Catherine and the Bread Tinged With Blood

From the collected examples in The Glories of Mary.

In Rome there lived a woman known as Catherine the beautiful, who led a very sinful life. Hearing St. Dominic preach one day on the devotion of the holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she had her name entered in the confraternity and began to recite it, though she did not yet give up her sinful ways.

One evening a young man of noble appearance came to her house, and she received him courteously. As they sat at supper she noticed drops of blood falling from his hands when he broke the bread, and saw that all the food he touched was tinged with blood. She asked him what this meant, and he answered that a Christian should take no food that is not marked with the blood of Jesus Christ and seasoned with the memory of his passion. Amazed, she asked who he was. "Soon I will show you," he said.

When they had passed into another room, his appearance changed: she saw him crowned with thorns and his body wounded, and he said, "Do you not know me? I am your Redeemer. When will you stop offending me? See how much I have suffered for you. Change your life." Catherine wept bitterly, and Jesus, encouraging her, said, "Now begin to love me as much as you have offended me; and know that you have received this grace because of the Rosary you have been used to say in honor of my mother." Then he vanished.

In the morning she went to confess to St. Dominic, gave all she had to the poor, and afterward lived so holy a life that she reached great perfection, and Mary often appeared to her.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the "example" stories that St. Alphonsus Liguori placed at the end of each section of The Glories of Mary. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the 1888 English translation. Liguori himself, in his author's "Protest," noted that the miracles and apparitions in the book are offered on human authority only, not as articles of faith.