewalk along State Street in Chicago, and yes, it caught my eye. But I was walking with a a friend after having coffee at a cafe, we were talking, we hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and I hoped to be attentive. So, I did not stop. Not immediately. But twenty yards beyond where it lay, I halted and turned back.

“Hold on a second,” I said to my friend. “I really have to see something.”

On the ground, a gold-colored oval medal, a bit smaller than a quarter, unblemished from the city grind, shining up from the grey concrete sidewalk.

I dodged two others who almost stepped on the medal, and lifted it from the ground.

“Do you know what this is?” I asked my friend, showing my find.

“Virgin Mary, something,” he said.

Virgin Mary something, indeed. On one side Mother Mary appears to be standing with her hands stretched out, robed, a halo above her head. On the other side was a large M—I assumed for “Mary”—and a cross, the two intertwined.

I placed it in my pocket.

I was raised Catholic. But when I was a little boy, my father had it out with the priest about my grandmother’s funeral, and the church’s refusal to hold a mass for her because she had not been giving regular checks to the parish. My father stood in front of the church arguing loudly with the old priest. I cowered at the entranceway, believing we were surely going to hell.

Soon afterward, my parents stopped attending mass. I finished my Sunday school studies and was confirmed in 8th grade, and began a long period of questioning everything about organized religion. I’m still questioning.

I took photos of the found metal, placed them on Facebook, and asked for help in understanding my discovery. The comments came quickly.

I would consider a lottery ticket, someone wrote.

And then the answers.

Catherine Labouré, in the summer of 1830, the eve of the feast of Saint Vincent de Paul, awoke from her sleep after believing she heard the voice of a child calling her to the chapel, where she claims she then heard the Virgin Mary say to her, "God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace to do what is necessary.” Mary is said to have had another request: Create a special medal, one that will facilitate miracles. The first 2,000 were made available in 1832. Pope Gregory XVI put one at the foot of the crucifix on his desk. Stories of cures and miracles spread all over the world.

In my forever questioning, I doubted this story. Not the fact there was a Saint Catherine, or that she truly believed she had encountered the Virgin Mary, or that those who proclaimed they had witnessed miracles had strongly believed they had experienced the unexplained. I’ve always held fast to that idea that whatever gets you through the night, whatever it is you hold true, is good enough for me. My personal doubts, as always, have come from from within. Did I believe in miracles? Do I believe in magic? as the Lovin’ Spoonful sang in the 1960s. Magic is what organized religion had appeared to be to me much of my life—sleight of hand, an illusion, trickery. And the discovery of the medal, the posting to Facebook, and all the comments had triggered a long-held skepticism.

That evening, I took the medal from my pocket and studied it further. I rubbed it between my finger and thumb, and tried to read the nearly unreadable words inscribed on the medal’s edges.What am I supposed to do with this now? I placed it on the tall table near the leather chair by the window in the living room of my home. Days later, it remains there, visible every time I sit down; every time I walk by.

A few days on, I received word that I would be eligible for my 3rd dose of the Covid vaccine. On the day of my appointment, heading for the medical clinic for my shot, the revelation of the “miracle” unexpectedly came over me—the miracle of science, the miracle of medicine, the miracle of a vaccine that could be saving my life. Is it a miracle in the religious sense, in the spiritual realm? Maybe not in the traditional way, but saving lives is a miracle, is it not? Just like the fight against polio, malaria, typhoid were miracles—this, too, was medical and scientific magic.

How we define our miracles is up to us. And if that is true, I have many. The miracle of my children, the miracle of my granddaughter, born a month ago, evolving into her life in the NICU after a premature birth, healthy and strong. The miracle of living, a heart beating every day that I rise. The miracle of music and how it opens the senses to wonder. The Sun. The Moon. The stars. The fact that we are surviving on a giant sphere racing through space and still hanging on. The miracle of a rose bush that blooms after three nights of autumn frost.

A couple of hours after my Covid booster shot, I was again walking to my office along the same street were I had discovered the Miraculous Medal days before. In front me was an older couple. I’ll guess in their 70s. He wore a woolen cap and long brown coat. The scarf she had tied around her neck was bright orange, a striking contrast against her shoulder-length silver hair. They walked slowly, deliberately, silently. And what was impossible to miss was that the couple was holding hands, gently swinging them like two young lovers, school kids on their way home from the bus stop.

There it was. The biggest miracle of them all, right in front me.

I plan to keep the Miraculous Medal as a reminder.