“I, your Mother”
Our Lady of Mount Carmel presented herself as Our Mother in the Cantabrian town of San Sebastian de Garabandal (Spain), between 1961 and 1965, according to the countless testimonies of simple and devout people of the time.
The truth that Mary is the Mother of God was proclaimed dogmatically at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and is the first Marian dogma. We knew that Mary is the Mother of God, not because she gave birth to him in eternity, but because she gave birth to him more than 2000 years ago in the Incarnation. God did not need a mother, but he wanted to have one in order to come closer to us with infinite love. God is the only one who could choose his mother and, to the dismay of some and the joy of others, he chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is and will always be the Mother of God.
However, the beautiful thing about the apparitions of Mary in Garabandal is that the Blessed Virgin wanted to show herself lovingly and tenderly as Our Mother, allowing us to experience her maternal presence, spiritual but real and close. And with this, we can see that her serene presence brings joy, comfort, heal, console, bless…
Our Mother lovingly offers us her heart not only as a refuge, but as a Home. She invites us to conversion, to put Jesus in the Eucharist at the center of our lives. In this way, Mary teaches us to meditate on the Passion of her Son as a way to learn to be faithful Christians and good people.
Listening to a musical synthesis of the message of Garabandal in this hymn, Our Mother wants to speak directly to our hearts. What a good Mother we have! She wants us to pray and do penance. She also wants to teach us, as children, everything necessary for us to be good and go to Heaven.
We must not forget that the title of Saint Mary of Mount Carmel (Holy Land) is a sign of the Virgin’s maternal love and protection. It refers to the special help and assistance of Our Lady of Mount Carmel for all those who wear or carry the Scapular. She comes to us in the face of dangers to the body and soul, frees the person from all evil and intercedes so that they may live in God’s grace.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel of Garabandal. (Photo: Albert Cortina)Mary’s School: Do what He tells you!
Mary is a Mother and also a Teacher. She teaches us with her example and her advice the human values and Christian virtues that we must practice in our lives. Her pedagogy is clear and synthetic. It could be summed up with this phrase: “Do what He tells you!”
And it is that in our days, by totally ignoring God in their lives, human beings are seriously deepening their rebellion against the Creator. The contemporary individual is rapidly building “the secular religion of man,” through which, human beings, in their pride, are increasing their deification, using misguided scientism, atheistic materialism or Gnostic spirituality, as well as exponential technologies that can lead to the extinction of the human species as we know it today.
Thus, self-realized man rises up with the pretension of attaining a supposed condition of Homo Deus, instead of humbly and faithfully accepting the authentic religion of God who offers us to be his children and to participate in his Glory. It is clear that Satan is behind this whole dark strategy of deception and perdition. The “prince of the world” has always whispered to humanity, since the beginning of time, the old temptation of Eden: “You will be like gods!”
As highlighted in the publication of the volume “The Truth of Love. Footprints for a Path” which contains an important unpublished text by Benedict XVI and which was published this year 2024, today it is denied that man, as a free being, is linked in any way to a nature that determines the space of his freedom. “Today man no longer has a nature, but ‘makes’ himself. There is no longer a nature of man, he himself decides whether he is male or female. It is man himself who produces man and thus decides on the destiny of a being who no longer comes from the hands of a creator God, but from the laboratory of human inventions.”
Thus, gender ideology, transhumanism, posthumanism, transspeciesism, cyborgism and other bioideologies that seek the dissolution of human nature, loom as a grave danger in our time and in the near future.
It is not surprising, then, that in Garabandal the Virgin communicated to the Church and to humanity the well-known messages that represent a warning and a call to the world to make a profound and transforming conversion. In these messages a Warning or illumination of conscience is announced, a Miracle for humanity to amend itself, and conditionally, a Punishment.
As communicated in the first message of October 18, 1961: “The cup is already filling up and if we do not change, a very great punishment will come to us.” In the second message of Our Lady, which arrived shortly before the end of the apparitions, on June 18, 1967, we are told that “/…/ before the cup was filling, now it is overflowing. /…/ I, your Mother, through the intercession of the Angel Saint Michael, want to tell you to amend yourselves. You are already in the last warnings! I love you very much and I do not want your condemnation. Ask us sincerely and we will give it to you. You must sacrifice more. Think of the Passion of Christ.”
Crucifix given to be kissed by the Virgin in Garabandal. (Photo: Albert Cortina)With the simplicity of a mother, the Blessed Virgin appeared in the houses and fields of San Sebastian de Garabandal, giving her children the instructions they needed to hear for the good of their souls. The testimonies of that daily and at the same time extraordinary and supernatural coexistence with Mary remind us that, if we do not take the way of the Cross, if the Eucharist is not the center of our lives and of each of our days, if we are not good, if we do not convert, the Lord will have no choice but to intervene so that we understand the importance of what is at stake: our salvation.
“The abolition of the Creator as the abolition of man thus becomes the authentic threat to faith,” Benedict XVI concludes, and “that is the great task that is presented to theology today,” which will be able to resolve it only if the example of the life of Christians is stronger than the power of the denials that surround us and that promise a false freedom.
As we can see, Benedict XVI believed that the greatness of the Christian ideal cannot be renounced despite the darkness that exists in our world, and that God’s plan, accessible through the incarnation of Christ, is the only way to reconcile human freedom with its nature, allowing humanity to live in harmony with its Creator.
In keeping with the serious existential risks that threaten us, both from a human and spiritual point of view, Our Mother teaches us patiently, lovingly, but at the same time with clarity and forcefulness, that we must delve deeper into Christian virtues and pray a lot, especially the Holy Rosary.
Holy Rosary. (Photo: Albert Cortina)Another lesson that we can draw from this call to conversion, to penitence, to prayer, to the Eucharist and to turning our gaze to the just and merciful God is that we must not abandon the values of Christian humanism, of its anthropology of the person in his dignity and freedom, as well as the fundamental elements of the Social Doctrine of the Church and its two-thousand-year-old Magisterium, which have brought so much good to the Catholic faith and to universal Christian civilization. In short, we must enter ever deeper into the contemplation and understanding of the Word of God that is found in the Holy Scriptures and that remains alive for each and every one of us.
In the spiritual battle that we are experiencing in these End Times, we must be aware that we are apostles of Mary, and we work for the advent of the Social Order of Christ (OSC) based on the civilization of love and the culture of life, against a New World Order (NWO) built on structures of sin and the culture of death, on which rests, without a doubt, the diabolical power of a system or a character that we call the Lord of the World or Antichrist. However, we know from Our Mother, in the apparitions of Fatima, that in the end, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph, and that a long period of peace will begin.
Human Values and Christian Virtues
Our Mother, in her various apparitions, reminds us that we live in a moral universe, that evil harms us, and that good helps and preserves us; that the fundamental problem of the world is not in politics or economics, but is found in our hearts and souls, that spiritual regeneration is the indispensable condition for social improvement and renewing the world.
Marian piety leads to this spiritual regeneration in which Christian virtues such as strength and hope are fundamental to recognize and celebrate the triumph of good over evil, because Mary is the one who will crush the head of the ancient serpent. She continues to strengthen our path so that we do not become discouraged in this battle against the forces of evil.
Among the many human values and Christian virtues that we could have chosen, I would like to highlight three that, in my opinion, are very necessary for our time, as well as for the world to come. We will refer to the following:
- Humility
- Trust
- Hope
1. Humility
If there is a virtue that is truly Marian, it is the virtue of humility. Our Mother in Heaven is “full of grace” precisely because of her humility. We could say that Mary’s secret is humility. That is why Satan, the fallen Angel, because of his pride and arrogance, could not successfully tempt that blessed creature, and therefore he will be defeated.
Mary teaches us that God does not exalt us precisely for our gifts, wealth or for the skills or expanded abilities acquired, but for humility. God is in love with humility. God raises up those who lower themselves and exalts those who serve.
Precisely for this reason, in Marian apparitions, it is significant to see how the recipients of the Virgin’s messages are simple people. In this way, Mary appears in natural and hidden places and usually chooses children, as happened in Garabandal and in other Marian apparitions, because Our Mother wants to be close to humble people.
In the town of San Sebastián de Garabandal, the mark left by the presence of the Virgin in the almost 3,000 public apparitions that took place between 1961 and 1965 is preserved alive. In simple houses of humble families and in narrow streets of a small town in Cantabria with a wonderful place called “Los Pinos”, it was precisely there that the Virgin wanted her affection and love as a Mother to overflow. In this extraordinary landscape, the Virgin announces to us a Great Miracle after a Great Warning that will be given to all humanity and a conditional Punishment, if we do not amend ourselves. In this natural sanctuary, the Virgin asks us to be like little children before God who is Love.
2. Trust
In the summer of 2018 I had a spiritual experience that made me understand how we should not be afraid of the events that are yet to come in the spiritual battle that is being freed in our day.
Through the Mediation of the Archangel San Gabriel, the great announcer whose mission is to take God’s message to man and to which he has as a messenger that makes us grow in spiritual life revealing the plans and purposes that God has for us, I It was clear that we have to trust without reservations in our Lord Jesus Christ and in our mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and be awake watching at all times, as we are warned in the Holy Scriptures.
Nessun Dorma! … No one sleeps!
The message of heaven was very clear: “The Mantle of the Virgin protects you, do not fear! Trust. “
Archangel Saint Gabriel (AI generated image)In this way, I was able to understand how the spiritual motherhood of the Virgin Mary is explicit in three ways: Mary is a lawyer because she intercedes for us, she defends us from the harassment of evil and the dangers. Maria is a mediator in the sense that all grace that comes to the sky has a Marian seal, although it is not seen. In the case of Mary as a Load, we want to explain that all grace that comes to us from Christ comes to us from the Son of Mary.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in you. (Photo: Albert Cortina)3. Hope
What is hope? Aristotle seems to respond in the following way: it is the dream of an awake man.
From the Catholic perspective, hope is the virtue that gives meaning to the path of life.
In this way, we can affirm that “hope is the theological virtue for which we aspire to the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, putting our trust in the promises of Christ and supporting us not in our strength, but in help of the grace of the Holy Spirit ”(Catechism of the Catholic Church, n.1817).
These words confirm that hope is the answer that is offered to our heart, when the absolute question arises in us: what will be of me? What is the fate of my pilgrimage for this life? What will be the fate of the world and humanity?
Many times, before Garabandal’s messages about notice, miracle and punishment, we ask ourselves these questions and lead them to our Lord and our mother so that inspired by the Holy Spirit, and with the confidence put in the mercy of God the Father Father , let’s get inner peace.
If there was no reliable tomorrow, a luminous horizon, it could only be concluded that virtue is a useless effort. “Only when the future is true as a positive reality, the present is also lifeless,” said Benedict XVI (Spe Salvi Encyclical Charter, 2).
During his very brief ministry, John Paul I also dedicated a catechesis to hope, in which he affirmed that this “is a mandatory virtue for every Christian” that is born of confidence in three truths: “God is almighty, God loves me immensely, God is faithful to promises. ” And it is He, the God of Mercy, who ignites confidence in me; Therefore, I do not feel alone, nor useless, nor abandoned, but involved in a destination of salvation, that one day will reach paradise (General Hearing, September 20, 1978).
Today’s world has a huge need for this Christian virtue. The world and humanity need hope, as they need patience, virtue that goes hand in hand with hope. Patient men are good weavers. Peace want stubbornly, and although some are in a hurry and they would want everything, patience has the ability to wait. Even when many around them have succumbed to disappointment, those who are encouraged by hope and are patients are able to cross the darkest nights. Therefore, hope and patience are linked.
Often, we are tempted to ask ourselves, what does God expect? Why don’t you act already, and, on the other hand, evil advances so much and how much do you want? And perhaps the answer is that perhaps when he does, the punishment will be so hard, that those who live it wish that God would have been without acting longer.
We have to understand that the times that will come will exceed us humanly, but that we only have the present to hit God and ask, day by day, mercy both for us and for the world and for the Church, plunged into these times in A hard proof of faith.
As a conclusion, I would like to convey the following central idea: the appearances of the Virgen del Carmen in Garabandal must be understood as a message of hope and salvation for each of us, for the world and for all humanity.
From that hidden place in Spain, our mother wanted , in turn, he loves us infinitely. He is undoubtedly the light of the world.
Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Lux Mundi. (Picture by Albert Cortina)***
The content of this article was presented at the First International Congress of the Virgin of Garabandal held on October 17-19, 2024.
Link to the Congress sessions:
