RELATION OF A PRODIGIOUS MIRACLE that the Apostle of the East, St. Francis Xavier, made with a nun of the convent of Our Lady of the Purification, of the Village of Moymenta in Portugal, on March 10 of the year 1637.

Place: Moymenta, Portugal
Year: 1637
Event: Milagro, Miracle

Authenticated and approved in the form commanded by the Tridentine Council, by the illustrious lord Miguel de Portugal, bishop of Lamego, of the council of his Majesty.

In the village of Moymenta de Abeyra, bishopric of Lamego in Portugal, in a monastery of religious Bevitas, lived consecrated to God, Sister Maria de la Encarnación, professed nun, native of Garayal of 25 years of age, daughter of Gaspar Vaez de Sousa, oidor of the Duke u¡y Knight of the habit of Christ and Maria Correa, his wife.

This nun was so mistreated by the evils of life that, taking possession of her a cold mood like a palsy, left her dead on her right side from head to toe.

Three years went by in which this sick woman felt with excessive headaches, an ordinary flow of it, colder than the same ice, which when lowering the right eye left her without light and without sight, reached the arm and after having crippled it, including the hand, also left the fingers impeded and so without strength that not only they could not support any light weight, but neither could they move away from each other, the humor passed forward and reached the stomach where it caused a great opilation with three posthumas, each one fatter than a fist, and finally giving the rest of the right side to remain a hand span shorter than the left. In addition to this, she was unable to get food into her stomach, which caused her anxieties and mortal agonies, and heart aches that made her speechless, made it difficult to breathe and almost suffocated her completely. Not even sleep, common subsidy of nature, thin and tired, was an occasion of relief for her, but closing her eyes to steal them from the continuous work of the day, she felt false and restless shadows that prevented her from resting, a pain that she suffered almost the last two years of her illness. In this fatigue she passed the nights from clear to clear, until at dawn great pains came upon her, running through all her joints, which left her (after she was worn out and tired) in a painful sleep, but so shallow that in it she heard everything that was said to her, although she could not answer. Above all, the variety of accidents from which she suffered was remarkable, for some made her into a ball, and others left her so straight and muddy that she could not move anywhere; some took away her speech, and others struck her with such fury and vehemence, that they made her lift a span high from the bed on which she lay, and these accidents were so frequent, that in one day they used to strike her six or seven times.

For the remedy of so many ills, there was no physician in the kingdom who was not consulted, nor medicine that was not applied to her by means of bloodletting, fountains, purges, sweats; without the crippled parts obeying all these remedies more than if they were an insensible stone. Finally, having exhausted all the art and apothecaries and with the disease still growing, the doctors affirmed with authentic certifications that life could not last with such a complication of ailments and that it only remained to make supplication to His Holiness so that, dispensing, this sick woman could go to take the baths of the Caldas de la Reyna. For not ceasing to try this remedy for whose effect the dispensation was expected, which was then sought in Rome. But God, who on the wings of those in whom he flew through the world, brings health according to the prophet, kept the victory of this evil (which has not a single wonder) for the second Thaumaturge, first apostle of Japan, light of the East, St. Francis Xavier. For this reason, not only once, but many times, he inspired Father Baltazar Sarabia, a professed religious of the Society of Jesus and brother of the same sick woman, to send from his cell a paper image, in which Saint Xavier is seen in pilgrim’s costume, in the form that in Naples appeared to Father Marcelo Mastrili, when he was about to die and having already lost his senses, he resurrected him to wait in the East for his many examples as today he makes great samples of sanctity.

The Father was not resolved to let go a pledge of so much devotion, when on March 3, feeling more than ordinarily moved to do so, understanding it to be a thing of God, he asked the Saint for permission, in a sheet of letters, to send him to the pilgrim and to bring his sister more pilgrim health. He did so, advising her in the letter that, when he got his hands on the sacred image, that she should vow that, having received the desired health through her, she would have a bust image made for her and place it in the church of her convent, and that she would make a feast on her day every year, with a sung mass and sermon; and this not only in her lifetime, but after her death, leaving it as an inheritance to two other prophet sisters in the same convent. And to further encourage her, he sent her the account of the miracle of Father Marcellus, which we touched on above.

The letters arrived with the Holy Image on Saturday, March 7, at five o’clock in the afternoon, and with them came her health, for, having finished reading them and the account of the miracle of Father Marcellus, putting in her mind to make the vow in the way her brother advised her, she suddenly broke out in extraordinary sweats, because they were as copious as they were mild. And because the most of the miraculous event cannot be expressed better, than with the words of the one who experienced it, we will faithfully put here the copy of two letters of the sick woman, written to the same Father Baltasar de Sarabia, in the first of which she says thus:

So much so that in the presence of the holy image read of your mercy with the relation of the miracle that Father Marcelo, which was on Saturday the seventh of March, I immediately had the intention of making the vow that your mercy ordered me, and only with this intention, as if the Saint wanted to give me the pledges of the future miracle on the same day at seven o’clock at night I got an extraordinary sweat and on Sunday I found myself much worse, adding the evil, so that forced by his strength, I did not delay the offering. In this way I spent the tenth of March when I was able to get up and with some crutches I went to the Abbess’ cell and asked her for permission to go to confession and make the vow to the Saint. She answered me that confession was to be kept until the eve of our Father St. Benedict. I was comfortable with the obedience, trying to make the vow on that day, but arriving at my cell, taken it seems of God that I did not want that the glory of Saint Xavier could be attributed to our Father, if on his eve I made the vow, suddenly I got on my knees and assisting me two nuns, with humility I began it, with humility I began to do it in the way that Your Mercy by your letter ordered me, only I added that I would not fail to make a feast to the Saint on his day for any human respect, even if it were for the death of parents or brothers, because I wanted in this sacrifice of my will to the Saint, as a sign of the renunciation that he had made of his parents to the great Marcellus. Having just said the last words, an admirable thing! I remained a short space on the Saint on my chest and wanting to take the crutch, I found myself with the same leg as the healthy one and then I went to the choir with such haste that there was no nun who could run to catch me, finding myself suddenly with the sick side as healthy as the other, and my eye with the same sight as the other, my stomach, which had a very great hardness, was softer than it had ever been, and finally I was in such perfect health that the following night I attended the Compline and Matins and sang a [lition] with a very good whole. This miracle was of such admiration, that when the nuns saw me running to the choir, not believing their eyes, they thought it was some great delirium, but knowing the greatness of the Saint, with many tears of joy they sang a TE DEUM LAUDAMUS They rang the bells, to which all the people of the place attended, frightened by the marvel they heard. The following day, the Mother Abbess ordered to say a sung mass to the Saint, for the mercy he had done her, making this miracle, memorable during the time of her government.

In another letter that she wrote to him in the following mail she says thus: News from me is that I am now completely free of past evils; The sweats that the Saint gave me after I saw the letters of your mercy were continuing without being able to make him resistance, even in the coldest places where he could not attend in the time of the greatest heat and in so many copies, that then it was seen to be miraculous and always responding at the same time that the first ones more or less reached the number of twelve in honor it seems of the first twelve apostles whose spirit and gift of working miracles, so much he represented in life and death without Saint Francis Xavier, that even in that he wanted to show me his greatness, because he healed me, leaving inside me the cause of my illness that little by little was coming out in the sweats so that I could see it with my eyes, or it could be that he wanted with these sweats that in my own cell I took the baths that I had to go to take in the Caldas, working in my greater effect, of what they could give me in honor of the observance of the religious cloister. So much for the second letter.

So that, drawing in sum the wonders of this miracle, which even in number is worth many, at the same time the sole of the foot suddenly returned to its natural seat, the stomach was relieved of the mood that oppressed it, the crippled arm free, the sight restored, and from the head, the beginning of all evil, fled all disease without leaving any sign of what had been, as was seen and experienced by the whole convent and later declared before the most illustrious and reverend lord Miguel de Portugal, who, visiting his bishopric personally, examined here the witnesses of such a prodigious miracle, and finally making a meeting of lawyers and doctors, both theologians and canonists in the manner provided for by the sacred council, on August 24, the day of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, with public sentence and universal opinion of all those who attended the meeting, declared and approved it as true, true and worthy to be venerated and preached as such.

But because after this miracle was already approved, the same St. Francis Xavier worked in his devotee another new wonder, which those who knew it called the second miracle, it seemed good to us to publish it with the first, as well for the greater glory of the Saint, as for the praise of his devotee, to whom if the Saint wanted to give health and miraculous life, also after six months he wanted to take it away, not to punish her as ungrateful, but to reward her again with new benefit and give new office to the request that she made to him. It is therefore the following case:

It had to be given beginning to the fulfillment of the preserve, and for that the Father Baltasar Sarabia arrived to this convent on Thursday thirteenth of August, with the promised image of bulto, of seven palms height, perfect work in everything. It only seems that his beloved Sister María de la Encarnación y Xavier was waiting for it, to say in her presence the NUNC DEMITIS, of the old Siemon, because (as she confessed two days before her death) on the same Thursday that the Saint arrived, carried away by a new fervor, she began to make a novena to him, in which for days she was asking him that if by misfortune she had to reach such ingratitude, that even in very small things she would displease him, she would soon receive death from God, because she would rather die than demerit something of his service. In this resignation of spirit she continued all the following magnas, which she got up before the community to continue her petition and with tears and sobs she went to the door of the inner sacristy of the convent where the Saint was enclosed, still wrapped in the form that had come from [Coimbra].

After seven days of battery, God heard him and showed himself willing to provide in his request for the death he desired, because being so that he had been six months with the perfect health that remained to him from the preceding miracle, on the twentieth of August, the following Thursday after the arrival of the Saint, he suddenly woke up with a serious and malignant disease, which was then going around in Muymenta. The doctor was called and in some visits he made, he always said that all the signs he had were signs of life and that he would not die. She asked for the sacraments on the eighth day and they denied them, saying that she was not in danger. She pressed more insistently, affirming that she knew her death was certain and that the more they advanced it to her, the more they would anticipate the pleasure she had in receiving it. They gave them to her by dint of her petitions and she visibly improved with them, so that while before she was burning with fever and suffering cruel pains the first twelve days of her illness, in the last two she was so quiet in her powers and senses that the nuns considered her healthy and believed that she would live anointed because she had hastened to receive the last sacraments so early in the morning.

To this she responded with these formal words: Do not be deceived gentlemen with my improvement, because I have that I will die next Thursday, that on the fourteenth day of my illness, nor be frightened that I so certify it, because on the same Thursday of the image of my Saint arrived at this convent, I began then to ask him to reach me from God, and with this petition I continued every morning, placing myself at the door of the sacristy, which was still closed, until the following Thursday, as you have seen, I fell ill and then I was certain of the dispatch of my petition, and you do not want to know any more; It only remains for me now to say goodbye to my Saint, for which I have asked my brother Father for permission to have him unwrapped and taken out of the drawer in which he is, so that he may be brought to me in this cell.

The license came and with it the Saint came to our nun’s cell where she kept him for three hours. Here I say that it was to hear and see that happy soul, feeling blessed with the visit of her Seraphim who seems to have come to Moymenta in search of her, to take her by the hand of the earth to heaven. She was already bursting into tears of joy, and in thanksgiving, partly for the bodily health that six months ago she had with such a remarkable miracle received from his literal hand, partly for the dispatch of the request for her death, which she was already waiting for with hands tired of baptizing so many souls, and with feet that walked so many kingdoms, and finally touching many other steps of her life, because she had it all very much by heart. Other times, taking from this same occasion, as if she were an apostle Saint Paul (which is what the nuns called him on this occasion), she spoke of the ugliness of vices and the beauty of virtues, giving, as an ancient example, healthy advice to the whole convent that listened to her with tears and sobs, and particularly Leonor de Santa Ana, her younger sister, who grew up here and by her death remained in her place, because talking to her, she told her that when she entered the Novitiate she should always love holy patience very much, because she was never more religious than when she was more troubled and afflicted. Finally, this farewell was more to be, to see and to hear, than to be able to write with the effect that it deserves.

When it was over, she sent to ask her brother, her father, with great solicitude, that without waiting

for the celebration of the feasts that he had prepared, that the holy image be placed on the altar immediately, because he wanted to carry this happiness to the next life and that nothing be reduced in the same feasts because of his death, because he knew that the Saint was doing him greater mercy in carrying it from this life than in having miraculously given him his health before. After she was told that the Saint was already placed according to her prayers on the altar, she was covered with a new joy and asked to be moved from the high place where her cell was, to the low place that was in the correspondence of the church and cloister where the cemetery and burial of the nuns is, saying that she wanted to go there to arrive alive to the tomb in which she was to be buried, and to the church where her Saint was already placed.

Moved to such a good neighborhood, she arrived on Thursday the third of September, day in which she had said that she was going to die, because of which the whole convent was that day between fear and hope to see if the event corresponded to what was said, when at seven in the morning, having been the two days before almost free of fever and totally without pains, always talking to the last parasite with a Holy Christ that he also had in his heart and hands and persevering in his very perfect judgment, with the Most Holy name of Jesus in his mouth, he expired and gave his soul to his Creator, being twenty-six years old, six months after God had miraculously given him health through the intercession of Saint Francis Xavier.

And it is good that we note that in these six months she lived more in heaven than on earth and that living before in admirable observance, in the time that she enjoyed the miraculous health she lived as a recollect, occupying herself all in care and thought of how she was going to serve her Saint, with whom she had notable primors, not only in works, which require a greater relation, but even more in words because she never named him, but by my lord San Francisco de Xavier and she called herself his slave and for this respect after the miracle she always signed herself María de la Encarnación and Xavier, saying that it was good that the servant was named after the name of the lord. The same surname left by inheritance to his two sisters, who still represent her today, not only in the debt of the benefit but also in the gratification of it, because they were in his place being Mayordomas of the feasts of the Holy Apostle that every year on his day, in fulfillment of the vow, they have to do.

It was this death reputed in all this convent by second miracle, because besides the many remarkable circumstances that are considered in it and others that for brevity are left, it seems to us that it is enough for us to have it for mysterious, to know that it was a Thursday, day in which, not only the image of the Saint arrived and began the petition and novena of his devotee, but also the one on which he fell ill because God and Saint Francis Xavier wanted to show in this correspondence of days, that for this reason the illness and death occurred on Thursday, because one and the other began to be requested with instance on another Thursday, which was the one on which the Holy Image arrived, through whose intercession such a happy death was achieved. May God and his Saint be praised in everything and for everything. In Moymenta on September 27, 1637.

WITH LICENSE.

In Madrid at the Printing House of the Kingdom, year 1638.

To see the Spanish version, modernized and transcribed, click here.

To see the French translation, click here.