THE GOA MIRACLE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 308, 14 March 1879, Page 9

THE GO A MIRACLE.

(Communicated to the Bombay Catholic Mea miner.) Now that the exposition of the miraculously preserved body of St. Francis Xavier excites the religious ardour and consolation of the elnkhen «r the Church, the admiration aud bewilderment of the pagans, and a strange uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of the unbelieving section of Christians, I think it worth my while, to make and publish the following translation from the admirable book of " Mystics, by Joseph von Goerres,"' in order to give food for reflection to those whose minds are susceptible of the truth. Speaking of sundry kinds of changes in the body, which frequently occur after the death of the mystical Saint, Goerres observes : " The body of St. Lidwina of Schiedam had been, during eight and y thirty years, dreadfully deranged by the most violent and continual diseases ; but, when she had died, there was not the slightest terror or paleness of death visible on her face ; on the contrary, it was as if anointed with an aromatic oil, aud shone so marvelously in splendour and whiteness that it seemed to belong to a transfigured body. All who saw her, declared they had never seen so beautiful a picture, and could not satiate themselves with the .aspect. The whole body shone in such whiteness and lustre : all her limbs were round and fleshy, as if they had never suffered anything ; the fracture on her forehead had disappeared : all wounds on her hands, feet, and body were healed, and only on those, which the Picards had inflicted on her, a small scar was visible. The body of St. Colette kept after her death for twelve hours the colour, in which she died ; then it became white like snow with lovely traces of the veins, and all the limbs so wondorfully beautiful, that the .state of innocence scemcTl renewed in her, and more than 30,000 persons came to see her. When Mary Jane of Tours had died in her eighty second year her body, by old age, fastings and mortifications very much emaciated, suddenly began to flourish so as to look snow while and smooth like marble or ebony, similar to that of a virgin of eighteen years. When a fortnight after the death of the Clare Nun, Antonia of Florence, the sisters re-opened her coffin, they foun I the body intact and ruddy ; and thenceforth at each visit alternately either white or ruddy. The same took place with the bodies of St. Magdalen of Pazzi. of St. ltona de Lima, in whose death nobody wanted to believe, of Catherine of Sieua, Lutgardis, Columba of kieti. Dominica do Paradi&o, Oringa, aud many other holy women. This phenomenon has often been witnessed likewise in holy men. The body of St. Francis of Assisium was shining in beauty, and St. Anthony of Padua appeared to be only bleeping ; in St. 'Laurence •luhtinkn the cheeks began to redden two days after his death, the blood appeared vivid beneath the .skin, and the body was perfectly intact, though it had remained for forty-seven days uuburied. The flesh of Philip of Aquerio which before was dark became quite bright and lucid, and the sores he suffered from emitted a sweet fragrance. This lucidity of the body is frequently intensified into perfect pellucidity. Thus Sulpitius narrates of St. Martin, that his body shone clearer than glass, and appeared whiter than milk; of irt. Hugo, Bishop of Lincoln, it is narrated that after his death his body appeared exteriorly whiter than milk, and interiorly clearer than glass. As -this lucidity proceeds from the tender texture that projects from the solid parts, so the redness is caused by the great agility and liveliness of the blood, which latter is also exhibited by the bleeding which is frequently observed in such bodies after death. Both united will in a similar manner cause the flexibility and suppleness in the joints and the tonderncs-- of the ilesh, which has so often been admired in dead bodies of such holy persons. Death having thus lost for a long period over such bodies its stiffening power, it loses likewise its severing and decomposing power against Iheir iucorruptiblcness. For inasmuch as the spiritual souls that inhabited them, renounced the lower life and its pleasures, its stain too, i.e. put refaction, it, removed from what served them as a covciing. The inmost, deepest and simplest ground of a thing is usually called its essence, in opposition to the accident, which is laid on to this essential ground us something exterior, manifold, transitory aud movable, lv the same manner, therefore, as the accident by entering into the deepest and simplest iecol lection, receives more of the species of the essence, and thus the essential condition of the creature is increased, so by expanding into varieties of forms and ciicumstauces, the same* creature loses of its essentiality ami becomes thereby eorruptlbti.