Feast 14 December
Carmelite reformer. Doctor of mystical theology. The Dark Night.
Sacred art
The portrait kept with St. John of the Cross is the image this library has of John. The honour goes to the person, and through the person to God. It is not a machine, and it is not a substitute for the life written below.
Friend of Teresa of Ávila. Jailed by his own. Died 1591. The Ascent of Mount Carmel. A man who wrote that God is found when the lights go out.
If it belongs to John, it is here, with a door back into the story.
Nazareth & Bethlehemc. 1 BC – AD 1
The central Catholic claim: the eternal Son of God took a human nature in the womb of Mary. Every later miracle is a footnote to this one.
Cana of Galileec. AD 30
Jesus’ first public sign in John’s Gospel: at a village wedding, at Mary’s request, water becomes wine — good wine, and a great deal of it.
Near the Sea of Galileec. AD 31
With five barley loaves and two fish, Jesus feeds a crowd of thousands. It is the only wonder told in all four Gospels — and John uses it to teach the Eucharist.
A high mountain (traditionally Tabor)c. AD 32
Peter, James, and John see Jesus’ face shine like the sun, Moses and Elijah speaking with him, a bright cloud, and the Father’s voice. A glimpse of glory before the cross.
Bethanyc. AD 33
Four days in the tomb, already a stench: Jesus calls Lazarus out. It is the last great sign in John before the Passion — and it helps to cause it.
Esquiline Hill, RomeTradition: 5 August 358
A childless Roman couple vow their fortune to Mary. On a hot August night, snow falls on the Esquiline in the shape of a church. The basilica of St. Mary Major stands there.
Durham CathedralDied 687; found intact 698 and 1104
The bishop of Lindisfarne, buried on his island, found incorrupt eleven years later, carried across Northumbria from the Vikings, opened again at Durham in 1104 still described as entire. The coffin, the stole, the pectoral cross remain.
LoretoTradition: arrived 1294
A small stone house, now inside a basilica, claimed to be the house of the Holy Family, carried from Nazareth by angels — or, as later historians prefer, by the princely family of Angeli. Popes have piled privileges on it. Archaeologists argue.
Turin (earlier Lirey, Chambéry)First documented 1354; claimed as 1st century
The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth bearing the faint image of a crucified man. Many Catholics believe it may be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. The Church has not formally declared it authentic.
6 studied signs on this image
Montevergine, MessinaDied 1485
A Poor Clare of Messina, of great austerity, whose body remains seated in the choir of her monastery — another of the sitting saints of the Italian south, intact, vested, at her place.
Tepeyac, Mexico City1531
Mary appears to St. Juan Diego, asks for a church, and leaves her image on his cactus-fiber tilma — an image still visible, and still drawing millions, nearly five centuries later.
6 studied signs on this image
Šiluva1608
In a village that had lost its Catholic church to the Reformation, children see a woman holding the Child and weeping. A buried chest of liturgical treasures is found. Lithuania’s great Marian shrine begins.
El Cobre, Santiago de Cubac. 1612–1613
Three men in a boat — two Indians, one African child — find a small statue on the water after a storm: “I am the Virgin of Charity.” She is Cuba’s patroness, the lady of a copper-mining town, of exiles, of a people who have had to carry her.
Luján, Buenos Aires Province1630
A small terracotta image of the Immaculate, being carried from Brazil, will not move from a spot on the Luján river until it is set down. A shrine grows. She is patroness of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
LimaDied 1639
A Dominican brother, son of a Spanish noble and a freed Black woman, barred from full priesthood by race, whose life in Lima was a cascade of healings, bilocation, and a rapport with animals that hagiography cannot quite make ordinary.
Westminster Cathedral, LondonMartyred 1654
A secular priest, hanged at Tyburn for his office. The body was bought from the executioner, smuggled to Douai, found remarkably preserved, and in 1930 brought to Westminster Cathedral, where he lies in a glass coffin in the north aisle.
Jesuit church, WarsawMartyred 1657; found intact 1730
A Jesuit missionary, tortured and killed in Janów. Seventy-three years later the body is found incorrupt, the wounds still visible. The relic has been kidnapped by history — Pinsk, Polotsk, Moscow, Rome, Warsaw — and is home again.
Rue du Bac, ParisDied 1660
Co-founder of the Daughters of Charity with Vincent. Her body, found well preserved, lies in the chapel of Rue du Bac, across from Catherine Labouré and the chair of the apparitions.
Paraíba River, then Aparecida1717
Three fishermen, catching nothing, net a small, mud-dark broken statue of the Immaculate Conception — first the body, then the head — and then a haul of fish. She is the patroness of Brazil.
La Vang, Quảng Trịc. 1798
Christians hiding in the jungle from the Cảnh Thịnh persecution see a lady in áo dài, holding the Child, under a great tree. She tells them to boil the leaves for medicine. La Vang becomes the national Marian shrine of Vietnam.
San Salvatore in Onda, RomeDied 1850; body in San Salvatore in Onda
Roman priest, founder of the Pallottines, apostle of the idea that every Catholic is an apostle. The body is under the altar in his church in the Regola, a short walk from the Campo de’ Fiori.
Ars-sur-FormansDied 1859
A poorly educated parish priest who turned a forgotten village into the confessional of France. Nights of diabolic harassment, a multiplying of food, knowledge of consciences, and a body still shown at Ars.
Knock, County Mayo1879
On a wet evening, fifteen villagers see Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, and a Lamb on an altar against the parish gable. No word is spoken. The rain does not touch the vision.
St. Onofrio, RomeDied 1882; found intact 1906
Foundress of the Sisters of St. Dorothy. Exhumed in 1906, the body was intact, the habit fresh. She lies in the chapel of St. Onofrio on the Janiculum.
TurinDied 1888
Priest of street boys, founder of the Salesians, whose dreams — the two columns, the wolves turned lambs — guided an order, and whose life accumulated healings, multiplying chestnuts, and a reputation for reading the future of his boys.
Lisieux, Normandydied 1897; canonized 1925
A Carmelite who died at twenty-four, promised a shower of roses, and was named a Doctor of the Church for a little way of trust that has sent more people to holiness — and to Lisieux — than any treatise.
Cova da Iria, Fátima1917
In 1917, in a hollow of pasture called the Cova da Iria, near the village of Fátima in Portugal, three shepherd children — Lúcia dos Santos, ten, and her cousins Francisco Marto, nine, and Jacinta Marto, seven — saw a lady brighter than the sun, six times, on the 13th of the month from May to October. She asked for the rosary every day, for the conversion of sinners, for devotion to her Immaculate Heart, and that a chapel be built. On 13 July she showed them hell and spoke of war and of Russia. On 13 October, before a crowd of tens of thousands standing in the rain, including reporters who had come to mock, the sun appeared to dance. Francisco and Jacinta died in the influenza. Lúcia lived until 2005 as a nun. The bishop of Leiria declared the apparitions worthy of belief on 13 October 1930.
San Giovanni RotondoStigmata 1918; died 1968
A Capuchin friar who bore the five wounds of Christ for fifty years, heard confessions for ten hours a day, and was accused, banned, filmed, loved, and finally canonized. The most investigated mystic of modern times.
Płock, then Vilnius1931 (vision) · 1934 (first painting)
Jesus appears to St. Faustina Kowalska and asks for an image: one hand raised in blessing, the other touching the heart, two rays — pale and red — and the signature “Jesus, I trust in You.” The devotion was once suppressed, then became a universal feast.
PaduaDied 1942; body shown in Padua
A tiny Croatian Capuchin, hunched, who sat in a confessional in Padua for thirty years. The body, exhumed for beatification, was found intact and is now in a glass shrine in his church — a confessor who did not leave his box.
Akita1973–1981
Sr. Agnes Sasagawa hears a voice from a wooden statue; the statue weeps 101 times; a cross-shaped wound appears on the sister’s hand. Bishop Ito declared the events supernatural in 1984. Rome has been more reserved in later comments.
Pantano, Civitavecchia2 February 1995
On 2 February 1995, at about 16:20, in a garden at Pantano on the edge of Civitavecchia, a five-year-old girl named Jessica Gregori stopped in front of a plaster statue forty-two centimetres high and called to her father. Blood, she said, was coming from its eyes. Over the next six weeks the same object was reported to weep fourteen times — in the garden, in the house, and at last in a bishop’s hands. A CAT scan at the Gemelli hospital found no device inside the plaster. Two forensic professors named the first stains as human blood, male. John Paul II later blessed a gold crown and a rosary for the figure. Rome has never declared a miracle. The statue is still in a glass case at Sant’Agostino.
Costa Rica / Italy2011 and 2013 (recognized healings)
A pope who died in public is raised to the altars on the back of two classical medical miracles: Floribeth Mora Díaz’s otherwise hopeless brain aneurysm, and a French nun’s Parkinson’s disease — the illness that had been his own.
