Sublime

In October of 1717, Dom Pedro de Almeida passed through the town of Guaratinguetá on his way to Vila Rica, a gold-mining town. Since he was the governer of São Paulo and Minas Gerais at the time, the residents of Guaratinguetá decided to host a feast in his honor. They sent the men down to the nearby Paraíba river hoping to catch some fish to please Dom Pedro de Almeida. Unfortunately it was not fishing season and the men had little luck catching any fish. The fishermen were desperate and began to pray. They continued to cast their nets, but still no luck. They cast their nets one final time in desperation and to their bewilderment pulled something quite heavy to the surface. It was a statue of a body with a missing head! Alarmed, they cast the net once again and what did they catch? The statue's head! They cleaned the statue up to discover it was a black version of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Suddenly the statue's weight increased and it became so heavy that the men couldn't move it from it's resting place on the boat, so they wrapped it in cloth and tried their luck at fishing once again. Suddenly they began to catch fish. Not just one or two fish, hundreds of them! There were so many fish the boat almost sank. And this is how the first miracle of Our Lady of Aparecida happened.