Martin's Miracle

On the mountainside of Mount Sainte-Odile in Alsace, France, I stopped to catch my breath. My three kids and I had planned to meet here—but they were nowhere in sight. I guess they’d changed their minds and decided to stay back at the abbey. Oh well, I thought. Perhaps expecting teens to be excited about a religious relic was a little ambitious.

- Jen Fitz

It was our last full day in France, and I’d wanted to share this special place with them. I’d learned about Odile, the patron saint of good eyesight and Alsace, when studying abroad in nearby Strasbourg as a teenager. The people who lived there loved telling me the story of how Odile had come across a blind beggar in the wilderness, on this very spot. Tapping a rock, she made water gush forth that restored the beggar’s eyesight.

“You can see the actual spring!” I’d told my kids on the way over. But I could gather now that they hadn’t been as invested as I was in visiting it.

I stepped into the clearing where the spring was. A sense of calm washed over me.