Our Lady to Saint Catherine Labouré, Paris, 1830
The invocation Our Lady gave for the medal in 1830
O María, sine labe concépta,
ora pro nobis qui ad te confúgimus.
O Mary, conceived without sin,
pray for us who have recourse to thee.
SourceOur Lady to Saint Catherine Labouré, Paris, 1830 · The invocation Our Lady gave for the medal in 1830
In 1830, in the chapel of the Daughters of Charity on the Rue du Bac in Paris, Our Lady appeared to the novice Catherine Labouré. In the apparition of 27 November she showed her the image to be struck on a medal: the Virgin with outstretched arms and rays streaming from her hands, framed by the words “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee”; on the reverse, the letter M surmounted by a cross, the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and twelve stars.
With the approval of the Archbishop of Paris the first medals were struck in 1832, and the graces obtained during the cholera epidemic of that year led the people to call it the “Miraculous Medal”. Its invocation spread faith in the Immaculate Conception across the world more than twenty years before Pius IX defined the dogma in 1854. Saint Catherine Labouré was canonized in 1947; the feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal is kept on 27 November.
Church Latin pronunciation: “concépta” sounds “con-CHEP-tah”; “confúgimus” sounds “con-FOO-jee-moos”.
The invocation engraved on the medal itself: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” It may be said on its own, many times a day.
27 November, the date of the 1830 apparition in which Our Lady showed the medal to Saint Catherine Labouré.
The M with the cross joins Mary to Christ's Cross; the two hearts are those of Jesus (crowned with thorns) and Mary (pierced by a sword); the twelve stars recall the Woman of Revelation (Rev 12:1).