“No devotion has been confirmed to date with a greater number of authentic miracles than the scapular of Carmel”
St. Cláudio de La Colombière, a Jesuit priest and confessor of St. Margaret Mary of Alacoque, observed:
“No devotion has been confirmed to date with a greater number of authentic miracles than the scapular of Carmel”
Here are 9 of these amazing miracles.
1 – The first miracle of conversion
On the same day that Our Lady gave the scapular to St. Simon Stock, he was hastily called by a nobleman named Peter of Linton:
“Come quickly, Father, for my brother is to death in despair!”
St. Simon Stock immediately went to the dying man. As soon as he arrived, he threw his great scapular over the man, asking our Blessed Mother not to fail to keep his promise. Man has finally repented and died in the grace and love of God.
2 – The scapulars that resisted the grave
Just twenty-five years after the vision in which Our Lady of Carmel delivered the scapular to St. Simon, Pope St. Gregory X died and was buried with his scapular. When his grave was opened 600 years later, the scapular was still intact.
Two great founders of religious orders ( St. Alphonsus , of the Redemptorists, and St. John Bosco of the Salesians) had a special devotion to Our Lady of Carmel and wore the brown scapular. When they died, they were both buried with their priestly robes and scapulars.
Many years later, when the graves were opened, their bodies and the sacred robes with which they were buried had already been consumed – but the brown scapular that each used was preserved perfectly intact. The one of Saint Alphonsus Maria is exposed in Rome in the monastery he founded.
3 – The scapular that calmed a storm in the sea
In 1845, the ship King of the Oceanleft the Port of London for Australia. Among the passengers was English Protestant pastor James Fisher, with wife and two children, ages 9 and 7. The weather was fine in the first few weeks of travel, but when the Indian Ocean was already in, a strong storm from the northwest swept across the ocean. The waves erupted furiously, the sails ripped, and on board the wood looked like nothing more than reeds at the mercy of the winds and waves of that memorable night. They ordered the passengers to go down to their cabins.
There was nothing to do. There were orders of command, cries of despair, and pleas for mercy. Mr. Fisher, with his family and others, climbed the deck and asked everyone to join in prayer, begging forgiveness and mercy.
There was a young Irish sailor from the county of Louth, John McAuliffe, unbuttoning his shirt, and drew a scapular from his neck. He brandished it in a cross and threw it into the sea. Soon the waters overcame his wrath, the tempest calmed down, and a small wave sent to the young sailor the same scapular which, a few minutes earlier, he had thrown into the escaped sea. So the ship arrived safe and sound at the port of Botany.
Now the only people who had noticed the sailor’s gesture and the return of the scapular to the deck were the Fishers. With deep reverence, they approached the boy and asked them to explain the meaning of those simple pieces of brown cloth, marked with the letters BVM. Once informed, they promised to embrace the faith whose protector and lawyer is the powerful Virgin of Carmel, Our Lady, Mother of Jesus.
Already in the Australian city of Sidney, they went to the small chapel of Santa Maria, then made of wood in the place where a magnificent temple stands today, and were received into the bosom of the Church by Fr. Paulding, later archbishop.
4 – The scapular that saved a house from the fire
In May 1957, a Carmelite priest published an astonishing account of an entire neighborhood of row houses that had burned down in Westboden, Germany. In one of them lived two pious families, who, upon seeing the fire, immediately hung a scapular at the entrance door.
In five hours, 22 houses were reduced to ashes – but, amid the general destruction, a single one remained intact: the one with the scapular attached to the door. Hundreds of people were eyewitnesses to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in that residence.
