Presented for your consideration and reflection this Christmas Day. A miracle.

Nun’s remains miraculously healed New York woman, Vatican says

Mother Marianne Cope is elevated to sainthood after the Vatican authenticates a second miracle that was a result of her intercession — the use of her bone fragments to cure a woman with acute pancreatitis.

The second Vatican-authenticated miracle leading to the sainthood of Mother Marianne Cope involves the healing of a New York woman who had an infection destroying her organs, fellow nuns have revealed for the first time.

Details on the purported miracle were revealed last week by the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities in Syracuse, N.Y. A bag of soil containing Marianne’s bone fragments from the Hawaii peninsula where leprosy patients were exiled was pinned to Sharon Smith’s hospital gown, Sister Burkard said.

Marianne cared for leprosy patients at the Kalaupapa settlement on the island of Molokai in the 1880s. She died in 1918 of natural causes and was buried there. The pope proclaimed her a saint last week after the Vatican authenticated two miracles that were a result of her intercession. The first miracle involved the unexplained cure of a New York girl who at 14 was diagnosed in 1992 with germ cell ovarian cancer.

Not much to add to that. Merry Christmas to all.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Even as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, Who shall prepare thy way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord, Make his paths straight; John came, who baptized in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins. And there went out unto him all the country of Judaea, and all they of Jerusalem; And they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, There cometh after me he that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I baptized you in water; But he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel According to Saint Mark