RAMON AND LUIS ANDREU, PRIESTS

Fr. Ramon Andreu on right

The brothers Luis Maria and Ramon Maria Andreu Rodamilans were among the four hundred or so spectators who attended the second ecstasy of tears, on July 29, 1961.
Both are Jesuits and doctors of Theology. Luis himself was then professor of Theology in the Major Scholasticate of Ona (Burgos) and Ramon, a preacher of retreats and Spiritual Exercises.
During the first visit they made to the village, they were simply drawn there out of curiosity, led there by friends, the Fontaneda family, very well known in Spain for their brand of biscuits ("galletas").
Father Ramon Maria Andreu immediately took down a substantial amount of notes about Jacinta's and Mari-Loli's ecstasies. First he thought that this was a case of hypnotism, until a very disturbing "sign" was given him: the instantaneous realization of a thought he had just formulated . . .: "Let one of these children come to herself and the others remain in ecstasy." This is exactly what happened.
Mari-Loli immediately recovered her normal state and turned slightly towards Fr. Ramon to look at him before falling again into ecstasy . . .!
We shall see later how the involvement of the Andreu family at Garabandal took an absolutely extraordinary turn.
[Excerpted from 'Garabandal' Book, page 72.]

Yes, the thoughts of many were read by Our Lady at Garabandal and transmitted to the girls to tell the people involved. This made most of them believers! As it says in the Gospel: "The thoughts of many hearts will be revealed to thee" (Luke 2:35)

Fr. Ramon wrote a lot about the events at Garabandal. I have posted some of his work here on this blog.

The children of Fatima had priests from elsewhere to support them too, even though the local pastor didn't believe in Our Lady's apparitions there. He even held the three seers from receiving their First Holy Communion, thinking they were liars. Lucia was held back for a year and Francesco and Jacinta made theirs shortly before they died. They suffered a lot because of this rejection.
Deacon John

So, What Do I Do?

Good advise from Mark, as we await the "Warning" and "Great Miracle":

M A R K  M A L L E T T

–––S P I R I T U A L  F O O D  F O R  T H O U G H T–––

So, What Do I Do?

Hope of the Drowning, by Michael D. O'Brien

 

RECENTLY, after a talk I gave to a group of university students on what the popes have been saying about the "end times", a young man pulled me aside with a question. "So, if we are living in the 'end times,' what are we supposed to do about it?" It's an excellent question, which I went on to answer in my next talk with them.

These pages exist for a reason: to propel us toward God! But I know it provokes other questions: "What am I to do?" "How does this change my current situation?" "Should I be doing more to prepare?"

I'll let Paul VI answer the question, and then expand on it:

There is a great uneasiness at this time in the world and in the Church, and that which is in question is the faith. It so happens now that I repeat to myself the obscure phrase of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Luke: 'When the Son of Man returns, will He still find faith on the earth?'…I sometimes read the Gospel passage of the end times and I attest that, at this time, some signs of this end are emerging. Are we close to the end? This we will never know. We must always hold ourselves in readiness, but everything could last a very long time yet. —POPE PAUL VI, The Secret Paul VI, Jean Guitton, p. 152-153, Reference (7), p. ix.

 

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All Mark's writings can be found at:  Spiritual Food For ThoughtListen to Mark's music on his official website:  www.markmallett.com

FRIDAY, JULY 28, AND SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1961:

Fright and stupefaction of Jacinta and Loli

"TWO EVENINGS OF TEARS"

As was promised, the Blessed Virgin, since July 4, was gradually explaining to the children the Message she had revealed to them. This catechesis was absolutely necessary, considering their young age and the small amount of religious knowledge they had. What, indeed, did the words "sacrifice," "penance," mean to them, and how, in practice, were they "to be very good"?

The ecstasies of July 28 and 29, 1961, were to represent a kind of particularly intensive course in which only Jacinta and Mari-Loli took part. For the first time Our Lady showed them "the Cup filling up with the wine of the Wrath of God." She spoke to them of the trials the sins of humanity would eventually cause, in a time we may call "time of the Pre-Warning" (or Pre-Aviso). Mary was also to reveal to them later, the unique and inescapable event of the future Warning, a stupendous phenomenon and experience called "Aviso," of both cosmic and moral-spiritual (interior) dimensions, that would affect the whole of mankind. We could die from the effect of the emotion aroused by it. It would place us before our conscience thus "scanned" in the light of God revealing to us the evil we had done and of the good we had not done, in our lives. Through its frightening physical dimension and its prodigious divine interior action, we would know that the Warning really came to us from God, but also that it will still be a "warning of grace and mercy!"

Finally, the Blessed Virgin recalled the final Chastisement of which mankind would be the object . . . should it persist in refusing to amend its ways. The first of the two "Nights of tears" occurred at the cuadro, and the second at the Pines.
Sari and Mari-Carmen, mandated by Our Lady, were the only ones authorized to stay by the visionaries. The crowd, kept at a distance, could see the terrified girls crying . . .
[Excerpted from 'Garabandal' Book, page 71.]

Our Lady is a great teacher! First she gives them the Message, then she teaches them its meaning . . .
The children of Fatima were taught in the same way. They received the "Secret" from Our Lady and then she literally taught them by showing them hell and souls and demons that were down there because of sin. They never forgot this vision and spent their lives (which for Jacinta and Francesco were very short) praying for sinners and offering reparation for sin.

The Warning is coming soon, whether we like it or not. It's not conditional! It will happen when the world is at its worst, when things look hopeless. Look around and see the hand writing on the wall. God will intervene and correct the conscience of the world. Everyone will feel and see the Warning. Everyone will know how they are offending God and their fellow man. Some may die of shock. Those who love God will love Him even more. The world will actually stop, suspended during the Warning. The Warning will prepare the world for the Great Miracle which follows shortly afterward (more about this later).
I've been praying for this event to happen for 40 years. I look forward to it for the salvation of the world.
Deacon John

THURSDAY, JULY 27, 1961:

Santander Cathedral

CONCHITA IS STRONGLY REQUESTED
TO GO TO SANTANDER. FIRST MENTION
OF THE FUTURE DOUBTS AND DENIALS

Conchita left for Santander with her mother, Aniceta, and her aunt and godmother, Maximina. The pretext was to change her ideas and have a simple interview with Msgr. Fernandez. This trip was to last one week. Plotted by Don Luis Odriozola and by one of Conchita's uncles, curate of the parish of the Consolacion at Santander, this stay was really to draw the visionary away from the main site that already stood out in the Garabandal "events."

The priests and physicians, members of the "Special Commission" questioned the visionary every day at Santander. Verbally jostled about, even threatened to be sent to "a house for the mentally ill," she was forbidden to receive Communion, to go to confession and to attend Mass. Instead, she was taken to the beach and the movies. They were hoping to dissuade her from returning to her village.
Doctor Pinal tried to hypnotize Conchita to "find out the magic fluid from which she held her power of suggestion over her little playmates," 'concluding' that this was coming . . . from her braids! The girl ended up by "acknowledging" that she had not seen the Blessed Virgin, but she did not swear not having seen her.

On the day of her arrival, Conchita fell into an ecstasy right in the middle of the street in front of the church of the Consolacion. At the same time, at the Pines, the three other visionaries also had an apparition of the Blessed Virgin. This was Conchita's only ecstasy in the capital of the Cantabrian region.

In an interior locution, Conchita learned, in these doubly significant circumstances, that "there would come a time when she and her companions would deny their apparitions and doubt everything." When she returned to Garabandal, she confided this news to her mother and her aunt.

Aniceta, a widow since many years and head of the family, watched over her children carefully. She asked for several signs to confirm the authenticity of the phenomena. she obtained them and had no longer any doubts. She died in 1990.
Maximina, Conchita's first confidante, always supported her godchild and never doubted the supernatural origin of the apparitions. She is one of the best "reporters" of these events.
[Excerpted from 'Garabandal' Book, pages 69, 70.]

The parallel to Fatima is unbelievable. There, the local administrator "arrested" the three tiny children, put them in jail with the regular criminals, and even threatened them with death by being boiled in oil! But the big difference was that the three children of Fatima did not deny the apparitions and refused to tell the authorities the "Secret." That had to be a supernatural "grace" because even adults tell everything and agree to anything under that type of pressure.

Poor Conchita was all alone, bombarded by the Commissions questions and examinations, aged intellectual men against a young farm girl with no education . . . I wonder if they even believed in the supernatural at all? The blind will lead the blind . . . Of course, all this happened at the beginning of the "events of Garabandal", so there is no denying the supernatural in the thousands of apparitions and signs yet to come. "Everything is possible for him who believes."(Mark 9:23) And as the old saying goes: "For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible." (Bishop Sheen?)
Deacon John

Pope will Travel to Spain Next November; Wouldn't it be Great if The Warning had Come and He Went to Garabandal for the Great Miracle; Just Wondering!!!

Benedict XVI will travel to Spain on November 6th and visit Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona. The two day trip, will start at Santiago de Compostela’s Cathedral in light of the Holy Year. That’s where he will dine with bishops and other officials. 

The pope is responding to invitations by Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, as well as the president of the Galician government and the Archbishop of Santiago. Before returning to Rome the Pope will visit Barcelona to bless Antonio Gaudi’s church of the Holy Family. 

This will be the second time Benedict XVI visits Spain. His first trip was to Valencia in July 2006, on the occasion of the World Meeting of Families. He will also visit Madrid in August 2011 to preside over World Youth Day. 

SUNDAY, JULY 23, 1961:

THE CHILD JESUS AND THE VISIONARIES,
THE FIRST OF THE RARE "COSMIC PHENOMENA"
AT GARABANDAL

Our Lady, who had come with the Child Jesus, authorized the children for the first time to take Him in their arms. They felt His weight, noting, however, that they had the impression of not being really in contact with His little body.

Another first on this Sunday: beginning of the "cosmic phenomena" at San Sebastian de Garabandal. On that day, the young girls saw large stars with a long tail. Some of these phenomena were sometimes visible to everyone. They will reach their peak, and by far . . . , with the "very great Miracle" of the future "D" day to be revealed eventually, first to Conchita (on October 18, 1961).
[Excerpted from 'Garabandal' Book, page 67.]

Many saints have held the Child Jesus! Remembering St. Anthony, whose statues and holy cards always show him with the Baby Jesus in his arms. So it's not surprising that Our Blessed Mother gave Jesus to the girls to hold. Later on Conchita asked Our Lady: "When the Baby doesn't come, where is He? In heaven? . . . or in a cradle? . . . " See how a child's mind works! Conchita thought that Jesus always was a Baby. St. Francis of Assisi, of course, was one of the first Saints to have a strong devotion to the Infant Jesus and staged Nativity scenes with live people at Christmas time.

There was a lot of "cosmic phenomena" at Fatima, during OurLady's apparitions there in 1917. And the people who were there also witnessed the strange events, like falling flower petals that disappeared before they hit the ground, low clouds circling the Holm oak tree Our Lady stood upon, an orb of light surrounding and transporting Our Lady into heaven, etc., etc. Real manifestations of the supernatural! I'd probably faint with joy to see these sights! How about you?
Deacon John

SATURDAY, JULY 22, 1961:

BEGINNING OF THE PERSONALIZATION
OF THE ECSTASIES

We know that, on this day, for the first time and very often later, the visionaries in ecstasy went two by two: Conchita and Mari-Cruz; Mari-Loli and Jacinta.
[Excerpted from 'Garabandal' Book, page 67.]

Each day, it seems, something new is added to these mysterious events . . . I've seen film on video of the girls marching arm in arm, step in step. They marched better than a platoon of soldiers! And as they did so, their heads where tilted back as they looked at the vision. They never looked where they were going or what they were stepping on. Sometimes they marched backward and downhill! Amazingly, they never tripped or fell over one another or anyone else who was in their path. One report told of the girls coming to a stream and walking over a plank without looking down. The poor villagers had a hard time keeping up with them . . .
We'll hear more of these ecstatic marches as the story continues . . .
Deacon John