Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception and therefore it is a Holiday of Obligation, according to the Catholic Church, as it was on this day that the doctrine that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ was formally adopted in 1854 during the reign of Pope Pius IX. Early Christians already knew in their hearts that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without any stain of original sin. But the split in Christianity with the Protestants brought many people to question so many Catholic doctrines and that included the Blessed Virgin Mary’s being born immaculate.
Prior to the year 1854 when Pope Pius IX made this into a Catholic dogma, there was an apparition by the Blessed Virgin Mary in a place called Rue da Bac in Paris, in the chapel of the Daughters of Charity, on July 18, 1830 and a second apparition on Nov.27, 1830 to a postulant named Catherine Laboure. She is now St. Catherine Laboure, whose incorrupt body lies today on the side altar of this chapel. I was blessed to visit this chapel last October with my wife and our media friends.
The first apparition was significant in the sense that amongst the many apparitions of our Blessed Mother, it was only with Catherine Laboure that the Mother of God was sitting on a chair and she asked Catherine to approach her and she knelt and put her face on her lap.
Catherine would later tell her confessor that Mama Mary was skin and bones and not a ghost. Perhaps she was given that special privilege because when her earthly mother died when she was still 9 years old, her servant saw Catherine embracing the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary saying, “Now that my mother is gone, you are now my mother.”
On the second apparition in Rue de Bac, the Blessed Virgin Mary showed St. Catherine a Medal with the words emblazoned “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” The back of the medal had two hearts, one was of our Lord Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns, while the other was that of Mama Mary, a heart pierced by a sword, as prophesied by Simeon. Yes, you can get these medals at the Asilo dela Milagrosa, as they will protect those devotees who wear this miraculous medal. St. Catherine Laboure told her confessor that this was a promise by the Blessed Mother.
That apparition motivated Vatican officials to start the process to declare the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of the Catholic Church, which happened in 1854. Four years after this dogma was formalized, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous in a small village named Lourdes near the Pyrenees Mountains. As she appeared in a grotto (there were 18 apparitions in Lourdes) she told Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
What puzzled Church officials in Rome about the apparition in Lourdes was a question they asked, “How could a young girl know about the Immaculate Conception in a place so far and distant from Rome at a time when the latest technology, the telegraph, was only ten years old and hasn’t reached that part of France?” Indeed, in the old days, letters or announcements from the Pope often reach far-flung areas after many years.
But for Pope Pius IX, Lourdes was the confirmation that he did the right thing by declaring the Immaculate Conception a dogma. Since then, Lourdes has become one amongst the may pilgrimage destinations next to the Vatican. Later on, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Fatima, Portugal in 1917 and in many more places all around the world. Here in the Philippines she appeared in Lipa, in Batangas and here in Cebu in Perrelos, Carcar, which now houses the Theotokos Center. These apparitions of our Lady is real proof that there is an afterlife and that the Blessed Virgin Mary was sent by God to remind all of us to constantly pray, most especially the Rosary.
If curious or investigative journalists scrutinized these apparitions, especially the apparition in Fatima before the three children, the message that Mama Mary revealed was a prophesy about the growth of Communism if Russia was not consecrated to her Immaculate Heart. While the Catholic Church declared the Fatima apparition as one of divine origin, the succeeding Popes did not heed her request to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart. Thus, a bigger war, World War II, erupted and after that war was over, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the many other wars waged in the name of Communism.
You can read the book by Antonio Socci entitled “The 4th Secret of Fatima” where this debate continues to rage. I too believe that if the Popes only heeded the request by our Immaculate Mother to consecrate Russia, there would be world peace today. When she appeared in Lourdes, her message was “Penance, penance, penance” and to pray without ceasing as the wrath of God is upon us because we have turned our backs from God.
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