Wall Street Miracle

As a multinational conglomerate went live for the first time on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, corporate executives talked about profits, percentages, and dividends, but also about the intercessory power of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That's because a manager at this corporation, Connie Bocchieri, had a chance encounter with a novena booklet to Mary, Undoer of Knots. This led to a frantically placed prayer and a miracle that taught corporate professionals on Wall Street the value of prayer.

The book cover that drew Connie's attention depicts the Blessed Virgin Mary wrapped in a blue mantle, halo glowing as she undoes several tight-laced knots on a long white rope. Mary, Undoer of Knots, encourages us to entrust our problems, our knots, to her. Flipping through the book, Connie realized the original 18th century painting was located in Augsburg, Germany, near where she would travel soon for business. She went to see it for herself, intrigued by the simplicity of the message.

But Mary, Undoer of Knots, faded in her memory as she returned to her corporate career in the United States. Connie's multi-national company was merging with another large corporation. She managed a department that had to make sure 170,000 employee profiles would upload to their website the first day they would go public on the New York Stock Exchange. Each employee needed an online profile to book their travel to meet their client's needs.

Having worked hard to complete the necessary preparation, Connie's team began uploading the thousands of profiles on a Wednesday. They needed them completed by the following Monday. "It was the fastest integration ever done of two major corporations," she said.

On Friday at 3 p.m., technicians notified Connie that they had a problem. After three days, they had completed only 30,000 of the 170,000 uploads. At this rate, they would not be ready for day one on Monday.

Technicians hoped that as server traffic diminished Friday evening, the profiles would upload faster. But by Saturday morning, only 11 more had loaded. "Here we were, down to the wire, and we might not make it," Connie said. She called in the best software engineers who worked on the problem throughout the day, but to no avail.

As the clock ticked into Saturday night, less than 48 hours to launch, Connie turned to a backup plan - she prayed. She said, "I told my coworker, Marina, that we have to surrender it to God. As I said that, I thought, 'Mary, Undoer of Knots!'"
She found an image of Mary, Undoer of Knots, and texted it to the account manager at the travel agency, Ann Marie, who was on the phone with the technicians. That very second, as soon as Ann Marie received the picture, she heard a technician say, "Oh, my God, it's a miracle - 35,000 profiles just uploaded!" Within 30 minutes, all 170,000 profiles were online.
The head technician called Connie saying, "We didn't do anything. We don't know how this got fixed."

Connie's CFO, a Christian, received word of the good news as he traveled to the New York Stock Exchange. He told Connie, "Praise God for answered prayers. This was the Blessed Mother interceding for you, not wanting you to fail."

The next morning, as the company's new acronym flashed on the black board above the trading floor, Connie's CFO asked the other executives, "Did you hear about Connie's miracle?" In the center of corporate America, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, corporate executives discussed Our Lady's intercessory power.

At Connie's corporate office, her coworkers continue to ask, "Have you heard about Connie's day one miracle?"

You might also like...

The world may think that Christmas ended at midnight on Christmas Day, but the Church knows better. We celebrate an eight-day Christmas Octave, stretching from Dec. 25 to Jan. 1, with a number of special feast days, including three feasts of martyrs:

On Oct. 28, the Church celebrates the Feast Day of Sts. Simon and Jude, apostles of the Lord who zealously preached to the nations. Father Dan Cambra, MIC, tells their story.

Eight missionaries, sent to proclaim the Gospel to the Huron people in North America, suffered terrible martyrdom at the hands of the Iroquois. We celebrate them on Oct. 19. Here, in brief, is the story of St. John de Brebeuf, St. Isaac Jogues, and their companions.