TRUE TO HER WORD TO US

True to her word, Our Blessed Mother seems to not be abandoning us, in spite of a world which from all outward appearances, is getting further from her Son. I remember Mother Miriam telling me that there were no fewer than 15 “supposed” appearance near our abbey in Italy.

The Church is slow to confirm these apparitions, but one was recently approved as the “real deal”. A letter by Pope Francis, sent to the bishop of Brescia on July 5, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, indicated that the “spiritual proposal that emerges from the experiences narrated by PIERINA GILLIin relation to María Rosa Mystica does not contain theological or moral elements contrary to the doctrine of the Church.”

 The visions took place between 1947 and 1966 in Montichiari and Fontanelle, Italy, located in the country’s northern province of Brescia. Pierina’s diaries describe the apparitions and insights shared by the Blessed Virgin. According to Cardinal Fernández, these pages “reveal a humble and complete trust in Mary’s maternal action.”

Pierina was a nurse and postulant for the Handmaids of Charity in Montichiari, when she first encountered the Blessed Virgin privately while praying in a hospital chapel in the spring of 1947.The Virgin Mary appeared wearing a violet dress and white veil with an expression of sorrow and tears in her eyes. Her heart was pierced with three swords, and she asked for prayer, penance, and sacrifice.

Appearing again on July 13, 1947, Our Lady was this time dressed in white and had three roses on her heart: white, red and a yellow, symbolizing the spirits of prayer, sacrifice, and penance.  (Nothing new in her message to us.)

When Pierina asked who she was, Our Lady responded: “I am the mother of Jesus and the mother of all of you. Our Lord sends me to bring a new Marian devotion to all religious orders and institutes, male and female, and to the priests of this world.”

 Our Lady said she wished that “the 13th of July be celebrated every year in honor of the Mystical Rose.” Pierina would later translate this term as meaning that “Mary is the master teacher of the innermost mystical life and the mother of the mystical body of Christ — the Mother of the Church.”

 Our Lady would appear five more times in 1947, including a series of public apparitions in November and December of that year. At the Cathedral of Montichiari on Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Virgin told Pierina: “I wish to be known as the Mystical Rose. It is my wish that every year, on the 8th of December, at noon, the hour of grace for the world be celebrated.

Many divine and bodily graces will be received through this devotion. Jesus will send his overflowing mercy if good people will pray continuously for their sinful brother. The Lord is still protecting the good and is holding back a great punishment because of my intercession. Soon, one will recognize the greatness of this hour of grace.”

Shortly following these apparitions and investigations by the diocesan ecclesiastical authorities, Pierini secluded herself at the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Holy Child in Brescia. It was not until years later, in 1966, that the Blessed Virgin appeared again to her, in which she blessed a miraculous spring in Fontanelle, called “Fountain of Grace.”

Our Lady then asked Pierini to kiss the soil where the water sprang forth and to place a crucifix there so that “the sick and all of my children, before drawing or drinking water, may ask pardon from my divine Son with a beautiful kiss of love.”

 There were more apparitions in 1966, in which the Blessed Virgin continued to share various messages regarding prayer, penance, and devotion.