CathInfo.com

It was only after posting this subject I found it had already been put up. that said, this is so special it deserves a second read.

Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

In our last newsletter, we recalled that the Catholics of the age of the Apostles and Church Fathers transformed a pagan world into a vibrant Catholic civilization primarily in three ways: Through their supernatural Faith, through their Supernatural Charity, and through the miracles God worked through them. It is no coincidence, then, that at almost the same time that our last newsletter appeared, we received word that Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB, the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, who died four years ago, was recently found to be incorrupt. According to a recent report by the Catholic News Agency:
Known for her devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass and her faithfulness to Benedictine contemplation and the Liturgy of the Hours, she died at age 95 on May 29, 2019, on the vigil of the solemnity of the Ascension.
Roughly four years later, on the solemnity of the Ascension in the Latin rite, the abbess and sisters decided to move her body to a final resting place inside their monastery chapel, a long-standing custom for founders and foundresses.

Expecting to find bones, the Benedictine Sisters instead unearthed a coffin with an apparently intact body, even though the body was not embalmed and the wooden coffin had a crack down the middle that let in moisture and dirt for an unknown length of time during those four years.

“We think she is the first African American woman to be found incorrupt,” the current abbess of the community, Mother Cecilia, OSB, told EWTN’s ACI Group on Saturday. As the head of the monastery, it was her role to examine what was in the coffin first.



Incorrupt Body of Sister Wilhelmina, the Foundress of the Benedictines of Mary
The body was covered in a layer of mold that had grown due to the high levels of condensation within the cracked coffin. Despite the dampness, little of her body and nothing of her habit disintegrated during the four years.
The shock was instant for the community who had gathered to exhume her.

“I thought I saw a completely full, intact foot and I said, ‘I didn’t just see that,’” the abbess said. “So I looked again more carefully.”

After she looked again, she screamed aloud, “I see her foot!” and the community, she said, “just cheered.”
“I mean there was just this sense that the Lord was doing this,” she said. “Right now we need hope. We need it. Our Lord knows that. And she was such a testament to hope. And faith. And trust.”

The Catholic Church has a long-standing tradition of so-called “incorruptible saints,” more than a hundred of whom have been beatified or canonized. The saints are called incorruptible because years after their death parts of or even the entirety of their bodies are immune to the natural process of decay. Even with modern embalming techniques, bodies are subject to natural processes of decomposition.

According to Catholic tradition, incorruptible saints give witness to the truth of the resurrection of the body and the life that is to come. The lack of decay is also seen as a sign of holiness: a life of grace lived so closely to Christ that sin with its corruption does not proceed in typical fashion but is miraculously held at bay.

I wouldn't have thought of the antibiotics and medication in general, but that very well could have some sort of effect.  (It might vary with the metabolism of every individual.)  Also, there are all the preservatives and other additives that are in food nowadays.  I have heard that bodies are not decaying the way they used to.  Heaven only knows what all this stuff is doing to us.  You need look no further than drastically decreasing testosterone levels in men.

These are all things that should be looked at, in determining whether incorruptibility is truly miraculous, or whether there could be some sort of natural reason, even if an unusual one.