No One Could Be Like You
[Verse from a hymn to the Virgin of the Piedras Albas area, a parish of
Cabezuela in the valley of Jerte, province of Caceres.]
| 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
|
Some lines from Conchita's diary aid us in forming
an idea of her appearance:
The Virgin comes in a
white cloak, a blue mantel, a crown of little golden stars.
The feet are not seen; the
hands are open and there is a scapular on the right one: the scapular is
brown. [Rather than being like the small scapulars
currently worn, the scapular held by the Virgin resembled the maniple
that the priest formerly carried on his arm during the
celebration of the Mass. I say formerly because presently the
maniple has been discarded in the new liturgy. The girls saw that a
mountain was painted on one side of the scapular. At the time they did
not understand the reason, but they would learn later. In Spain, an
expression used is Virgin del Carmen which is an abbreviation
for Our Lady of Mount Carmel, one of the most ancient titles
in Catholic Marian devotion and one which ties Mary closely to her
native land, the land of Our Saviour, and to the mysterious destinies
of its people.
It should be
added that Mount Carmel, historically the site of awesome works of God,
has been for many centuries—at least since St. John of the Cross—the
symbol in the Church of the height of perfection to which every really
Christian soul is called. The ascent cannot be easy, being the
great enterprise of life; but what is found on the summit is worth the
effort: All that rests on that mount is the honor and the glory of
God.
It appears
very significant and of tremendous meaning, that the Virgin has desired
to appear at Garabandal as Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
The fact that
the girls could not conceive of a Virgin of Carmel clothed in white and
blue corroborates the authenticity of their vision. The statue that
they saw at the church, and the various religious pictures that they
had seen presented the Virgin of Carmel robed completely different. If
they described her as they have in spite of what they were accustomed
to see, it is because that was the way they saw her.
And now comes
the best thing. On July 16th, 1251, in the first apparition of the
Virgin of Mount Carmel to St. Simon Stock, General of the Carmelites,
she was dressed with a white tunic and a blue cloak, as at Garabandal!]
Her hair is long, a dark
chestnut brown color, wavy, parted in the middle;
The face somewhat
elongated;
The nose also somewhat
long, and fine;
The mouth, very beautiful
with lips a little full;
The color of her face tan,
much lighter than that of the angel, different.
The voice, very beautiful,
a voice very unusual.
I don't know how to
explain it.
There is no other woman
who resembles the Virgin, either in the voice, or in anything.
Sometimes she carries the
Baby in her arms.
He is very small, like a
newborn baby, with a round face the same color as the Virgin's.
He has a very small mouth,
and hair slightly long.
He is dressed in something
like a blue tunic.
Taking into account the poor
expression of a young girl from a very secluded village, the resulting
description is astonishing. The vision must have been really marvelous
for her to be able to expand so much in trying to describe it. With all
this, it can be understood that human language is not made for
realities that are so much above our experiences and happenings here
below.
I don't know how to explain
it. There is no other woman who resembles the Virgin, either in the
voice, or in anything.
"Sometimes she carries the Baby in her
arms."
You have your reasons, child.
Everything has to be explained in language proper to it. The words of
this earth cannot adequately explain the things of heaven. Because of
this, one is forced by necessity to have recourse to clumsy negatives.
After her visions in the grotto
at Lourdes, people asked Bernadette, Your Lady of the Grotto, is she
like Fulanita or Menganita ? Bernadette was not able to contain
herself, and answered with unusual force-fulness. Please, there is
no comparison possible.
Later the great sculptor Fabish
finished his statue of the apparition in Carraran marble, and hoped to
get from Bernadette an enthusiastic remark like the exclamation, That'sher!He
was only able to obtain this kind concession, Your statue is very
beautiful, Mr. Sculptor, but it's not she. No. There is as much
difference between this and what I saw as there is between heaven and
earth.
The children of Garabandal, as
at Lourdes, could talk about the appearance of her hair, the color of
her clothes, the position of her hands; but they could never describe
to us the complete grace of her person, the charm of her
smile, the radiation of light in her appearance, the celestial melody
in her voice, the splendor of her goodness, her loveliness, her purity,
her love, all those things that make her seem divinely transfigured. A
singular creature in whom nature and grace have united to give the
absolute maximum, making her an unsurpassable miracle of perfection!
No wonder that she is
considered the figure of Paradise, and that the hours with her appeared
to the visionaries as fleeting minutes, and that the place where the apparitions occurred most frequently would be
called a little bit of heaven.
"A normal eye with eyelashes ... a rainfall of stars. The
four of us saw it."
This has been told to me about
Loli. Sometime after the things we are relating, she was taken by
friends to look out for the first time at the sea near Comillas [They brought her there to see Father Lucio Rodrigo, a Jesuit
whom we will discuss later on; he was professor of moral theology at
the famous pontifical university of that coastal village, relatively
near to Garabandal.] That magnificent panorama ought to have
impressed her. Someone must have said to her, What do you think?
Isn't this marvelous?
I see that it is, answered
the girl. But after having seen the Virgin!
In order to better picture the
meeting of the children of Garabandal with the Queen and Mother of
Heaven, I would like to place here what Conchita said a long time later
to Isabel de Daganzo, a painter from Santander now living in Barcelona.
The woman herself gave me this testimony, validating it with her
signature.
«This is a resume of
my conversation about the apparitions of Garabandal with Conchita in
Burgos [Conchita was living at the time in the
city as a boarder in the school of the Concepcionistas Misioneras
de la Ensananza. There she remained during the entire schoolyear
of 1966-1967 and up to Christmas of the following year, at which time
her mother took her out of the school.] from the 7th to the
15th of November, 1967. With her help and that of the most Holy Virgin
I wanted to put on canvas something that would depict well those
celestial scenes.
I showed her, among
various sketches, one of Our Lady of Garabandal. (She had assisted me
in making this one, first at the village and later at Pamplona.) From
this came the picture that is venerated today in St. Michael's chapel
at Garabandal, and from which so many holy cards in color have been
reproduced that have circulated over the entire world.
Your Virgin is good, Conchita
told me, only you should make the tunic more graceful. There were
no clouds, only light. At times she smiled so much that her teeth could
be seen. Her hair was more wavy. The flowers on her robe were
embroidered in white. The scapular was one single piece and somewhat
bigger.
—What did the eye
in the first apparition signify? Was it like this? (I made a drawing.)
—No, it didn't have
that shape. It was a normal eye, with eyelashes, brown in color. And I
don't know what it signified. The light was all the same and the
greatest light was here. (Drawing on paper, she pointed out to me
the large eye, and where it was positioned, and without the least
hesitation pointed out the exact distance and space.)
A little later she added,
Many things happened during the apparition on that day. Among these
was a rainfall of stars. The four of us saw it—Loli, Mari Cruz, Jacinta
and myself.
"A bright star with a large tail passed by."
I asked her how they fell.
From her hands?
No, no. They fell from
above, as if it were raining.
One of my canvasses showed
the Virgin on top of a red cloud, because I had read of this in a book.
We never saw the Virgin
on top of a red cloud. What happened was that one day, while we were not
in ecstasy, a red cloud covered the four of us and frightened us very
much.
Another canvas represented
the Lady on top of a star with a long tail, with the four visionaries on
their knees at her feet.
Yes, one time a bright
star with a large tail passed by; but it passed, it didn't stay at the
feet of the Virgin. And there were not four of us, only Loli and myself.
That was the feastday of Our Lady of the Pillar.
On another canvas Our Lady
appeared as Queen of the Angels, surrounded by them.
I didn't see the Virgin
surrounded by angels; but I don't know if the others saw her that way.
—How did the Virgin
bless you and kiss you? Like this? (And I showed her another canvas.)
She didn't bless us,
but she did indeed kiss us. She faced us; she came down to our level.
And when at times we couldn't reach her, we lifted one another
up.»
In recalling these things, a
soft breeze seems to go gently through the soul. What a Mother we have
in the sky! How she comes down to us with supreme delicateness, seeking
to lift us up toward her so that we might be less unfortunate and
miserable.
«Could you tell about
something» —Isabel finally asked Conchita— «that
I could put on canvas that could cause fear?
No. What I have seen
that could cause fear is the Chastisement, [
TheCHASTISEMENT,is
one of the great secrets of Garabandal. It will be elaborated on later,]
and I can't tell you about that. Besides, terror and fear are not the
best for moving souls.»
