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Friar Herbert Thurston - The Physical Phenomenon of Mysticism

… it is, unfortunately, difficult to give those full details which are necessary if the reader is to appreciate the strength of the evidence of this case. I must content myself here with a summary statement, such, for example, as that which may be found in the recent English Life of the Blessed Mother Pelletier. We are told that in the Bourges convent during the exceptionally severe winter of 1845, the flour in the granary was running short.

There were 116 persons to feed; starvation stared them in the face. The Superior bethought herself of the Venerable Germaine Cousin .... Novenas were made in her honour. . . . Daily a portion of her Life was read, and medals in her honour were distributed, one being hung in the bake-house. The Sisters in charge of the bakery were in the habit of kneading twelve bushels of flour every five days, which made twenty large loaves. The Superior told them henceforth only to use eight bushels and Venerable Germaine was begged to make good the rest.

They did not obtain the desired result, the bread only lasted three days. Nor were the second and third attempts more successful.

Without losing faith, the Superior prayed to the little Saint "Make the quantity of flour suffice for twenty loaves. . . "

The miracle took place. The first batch, though made from only eight bushels, produced twenty large loaves weighing from twenty to twenty-two pounds each.

The second batch was even more marvellous; in kneading the dough it swelled to such an extent that it overflowed the trough in a few moments. The Sisters filled the oven with this, and then calculated they still had twenty pounds of paste left, without counting the yeast, and yet only four bushels of flour had been used. Five days later the same multiplication took place with two batches.

This was but the commencement of a series of favours received through Venerable Germaine. ln the convent granary was a supply of flour which at most would last, with care, for two months.

After a few weeks the Sisters remarked that although the quantity had lessened, the diminution was quite out of proportion to the amount used. "Wishing," as they said, "to surprise the little Saint red-handed in a miracle," at the beginning of February they began to measure the flour. Again at the end of a fortnight they did the same. The flour weighed exactly what it had done a fortnight before, in spite of two bakings, so without knowing it the Community had been drawing direct from the granaries of Divine Providence.

From November 1845 until February 1846 Ste. Germaine had practised every form of multiplication both of bread and flour.