A personal testimony
I once had a dream many years ago, before I ever heard of Our Lady of Miracles or the island of Malta itself.
In the dream, Our Lady sat in a large brown chair. The Christ Child was on her knee and Our Lady was pointing towards Him. Both were enveloped by her dark blue mantle which swept over her knee and down to the floor. The wooden 'throne' on which she was seated was also prominent in my dream but most of all were the words which She spoke with great solemnity.
"Look at my son, how much He has suffered. Do not hurt Him any more." The words and the presence of Our Lady made a great impact on me, like no dream I had ever known.
That was in 1961, over 30 years ago. In 1989 my husband, who was born in Malta but had lived most of his life in England, was directed in prayer to return to Malta with his family.
It seemed a strange request since we were happily settled and there was no reason to uproot ourselves and go to live in a country that we had rarely visited in our 15 years marriage.
We put it aside for one year. During that year our circumstances changed so much that we decided to leave the Yorkshire village that had been our home for the past six years. We wondered then if Malta was perhaps what God wanted for us after all. We asked God for guidance and to show us some indication of what He wanted. Soon we were being given messages in prayer from fellow Christians that pointed directly to Malta. Sometimes these came from persons who had no idea that we were wrestling with this dilemma.
Our house had been on the market for nine months but the housing market was collapsing and nothing in the area was selling. Nevertheless, we decided to go ahead with some enquiries about work in Malta. When my husband tried to telephone friends or relatives there, we found it impossible. We were continually getting the tone for 'number unattainable'. This went on for a few weeks and was a constant source of discouragement.
One morning we opened our front door to find a new Maltese telephone directory on the doorstep together with an invoice from British Telecom. Five years before we had tried to obtain such a directory from them without success so we phoned them to ask what had made them send one now I gave them the invoice number on the delivery slip and they assured me that there would be no problem tracing the order.
At 5 pm that same day we had a call from a very puzzled
British Telephone employee. She was quite upset and apologetic.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but this directory of yours has
had our office confused all day. We have checked our records thoroughly
and we can't find an order Not only that, no-one knows who sent it."
"But it has your invoice with it," I said.
"Yes, that's what is strange. You don't have to accept it. You can
send it back if you like." I assured her that it was just what we
wanted and thanked her for her trouble and hung up. Armed with the new
telephone numbers we started making some progress.
Weeks passed and nothing was happening. At work, one of my husband's colleagues questioned his responsibility to his family. He pointed out that we had spent money getting the house ready for sale, were making preparation to move to Malta but had neither a job offer there or a house sale here.
He questioned whether his faith in following this supposed indication of God's will was not just fanciful nonsense. My husband replied that if God wanted us to move to Malta, He could sell the house for us and get him a job within ten minutes of him walking through our front door. He assured him that one way or the other, it was in God's hands.
When my husband got home, he told me what he had said to his friend. The minute he sat down, the phone rang. The call was from Malta offering him the job he had applied for. Five minutes later the phone rang again; a friend of a friend offering to buy the house - cash down! As a bonus, a third telephone call came minutes later, telling us that a difficult insurance claim had been resolved and that some money was on its way.
During this time my feelings about Malta had gone from hot to cold, hot to cold and I was feeling totally confused. I told my husband that I just didn't know what to think or feel anymore. The thought of moving to a country which I hardly knew needed some courage and I didn't seem to have it anymore.
My husband sympathized with me but didn't have any answer since he too was finding it difficult to make such a move and had a real reluctance about returning to his childhood home.
That evening I was looking through some old papers and came across a small picture of Our Lady of Miracles given to my husband by his aunt who lived in Lija, near the shrine in Malta. It was rather faded and showed only part of the picture. It seemed appropriate that his image of Our Lady was associated with Malta. I propped the little paper up against our dressing table in the bedroom and knelt down in front of it.
I prayed, "Look Our Lady, this picture is of you in Malta, If you want us to go there, sort out this confusion and get the family there safely. In return, I promise to visit the shrine and thank you."
The next morning when I awoke, my husband suggested to me that I should go immediately to Malta on my own for one week, stay with his sister and see what I thought of the place.
Considering the fact that we had four dependent children who he would have to look after whilst still working and that our finances were fairly tight, this was unexpected.
I jumped at the idea and arrived in Malt a few days later. For the first three I rushed around visiting banks, seeing property and asking about mortgages but I was feeling crushed inside. It was so different from the peace of Yorkshire and I felt alienated by the Maltese lifestyle.
To keep my promise to Our Lady, I asked my husband's relatives to drive me to the shrine in Lija. On seeing the full picture in the church, I noticed the flowing mantle over Our Lady's knees and the gesture of the hand pointing towards the child. Although the painting did not capture the majestic beauty of Our Lady in the dream it was remarkably similar. I thanked her for giving me the opportunity to visit Malta at this time and asked her intercession in solving the whole problem.
That evening I went to mass in a church in Sliema and later knelt to pray at the Lady altar - Our Lady Help of Christians. The weight of worry and confusion in me was too much. Tears began to flow no matter how hard I tried to stop them. I hid my head in my hands and poured out my concerns to Her. The priest put out the main lights in the church and retired, leaving me alone to pray in the dimly lit alcove.
For one whole hour I knelt there, praying and weeping
in turn I asked her if we were being carried away by our imagination, being
reckless, presumptuous, extreme and disrupting ourselves and our children's
lives for no reason.
"Why?" I asked, "Why?"
This was all the prayer that was left in the end and it was all that I
had left to say over and over again. "Why do you want us here?"
I got up and left the church, went home, quickly said goodnight to my hosts and went to my bedroom. I intended to go straight to bed but was still too upset. I ended up again on my knees at the end of my bed praying and weeping and asking "why?"
At about two o'clock in the morning I suddenly felt totally at peace. I still did not know the answer but I got into bed and fell deeply asleep.
The next morning, when I awoke, Malt felt like home. I was in love with the place. Everything seemed fresher, brighter more familiar and I was till totally at peace.
We had decided, before I left that neither of us would make up our minds till I returned and we had talked about it. So the next few days were spent simply looking and enjoying and leaving decisions till later. Nevertheless, as the plane took off, I felt truly sad at the thought that we might decide not to return with the family.
My enthusiasm surprised my husband on my return and he made his decision partly on the strength of my obvious eagerness to return there We decided definitely to take the plunge and move to Malta.
the following day a Franciscan friend phoned us. She was a very devout lady who experienced private visitations of the Blessed Virgin Mary in her spiritual life. she told us that on the night of the third day of my visit to Malta, she was woken by Our Lady at 2 am in the morning. She told her to kneel down and pray which she did.
As she was praying she realized that she was no longer in her room in Yorkshire but with me in Malta and described my room and me kneeing at the end of my bed. She told me that she was very concerned to see me so upset and said that I was asking the question "why?" over and over again.
But Our Lady's voice within her told her to say aloud
three times to me the same thing which was
"Be still, be at peace; sleep now and in the morning all will be well."
Then she added, again three times,
"The answer is in the Little Chapel by the quayside."
When she had done that, she saw me get up immediately and go into bed.
With that the vision went and she was aware again of her own room.
She was so surprised by all this that she phoned a friend immediately although it was so early in the morning to tell her what had happened. She wanted someone to be able to know about it before I came back from Malta.
When she told me the story I was not surprised. I knew that my husband and I had benefited from a very special grace and it was beautiful to receive such a confirmation.
After that our arrangements seemed to come together like a dream. Everything worked smoothly and well and we were all in Malta as a family only three weeks later.
We still wonder what that 'answer' meant, since there are so many quaysides in Malta and many chapels here.
One in particular is rather famous. In st. Paul's Bay, beside a little harbour for small boats is the chapel of St. Paul's Shipwreck. It was built on the site that is traditionally thought to be the place that locals built a bonfire to warm the survivors of the shipwreck that brought St. Paul to Malta in 60 A.D.
It commemorates the moment when a snake attached itself to St. Paul's hand and was unceremoniously shaken off into the fire by the apostle without causing him any harm. The locals were impressed since they were men of the land and knew that the snake was poisonous. It opened their hearts to accept Paul and listen to him. Not only had he survived without a scratch but he was full of love and a message of hope - the Gospel of Jesus Christ which he confirmed with miracles of healing. This led to the conversion of Publius, the Roman Governor, and thereafter to the whole country of Malta.
That 'Little Chapel by the quayside' holds a powerful message for today's missionaries, youth and families who are being bitten and harassed by many kinds of dangerous 'snakes'.
It is a pity that the tourist books do little to advertise this aspect of Malta since Our Lady of Miracles seems to be a sign of hope to this age.
For myself, I believe she gave me the words which go with that look of supplication and compassion that the artist has captured in the painting.
"Look at my son - how much he has suffered!
Do not hurt Him any more."
Our Lady of Miracles seems to be offering to help us to achieve this by allowing herself to be known under this title since the miracles needed to bring about transformation are sometimes the most difficult of all.
I believe she is waiting to spread her mantle of protection once again and this time around the whole world.