The Robber who Fasted on Saturdays

Related by Cesarius.

In the mountains of Trent there lived a notorious robber. When a religious one day urged him to change his life, he answered that for him there was no remedy. "Do not say that," said the religious. "Do what I tell you: fast on Saturday in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and on that day do harm to no one, and she will obtain for you the grace of not dying out of God's friendship." The robber did as he was told and made a vow to keep it, and so that he could not break it he went unarmed on Saturdays.

It happened that on a Saturday he was found by the officers of the law, and rather than break his vow he let himself be taken without resistance. The judge, seeing that he was an old man with gray hair, wished to pardon him; but by the grace of sorrow he had received from Mary, the robber said that he wished to die in punishment for his sins. He made a public confession of his whole life there in the courtroom, weeping so bitterly that all who were present wept with him. He was put to death and buried without ceremony in a grave dug nearby.

But afterward the Mother of God appeared, with four holy virgins, who took up his body, wrapped it in a rich cloth embroidered with gold, and carried it themselves to the city gate. There the Blessed Virgin said to the guards, "Tell the bishop from me to give this man an honorable burial in such a church, for he was my faithful servant." It was done; and from that time, says Cesarius, the people of that region began to fast on Saturdays.

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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.