Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part Three, Post 65

Conchita’s First Ecstasy: 6:25-8:15

On this day, the Vision’s visit to Conchita had been announced since December 8th, when she hadn’t had a Vision. The girl had been impatient since the previous night when we had visited. She was anxious to see the Virgin or VIGEN, as the girl sometimes calls her.

In the afternoon, at about four, the same set of people who had witnessed Mari Loli’s ecstasy the night before was in Conchita’s kitchen. Dr. Ortiz had just arrived—we have referred to him on other occasions. In the afternoon a Mexican woman arrived (the one with the green scapular) with her son and daughter-in-law. I repeat, we were all sitting in the kitchen when they came to tell us that Mari Loli and Mari Cruz were in ecstasy. I stayed in the kitchen a little longer since I saw that Conchita was very nervous and restless as I knew she was before she was going to have an apparition.

At 6:25 Conchita went upstairs and sat on her bed, where she entered the trance. She went downstairs in ecstasy and entered the kitchen again. She fell on her knees, then stood up and gave a medal for all who were present to kiss. After that, she began to collect rosaries and medals and lifted them, always giving the first part to be kissed since some of the medals had two sides. She put the medals that had chains around the necks of the owners and when she put the chain around the neck of a woman from Segovia she said: “It’s broken—I can’t—you put it on!” This woman showed me the chain, which has a very strange clasp and a safety that makes it difficult to put it on under any circumstances and much more difficult if you have no idea what a safety is, like Conchita—but—she put it on. Afterwards, she went out to the street and crossed paths with Mari Loli and Mari Cruz, who were also having ecstasies. They went toward the Church and stayed in the doorway. Then they walked backwards rapidly toward the road and went up to the pines, stopped, gave the crucifix to be kissed, and went up toward the pines at great speed.

After a little while, she descended backwards very quickly and went to her house. She entered the kitchen again, and it was full of people. Among these people was a married couple from Madrid with their four year old daughter. Conchita went towards them and knelt in front of the girl. She gave her the crucifix to kiss and replaced the wedding rings on her parents’ fingers. Rather than being frightened, as would be logical at this age, the girl smiled with such an extraordinary smile that to me it seemed like she must have seen something as well. Her parents cried and hugged even though they had been rather skeptical of the whole thing. When Conchita put the wedding ring on her, the woman had fallen on her knees, then had been lifted up by Conchita. When they’d offered their rings, there had been another ring there. Conchita threw this ring to the ground after saying about the Vision: “Oh! You won’t kiss it?” This ring belonged to a woman from Santander who had come for the first time and was a little incredulous. When she saw what happened, she became very emotional and since she didn’t have any medal or religious object, it occurred to her to give her ring to be kissed, without realizing that wedding rings represent a Sacrament and they are blessed, so they aren’t the same as any other ring. This woman told us later that her father was very sick and she’d asked the girl to intercede with the Virgin to heal him, as Conchita had asked. She fell on her knees several times, injuring her knee, which was already swollen. When she fell on her knees, she left blood on the tiles in the kitchen. This is very interesting because the following morning, when we said goodbye to Señora Andreu, this woman asked the child about her wound, and the girl said: “What wound—it doesn’t hurt even though it’s been swollen many times.” When we looked at the knee, we could all verify that there was a little line on the skin, similar to the scar left when a wound or cut heals. This was only a few hours after she’d been hurt and had bled on the floor. After what was described, she always knelt in ecstasy and fell backwards in a posture that was very moving. She spoke with the Virgin, prayed for the blind, the paralyzed, and those who don’t believe. Then she would get up and sit on the bench, bless herself, and return to the normal state, saying that she would have another Vision later in the day.