The Poor Shepherdess

Narrated by Father Giulio Cesare Auriemma, Affetti Scambievoli, vol. 2, ch. 7.

A poor shepherdess loved the Virgin Mary so much that her favorite thing was to slip away to a little chapel on a mountain while her sheep grazed, just to talk with Our Lady. Seeing that the statue was plain and bare, she used the little she had to make it a covering. One day she gathered wildflowers, wove them into a garland, and placed it on the statue's head, saying she wished she could offer a crown of gold and jewels, but that she was poor, and asked the Blessed Mother to accept this crown of flowers as a sign of her love.

When the girl fell gravely ill, two traveling religious stopped to rest under a tree, and both saw the same vision: a company of beautiful young women led by one far lovelier than the rest. She told them she was the Mother of God, on her way to visit a dying shepherdess who had often come to visit her.

The two men went to the girl's cottage, knelt at her request, and were allowed to see Our Lady standing beside her with a crown in her hand. As the young women sang, the girl's soul left her body, and she was crowned and carried home to heaven.

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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.