BODILY ILLS MIRACULOUSLY CURED.
Through Father Vianney were affected cures of the mentally afflicted, of paralytics from birth or accident, of sufferers from cancer and bronchial affection. There are those whose tongue had never spoken, whose ear had never heard, whose eye had never seen until the holy curé's word had gone forth: "Make a novena to St. Philomena; I will pray with you."
A nervous malady racked the being of Mademoiselle Zoe Pradille and deprived her of the power of walking, of kneeling, of reading and listening to reading and of eating without excruciating pain. Expert medical treatment was secured at home and a thorough test was made of health resorts, all without avail, until at last the pilgrimage was made to Ars and the novena was said, resulting in a complete cure as attested to by a physician who had known the case well for six years out of the eight which the patient had suffered.
A house, during its course of removal, fell and buried under the ruins a little child and her grandmother. The mother of the little one escaped and ran about distracted, while the fruitless search went on. Some one ran to make the accident known to Father Vianney. He knelt first in prayer, then hastened to the spot, blessed the ruins, and stood by encouraging the workmen, who were making the search. The grandmother was rescued unharmed. The child was found after a longer imprisonment in the ruins. She showed not the slightest sign of injury.
A member of the curé's household gave an old cap that the curé had worn to a poor woman, as an alms. The beautiful thought came to her: "The holy curé is a saint. If I have faith, my child will be cured." The boy had an abscess on the head. She put the cap on him. That evening, when she uncovered him to dress the wound, she found that the sore had disappeared. The child had been cured.
"To-day," one wrote from Ars, "we have had a very remarkable cure. It is of a young nun from the Alps whose tongue had been completely paralyzed for three years, after her recovery from typhoid fever. She could converse only by writing on a slate. The day on which she finished her novena, just as she was about to make her thanksgiving after Holy Communion, she felt that her tongue was articulating the acts. She now can speak. I have seen and heard her." The curé of her home parish and the physician who attended her in her convent, testified to her recovery.
One of the remarkable cures, instantly and publicly effected in presence of all the pilgrims, was that of a young man from Pud de Dome who could walk only with difficulty and with the aid of crutches.
"My Father, do you think I will leave my crutches here?" was his oft-repeated question during the novena. On the feast of the assumption he intercepted the holy priest as he came from the sacristy into the crowded church for the evening exercises and again put the question.
"Yes, my friend, if you have faith," was the reply. Instantly the power was given to the young man to walk unaided, and he hastened to St. Philomena's chapel to leave his crutches there. His gratitude was the life-long consecration of himself to God in the institute of the Brothers of the Holy Family.
Miracles of this kind caused the priest considerable embarrassment. He sought to hide from the public eye the marvelous results of his God-given power manifested daily in his parish, His "dear little St. Philomena," who never failed him in his hour of need, heard many plaints from him in which he charged her with working the marvels that were effected through his ministry. Such was the humility of the "wonder-worker" of our own age.