12/12/2018 Spanning continents and centuries, Our Lady’s message is clear. (Part 1)
Jeanette Flood
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/12/12/spanning-continents-and-centuries-our-ladys-message-is-clear/? https://www.catholicworldreport.com/author/flood-jeanette/ At various times and places, the Blessed Mother has communicated to her children on Earth the need for repentance and trust in God’s mercy.
In the last several days, the Church has celebrated both the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12).
This makes it particularly fitting to consider the times God has sent the Queen of Heaven to Earth to warn, guide, and help us.
True, not every alleged Marian apparition is authentic; in fact, most are not.
The Catholic Church upholds stringent norms in investigating of such matters, and only a small percentage of the hundreds of claimed Marian apparition gain Church approval.
(See my 2017 Fatima centenary article in Catholic World Report.)
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/10/06/fatima-spectacular-signs-for-a-skeptical-age/ There are varying degrees of Church approval of apparations; they are:
Partial: allowance for the devotion (e.g., prayers, medals, Masses at the site) after determining that the purported messages are not contrary to the faith;
Full: usually when the local bishop officially declares the apparition “worthy of belief”; and
Extraordinary: the Holy See is not usually involved, but rarely, various forms of Vatican recognition are also given.
However, the faithful are not obliged to believe fully- or even Vatican-approved apparitions, since they are “private revelations,” rather than Church doctrines—the latter being based on the public revelation of Jesus Christ passed on by the Apostles.
While approved visits from the Mother of God differ from each other, they also have certain commonalities, particularly the fact that they always directs mankind to God:
Mary implores us to honor the Father and imitate her Son by relying on the Holy Spirit.
Appearances particularly relevant to our day
There are several private Marian revelations with partial or full ecclesiastical approval that speak amazingly to our times.
First a brief chronological overview of these apparitions and their credibility, with links to more information.
Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531)
One of the most powerful and convincing of all Marian apparitions is that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, when the Blessed Mother appeared to Juan Diego, one of the few Aztec Catholic converts in newly conquered Mexico.
She requested a chapel to be built; to convince the bishop that the apparition was authentic, she asked Juan Diego to cut roses that were miraculously growing at the site, in a season and place where they never grew.
She arranged the gathered roses in his tilma—an Aztec-style cloak with swaths of cloth front and back. When he unfurled the tilma to display the roses, a bigger miracle was revealed—the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared on the tilma.
Though a tilma, being made of cactus fibers, usually lasted about 20 years before crumbling, Juan Diego’s tilma is still extant today, though it has been almost perpetually on display, often in the presence of lit candles, for 500 years.
Scientists cannot explain the origin of the image—which consists of no-known pigments, has no sketch underneath or any brushstrokes. Moreover, more recent technology has revealed curved reflections of figures (thought to be Juan Diego and the bishop) in the Lady’s eyes, exactly as they would appear in real human eyes beholding other people.
The arrangement of stars on her cloak matches the pattern of stars of that date in that place, seen from above (see MiracleHunter’s timeline of Guadalupe).
www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/guadalupe/index.html The apparition has received multiple forms of Vatican and papal recognition, one of only 15 Marian apparitions to receive any Vatican acknowledgment.
www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/vatican.html The Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.
Our Lady of Good Success, Quito, Ecuador (1594-1634):
Mary appeared under this title to an Ecuadoran nun, Mother Mariana, granting numerous miracles and giving many predictions for Ecuador and the world, not only for Mother Mariana’s day but even for later centuries.
Many have already been fulfilled.
The bishop at the time gave his approval and established a feast in honor of Our Lady of Good Success.
When Mother Mariana’s tomb was opened, three centuries after her death, her body and habit were incorrupt.
Our Lady of America (1956-1957):
The apparitions of Our Lady of America have received partial approval. Sister Mary Ephrem (later Mildred Mary Neuzil) reported to her spiritual director, then-Monsignor Paul Francis Leibold, that Mary appeared to her under this title with messages and warnings for the US.
After carefully reviewing Leibold’s letters and actions, Cardinal Raymond Burke determined they clearly demonstrate Leibold’s belief in these events as authentic and that he promoted and approved the devotion to Our Lady of America.
The messages were not found to be contrary to the Catholic faith and were given Leibold’s imprimatur in booklets published in 1960 and 1971.
Leibold became archbishop of Cincinnati, but it was not under his jurisdiction to approve the messages and apparitions.
They are currently under investigation. Thomas Paprocki, bishop of Springfield, Illinois, is the procurator-advocate for the bishops of the dioceses related to the reported apparitions and messages of Our Lady of America;
He himself seems open and favorable to them; he led a public prayer to Our Lady of America in 2017 and encourages others to ask for her intercession.
https://www.ourladyofamerica.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Catholic-Time-Cover-story-on-OLOA-to-end-abortion.pdf Our Lady of Akita (1973):
The apparitions of Our Lady of Akita, in Japan, were approved by the local ordinary, Bishop Ito, in 1984 (although there have been some misleading statements and resulting confusion on this topic; see note below for details).[1]
miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/statements/akita_statement_01.html
The visionary, Sister Agnes Sasagawa, experienced a bleeding wound in her right hand, and a statue of Mary at the convent was discovered to have the same wound, also bleeding.
Later the statue was seen to sweat, and to cry 101 times (witnessed also by the bishop).
The blood, tears, and sweat were tested by a non-Christian scientist and determined to be human.
Sister Agnes was eventually healed of her incurable deafness, as she said Mary prophesied; a woman with a brain tumor was also healed after praying to Our Lady of Akita.
There has been a misunderstanding of the Vatican’s role in this case.
Early on, Bishop Ito consulted the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which initially did not deem the apparitions to be supernatural;
Bishop Ito realized, however, that they did not have all the facts, and so he personally presented them.
He also ran his pastoral letter on the subject by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who said it was acceptable to propagate.
Some misunderstood and called this Vatican approval, so the CDF was obliged to state that it has never made any declarations (either way) on the authenticity of the Akita apparitions.
Ito left the dossier on the events at Akita with the Vatican, which has thus far neither formally approved nor disapproved the apparitions at Akita.
But no Vatican approval is necessary, because it is up to the local bishop. (The Vatican could weigh in someday, but otherwise the approval stands.)
While the Bishops’ Conference of Japan has been dismissive of the Akita apparitions, it is not in the jurisdiction of an episcopal conference to weigh in on the authenticity of an apparition, unless requested or permitted to do so by the local bishop (See Vatican norms on apparitions.)
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19780225_norme-apparizioni_en.html In addition, Bishop Sato, the successor of Bishop Ito, issued a statement (reproduced in this article, scroll to the end), saying that he would neither encourage nor forbid devotion to Our Lady of Akita and affirming Bishop Ito’s authorization to be “still valid.”
https://www.spiritdaily.org/Cool_to_Akita.htm Our Lady of Kibeho, Rwanda (1981-1989):
In the 1980s, several young people claimed to have seen and heard either Mary or Jesus.
The first three visionaries, Alphonsine, Nathalie, and Marie Claire, all described prophetic visions of the horrific genocide in Rwanda that would occur in 1994;
Marie Claire would be one of its victims.
From early on, there were healings, conversions, and solar phenomena reminiscent of Fatima during the Kibeho apparitions.
The Marian apparitions and messages received by these first three visionaries were recognized as authentic by the local bishop in 2001.
(End Part 1)