Posted on 09/26/2007 8:38:52 AM PDT by NYer
ROME, SEPT. 25, 2007 (Zenit.org).- When Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone's book about the last Fatima visionary was presented, guests got a chance to watch a video about Sister Lucia's final moments, related by her Mother Superior.
At Friday's presentation of "L'Ultima Veggente di Fatima" (The Last Fatima Visionary), written by the Pope's secretary of state, those in attendance saw a video reporting on the Convent of Coimbra, in Portugal, where Sister Lucia lived for the last 57 years of her life.
The visionary occupied the same cell during all those decades, and from there "she flew to heaven," said the superior of the Carmelite community, Sister Maria Celina of Jesus Crucified.
First impression
Recalling her first impressions of Sister Lucia, the superior said, "When I entered, it took me eight days to recognize Sister Lucia. When one of the sisters asked me: 'Mother, should I bring you a piece of bread to eat tonight?' I said to myself that this could not be Sister Lucia. And yet it was her."
Sister Maria Celina recalled how the visionary would stand at the end of the path leading to a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and scold her cousins who also witnessed the apparitions, "You went to heaven and left me here alone."
The superior said that Sister Lucia always denied any talk of a "fourth secret of Fatima." Sister Lucia would say of people who spread rumors of the alleged secret that "they are never satisfied; that they should do what Our Lady asked, that this is the most important thing. When someone would say: ‘Sister Lucia, they say there is another secret' […] she would look at them ironically. 'If there is one,' she would say, 'I wish they would tell it to me: I know of no other secrets.'"
Sister Maria Celina said that the visionary was never satisfied with the image made of Our Lady.
"The image of Our Lady was not how she wanted it," the superior said. "Sometimes she seemed ugly to her because it did not correspond to her exact memories; it was not what the artist derived from her description. It is somewhat like what happened with St. Bernadette."
Joyous nun
Sister Maria Celina described Sister Lucia as a woman religious who "emanated joy."
"I lived with her for 28 years and I saw a person who, the older she got, the more she developed an evangelical childhood," she said. "She seemed again to be the child who had the apparitions in the Cova de Ira. The heavier her body became, the lighter her spirit became."
Speaking of Sister Lucia's last hours, the superior said: "When she needed assistance we placed her bed at the center of the cell and we were around her, together with the bishop of Leiria-Fatima. I was kneeling down next to her. Sister Lucia looked at everyone and then looked at me at the end. It was a long look, but in her eyes there was a deep light, which I carry in my soul.
"I pray to her always and I know she prays for us. There are things that have no need of words: A gesture or a thought is sufficient. Sister Lucia had a hearing problem. Now she doesn’t anymore. Now she understands everything without words."
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thank you for sharing.
Perfect beauty CANNOT be recreated.
What a beautiful description!
Imagine being one of those three children. Kinda boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
Sister Maria Celina recalled how the visionary would stand at the end of the path leading to a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and scold her cousins who also witnessed the apparitions, "You went to heaven and left me here alone."
Yes, that was cute.
Jesus told Faustina “My gaze from this Image is like My gaze from the Cross”. (326) One afternoon in Stockbridge, Father Seraphim Michalenko shared with us an astounding revelation, which took Our Lord's words another step deeper. In Father Seraphim's words:
Faustina would come to the artist every so often between January and June of 1934 and every time she came he would have to change the face because she didn’t like it. It was at least 10 times and maybe more. So finally she came one day, and as far as she was concerned, the image was ugly, but Jesus said “leave it in the state its in, it not good but it will do, you don’t have to change it anymore... and thats the one that matches the Shroud.
Book By Superior Raises Fatima Mystery: Did Lucia Have Visions Up To Her Death?
A new booklet by the superior at the convent where Sister Lucia dos Santos spent her final decades reveals previously unknown details about the famous Fatima seer’s life and raises new questions about the extent of her mysticism — with indications that visions or at least unusual experiences remained with the cloistered nun into her final years.
Speaking of Lucia’s cell in Coimbra, where the seer lived for more than fifty years, the superior, Sister Maria Celina de Jesus Crucificado, asks, “How many times did Our Lady appear there? We still don’t know. But one day I witnessed something which showed me with what simplicity she approached both the supernatural and ordinary everyday life. It was in the year 2003, on May 26, I went with her to the lower choir in order to take a photograph of her with the image of the Immaculate Heart of Mary which had just been given to us.
“When I had taken the photograph, Sister Lucia continued to gaze at the image,” writes the superior. “I did not disturb her. Then, turning to me, she exclaimed: ‘Our Lady is crying!’ I think that, thanks to her extraordinary purity, her ‘ingenuousness,’ she who had been the recipient of so many visions that no one else had seen thought at that moment that I, too, could see what she saw.”
Thinking Lucia’s statement was a question, Sister Crucificado says she at first replied that the statue was not weeping — whereupon the Fatima seer, who died in February of 2005 at 97, “looked ‘caught out,’ so to speak, like a child whose mother finds her stealing jam! I thought I should not ask any questions.”
Entering the order of Carmelites in 1948 after a stint at another convent, Sister Lucia, whose baptismal name was Lucia Rosa Santos, and who at the first convent had been known as Sister Maria das Dores, donned a habit like the garments worn by the Blessed Mother during the apparition of October 13, 1917. She would remain in those garments for the next half a century.
According to the superior, the seer [above, left] was both a humorist and spark plug — unafraid to venture outdoors during the dangerous civil war in Spain and once issuing a few slaps on the street to a boy who was taunting the sisters. “Her heart appeared impervious to fear,” writes Sister Crucificado, adding that on a journey to check on other sisters from whom no one had heard, she led soldiers in the singing of the Rosario da Aurora as danger surrounded.
In those cloistered years, it is revealed, Sister Lucia humbly tended to everything from beehives to kitchen supplies and the larder.
For many years she also watched over a small niche at the entrance to the infirmary where there was a white statue of Mary.
Although interested in affairs of the world, says the superior, Sister Lucia rarely discussed them and did not seem affected by them, nor with modern technology.
“She was offered an electronic typewriter when she was already over seventy years of age, and had no difficulty in learning how to use it,” notes Sister Crucificado. “It is a computerized machine which, however, was never connected to the internet. Contrary to what has been stated, Sister Lucia never worked with a computer, and never visited a ‘site.’ She was very interested, asked questions, but ended saying, ‘My machine is better than this!’”
It was starting around 2000 — and indeed the time when her precious cousins and fellow seers, Jacinta and Francesco Marto, were beatified (and the third secret revealed) that the remaining seer began to become especially weak, often pushed about in a wheelchair. She also became forgetful — except when it came to the Fatima message, about which her memory, says Sister Crucificado, “was as clear as ever.”
Sister Lucia was upset, says the superior, by speculation about the third secret before it was revealed and aggravated with the debate that came after.
“Because of the polemics that were stirred up by certain groups who were not happy with the text of the third secret, a special envoy from the Holy See came to hear Sister Lucia herself say that she had nothing more to reveal,” says the nun. “One day I said to her, ‘Sister Lucia, people are saying that there is yet another secret!’ She replied, ‘If they know that there is another secret, let them reveal it! I know of no other! Some people are never satisfied. Take no notice!’”
It was the week of her 97th birthday that the famed visionary began to complain of great pain in her legs and was accompanied during the night by a younger sister, whom she often made laugh, says Sister Crucificado. There was a fainting spell and a “new, painful, and difficult phase.” She became hoarse and yet at Christmas in 2004 still mustered the strength to hold a statue of the Child Jesus, as was her custom. Cold, an electric blanket was used to keep the seer warm. She took her final food on January 28, 2005, and on February 8 began to receive oxygen, along with the intravenous feed upon which she had been placed.
In those final days, says the superior, Sister Lucia “made countless affectionate gestures to the statue of Our Lady of Fatima which Pope John Paul II had sent to her in December 2003 and made the Sign of the Cross several times before the same image.”
There were moments when she would squeeze a fellow sister’s hand. “Then she would say, slowly: ‘Our Lady! Our Lady! Angels! Angels! Heart of Jesus! Heart of Jesus!”
On February 10, she revealed that she had been offering her sufferings for the Holy Father.
At midnight on February 13, a sister brought the image of Mary to the seer’s lips, Lucia kissed it, and for the remainder of the night passed beads of the Rosary through her feeble hands as the fellow nun recited it. The local bishop was summoned and prayed for Lucia to be received in the arms of Jesus and Mary, as well as her deceased cousins.
“It is impossible to describe the atmosphere of peace that we lived at that time,” writes Sister Crucificado. “Yes, at that moment her eyes, which were closing to this life, were opening to the Eternal Light of God. Then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, those eyes which had so often contemplated the Invisible opened wide! She looked at all the sisters. Then she turned to the right and gazed into my eyes. I cannot describe the depth of that look. It was deeply moving. I placed the Crucifix on the right side, after which she closed her eyes. It was her farewell.”
Death came to the most famous Marian seer in the world at 5:25 p.m. on Sunday the 13th in that cell which as Sister Crucificado says “keeps secrets that we shall know only in Heaven.”
7/27/06
“Boggles” seemingly an understatement.
The children and the story of Fatima, particularly the prophecies of the 20th century and the visions of Hell, have always put a little spike of fear into me.
I used to teach in a Catholic school and I related the Fatima narrative to my 5th and 6th graders and told them how I could not help but notice how our religious books were thoroughly and completely devoid of the topic “Hell”.
I know that my God is a kind and merciful God, but I couldn’t help but make sure that I gave my students a little “hell”.
Imagine.... being visited by heaven so many times, yet she had to remain on earth for so long. That in itself must have been one of her greatest sufferings.
I'm glad that you did. CCD teachers are the last line of defense against banal religious ed. We're homeschooling, and our curriculum is suffused with Church teaching, but, out of respect for our priest, I thought I'd put my girls through CCD prior to receiving the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist. Sadly, it doesn't seem that a lot has changed since I got the "don't litter" CCD of the early '70s.
Give ‘em just a dose of Hell and hopefully that’ll manage to make an impression. I think that our Lord drops the H-bomb about 50 times in the Gospel. So, it was obviously important to him.
Actually, we used the same publisher at the school that I taught at as we do for CCD at my church, where I teach 5th grade, Burdette-Ginn. It’s kinda’ okay, but there is an unfair balance of “touchy feely” stuff. Almost the type of multiculturalism that keeps my kids out of a public school.
Yes, a bit revised since the “don’t be a litter bug” series of our youth. Now updated with the “be especially kind to minorities” and “it’s okay that our family has just a Mommy”. My eigth graders simply laughed at all the heavey-handed pandering!
If you’re homeschooling I’d have to think that you’d be familiar with Seton Press. I think they are published out of Christendom. Good stuff, whether you’re using them to teach art, history and/or reading. If you’ve not heard of these books simply pick-up one of the “Reading for Young Catholics” for whatever level your girls are at:
www.setonbooks.com/curriculum.php
Good luck with the homeschooling.
Dr. Sister Lucia commission a painting of our Lady after the apparition?
Not that I have ever heard.
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