05/21/2026
The Quiet Corner by Fr. John A. Kiley 17 May 2026
Marie Antoinette, once Queen of France, was executed by guillotine on October 16, 1793, at today’s Place de Concorde in Paris at age 37, convicted of high treason by her former subjects who, when they examined the royal purse, discovered a prayer to the Immaculate Conception. A generation later, St. Catherine LaBoure, a Daughter of Charity, was a 24-year-old novice when she experienced three apparitions of Mary at the Rue du Bac convent, again in downtown Paris. The most significant occurred on November 27, 1830 when Mary appeared on a globe with rays of light streaming from her hands and tasked Catherine with having a medal struck with the inscription: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee".
A quarter of a century later, in 1854, Blessed Pope Pius IX in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus solemnly decreed the Virgin Mary to be free of original sin from the moment of her conception, confirming the traditional belief of the Church that Mary was always free from personal sin. Less than four years later, in 1858, St. Bernadette Soubirous, a miller's daughter from Lourdes in the Pyrénées mountains of France, experienced over a dozen apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at a nearby grotto. During a vision on March 25, which went on for over an hour, Bernadette asked the lady’s name but the lady just smiled back, until Bernadette insisted and finally heard the lady say, in the local dialect, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” St. Bernadette, later a religious sister, never varied in her recollections.
The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother St. Ann can only be explained as the direct intervention of God in history. From Eden’s sad moments through Biblical antiquity to the present day, no human person has been spared the blight of original sin from the moment of conception save the Blessed Virgin Mary. God interrupted history to bestow this unique grace upon Mary displaying effectively his personal Fatherly concern for her and for mankind.
Another direct intervention of God in history is found, as Vatican II teaches, among the Jewish patriarchs, prophets and people. Catholic believers cannot forget that the Church received the revelation of the Old Testament through the Jewish people with whom God uniquely, in His inexpressible mercy, concluded the Ancient Covenant. The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about God’s unique intervention toward his kinsmen: "Theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4-5). And God continues to hold today’s Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes.” Again, God exceptionally entered and guided history.
And of course never to be forgotten – God forbid – is the intervention of God in history whereby the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took on human flesh, lived in an earthly community, died a miserable death and returned uniquely from the grave. Jesus is indeed God’s supreme intervention in human history. “And the Word became flesh*and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth (Jn1:14).”
Prayer, both communal and personal, is the practical response of God’s believing people that God as Father continues to intervene in human history. The random miracles that confirm the sanctity of the calendar’s many saints as well as the happy results or strengthened resolves that accrue from personal prayers are all testimonies to the ever active Fatherhood of God. As authentic Christian believers, Catholics must continue to embrace the personal love of God for his people, a God who invites prayer and a God who responds to prayer, a God who guides history and a God who interrupts history.
Jesus himself, as well as his Father, insists that he too is solicitous for the benefit of mankind throughout history, as this Sunday’s Gospel acclamation warmly teaches, “I will not leave you orphans, says the Lord. I will come back to you, and your hearts will rejoice (Jn14:18).” So God, as Father, Son and Spirit, is intimately interested in human history. He will continue to intervene, sometimes gloriously, sometimes quietly, in mankind’s destiny. COMPLETE See less
