Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord Jesus and our Mother, we have confidence in your powerful and never-failing intercession, manifested often through the Miraculous Medal. We, your loving and trustful children, ask you to obtain for us the graces and favors we ask if they will be for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
You know, O Mary, how often our souls have been the sanctuaries of your Son who hates iniquity. Obtain for us then a deep hatred of sin and that purity of heart that will attach us to God alone so that our every thought, word and deed may tend to His greater glory.
Obtain for us also a spirit of prayer and self-denial that we may recover by penance what we have lost by sin and at length attain to that blessed abode where you are the queen of angels and of men. Amen.
Saint Mary of the Miraculous Medal Rs: Pray for Us
History, Symbols
The medal of the Immaculate Conception, popularly known as the Miraculous Medal, was designed by the Blessed Virgin herself and given to St. Catherine Laboure in a vision on November 27, 1830. St. Catherine saw out Lady standing on a globe, with dazzling rays of light streaming from her outstretched hands. Framing the picture was an inscription, "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." Mary instructed St. Catherine to have a medal made based on this image and promised great graces to those who wear it.
In 1832 the first medals were struck and distributed in Paris. Almost immediately the blessings that Mary had promised began to shower down on those who wore her medal with marvels of grace, health, peace and prosperity. That is how it came to be called the "Miraculous Medal". There is no superstition or magic connected to the Miraculous Medal. The medal is simply an instrument bringing a person's prayers into focus and submission to God's plan.
The two sides of the medal give us two different messages. The front presents the person of Mary, the Mother of God, in the glory of her Immaculate Conception. She stands upon the globe as her feet crush the serpent to proclaim that Satan and all his followers are helpless before her. It shows her as our intercessor, the rays of light streaming from her hands symbolizing the graces coming through her intercession to all who ask for them.
On the back of the medal, Mary is shown in relationship to us, the Church. Two hearts represent those of Mary and Jesus; hers pierced by a sword while his wears a crown of thorns. Twelve stars framing the back of the medal are a double reminder; of the apostles representing the entire church as it surrounds Mary, and the stars seen in the vision of St. John in which "a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed in the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars." In this we can see Mary's part in our salvation.
Mary the Mother of God and our spiritual mother brings her children through the sorrows of earth to the bliss of heaven, where in the crown of the Queen they will shine like stars for all eternity.