(Excerpt of the book “The Immaculate, our ideal”)
As an outward sign of membership in the M.I., the Knight of the Immaculata wears her Miraculous Medal. We human beings are not only spirit, but also body. Our interior life, our ideal and mentality must be perceptible from outside, must be expressed in our external life. Therefore outward signs are necessary in order to bring the interior disposition to light. The Savior willed to grant His graces to people precisely through such “sacred signs”, namely the Sacraments. In a similar manner the Knight of the Immaculata must also make an outward profession.
The Miraculous Medal is the outward sign of the interior Total Consecration to the Immaculata.
Furthermore, as a weapon in the battle for souls he distributes these medals wherever he can.
The Miraculous Medal should be the weapon, the bullet, which the Knight of the Immaculata makes use of. Even if someone is as wicked as can be, if he agrees to wear the Miraculous Medal, give it to him and pray for him, and occasionally try with a kind word to bring him to the point where he begins to love the Mother of God and to fly to her in all his difficulties and temptations. But anyone who sincerely begins to pray to the Immaculata will soon be convinced to go to Confession as well. There is much evil in the world, yet let us consider that the Immaculata is even more powerful: “She will crush the head of the infernal serpent.”
Isn’t such a practice somewhat exaggerated? How is it that the founder of the M.I. places so much trust in such an external thing? We should reply, first, that the very origin of the M.I. is closely related to a great miracle that was worked through the Miraculous Medal, namely the conversion of a Jewish man, Alphonse de Ratisbonne. In the year in which the M.I. was founded (1917), the seventy-fifth anniversary of this great miracle was being celebrated in Rome. Young Brother Maximilian had already asked himself the question long before that:
Is it possible that our enemies should display such activity and gain superior strength, while we remain idle, without getting down to work? Do we not have even stronger weapons, namely the protection of heaven and of the Immaculate Virgin?
He found out the answer on that memorable twentieth of January, when the superior of the house presented to them the story of the impenitent Jew’s conversion as a theme for meditation. In that meditation, as Father Pal, his friend and co-founder of the M.I. attests, the Saint received the inspiration to found a knighthood in honor of the Immaculata, which chose the Miraculous Medal as its emblem and shield for the future Knights. From that day on, Brother Maximilian often visited the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in order to pray before the altar where Alphonse de Ratisbonne had converted. He also chose that altar as the one upon which he would offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the first time after his priestly ordination.
Furthermore Fr. Maximilian often used to tell his friars about truly extraordinary incidents that he himself had experienced with the Miraculous Medal. For example, one time while he was recuperating in Zakopane he tried to convert a young Freethinker who proudly called himself “the Heretic”.
All arguments were in vain. Nevertheless, out of courtesy he accepted the Miraculous Medal. Immediately afterwards I suggested that he make a confession. “I am not prepared. By no means,” was his reply. But… at that very moment he fell on his knees, as though impelled by a higher power. The confession began; the young man wept like a child. The Immaculata had won.4
Naturally, the cause of this miraculous change in a human heart was not the medal itself as a physical object, but rather the Immaculata, who attaches her special graces to the wearing of the Miraculous Medal. And there were many, many such incidents in the life of St. Maximilian. Therefore:
Distribute her Medal, wherever there is an opportunity: to children, so that they will always wear it around their necks; to the elderly and the youth, so that they, under her protection, might have enough strength to resist the temptations and falls that particularly beset them in our times. And also to those who do not go to Church, or who are afraid to go to Confession, who make fun of religious practices, who laugh at the truths of the faith, who are mired in a moral swamp or are living outside the Church in heresy – to all of these people you absolutely must offer the Medal of the Immaculata and ask them to wear it, but then fervently beg the Immaculata also for their conversion. Many people make use of another expedient when someone is reluctant to accept the Miraculous Medal. They just sew it secretly into his or her clothing and pray for that person, and sooner or later the Immaculata will show what she is capable of. The Miraculous Medal is the ammunition of the M.I.
