The Blessings of Mary Taken from A GARLAND FOR OUR LADY Irish Ursulines, 1920 with IMPRIMATUR A Conversion Obtained Through the Rosary A holy priest named Father Clement was called near midnight to hear the confession of a young nobleman who had just been attacked by apoplexy. He hastened to the house, found all in confusion, and the physicians in vain exerting their skill, the patient being totally unconscious. The night wore away in the midst of all this distress. At daybreak, the churches being open, the priest went to say Mass for the sick man at a chapel of the Blessed Virgin. Just as the Mass was over a servant came to inform him that his master had recovered consciousness. What was the joyful surprise of the religious when, on reaching the bedside of the nobleman, who had been unhappily notorious for his profligacy, he found him penetrated with feelings of the most lively compunction, asking mercy of God more by his sighs and tears than by his words, and offering up his life with heroic generosity in expiation of his sins. In these dispositions the sick man made his confession and asked for the Last Sacraments. The confessor, edified and affected, inquired of his penitent what could have prevailed with Our Lord to work in his favour this great prodigy of mercy. "Alas, Father," replied the sick man, in a voice broken by sobs, "alas, what is there that could have so prevailed with Him but mercy itself obtained by your prayers and perhaps by those of my deceased mother." This good lady, who was held in reverence for her piety by the court and the city, had, when dying, called to her the young duke, her only child, and spoken to him much as follows: "I leave to you, my son, a great name and great property, but I exhort you less earnestly to maintain these than to be true to the title of Christian. What dangers do I not foresee for you, my son! Into what excesses, perhaps, will not the great fortune you are about to possess precipitate you! I am dying too soon, alas, for you; but the will of God be done. It is under the protection of the Blessed Virgin that I leave you. I implore her to take the place of a mother towards you. My son, if you preserve any remembrance of me for the remainder of your life, if from henceforth you wish to give any marks of attachment to your mother who loves you most tenderly, who in dying regrets life only for your sake, promise me you will do the only thing I am going to ask of you; it will cost you little: it is to say the Rosary every day." "I promised this very sincerely," said the sick man to his confessor, after having given him the above details, "and I have done regularly what my mother so anxiously begged me to do. I acknowledge that it has been for ten years past my only act of religion." The confessor entertained no doubt but that this was a special protection of the august Mother of God who had obtained for his penitent this astonishing mercy from Our Lord. He exhorted him to redouble yet more his confidence in his Benefactress, and did not leave him till he had received his last sigh breathed forth in the same spirit of penance. HOME-------------------------------MARY'S INDEX www.catholictradition.org/Mary/blessings3.htm