(OSV News) — Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster of the Most Holy Rosary claimed to have had profound religious experiences, beginning in her childhood. She was born Mary Elizabeth Lancaster April 13, 1924 in St. Louis. Her great-grandmother, Mary Madden, had been a slave.

In a short autobiography discovered after Sister Wilhelmina’s death, she wrote that at her first Communion in 1934, 9-year-old Mary Elizabeth had “an unforgettable experience,” where “Our Lord asked me if I would be His.” “He seemed to be such a handsome and wonderful Man. I agreed immediately. Then He told me to meet Him every Sunday at Holy Communion. I said nothing about this conversation to anyone, believing that everyone that went to Holy Communion heard Our Lord talk to them.”

Notes with her eight-page autobiographical sketch, as shared by her religious community, also mentioned that the future Sister Wilhelmina also had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who thanked her for praying the rosary.

Foundress of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, in Gower, Missouri, Sister Wilhelmina died in May 2019 at age 95. On April 28, her body was exhumed from her grave to move it to a tomb in the monastery’s chapel. Despite her body not being embalmed, damage to her wooden coffin, and water sitting on her grave — all elements that should have contributed to her body’s decomposition — her body was found remarkably intact, the community’s sisters say.

The sisters said that a sainthood cause for Sister Wilhelmina may be taken up should widespread devotion to their foundress first be established.

Read the rest https://www.detroitcatholic.com/news/missouri-benedictine-foundress-recounted-childhood-visions-of-jesus-mary https://www.detroitcatholic.com/news/missouri-benedictine-foundress-recounted-childhood-visions-of-jesus-mary

Morticians Mystified by Sister Wilhelmina’s Body: ‘Something Special Going on There’

Jack Klein, owner of Hixson-Klein Funeral Home in Gower, Missouri, confirmed that the religious sister’s body was not embalmed and that the wood coffin was not placed into any outer burial container.

Shannon Mullen/Joseph Bukuras/CNANationMay 26, 2023

Editor’s note: This story was updated on May 28 after diocesan spokesman said she was mistaken when she told CNA that Bishop Vann Johnston had ‘been in touch with someone in Rome’ about the condition of Sister Wilhelmina’s body.

Expert morticians are scratching their heads at the recently exhumed body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, a Benedictine nun who died in 2019 and now appears to be in an unexpected state of preservation.

The reactions come a week after the abbess and sisters of the community that she founded, the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, unearthed the 95-year-old African American religious sister’s simple wooden coffin on May 18 from the cemetery on the monastery grounds in rural Gower, Missouri, to relocate her remains to a final resting place inside their chapel.

Rest of the story here.https://www.ncregister.com/cna/morticians-mystified-by-sister-wilhelmina-s-body-something-special-going-on-there

A Miracle In The U.S.

May 25, 2023 by sd

Famous is the image in Syracuse, Sicily, which emanated tears in 1953, as a pregnant woman who slept beneath it was cured of toxemia so severe it had temporarily blinded her. [See yesterday’s story]

It was upon waking — and finding herself wonderfully able to see — that Antonina Lannuso (and husband Angelo) noticed it weeping.

It is now known as the Weeping Madonna of Syracuse (in Italian, Madonna Delle Lacrime), and a large church, with towering spire, was built to house it.

We have come to learn that four years before that event, incredibly, and far across the ocean, another image connected to the Madonna “wept” and was also in a city named Syracuse — this one in Upstate New York.

The occurrence: Tuesday, April 13, 1949, during Holy Week.

That day, the strongest earthquake in more than 130 years rattled the Pacific Northwest, killing eight. It was a mega-event, dominating news.

But in Syracuse, New York, the city’s attention was focused elsewhere — to be precise, on a house at 511 Hawley Avenue.

As the Post-Standard reported: “On April 3, 1949, while cleaning her home, Viola Martin, a divorced mother of four, placed a 2-foot tall plaster statue of Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, onto a windowsill. It fell outside and struck a rock, smashing into pieces. The statue left a small cross on the rock.

“Somehow, the head of the statue remained intact, suffering only a small scratch on its nose, and landed in the driveway.

“Shirley Anne, 11, the oldest of the children, and described as ‘very religious,’ found the head while playing and gave the statue a kiss.

“The head, she said, began to weep tears. She went to tell her mother. When her mother saw the teardrops, she was shocked.”

Soon, throngs were crowding the home’s front porch hoping to catch a glimpse of an 11-year-old girl and her weeping statue of Saint Anne and thousands more when the statue’s head was brought to Our Lady of Pompeii Church, where tears were witnessed by twenty people, including three priests, altar boys, and nuns. The tears reappeared when they were wiped away, usually materializing after the devout girl kissed it.

It even bears resemblance to the Sicilian image that would lacrymate four years hence [below].

A frenzy ensued, so many coming to see that police had to restore order. Said the newspaper: “Shirley Anne lightly touches her lips to the forehead, then holds the head away from her. In a moment, the dull plaster finish begins to glisten at the corner of one eye. The glistening spots spread, and touching them leave no doubt, that they are watery, tear-like liquid. If the tears are wiped away, they reappear when Shirley Anne again kisses the statue.”

Herman Borzner, the paper’s chief photographer — who called himself a “pretty skeptical guy” — said he “wouldn’t begin to explain it, but I saw water appear in the crevice between the eye and the nose on one side of the face.” Ditto for a nearby college professor.

(copyright, Heritage Microfilm)

The tears even appeared on live television — but stopped on Good Friday.

No coincidence, that it was Holy Week. The mother of Mary, weeping along with her daughter, weeping for her grandSon.

1949 was the year Israel formed as an independent nation, NATO was formed, and Russia tested its first atomic bomb. And perhaps it is no coincidence that the miracle was the same day as that quake. (The greatest quake ever to hit Alaska would occur fifteen years later — on Good Friday, 1964.)

The name “Syracuse”  is from a pre-Hellenic word, perhaps Phoenician serah “to feel ill,” in reference to its location near a swamp. In biblical terms, it can also mean “to draw violently.”

And there we have it, in a nutshell, to discern.

Two cities named “Syracuse.” Two weeping icons.

[resources: books on the Virgin Mary]

A Miracle In The U.S.

catholiclayman
On March 5, 2023, there was a Eucharistic miracle – multiplying of the Host – during the distribution of communion… it was reported immediately by an extraordinary minister who was a last-minute substitution for the Pastor (whose thumb was bandaged before the Mass). The Pastor is Rev. Joseph Crowley of the St Maximilian Kolbe Parish at St Thomas Catholic church in Thomaston, CT. This parish was previously known as St Thomas Parish until a merger and was the last parish served by Blessed Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus. This video is the beginning of the 3/12/23 Homily where Fr Crowley reviews the details of the Miracle that he witnessed at the 3/5/23 10am Mass. We are in the year of the Eucharistic Revival! Log into Facebook STMKP | Saint Maximilian Kolbe Parish

Pray for Turkey and Syria!

On Feb. 6, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, devastating millions and killing approximately 42,000. The death toll continues to rise as rescue efforts are underway.

One incredible testimony moving across social media discusses the miraculous survival story of a five-year-old boy rescued 192 hours (8 days) after the earthquake.

Upon questioning, authorities asked how he survived for so long.

According to the French organization SOS Christians of the East, the boy said a man dressed in white provided him food and water and disappeared.

Here’s the tweet below:

https://www.churchpop.com/2023/02/16/a-person-in-white-fed-me-boy-stuck-under-rubble-miraculously-survives-earthquake-in-turkey/

The Mystery Man Near Chattanooga

August 4, 2022 by sd

[adapted from Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]:

Was it . . . an angel?

One of the most incredible accounts I’ve heard involved a Christian chemist named Vincent Tan Ban Soon, who emigrated from Singapore. He was working in a laboratory late the night of March 25, 1993, this in Tennessee, and about 1:30 a.m., as he readied to leave, he happened to look out the door and spot a man standing next to his car, on the passenger side.

It was a tough part of town, known for its crime.

Fearing assault, Vincent grabbed a rod and, just in case, held it behind his back as he exited. He also gave thought to chi-sao¸ a form of martial arts he knew. As he opened the car door, he nervously asked the stranger if he needed something.

“Hi, Vincent,” the fellow replied. Somehow, the stranger knew Tan’s name.

“Do I know you?’ asked Tan.

“Not really,” said the man, who was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, thirty to thirty-five years in age, with short, well-groomed hair.

“What is your name and who are you?” Tan summoned the courage to insist.

“I have the name of the secondary and primary school,” replied the stranger cryptically.

Though Buddhist at the time, now evangelical, Tan had attended Saint Gabriel primary and secondary school in Singapore. Continued this fellow: “You don’t need to use chi-sao on me.”

How could this stranger have read his thoughts! When Vincent asked him just that, the man cryptically replied, “I know.” Then, in a different, more serious tone—an unforgettable one, referring to Jesus—the stranger said, “He’s coming very, very soon.” The man had had a normal American voice, said Tan, no accent, about six-feet-tall, very normal and casual except the sense of urgency, when he mentioned
the Second Coming.

Soon? Jesus?

When Tan turned for a moment, the young fellow was no longer anywhere around.

Had that been the extent of it, I would have rationalized it in my head as a possible hoax played on Tan.   religious fanatic? . . .

There was, however, a second experience two days before Christmas that same year, in a way more astonishing.

This time it occurred on the way home from visiting a friend, when Vincent spotted a truck on the roadside— obvious car trouble. This was on Standifer Gap Road in Collegedale, about twenty miles from Chattanooga.

As Tan pondered whether he should risk stopping, he saw that it was an old man, maybe seventy-five, dressed in overalls—perhaps a farmer. He had a very old Ford truck.

When Tan pulled over, the man explained that he needed a jump. His battery was dead. He was clean-shaven, perhaps 5’8″, and a bit stout, with a full head of gray-white hair. Gray eyebrows. Normal nose—a bit pinched at the end.

Tan didn’t think he had his jumper cables with him but remembered how he had recently gotten a car started by using a metal clothes hanger instead.

It turned out that Tan did have his cables and this fellow connected his end of the cables with abnormal speed despite using no flashlight in the pitch-dark night. It was cold and so they waited in Tan’s own truck (he also owned a car) while the stranger’s Ford was charging.

That was when the man asked if they could pray. “God can work miracles, even start a car with coat hangers,” he commented—somehow knowing about the incident!

His prayer: “Most holy and powerful God in Heaven, we know You are coming very, very soon. Help us now in Your own time and way, in Jesus’s Name. Amen.”

The stranger asked Tan if he believed the Lord was coming and when Vincent said yes, he repeated that it would be soon.

He also knew, somehow, that Tan had a King James Bible in the vehicle, and asked to use it (it was in the glove compartment), commenting that Bible study “is like being in a big room with many candles that are lit.”

Again incredibly: Tan recently had had a dream about a room with many candles—but not all of them lit!
The old man also alluded to Matthew 24:36 and 42 (about not knowing the “hour,” and therefore being
watchful).

Lastly: the stranger referred to Revelation 3:11 (“Behold, I come quickly . . . ”)

There was something in his voice that was extraordinarily powerful, recalled Tan.

After the Ford was charged, and before he left, the stranger said he was leaving a little token of appreciation. “It will be enough to fill up your car tomorrow with gas,” he intoned, again coyly.

Tan followed the man until they came upon a sharp curve, around which the Ford was suddenly no longer a part of the treeless landscape. “He had disappeared in front of my eyes!” Vincent told me.

The next morning, on the way to telling a friend what had happened, he decided to fill up his car. When he got to the pump he realized the tank was almost full. He filled it anyhow. It came to $2.34.

The next time Tan tidied up his truck, he found some money on the passenger side where the stranger had sat: a quarter, a nickel, four pennies, and two one-dollar bills . . . “exactly $2.34.”

–Michael H. Brown

[resources: Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]

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