Cancer survivor honors Blessed Mother through statue at Church of the Magdalen
By Cynthia Nastars
I went on a Prayer and Action mission trip in the summer of 2014 as a chaperone for the youth from Wichita’s St. Thomas Aquinas Parish.
At the outset, our leaders informed us that our mission’s patron saints would be the Virgin Mary and St. Benedict. As the mission ended, the seminarian who led it – who is now Fr. Isaac Coulter – gave everyone a necklace with two medals: St. Benedict and Mary’s Miraculous Medal.
It is worth mentioning that medals such as these, which are among the holy objects referred to as sacramentals, are not magic. They contain no inherent power, but are yet another tangible way in which God has been known to work. Without faith and prayer, the graces associated with a medal are mostly or entirely lost.
He told us that the priest on the mission, Fr. Edmond Kline, had placed more than a customary priestly blessing on the St. Benedict medal, but had pronounced on it an exorcism blessing.
The Miraculous Medal has an impressive reputation, meanwhile. After all, it was introduced under its proper name as the Medal of the Immaculate Conception. The name by which most of us know it only came about after people started wearing it.
When Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Labourè in 1830 in Paris, the Blessed Mother said, “If you wear this medal, it will shed graces upon those who will wear it.” Our Prayer and Action team was urged not to place the medal on a shelf, but for members to keep it with them.
Each day for the next six weeks, I safety-pinned both medals to the left side of my bra, over my heart. After that, I had an urge to go to the doctor, specifically for a mammogram. I told my husband, and he inquired about my urgency. I could only answer that – despite the lack of any sensible evidence, such as a lump – I could no longer ignore a peculiar gut feeling.
It turned out to be the right decision. To make a long story short, I learned I had two kinds of breast cancer, including a particularly aggressive type that easily could have taken my life had it been found a year later. I received this devastating news at age 48 as the mother of four children. My life would change forever.
Many people asked why I suddenly sought a mammogram despite any apparent reason for it. What made me go? Once, after I answered that question, I had a mental vision of our Blessed Mother that hit me like a slap in the face. My hands went straight to my medals over my heart. My sweet Mother Mary told me to go. The medals were right on top of my tumors. I knew at that instant she had intervened with Jesus to save my life.
I realized at that moment that my life would never be the same. Our sweet Mother Mary interceded with God and gave me one of her graces for wearing that medal.
I believe St. Benedict also deserves plenty of credit for the timely discovery. His medal is sacramental of healing used to call down God’s blessing and protection through the intercession of the great saint. It repels both evil spirits and illness. If cancer is not a demon and an illness, I don’t know what is! I am humbled to receive grace from the Immaculate Heart. I do not doubt for one second that God saved my life.
I used to end the story there, but now there is more to it.
I eventually lost those medals. In earlier days, I usually freaked out and looked everywhere. More recently, however, it seemed appropriate to stop after just a basic search.
“They are where they need to be,” I told myself.
About a year and a half later, those medals turned up in the pocket of a sweatshirt during the same month in which a good friend was diagnosed with a very rare and harmful metaplastic breast cancer.
I gave her those medals to wear. She did, and now she’s also cancer-free herself, providing another example of the power of God at work through sacramentals.
Cynthia Nastars is a parishioner at Church of the Magdalen in Wichita.
