On this feast day of St. John Paul II, who was devoted to Our Lady, I humbly request his prayers regarding the subject of this blog.
In August of 2012, I wrote a blog about the modern day Marian apparition, Our Lady of America. (Click here to read that blog.) Two years later, in this month dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, I think it’s a good time to write an update.
While perusing the Internet recently, I found this statement concerning a legal decision about copyright burdens being lifted that may help bring about fulfillment of the request attributed by Our Lady:
“The United States Catholic Bishops should soon be able to plan that solemn procession and placement into the Basilica of the National Shrine of The Immaculate Conception at Washington, D.C. of the statue of Our Lady of America.”
If you have followed anything at all about this apparition, you know it has been mired in controversy and lawsuits for quite some time. (Click here to read what she reportedly said in the apparition.)
I am not going to go into it all. But I will review what has been “approved.” (Read my previous blog mentioned above, with a link to the letters from the Archbishop of Toledo and the Archbishop of St. Louis, Edmund Burke at that time, giving their approval.)
Our Lady is purported to have visited a cloistered nun, Sister Mary Ephrem (Mildred Neuzil), in Indiana starting in 1954, with messages about what she wants from her children in the United States of America. She asks for penance and mortification from her children in America, who she wants to honor her specifically by the “purity” of their lives. She has called for the young especially to be her “torchbearers of purity.” And if our Bishops will carry the statue of her image as Our Lady of America in a solemn procession to the Immaculate Conception Basilica in Washington DC, she promised miracles “of the soul” that will be greater than those at Lourdes and Fatima.
As I have said in my 2012 blog, does anyone believe the residents of the United States will listen to Our Lady and reform their lives and do penance without a miracle of grace?
And it would seem to me that her dire predictions about the people in this country suffering “punishments hitherto unknown to them” are beginning to come to pass…
Ebola has come to the United States. ISIS is on our doorstep. Our religious freedom is being challenged in all corners of life. And interestingly enough, the only living bishop who gave his approval to this apparition, Edmund Burke, has just been vilified in the secular media because his support of traditional teachings of the Church during the current Synod on the Family in Rome.
Please add to your prayers the fulfillment of Our Lady’s requests. And if any of you feel so inclined, please send a note to Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, asking him to have our bishops do as Our Lady has asked. (It might be good if he heard from somebody besides me.)
In closing, I offer the simple prayer Our Blessed Mother gave to Sister Ephrem:
“By thy Holy and Immaculate Conception, O Mary, deliver us from evil.”
