The Grave at Malden

...Second, the philosophical truth of the miracle...

...All the pews were continuously occupied by those who stayed to pray...

...On his desk were scores of letters typical of those which have been pouring in from all parts of the country...

...It is a situation for which we are not responsible...

...Such works are possible because the forces of nature are finite, and hence their effects have only a limited amount of perfection...

...It was the custom of Father Fitton to educate worthy boys, and it is presumed that Patrick Power was one of them...

...Sanctity-or at any rate the repute of sanctity-is still seen to be one of the greatest forces in the world...

...An ordination card has been preserved which states these facts...

...In Worcester there still resides Mr...

...The other is called Cosmology-the science of the world, which investigates the last causes and most common properties of material things...

...O'Connell, concerning the events themselves...

...William J. Cahill, living at 47 Royal Street, Allston, who is now eighty years old, remembers serving on the altar at the church of the Holy Redeemer in East Boston with Patrick Power...

...I will ask an official of the cemetery to take you through the police lines to the chapel, and to the grave, so you may be able to see for yourself what is going on...

...Edward O'Connell, a brother of Cardinal O'Connell...

...The newspapers have been full of other cases, some of them exceedingly striking, others of very slight consequence, most of them, of course, unverified...

...When the father told the nurse that the handkerchief had been dipped in the water at the shrine, however, she allowed him to proceed...

...As to the supposed cures, you can see for yourself the signed statements of several doctors which have been left at this office, in which they testify to the sudden and remarkable cures or improvement of their own patients...

...The boy uttered a sharp cry and soon was moving his leg freely at the knee joint, which, his relatives said, had been immovable for years...

...Have pity on this little boy...

...While I was standing by the grave talking with a group of newspaper reporters, several of whom had been in the cemetery day after day since the beginning of the rush of pilgrims, a boy whose leg was perfectly stiff was lowered to the earth by the side of the grave by his relatives...

...But God is infinite...

...Not that the people have been at all disorderly or unmanageable...

...But of course I cannot comply with their requests," said Mr...

...O'Connell, "We cannot possibly accept responsibility, or even appear to give anything resembling authoritative endorsement to what is going on...

...I only know that for years there has been a certain amount of talk, in restricted quarters, concerning Father Power's grave...

...Edwin Place in charge of the South Department of the hospital, has admitted that the rapid change in the boy's condition and the utter disappearance of the tube from the throat has baffled physicians who have examined him...

...The ecclesiastical authority in Boston has now put a stop to the demonstrations at Maiden...

...among the flowers were many coins, rosaries, religious medals, pictures, statuettes and other articles deposited as offerings...

...The cemetery will hereafter not be open for pilgrimages...

...Many were brought in invalid chairs or on stretchers, or were carried in the arms of relatives or friends...

...One contains a complete course of natural philosophy, physics, astronomy and chemistry, in French, illustrated by pen drawings by the young student...

...I went first to the office of the superintendent, Mr...

...Was there no occult law or force of nature that could bring about this event ? We here suppose the historical truth to have been proven, and we seek the further truth as to whether it transcended the forces of nature...

...Monotonously, almost producing the effect of a ritual chant, the policemen and firemen at the graveside called out: "Please don't kneel...

...One, reported in the Boston American (and presumably in other papers) was that of a six-year-old boy, a patient at City Hospital-William Graul of East Eighth Street, South Boston...

...the young priest who had been a holy man in his brief life on earth, and now, they believed, was a saint forever in eternal life...

...Here the veil was lifted that ordinarily hides the cruel facts of life...

...It is known, however, that he studied for the priesthood in Laval University in Quebec and in Saint Joseph's Seminary, Troy, New York, and that in the last year of his life he studied for a short time at Lou-vain, Belgium...

...Dear God in heaven...

...I then went with Mr...

...Touch the stone and go to the chapel to pray...

...At least, their faith and devotion are most wonderful...

...But the law itself is not necessarily changed...

...Rabbette, who had the cooperation of Reverend Michael Earls, S.J., of Holy Cross College, in Worcester, in preparing his material...

...The people went into the chapel by one door and emerged by another, after having passed before the altar and stopped for a moment to genuflect, or to say a brief prayer, or to light one of the innumerable candles flickering in the metal stands...

...But that faith in the supernatural has welled forth from under the surface of our materialistic society in one of the most extraordinary demonstrations of modern times, cannot be questioned...

...My own visit was on Saturday, November 16...

...The purpose of a miracle is to manifest something to man...

...Edmund J. Power, his nephew and godchild, has in his possession two large manuscript volumes described by Mr...

...The mother and father proceeded directly from the cemetery to the hospital...

...We could not deny entrance to the poor people who are really sick or crippled, and who believe that they may be cured or aided by praying at Father Power's grave, but must do our best to help them...

...We have been very much alarmed, fearful of disorder, or that some serious accident or panic might develop...

...Hence it is possible to have effects which far exceed in perfection those found in nature...

...A search of the hospital and numerous X-rays taken of the boy's throat and stomach have failed to reveal the tube...

...Nowhere outside of a hospital for cripples or for cancer or tubercular patients could so many such pitiable human beings be seen gathered together as in Maiden during the height of the pilgrimage...

...The known facts concerning Father Power are very few...

...The child was brought to the hospital on Wednesday, November 6, apparently in a dying condition...

...You can see for yourself how the thing developed and to what a point it has grown...

...Please don't kneel, keep moving...

...In the centre of a small group of excited people, praying or exclaiming, the boy was taken away, walking, though slowly and painfully, to the chapel...

...that is, whether this work or fact was above the order of all created sensible nature...

...A thorough search of the ward followed, but no trace of the tube was found...

...These works are possible because God is omnipotent...

...The letter-writers in nearly all cases beg for something in the shape of a relic...

...I heard a woman cry (I marked her words) as she knelt by a child whose wasted legs were held in iron braces...

...The boy's parents went to the cemetery...

...This case was one of ten or twelve reported by the Boston papers as occurring that day...

...For example, He can create immediately new cells in a decayed arm...

...That is, the historical truth of the miracle-whether the event said to be miraculous really took place...

...I know no more than you do," he replied, "and am no more competent than you to render an opinion...

...especially his supernatural good...

...it is written in Latin...

...It was a tombstone of a curious design, standing several feet from the ground, lying flat on six carved pillars of stone...

...It is a striking and very interesting fact that one of these books contains "a thesis on the possibility of miracles," being a summary of the scholastic philosophy as handed down from Saint Thomas Aquinas and other great doctors of the Church...

...Whether or not the Catholic Church will in the course of time publicly approve of the veneration of Father Power, is a most debatable question...

...In order that a miracle be known with certainty, a threefold truth should be known...

...Invisible yet more powerfully real than anything on earth, spiritual force might be reached and moved by prayer, through an intercessor in that spiritual realm...

...Thus God performs a miracle either to show His goodness toward some individual or to make manifest the sanctity of one of His saints or to prove the divine mission of one of His messengers...

...As those who passed the grave emerged at the further end of the barrier, for the most part they joined a third queue moving toward the cemetery chapel, which stands about a hundred yards from the grave...

...And this is the definition of a miracle as given by Father Power, translated out of the Latin and quoted by Mr...

...But what is your own opinion, Mr...

...THE GRAVE AT MALDEN By MICHAEL WILLIAMS TWO strong barriers of wooden rails had been built some ten feet apart on either side of the grave, each fence extending fifteen or twenty feet...

...Elsewhere in the same article it is stated that Although the tube is gone, he [William Graul] is breathing normally without it...

...At all events it is known that he was ordained by Archbishop Williams in Boston in 1867, on September 7, the eve of the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary...

...That is, whether this sensible work which, as we suppose, has been proven to be a historical fact and to have surpassed the order of all created sensible nature, was really done by God, or that some creature at the command of God is at least the moral cause of it...

...Briefly, the purpose of a miracle is some good in the moral order...

...Edmund J. Power, a nephew of Father Patrick Power, who remembers that Father Power lived with relatives in Cambridge, and later in Brook-line...

...At the upper end, a chalice engraved in the stone formed a receptacle for rain water...

...The nurse jumped at the sound of the voice and sped to Billy's side to see what had happened to the tube...

...This was before the tombstone which originally stood on the grave had been removed by the cemetery authorities, as it was being injured and probably would have been broken into pieces by the crowd...

...water which has been touched to the grave, or earth from it...

...His throat was so contracted after a coughing spell that he was unable to breathe...

...In view of the occurrences at Maiden Cemetery, this particular definition of the miraculous by Father Power possesses unusual interest: A miracle is a sensible work performed by God and surpassing the order of all created sensible nature...

...It is estimated by the Boston newspapers, whose reporters for several weeks have been constantly present in Holy Cross Cemetery at Maiden, Massachusetts, where the grave of Father Patrick Power has become the centre of one of the most extraordinary popular manifestations of religious faith witnessed in modern times, that more than a million people have visited the cemetery since the movement began a few weeks ago...

...many of them had come from distant states...

...A thorough investigation of all the circumstances of the supposed miracles will be made...

...As Graul started to apply the handkerchief to his son's throat, a nurse saw him and ordered him to stop...

...The line was kept slowly, jerkily moving...

...Some time later, when his parents had left the hospital, little Billy amazed the nurse by addressing her in clear tones, the first time he had been able to do so since he entered the hospital...

...There is a story that he loved to walk in the rain bareheaded, and that these walks led to his contracting the cold that later developed into pulmonary trouble, and caused his death...

...Many of them occur at other places than in the cemetery...

...The mother stood in line for three hours before she was able to reach the tomb...

...The rector of that church was Father James Fitton, borne in honored memory in the annals of the Catholic Church in Massachusetts...

...Before the altar lay ia heap of crutches, body and leg braces, spectacles, and other articles left there by those claiming to have been cured...

...Such a way is that which appeals to the senses...

...They were given more time than the able-bodied pilgrims...

...A flat slab of stone covered the grave and was heaped high with flowers, some of them faded and withered, others fresh...

...It has required all the resources of our local police force, assisted by volunteers from the fire department and sometimes by policemen from nearby communities, in addition to our own cemetery staff, to handle the crowd...

...To be a true miracle there either should be no creative forces in the sensible world capable of effecting it, or if there are any such forces, they should not be used here and now to bring about the event that is called miraculous...

...His parents died when he was four years old, and he was brought to America by an elder brother, John Power...

...At the grave-side there would be occasional halts or interruptions of the endless line as paralytics or cripples or blind people, among whom were many little children, were brought to the grave...

...None of the others was quite so remarkable, but all of them were of a similar nature: cripples who believed, or at least who said that they believed, that they had either been cured or greatly improved...

...In the streets outside the cemetery automobiles were parked by the hundreds...

...The purpose of a miracle is the moral good of man...

...The blind, the deaf and dumb, paralytics and cripples, victims of accidents or of wasting organic diseases, the mentally afflicted as well-a pageant of deformity and disease, a masque of misery-defiled through this place of the dead...

...Each entrance was several hundred yards distant from the grave...

...Devout pilgrims to Father Power's grave had used this as people use holy water which has been blessed in Catholic churches, signing themselves with the cross with fingers dipped in the water, or taking it away for a similar use at home...

...At the hospital, the newspaper goes on to report: A hard rubber tube was inserted as his only means of life after a throat obstruction made it impossible for him to breathe...

...For them there was life beyond those graves...

...Third, the theological truth of the miracle...

...On the contrary, as I think you can see for yourself, the atmosphere of decorum and of devotion is highly remarkable, and the people accommodate themselves wonderfully to the disciplinary methods we have been obliged to adopt...

...Such cases by this time have probably run into hundreds...

...In addition to the people forming the various queues, there were many other hundreds of men and women and children standing about the cemetery in groups, or kneeling in prayer under the tall cross that commemorates the dead bishops of the Boston diocese, or at other monuments...

...were assisted to kneel, or, when totally helpless, were lowered to the ground for a few minutes, so as to touch the grave...

...A newspaper publication of a supposed miraculous cure at Father Power's grave started the whole thing a few weeks ago...

...A staff doctor was in the ward at the time, and believing that he might have taken the tube from the boy's throat, the nurse spoke to him about it...

...When a miracle is performed, the physical law is only suspended...

...It does not produce its effect...

...The two queues converged at one end of the lane formed by the wooden barriers, and then in single file passed by the grave...

...He died in Brookline on December 8, 1869, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth...

...O'Connell's assistant to the grave and to the chapel...

...while their friends applied earth scooped from the ground, or water which had previously touched the tombstone, to their bodies...

...Such works are possible because God, Who is omnipotent, can do alone and immediately that which He ordinarily does by means of secondary causes in a slow and gradual manner...

...It is not known definitely where he lived as a boy...

...That mother's appeal was the theme-note, so to speak, of the tremendous symphony of prayer which poured forth around Father Power's grave from thousands of souls...

...He was born in Bantry, County Cork, Ireland, on December 8, 1844, the son of Patrick and Mary Power...

...For them this place was not merely the depository of the worn-out bodies of the dead...

...All that we know here at the cemetery is that we have been flooded by a tide of humanity, and have our hands full trying to control and handle it properly...

...Leo Rabbette, in a remarkable article in the Boston Sunday Post, as beautifully written by Father Power himself, in pen and ink after the manner of the mediaeval monks, while he was a student at Laval University in Quebec...

...Graul got close enough to the tombstone to dip a handkerchief she had brought for the purpose into the water that had accumulated in the chalice from a recent shower...

...Moreover, when God decreed the law, He also decreed the exceptions He would make to the law...

...Policemen and firemen stood at intervals within the lane thus formed directing the movement of the pilgrims, whom they had marshaled into two long queues which stretched from the grave to points near the two entrances to the cemetery...