The Hail Mary and the Wounded Child

Related by Blessed John Herolt.

A married man was living in a state of serious sin. His wife, a good woman, could not get him to give up his bad ways, but she begged him to keep at least one small devotion to the Mother of God: to say a Hail Mary every time he passed her altar. He began to do it.

One night, as he was on his way to commit a sin, he saw a light, and found that it came from a lamp burning before an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. He said his Hail Mary as usual, but then he saw that the child was covered with wounds, with fresh blood flowing from them.

Shaken, he understood that it was his own sins that had wounded his Redeemer, and he began to weep, but he saw the child turn away from him. In his confusion he turned to Our Lady, saying that her Son had rejected him and that he could find no advocate kinder or more powerful than she, his mother, and he begged her to plead for him. Mary answered from the image that sinners call her the mother of mercy, yet by their sins they make her the mother of sorrow, renewing her Son's passion. But because she never sends away anyone who throws himself at her feet, she began to plead with her Son to pardon him. Jesus at first showed himself unwilling, but Mary set the child down, knelt before him, and said she would not leave his feet until he had pardoned the sinner.

Jesus answered that he could deny her nothing, and that for love of her he would pardon the man, telling him to come and kiss his wounds. The man came forward weeping, and as he kissed the wounds they were healed. Then Jesus embraced him as a sign of pardon. From that day he changed his life and was always full of love for the Blessed Virgin.

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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.