al-maslub 6

After her stay in Jerusalem... 

Mariam returned to Jaffa, to go from there to Saint Jean d`Acre [Akko]... 

however the boat she was travelling with was forced by inclement weather... 

to change direction and to port in Beirut. 

Feeling it was perhaps the will of God... 

she once again took up an occupation as a household servant.

Two exceptional facts stand out during this period. 

She had been working for scarcely six months, when suddenly she was struck with total blindness. This lasted for forty days. 

Once again Mariam turned to the Blessed Virgin, "See, my Mother," she said, "all the trouble that I am causing in this house, I was not even better cared for by my parents. Oh, if it would please you and your Divine Son, give me back my sight!" 

Immediately something fell from her eyes and they opened... 

and she could then once again see.

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A couple of months after that... 

she suffered a tragic fall when she was hanging clothes on the terrace. 

At first the family whom she was working for thought she was dead. Her bones seemed to be badly broken and crushed, and the doctors gave no hope of recovery. 

Her employers cared for her as for their own child. 

-

A month later...

in front of her little night lamp that she kept burning before a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she saw - as did Therese of the Child Jesus later on - the Blessed Virgin smile at her, recommending three things to her, obedience, charity and confidence. A perfume and light filled the room. 

Mariam was cured, and she immediately became hungry. The family and neighbours came flocking in, and at the sight of the prodigy everyone, both Christian and Muslim, went down on their knees, giving thanks and proclaiming God`s miracle through the Virgin Mary.

These facts were later confirmed in a letter in 1869, when the prioress of the Carmel of Pau where Mariam was then a sister, wrote to Sister Gélas, the superior of the Daughters of Charity of Beirut, asking her to verify the accuracy of these facts, and the superior confirmed that the events had happened exactly as stated, and even added some further details.

At age eighteen... 

circumstances led her to leave Lebanon for Marseille, France at the beginning of May, 1863. 

There she became a cook for an Arab woman named Madame Naggiar. 

Each morning Mariam usually went either to the church of St. Charles or to the church of St. Nicholas, the latter being of the Greek Catholic rite, which was her rite. 

In this church she once again enjoyed the sumptuous ceremonies of the confessor she chose, Father Philip Abdou, the rector of the church, a Lebanese.

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During one of her first communions there, she was rapt in a wonderful ecstasy. 

Her mistress, when informed of it, came for her in her carriage. 

The phenomenon lasted for four days, and the doctors did not know what to make of it. 

Mariam acknowledged later that she had gone through heaven, hell and purgatory. While in ecstasy, she received the order to fast for one year on bread and water, to expiate the sins of gluttony in the world. And to wear poor clothing, to expiate the sins of immodesty and luxury.

[bron]