Select
Page

The apparitions of

GARABANDAL

BY
F. SANCHEZ-VENTURA Y PASCUAL

Chapter Nine

THE MESSAGE

Page 122

girl took me aside and said: "Father, we've been with the Virgin and we cried awfully, because the Virgin told us that when you went up to the pines you were very happy, but when you came down you were very sad and full of doubts. She told Conchita everything you were thinking and the reasons why you doubted. And she told us to tell you this at once, so you'll cheer up and be at ease, because it really is the Virgin who appears to us."

   I went round to Conchita's house. Her only greeting on seeing me enter was: "Are you still sad?" She then proceeded to give me a concise yet exact resume of all my inner thought processes and the reasons for my discouragement. "She told me lots of things about you, and charged me not to tell you for the time being," she added. "Was Our Lady sad? I asked. And she responded: "No, she was smiling."

   The general disappointment was hardly surprising in the light of a message that clearly told us nothing new, a message, what is more, that was made known at a late hour on a day that ended in an impressive display of lightning, rolling thunder, rain, hail, pitch darkness and cold.

   Nevertheless, overlooking the literary efforts of these children, who barely knew how to write, the meaning of the message is truly in keeping with what the world needs today. It speaks of a punishment which has been announced for a long time. And, to avert this, it demands repentance, sacrifices and penance. The message also mentions devotion to the Blessed Sacrament as a means of reparation, and employs an expression whose meaning was unknown to the children, but which happens to be a piece of Marian terminology, used by the Blessed Virgin on another occasion: "The cup is already filling up . . ."

   At Fatima, in their early apparitions, the visionaries likewise saw a large cup in the shape of a chalice into which were falling drops

Mystical Communion. The Host is invisible.

Select
Page