| Reprinted with kind permission from
St. Joseph Publications
from the book She Went in Haste to the Mountain (Book 1) NOTE: All excerpts from Conchita's Diary will be in extra-bold type |
| Reprinted with kind permission from
St. Joseph Publications
from the book She Went in Haste to the Mountain (Book 1) NOTE: All excerpts from Conchita's Diary will be in extra-bold type |
We said the rosary looking at
her.
And she prayed with us in
order to teach us how to pray well.
The simple practice of the rosary, so underestimated today, has extraordinary and mysterious power to lead souls through Mary to God; it obtains from Him the mercies that the world needs. Imagine listening to the Virgin reciting the Our Father and Glory Be to the Father with the young girls. Then everything was a prayer of love, of praise, and of petition. But according to what Con-chita tells us, when she recited the Ave Maria with them, it was not only an exercise of prayer, but also an instruction. The four girls, like other children, and adults too for that matter, had the bad habit of praying in a hurry, with poor pronunciation, almost mechanically. She showed them that one should not talk to God like this. Afterwards when the girls had learned their lesson [During the apparitions one of the things that struck the visitors to Garabandal was the prayer of the girls in ecstasy. They prayed with great cadence in their voices, unhurriedly, with tremendous feeling. Hearing some of these prayers on a tape recorder was—of all the things that I first knew about Garabandal—the thing that most convinced me.] the celestial apparition accompanied them only in the recitation of the Gloria.
When we had finished the rosary,
she said that she was leaving.
And we told her to stay a
little while, since she had been there only a very short time.
And she laughed, and told
us she would return on Monday. Then when she left, it made us sad.
Nothing astonishing about that. In heaven time passes rapidly; while in the darkness of hell, the hours pass slowly in monotonous depression.
When she had gone, the people
came to embrace us and ask us what she had said.
Some of the people didn't
believe since we had talked so much.
How could the Virgin talk
and listen so much?
Always the habit of applying our feeble conceptions and poor judgment to everything, even to the things of God! To say that the children had talked too much! As if God and the Virgin were such haughty persons that one could only go to Them with great formality and protocol to deal strictly with serious matters and important business [From the beginning, one of the strong reasons that certain intellectuals advanced against the supernatural nature of the events of Garabandal was namely this: the quantity and the purility of the conversations that the visionaries held with their invisible interlocutors. Although this may be a very wise point, how can anyone show that the matters of children are of less worth and importance in the eyes of God than the affairs of adults?]
For My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways My ways. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts. (Is. 55: 8-9)
At that tine Jesus answered and said: I praise You, Oh Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things (the Queen's mysteries) from the wise and the prudent and have revealed then to little ones. (Matt. 11:25).
But the majority did believe,
because they said it was like the case of a mother who hadn't seen her
daughter for a long time, who tells her everything.
And how much more we who have
never seen her.
Besides, she is our mother
in heaven.
They took us to the sacristy
and a priest named Father Francisco Odriozola [This priest
resides in the city of Santander; sometime later he was named canon of
the cathedral. He was to become one of those most involved in the investigation
of Garabandal, and his name will always be connected to the history
of these amazing events.] questioned us one after the other.
And afterwards he told the
people what we said to him.
That is how the Sunday of
July 2nd ended.
A very happy day, because
we saw the Virgin for the first time.
For we are all always with
her, whenever we want to be.
There could not be a better conclusion for a main chapter of the new Visitation of Mary.
She is always with us.
And we can be with her, whenever we want to be.
By faith and love, by devotion and imitation. Nothing is more important than that, more important even than the apparitions themselves, which would serve no point if they did not lead us to that end.
Blessed are you who have believed, was said to Mary at the time of the Visitation. (Luke 1:45) We, her children, do her little service if we do not strive to acquire before all other virtues, the first one of faith.
PHOTO: "We are all always with her."
July 2nd, 1961... The Lord's day . . . Sunday. Day of a new Visitation by the Virgin. With the passing of time, it will come about that the Catholic liturgy will repeat in commemoration of July 2nd at Garabandal that which it says each year February 11th in celebrating Lourdes:
Today the glorious Queen of Heaven appeared on the earth. Today she brought to her people words of salvation and tokens of peace.
