Anyone who wonders about the relevance of credible apparitions and their prophetic indications need only glance at the news every day to wonder no longer.
It brings to mind a “word of knowledge” from March of 2017 that ended by saying, “Flee to Saint Joseph, and the Blessed Mother of the holm oak who tells us that brightness can be found only by those who practice the diligence of prayer amid consternation. Those who framed the future in accordance with their own time tables now find disbelief in prophecies though they unfold around you.”
In other words, premature expectations have perhaps caused skepticism in some corners, but the problem may not have been with the prophecy itself but the time-tables imposed upon it by followers and observers.
At any rate, something to mull over. (Note: Our Lady appeared at Fátima over a holm oak tree.)
While we’re discussing apparitions, a quick aside:
Those who inculpated the apparition site of Medjugorje in Bosnia-Hercegovina (as a work of the devil) must now seriously reconsider all they have thought (and more importantly, in this time of apocryphal bloggery, said), for it turns out that the formal Vatican commission empaneled by Pope Benedict XVI to study the famous apparitions — and after years intensely investigating it — not only concluded that, at the very least, the first seven apparitions were authentic (one more than recognized for Fátima), but explicitly stated that: “the hypothesis of a demonic origin from the beginnings of the phenomenon appears gratuitous and unfounded… by the positive fruits derived from the phenomenon itself.”
The definition of “gratuitous” is: “uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted.”
That’s the upshot of a commission praised even by a skeptical Pope and one many thought would rule negatively, composed, as it was, by hard-nosed bishops, priests, theologians, and psychologists (led by the esteemed Cardinal Camillo Ruini) who studied Medjugorje for years.
One more aside: those waiting for the Saint Joseph consecration book by Father Don Calloway, a priest tied closely to Medjugorje, can take heart in the fact that though the book is temporarily unavailable (the publisher, who ships to us specially, ran out of stock twice) can choose from eight different dates including ones in March and May, to start the novena, not just the one that began last weekend, or really any time, since God is not bound by the human calendar. The book will be available again in a couple of weeks and can be ordered here.
Speaking of Fátima and the amazing apparitions of Our Blessed Mother there:
The current outbreak of coronavirus, though at this point not a pandemic (and perhaps not destined to be such), brings to mind pandemics of the past, in particular the great Spanish Flu that killed two of the three Fátima visionaries (Francisco and Jacinta Marto, in 1919 and 1920 respectively), along, worldwide, from the Arctic to Australia, from the U.S. to China, with fifty to one hundred million others.
Here’s the mystery: despite its momentous toll, and global effect, the Spanish Flu pandemic, arguably the most serious event of that century, was not part of the formal “three secrets.” The secrets predicted the rise of Communism in Russia, the end of World War One, the beginning of World War Two, and a sign that would precede that second international conflict, as well as problems in the Church (including, it seems, the attempt on Saint John Paul II’s life) and Our Lady’s triumph in the end.
But nowhere in those secrets is “plague” — though the Spanish flu that immediately followed the apparitions registered a death toll (to repeat, at lowest estimates, 50 million) that exceeded World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iran-Iraq War combined (they tally to just over half as many, about 31.7 million). In fact at its highest estimated range (of a hundred million), the great flu of 1918-1920 equaled the death tolls of all wars, large and small, in every part of the world, during that entire century (including sectarian ones in the Mideast and China).
How could such an event, the biggest killer that century, not have been in the secrets, at least as publicly revealed?
The two seers who died, from all indications, were told that they would die young, and in the case of Jacinta Marto, was given precise details, including the day of her death. So it wasn’t totally ignored. They knew what pertained to them. Whether privately they also were told by the Virgin about the entire global outbreak is something no one knows. (“Plague” is used in quotes because technically flu is not plague; bubonic fever is.)
The point: does this not indicate that secrets at places at Medjugorje may also only have part of the future picture — that no visionary has the complete picture, or at least does not divulge the whole picture. And that for all we know the secrets of Medjugorje, and from elsewhere, while involving very major events, may not include the most momentous one (or ones, plural) to come.
[resources: Tower of Light, The Warning, and Michael Brown retreat,, Arizona]
