The pagan world into which Our Lady was born had no knowledge of her coming, nor of the new day she heralded. Catherine Laboure was born on May 2, 1806 in Fain-les-moutiers, a tiny village in France, not far from Dijon. She was the ninth of eleven children.

Catherine’s mother was the source of her sanctity. She had instilled a love of God in her child. Perhaps she had a premonition of her daughters’ coming sanctity.

On her mother’s death, at the age of nine, the child was grief stricken, and in the midst of this terrible grief … one day … she climbed up on a chair and reached for a statue of the Blessed Mother that stood high on a shelf in her Mother’s bedroom. “Now you will be my mother” she said to the statue.

This was the start of the Marian age perhaps. for it was…