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The apparitions of

GARABANDAL

BY
F. SANCHEZ-VENTURA Y PASCUAL

Chapter Eight

OTHER TESTIMONIES

Page 104

   "I spent Holy Week among these people. I lent an ear to villagers and visitors alike; I chatted with the children before and after their visions. Since, professionally speaking, I can find no explanation for what I saw, I feel bound to believe in a prodigy.

   " 'Did you see the Blessed Virgin,' people ask me.

   " 'No, I didn't,' I confess, 'but I did feel her presence in my heart and soul.'

   "Doctor, I find you most skeptical," remarked a Jesuit Father who accompanied me.

   "No, Father. It's not that," I responded. "I'm utterly disconcerted. My dearest wish would be to feel just as the children and everybody else feel about it. But, you know far better than I do that faith is a gift that God doesn't give us all in the same measure."

   "A few hours later, I found myself watching the second apparition at close quarters. It was before dawn on Holy Saturday. The rain was pouring down, and the whole village looked like a rock-strewn mud-pie. Armed with torches, we followed one of the visionaries at a great pace as she went round the village streets in ecstasy. Clasped between her hands was a crucifix. Her head was thrown back, her smiling eyes staring up at the heavens . . . From time to time, she would drop to her knees, pray and kiss the Cross. Half the locals and all the strangers, even visiting children, followed her, open-mouthed in wonder. Only shortly beforehand, in her humble peasant kitchen—where she had spoken to us rather drowsily, for it was 4 a.m.—we had seen her suddenly fall into an.ecstatic trance, falling to her knees without burning herself on the searing stones of the blazing hearth. As though uplifted by angels' wings, she rose to her feet and commenced her tour of the village. Stumbling in the pitch blackness of the night, spattering one another with mud up to our eyebrows, we pursued her, never pausing for breath.

   "Fervently, I begged God to grant me the grace of faith.

   "In the little visionary's wake, we plunged down practically every lane and alley in the hamlet; we visited the church porch, the cemetery, and the mountainside where the Virgin Mary had appeared for the first time.

   "The unevenness of the ground underfoot, the darkness and my city-dweller's innate clumsiness caused me to trip up on every stone that lay in my path. Bit by bit, I was left behind. I could go no farther and decided to await the return of the others. My wife could not bear to stop, despite the fact that she was already panting for breath. On she went, drawing courage from my own incredulity.

   "All of a sudden, before she reached the brow, the ecstatic child halted in her tracks and started to run downhill backwards, scarcely

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