On the night of July 18, 1830, Sister Catherine Labouré was awakened by her Guardian Angel in the guise of a child. The Angel led her to the chapel where Catherine saw the Blessed Virgin for the first time and remained deep in conversation with her for two hours. The parallel between St. Catherine’s account of this marvelous happening and the nocturnal deliverance of St. Peter by an Angel, narrated by St. Luke in the Twelfth Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is striking.

Peter slept, in his prison, while the Church prayed without respite to God for him. In the solitude of her novitiate, Sister Catherine fell asleep, in the thought that St. Vincent would obtain for her the grace to see the Blessed Virgin.

An Angel of the Lord appeared suddenly, and a resplendent light shone in the prison of Peter. Sister Catherine’s Angel carried a miraculous light with him, and he himself shone with light.

The Angel struck St. Peter on the side, waking him, and saying:

“Get up at once; put on thy cincture and thy sandals; wrap thy cloak about thee and follow me.”

Three times, Sister Catherine heard herself called by name. She awakened, and the child said to her:

“Come to the chapel, the Blessed Virgin is waiting for you.”

The Sister continues: “I hastened to dress myself.”

Peter left and followed the Angel. Catherine says of the child: “He followed me, or rather, I followed him.”

St. Peter arrived with the Angel before the iron door which opened onto the city: the door opened of itself before them. Sister Catherine arrived at the entrance to the chapel, and the door opened of itself when the child scarcely touched it with the tip of his finger.

She came into the sanctuary, and when the Blessed Virgin had taken up her position in a chair upon the steps of the altar, the young Sister believed herself the subject of an illusion: “I doubted whether this was the Blessed Virgin …. It seemed to me that I was not looking upon the Blessed Virgin.”

The text of the Acts of the Apostles represents St. Peter as “not knowing whether what had happened by means of the Angel, was real. He believed that he had had a vision.”

The Angel accompanied Peter until the moment when he had regained his liberty; the child stayed close to Sister Catherine to make her understand that her fears were vain. Then, looking upon Mary, Catherine threw herself forward on her knees upon the steps of the altar, and rested her hands upon the knees of the Blessed Virgin. She saw, she believed, she conversed with her heavenly Mother.

“She is gone,” said the child, and conducted Sister Catherine back by the same way to the dormitory, where she arrived at two o’clock in the morning. She declares, and we readily believe her: “I slept no longer.”

To complete the series of these comparisons, let us note finally, this remark of the Acts, after the disappearance of the Angel and the deliverance of the Prince of the Apostles: “Then Peter, returning to himself, said: ‘Now I know for certain that [the] Lord sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people had been expecting.’” (Acts 12:11.)

Sister Catherine was able, for her part, to write with all sincerity: “I believe that this child was my Guardian Angel, who rendered himself visible to take me to see the Blessed Virgin, because I had prayed to him a great deal to obtain this favor for me.”

When God made the world, He followed a pattern, a blueprint that lay in His eternal mind. He follows a pattern in governing the world and ordering the planets in their courses.

The amazing similarity between the angelic visitations of Saint Peter and Saint Catherine Labouré seems to show that God follows a pattern in miracles too!

Banner: St. Peter being delivered by an angel

File: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Liberacion_de_San_Pedro_Murillo_1667.jpg

Attribution: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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