ALPHONSE RATISBONNE + THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL; 27th NOVEMBER
ALPHONSE RATISBONNE + THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL
27th NOVEMBER
“According to traditional Catholic theology, there is an intimate and profound relationship between the Blessed Mother and the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. By the will of God, the universal mediation of Mary is ordinarily necessary for the salvation and sanctification of men, just as the mediation of the Church is also necessary. And, if the Church has been entrusted with the task of guarding and spreading the truths of the faith in their integrity and purity, the Blessed Mother has been given the mission of fighting and conquering the devil, the supreme inspirer and advocate of all errors and heresies”. (1)
Alphonse Ratsibonne was the son and heir of a wealthy Jewish French family. When he was a child, his older brother, Theodor, converted to Catholicism. Alphonse, however, was aggressively atheist and he and his family had an abiding antipathy to the Catholic Church and all things to do with it, including cultural and religious customs.
The aggressive aspect of his atheism softened somewhat when, at the age of 27, he fell in love and became engaged to his second cousin, who, at 16 years old was deemed too young to marry and the marriage was postponed. The experience, however, lifted his sensibilities so as to contemplate the reality of human dignity - he wrote to her that he had even begun to believe in the “immortality of the soul” as a consequence of the love he felt for her.
At the postponement of his marriage, he toured Italy alone. Entering an Italian church, he idly stopped and watched Holy Mass, recording that he became aware of “a known atmosphere”.
He arrived in Rome on the feast of Epiphany 1842, where he called upon the Baron de Bussieres, a childhood friend. Over dinner, the Baron, his brother and Ratisbonne engaged in a discussion on religious beliefs, debating whether they were “superstitions”. Ratisbonne was scornful of such beliefs. The Baron's brother, Theodor, then presented Ratisbonne with a medal of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, (“the Miraculous Medal”), which had been struck to the design dictated by Our Lady when she had appeared to St Catherine Laboure in Rue de Bac, just 12 years before. Theodor dared Ratisbonne to wear the medal and to write down and recite the Memorare, the prayer attributed to St Bernard of Clairvaux.
Ratisbonne laughed and accepted the dare, saying, as he placed the medal around his neck, “Look at me now. I am Catholic, Apostolic, Roman.” The Bussieres family proceeded to pray for him, seeking assistance from their friends. One of the friends who prayed for him was August de la Ferronays, a former Minister of Charles X.
The following account is recorded by Ratsibonne himself (2):
“On Thursday, January 20, [1842], after eating breakfast at the hotel and taking my letters to the post office, I went to the house of my friend Gustave, the pietist, [a protestant sect] who had just returned from a hunting expedition which had kept him away for several days.
He was very surprised to find that I was still in Rome. I explained my reason to him: I had wanted to see the Pope. “But I went away without seeing him,” I said to him, “since he was not present for the ceremonies for the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter [on January 18], where they had told me that he would make an appearance.”
Gustave sarcastically consoled me, telling me about another curious ceremony that was about to take place, I believe at Saint Mary Major, something having to do with the blessing of animals. And throughout the whole conversation, we were continuously joking and jesting in a way that you can imagine would happen in a conversation about this sort of thing between a Jew and a Protestant.........
If at that moment (it was noon) a third party had come up to me and said: “Alphonse, within a quarter of an hour you will adore Jesus Christ, your God and your Saviour, you will be prostrate in a poor church, you will strike your breast before a priest in a Jesuit house where you will spend Carnival preparing for Baptism, ready to sacrifice yourself for the Catholic faith; and you will renounce the world, its pomps, its pleasures, your own fortune, your hopes, your future; and, if necessary, you will also renounce your fiancee, the affection of your family, the esteem of your friends, your connections with the Jews...and you will aspire to nothing other than to follow Jesus Christ and to carry his Cross even unto death!...” I tell you that if some prophet had come up to me and made such a prediction, there is only one person I would have thought more senseless than him: the man who would believe that such madness was possible! And yet, it is just such madness that today constitutes my wisdom and my happiness.
I walked out of the cafe, and there was the carriage of Theodore de Buissières. He stopped and invited me to get in and go for a ride. The weather was beautiful, and I happily accepted his invitation. But de Buissières asked me if I would mind stopping for a few minutes at the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte that was just down the street, because he had a matter he needed to take care of; he suggested that I wait in the carriage; but I preferred to get out and see the church. The people there were making preparations for a funeral, and I inquired who the deceased person was who would be receiving such extreme honours. De Buissières responded: “He is one of my friends, the Count de la Ferronays.” He added, “His sudden death is the cause of the sadness that you have seen in me for the last two days.”
I did not know de la Ferronays; I had never seen him, and I had no other impression than that of a vague sorrow that one always feels at the news of a sudden death. De Buissières left me to go and reserve a gallery for the family of the deceased. “Don’t get impatient,” he said to me as he entered the cloister, “it will only take two minutes....”
The church of Sant’Andrea was small, poor, and deserted;... I believe that I was almost completely alone;... there was no work of art that attracted my attention. I walked around, mechanically, looking around without thinking anything in particular; I recall only that there was a black dog that was jumping and dancing around in front of me... I had only been in the church a moment when I was seized with an indescribable agitation of mind. I looked up and found that the rest of the building had disappeared. One single chapel seemed to have gathered all the light and concentrated it in itself. In the midst of this radiance, I saw someone standing on the altar - a lofty, shining figure, all majesty and sweetness - the Virgin Mary, just as she looks on this medal. Some irresistible force drew me towards her. She motioned me to kneel down and, when I did so, she seemed to approve. Though she never said a word, I understood her perfectly. The whole church disappeared- I no longer saw anything, or rather, I saw only one thing: How can I ever speak of it? Human words are incapable of expressing that which is inexpressible. Any description, however, sublime, would only be a profanation of the truth. There I was, lying prostrate, bathed in my tears, with my heart outside of myself, when de Buissières called me back to life.
I could not reply to his hasty questions; but I took the medal that I had on my chest and with with great affection I kissed the image of the Virgin, resplendent with grace....Oh! It was truly She!
I did not know where I was; I did not know if I was Alphonse or someone else; I felt such a total change within me that I believed that I was someone other than myself....I tried to find myself and I did not find myself....The most ardent joy sprang from the depth of my soul; I could not speak; I did not want to reveal anything; I felt within me something solemn and sacred that made me ask to see a priest....I was taken to him, and only after he asked me to was I able to speak as best I could, on my knees and with a trembling heart.
My first words were in gratitude to de la Ferronays and the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Victories. I knew with certainty that de la Ferronays had prayed for me; but I could not say how I knew, just as I could not give an account of the truths which I had now acquired faith in and knowledge of. All that I can say is that at the moment it happened the bandages fell from my eyes; not one only, but all the multitude of bandages that had been wrapped around me, they rapidly fell off one after the other, like snow and mud and ice under the heat of a scorching sun.
I came out of a tomb, out of an abyss of shadows, and I was alive, perfectly alive....But I was weeping! I saw, at the bottom of the abyss, the extreme miseries from which I had been rescued by an infinite mercy; I shivered at the sight of all of my iniquities, and I was stupefied, softened, lost in admiration and gratitude....I thought of my brother with an unspeakable joy; but together with my tears of love I also wept tears of compassion. Oh! how many people tranquilly descend into this abyss with their eyes closed by their pride or their carelessness. They descend there, they sink into the horrible darkness alive! And my family, my fiancee, my poor sisters! Oh, excruciating anxiety! I think of all of you, you whom I love! I give my first prayers to you... Will you not raise your eyes toward the Saviour of the world, whose blood has cancelled original sin? Oh, the imprint of this stain is horrible! It makes the creature made in the image of God completely unrecognisable.
I am asked how I learned these truths, since it is certain that I have never opened a book of religion, I have never read a page of the Bible, and the dogma of original sin, which is completely forgotten and denied by the Jews of our day, had never occupied my thoughts for even a moment; I doubt that I had ever even heard its name before. How then did I arrive at this knowledge? I do not know.
All that I know is that when I entered the church I was ignorant of everything; when I left, I could see clearly. I cannot explain this change except with the image of a man who awakens from a deep sleep, or a man born blind who sees the light in a single instant; he sees, but he cannot define the light that illumines him and in which he contemplates the objects of his admiration.”
Professor Shoeman provides another perspective to the story – that of the Baron de Bussieres’ account of the event when he went into the church to get his friend, (4):
“I caught sight of him on his knees, in the chapel of St. Michael the Archangel. I went up to him and touched him. I had to do this three or four times before he became aware of my presence. Finally he turned towards me, face bathed in tears…with an expression no words can describe…he took hold of his Miraculous Medal and kissed it with passionate emotion. He broke into tears ….Gradually this delirious emotion subsided and he grew calmer, and now his face was radiant, almost transfigured. He begged me to take him to a priest and asked when he could receive holy Baptism, for now he was sure he could not live without it. I took him at once to the Gesu to see Father de Villefort, who invited him to explain what had happened. Ratisbonne drew out his medal, kissed it, and showed it me, saying, ‘I saw her! I saw her!’ and again emotion choked his words, but soon he grew calmer and spoke.
[He repeated the account set out above]
…At first he [Ratisbonne] had been able to see the Queen of Heaven clearly, appearing in all the splendour of her immaculate beauty; but he had not been able to bear the radiance of that divine light for long. Three times he had tried to look up to her, and three times he had found himself unable to raise his eyes higher than her hands, from which blessings and graces seemed to be falling like so many shining rays. ‘Oh God,’ he cried, ‘only half an hour before I was blaspheming, and felt a deadly hatred for the Catholic religion! All my acquaintances know that humanly speaking I had the strongest reasons for remaining a Jew. My family is Jewish, my bride to be is a Jewess, my uncle is a Jew. By becoming Catholic I am sacrificing all my earthly hopes and interests; and yet I am not mad.’
…I felt ready for everything and [immediately] insistently demanded baptism. They wanted to delay it. ‘But how!’, I exclaimed, ‘the Jews who heard the preaching of the Apostles were baptised immediately, and you want to delay it, even though I heard the Queen of the Apostles!’
Cardinal Patrizi solemnly baptised Ratisbonne, with the new name of Alphonse Maria, on January 31, 1842, in the Church of the Gesù. Ratisbonne became a priest in 1847. For some time he belonged to the Society of Jesus, which he then left with the permission of Pius IX to enter the Congregation of the Daughters and Missionaries of Our Lady of Zion, founded by his brother Theodor. Just like his brother, Alphonse Maria Ratisbonne wanted to dedicate his entire life to the apostolate among the Jews. In 1855 he left for Jerusalem and, with his brother Theodor, founded a congregation of nuns — the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion — to pray for the conversion of the Jews.
[At that time, in Jerusalem], he purchased the ruins of Pilate’s palace, the Praetorium, the very spot where Pilate showed the beaten and bloody Jesus to the crowd suggesting that He be released, to which the crowd of Jews cried back ‘Crucify him! His blood be on us and on our children!’ (Matthew 27:25). “
“He knelt on those ruins and prayed: it seemed that he could still hear the echo of that condemnation and the hateful cry of his fathers: “Crucifige Eum!”
‘I have never forgotten’, he said, ‘what I felt in front of those ruins of the court of Pontius Pilate.’ There it was that the cry rang out: ‘May His blood be upon us and our children!’
‘It fell, yes’, thought Alphonse, ‘but it fell not in a curse but in regeneration’, just as it fell on him on 20 January 1842 in Sant’Andrea delle Fratte.(5)
On the site of Pilate’s Praetorium, he constructed the Sanctuary of Ecce Homo. He died in 1884 at Ain Karem, John the Baptist’s birthplace, near Jerusalem.”
Roberto de Mattei observed:
“At the Rue du Bac, at La Salette, at Lourdes, at Fatima, the Blessed Mother chose innocent souls to transmit her messages to the world. In Rome, she appeared to a sinner, to a heart hardened by pride, to an enemy of the Church. .... Ratisbonne seemed to prefigure the modern world, incredulous, hard of heart, obstinate in his errors.
And yet it only took the apparition of Our Lady, one single action on her part, to make Ratisbonne fall to his knees and instantly understand – according to his own words given in the canonical investigation – “the horror of his state, the deformity of sin, the beauty of the Catholic Religion.”
His conversion was perfect and instantaneous, just like that of Saint Paul the Apostle: the darkness of his unbelief was instantly dispelled by the brightness of the truth. The Blessed Mother – “living, great, majestic, most beautiful, and merciful” – displayed her traditional qualities as Queen and Mother: both power and mercy. But in order to intervene, the Madonna requires the cooperation of human beings: the Miraculous Medal, the Memorare, the insistent prayers of the Baron de Buissières and of Count de la Ferronays, perhaps through an imperceptible gesture of good will by Ratisbonne, are all parts of the story not to be overlooked in the big picture of this conversion story.
Nothing is impossible for the Blessed Mother, she who is the royal dispenser of graces, when she is invoked by ardent and devout hearts. When men decide to cooperate with the grace of God, then wonderful things happen in history.."
THE MEMORARE
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me.
Amen.
(1) Roberto de Mattei, “The Conversion of the Jew Alphonse Ratisbonne” https://remnantnewspaper.com/.../4777-the-conversion-of...
(2) As set out in The Remnant, ibid.
(3) The Conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne,
(4) Professor Shoeman, Salvation is from the Jews,
(5) de Mattei, ibid.
(6) Father Anotnio Bellantonio, “La Meraviglia romana dell’Immaculata, 2nd edition, Rome, 1973; see The Remnant, ibid., at; https://remnantnewspaper.com/.../4777-the-conversion-of...#
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