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At St. Jude’s Church off of Boston Avenue, in downtown San Diego, Mother Teresa came to meet some AIDS patients. It was June, 1996. At some point during the meeting she gave them brown scapulars. Then they all returned to their AIDS home. A few days later, Jeśus, one of the patients, felt close to death and remembered Mother Teresa talking about the Brown Scapular and the Blessed Virgin Mary. He asked one of the nurses if she could put it back on him (they had taken it off when they were washing him). She said yes, but then forgot to do it. In the middle of the night she remembered and came into the darkened room. Without turning on any lights, while she was placing the Scapular around his neck, Jeśus suddenly called out, “Turn out the lights! It’s too bright!” The nurse saw a light and became frightened. She ran out of the room looking for some co-workers, to see if she was going crazy, or if they too could see a light. As they entered the whole room lit up momentarily and Jeśus died. Nine people witnessed this. A man in the San Bernardino area received a phone call from his son who lives in Washington State. “Dad, I think I’m having a heart attack! I’m having trouble breathing and my chest feels constricted.” “Are you wearing your scapular?” the father asks him. “No, but why bring that up now? I just told you I’ m having a heart attack.!!” The father knew that his son was in a state of grave sin, not living up to his Catholic upbringing, and the father, a devout Catholic, trusted in the Scapular promise, namely that no one clothed in this scapular shall suffer eternal fire; and if, while wearing it they die, they shall be saved. In other words, he trusted in what St. Robert Bellarmine, Pope Benedict XV and others taught: that anyone dying in Mary’s family (the Carmelite Order or the Brown Scapular Confraternity of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel) will receive from her, at the hour of death, either the grace of perseverance in the state of grace or the grace of final contrition for their sins. The father told his son, “look, just find your scapular and put it on. Your mother and I will do what we can for you. We will pray a Rosary for you, and then call you when we finish. OK?” So he hung up. After they prayed the Rosary his wife called her son back to see how he was doing. “Mom, I can’t believe it,” he told her. “As soon as I put the scapular on, all the symptoms just disappeared. Just like that.” This same man was running around the track at a local school, getting some exercise. At the track he met two other men, and they spent some time in conversation. It turned out that they were both fallen- away Catholics, no longer going to Church, etc. So the man spoke to them about the Catholic faith, about Mass, and so on, and gave each of them a scapular before departing. A few months later he is helping out at a soup kitchen, where a man keeps trying to get his attention. Because he tries to avoid this man, the man finally gets right in his face, and says, “Do you remember me?” “No.” “You gave me a scapular a while ago. Now do you remember?” “No. I’m sorry. I give lots of scapulars away.” “Well, I met you while working out at a track. I didn’t tell you this at the time, but for 10 years every night. I would have these terrible nightmares. I would dream of snakes chasing me and trying to eat me. Every night I would wake up from this nightmare so shaken that I couldn’t get to sleep after that. It got so bad I felt like killing myself at times. But from the day you gave me that scapular and I put it on, I haven’t had one of those nightmares again.” (Genesis 3:15 and Rev 12: Both the woman and her child, Jesus and Mary, are in a life and death battle with the ancient dragon, the serpent, and they together overcome Satan. Not just Jesus, but Jesus and Mary.) A woman was enrolled in the brown scapular. That night she had a powerful dream about something that had happened in the past. It moved her to go to confession the very next day and to receive absolution from Jesus through the priest. She was delivered of a great burden she had been carrying for years. The story is told that the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock (an English Carmelite priest and brother) in the 13 th century, and that she gave him an article of clothing called a brown scapular (so called because it hangs over the scapula or shoulder bones) as an abiding sign of her special love and motherly protection. It is also said that she gave him and all who devoutly wear the Bowen Scapular this promise: “This shall be to you and to all Carmelites a privilege, that anyone who dies clothed in this shall not suffer eternal fire; and if wearing it they die, they shall be saved.” By wearing it, or even better, being enrolled in it, a person is saying “Yes” to Mary. “Yes, I want you to be my heavenly mother. Yes, I believe that when I was baptized I became a member of God’s family, and that I have not only a Heavenly Father, God, but also a heavenly, Blessed Mother, you, God’s greatest creature. (I also believe that, as part of this Family, I have older brothers and sisters, the angles and saints.) I believe in and want your special love for me; I want your motherly protection. I, for my part, will try to live up to the demands of the Christian life in imitation of you and your Son Jesus Christ. By clothing me with this physical sign of you motherly love, I trust that you will also help clothe me with your virtues of humility, of faith, hope and charity for Jesus, of prayer and self-forgetfulness, of friendship with and obedience to God and His Church, and with your other virtues.” It is also good to keep in mind that the brown scapular is not a magical charm that will get you into Heaven automatically. It is meant to be used as an act of religion, not as an act of superstition. Superstition is trying to get God to do what you want. Religion is trying to get yourself to do what God wants. And Jesus and Mary, you Blessed Mother, working through the Scapular will help you to do God’ s will, so that you can already taste – in this life! – the joy of really being a son or daughter in God’s Family. In gratitude remember to kiss your Scapular and pray this prayer each day. |
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