Cures Worked by Martin

Martin also had the gift of healing in such abundance that hardly any sick person came to him for help without being restored to health at once. The following example will show this clearly. At Trier there was a girl so completely struck down by a terrible paralysis that for a long time she had been wholly unable to use her body for anything. She was already dead, as it were; only the faintest breath of life seemed to remain in her. Her grieving relatives stood around her, expecting nothing but her death, when news suddenly came that Martin had arrived in the city. When the girl’s father learned that this was so, he ran to plead for his all but lifeless child. [a]

Martin had by then already gone into the church. There, while the people looked on and in the presence of many other bishops, the old man cried out in grief, clasped the saint’s knees, and said: “My daughter is dying of a wretched kind of illness. And what is more dreadful than death itself, she is alive now only in her spirit, for her flesh is already dead before its time. I beg you to go to her and give her your blessing, for I believe that through you she will be restored to health.” Martin was troubled by these words. Bewildered, he drew back, saying that this was not in his own hands, that the old man was mistaken in what he believed, and that he was not worthy to be the one through whom the Lord would display his power. The father, in tears, kept pressing his case still more earnestly and begged Martin to visit the dying girl. At last, compelled by the bishops standing by to go as he was asked, Martin went down to the girl’s home.

A huge crowd was waiting at the doors to see what the servant of the Lord would do. First he turned to his usual weapons in matters of that kind: he threw himself down on the ground and prayed. Then, looking intently at the sick girl, he asked for oil to be given to him. When he had received it and blessed it, he poured the powerful holy liquid into the girl’s mouth, and at once her voice came back to her. Then, little by little, through his touch, her limbs began one by one to come back to life, until at last, in front of the people, she rose up and stood on firm feet.