Easter in Europe - a Memorare Miracle!

Blog post written by Spring 08 Student, Emily Kovar.

Among the popular destinations for the Franciscan students this Easter, were Lourdes, Ireland, Lisieux, and of course Rome. As usual, we were encouraged to make our train reservations early (as holy week is the busiest travel time of the year for Europeans) but of course, many students procrastinated or like myself, made last minute changes to their travel plans.

I had made plans to travel to Lisieux and spend Easter in the hometown of my patron saint, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. All the arrangements were made, the train reserved, the hostel was taken care of… we were set. Then my plans changed. To my excitement, my parents were going to Rome for Easter and they invited me to come with them.

I found a group to travel to Rome with, but they still needed train reservations. You can imagine how hard it is to get reservations to Rome for Easter. The leader of the group assured me that he would make the reservations while I was away the weekend. I was nervous, this was the weekend before holy week. Could we really get train reservations this late?

My qualms were confirmed when I got back from my weekend travel to find that not only was he having a hard time getting reservations, he could not even get through on the phone to make the arrangements. In a very optimistic moment, I laid out a very positive plan. I told him that I was going to go to the chapel and say a Memorare, thanking Mary—in advance—for helping our travel arrangements to work out. I told him to go and call the OBB once again; assuring him that this time he would get through and make our train reservations.

The next time I saw him, he had a big smile on his face and asked, “Did you really go and say that prayer??!” He told me that everything had happened, just like we planned. When he got through on the phone, he not only made the travel arrangements for our group but for another group as well—for a total of 18 train reservations to Rome! We were amazed and knew we were in store for a very blessed Easter.