There is another even more remarkable instance in which the Saint prevails with God to work a miracle, which He declares at the time to be hurtful to the person who is the subject of it. Catherine's mother, Lapa, was dying, but was most unwilling to die. Her daughter, therefore, prayed that her health might be restored to her, but was answered that it was better for Lapa that she should leave this life then. With this answer she returns to her mother, and endeavours to reconcile her to the necessity of then dying, but in vain. Thus the Saint became mediator between the Lord and her mother, supplicating the one not to take Lapa out of the world against her will, and exhorting the other to be resigned to the disposition of the Lord. But Catherine, who with her prayers, constrained, as it were, the Omnipotent, could not, by her exhortation, bend the weak mind of her mother. So the Lord said to his wife, "Tell your mother that if she will not leave the body now, the time will come when she shall greatly desire death, and not be able to find it." Lapa, however, could not make up her mind to die, nor would she confess in preparation for death; and, accordingly, died unshriven. Then her daughter cried to God, and said, "Oh, Lord God! are these then the promises you made me, that no one of this house should perish? * * * * * And now I see my mother dead without the sacraments of the church! By thy infinite mercy I pray thee, do not let me be defrauded in such a manner! Nor will I move hence for an instant as long as I live, until thou shalt render back my mother to life." So God, although he knew that it was bad for her mother, recalled her again to life; and she lived to be eighty-nine years old, surviving all her numerous children, tried by much adversity, and often longing for that death which she had before so unwisely rejected. [Sidenote: THE STIGMATA.]