Cervantes: Apparitions in Garabandal

IT MAKES me wonder why only a few priests talk about Church-approved apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, such as Fatima in 1917. I’ve always thought that instead of cracking jokes for entertainment during their homilies, priests would rouse greater interest of churchgoers and make a deeper spiritual impression if they talked about Marian apparitions more. I wouldn’t mind, though, if they also dwell on other apparitions still awaiting Church verdict but had been confirmed as true by the most credible mystics such as Padre Pio and Mother Teresa of Calcutta during their earthly sojourn.

I have a Catholic church-goer friend (already in his 60’s and has been practicing journalism for decades now) who once asked me how come there were many Blessed Virgin Mary’s. I initially thought he was joking until I saw he was really serious and sincerely looked perplexed. Seeing my reaction, he enumerated Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, and Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. I ventured an explanation that elicited a facial response that sounded like Eureka in my mind, then he walked away satisfied.

People are attracted to the sensational and apparitions are sensational. Not that matters of religion ought to be made sensational all the time, but when the Blessed Mother made the sun dance and spin before a crowd of 70,000 in Fatima, wasn’t she also being sensational in her bid to court more believers in her messages from there?

Every now and then is the need to electrify sleeping or wayward souls in danger of fatal electrocution.

In recent years, I have devoted my writings to Marian messages from Garabandal, Spain which I came to discover in a volume I dug up from a pile of books on sale at Alemar’s bookstore in San Fernando, Pampanga. It might have been providential as the book, by its drab appearance, could not have attracted any other book reader. But it attracted my attention and, after having browsed through some pages to find out it was about the Blessed Mother’s recent apparition, I bought it. And wrote and wrote about the Garabandal apparitions.

Since then, my collection of materials has covered several other supernatural apparitions and other phenomena. Yes, also materials on the diabolical such as those written by official Catholic exorcists.

So appropriately in this space, the Garabandal apparitions that started my writing affair with the supernatural. The events there, in my view, are one of the most spectacular in the history of the Church: the Blessed Mother appearing in various places in the village, the visionaries walking on air and assuming positions defying gravity, speeding over rough rocks outside the clock of reason, lifting each other with their fingers so as to kiss the Blessed Mother, etc.

The credibility of Garabandal I gathered from St. Padre Pio himself (he was still alive on earth during the apparitions that started in June, 1961) who told one Joey Lomangino, a blind businessman.

Joey asked the Padre: “Father is it true that the Virgin Mary is appearing to four girls in Spain?” Padre Pio replied: “Yes.” Joey further asked: “Father, should we go to Garabandal?” And the Padre again replied: “Yes.”

Also, when Conchita Gonzalez, one of the four visionaries of Garabandal, visited the Vatican, then Pope Paul VI (now a saint) told her: “Conchita, I bless you and with me, the whole Church will bless you.”

From Garabandal, I gathered three conditional prophecies from the Blessed Mother, the first two of which I deeply believe, will happen in our times (If I, as a senior, am granted longer life): the Warning, the Miracle and the Chastisement.

I was to find out later that the same prophecies had already been revealed even a hundred years ago, and also in other modern-day Marian and other supernatural phenomena, thus bolstering their credence.

In the next column, I dwell on some details of the Garabandal apparitions and then, later, on the three prophecies. This early, I ask pious readers to spread the messages of the Blessed Mother of Garabandal.

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