The following page from:
http://members.aol.com/bjw1106/marian7a.htm
With PDT's comments inserted in red.
"...Peter went up to the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. And he
became hungry and desired something to eat; but while they were preparing
it, he fell into a trance and saw the heavens opened..."
Acts of the Apostles 10:9-11
The apparitions and visions that occassionally occur to the successors
of Peter are difficult to definitively verify. For a variety of reasons, members
of the Vatican's heirarchy do not like to broadcast the mystical experiences
of the head of the Catholic Church. Despite this reluctance, from time to
time details of such incidents do surface, almost always without attribution.
Unfortunately, these episodes are nearly impossible to independently follow-up
and evaluate. Nonetheless, the reality of these visions appears to be supported
by the multiple sources that report a remarkably similar set of information
describing the circumstances of the purported vision.
"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our defense against
the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do you, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into
hell Satan and the other evil spirits who prowl about the world for the ruin
of souls. Amen."
While this prayer may now seem quaint and mildly embarrassing to the modern
reader with its reference to Satan and evil spirits, it should be noted that
virtually all measures of social pathology and moral decline (things like
the crime rate, percentage of unwed mothers, abortion rate, divorce rate,
etc.) each started to rise sharply as the 1960's ended...a few years after
this prayer had ceased being used in Church liturgies. Regardless, while
the precise details of Leo's visions are not known, it would certainly appear
that his concern about the coming difficulties in his Church and the world
in which it found itself were well founded.
There were occasional rumors of visions and "angelic" phenomena associated
with Pius XII during the entire duration of his papacy (1939 - 1958). He
purportedly experienced mystical visions of both Jesus and Mary. After one
of these "visions" he reportedly told one of his assistants, "Mankind must
prepare itself for sufferings such as it has never before experienced."
He expressed dismay at what he saw facing humanity in the not so distant future,
describing those times as "the darkest since the deluge". He described the
times that were unfolding as a period of great spiritual conflict, noting,
"The hour has struck - the battle, the most widespread, bitter and ferocious
the world has ever known, has been joined. It must be fought to the finish."
He made these comments having communicated with Sister Lucia, the surviving
visionary of Fatima, a correspondence which he conducted through intermediaries.
Apparently as a result of these contacts, he consecrated the entire Church
and the world to Mary's heart in 1942 implicitly accepting Sister Lucia's
visions at Tuy and Pontevedra in the late 1920's. In the late 1940's he learned
from Sr. Lucia that, failing a Church-wide collegial consecration of Russia
by the bishops in unison with the Pope, the tribulations prophesized at Fatima
might still be ameliorated if the world could be consecrated to Mary's Immaculate
Heart. If such a consecration could be again be performed, this time with
the bishops of the Church and with a special mention of Russia in the words
of dedication, then the tribulations which he saw in his visions could be
mitigated.
To reaffirm the trust he exhibited in the Mother of God, he also witnessed
the inexplicable solar phenomena of Fatima while walking in the Vatican gardens.
He wrote to one of his cardinals,
"Having lifted the papers I had in my hand, I was struck by a phenomenon I
had never seen before. The sun, which was fairly high, looked like a pale
yellow opaque globe completely surrounded by a luminous halo, which nevertheless
did not prevent me at all from staring attentively at the sun without the
slightest discomfort. A very light cloud was before it. The opaque globe
began moving outward, slowly turning over upon itself, and going from left
to right and vice-versa. But within the globe very strong movements could
be seen in all clarity and without interruption.".
After nearly 1,500 years as a common belief of many of the faithful and after
nearly fifty years of intensive theological study, two days after his experiences
in the Vatican garden Pius XII formally declared as Catholic Dogma that Mary
was Assumed body and soul into Heaven - a doctrine known as the Assumption.
Another intriguing vision occurred only once and only to one individual
- in Rome in August of 1981. On May 13, 1981, during an open-air papal audience
in St. Peter's Square, the Polish Pope who had dedicated his papacy to Mary,
bent down to hug a young girl who was wearing a small likeness of Our Lady
of Fatima. At that precise moment, Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish assassin, fired
two shots at his head at close range. The bullets missed the Pope but hit
two pilgrims standing nearby. Agca fired again hitting the Pope in the abdomen.
Had he not bent down to hug that little girl wearing the picture of Mary,
those two bullets would have ripped through his skull probably killing him
instantly.
As it was, it would take him six months to fully recover from the wounds.
As he convalesced at the Policlinico in Rome, John Paul became even more prayerful.
He prayed to Our Lady of Fatima since he was convinced that it was her direct
intercession that saved his life. He reread the three Secrets that the Lady
of Fatima gave the three children in 1917 and which were finally recorded
in written form by Sister Lucia in the late '30's and he instructed Bishop
Pavol Hnilica, a Slovak bishop who was secretly ordained while a priest in
communist Czechoslovakia, to send all the Church's documents on the events
at Fatima for his review. The Pope also dispatched Sister Mary Ludovica to
Fatima to meet with its retired Bishop John Venancio. The purpose of this
meeting was never disclosed.
It was while he was in this state of mind at the Policlinico that John Paul
reportedly witnessed the inexplicable phenomenon of the sun first seen at
Fatima sixty five years earlier. Moreover, he reportedly received a vision
of the future related to the third Fatima Secret at the same time the phenomenon
of the sun took place.
What were the contents of his vision? Only John Paul knows. However, Bishop
Hnilica reported at the time of the Pope's release from the Policlinico, that
the Pope told him: "I have come to understand that the only way to save the
world from war, to save it from atheism, is the conversion of Russia according
to the message of Fatima." It is reasonable to suspect that, since the time
of this vision, he has been acting in accord with what he believes are Heaven's
wishes.
John Paul II has dedicated his papacy to Mary, the Mother of Jesus. His personal
motto, Totus Tuus (Completely Yours), is a term illustrating the consecration
of his life to the Blessed Virgin, a consecration that took place while he
was still a Polish bishop.
The assassination attempt and the vision that followed it serve to affirm
Mary's unique role for this Pope. He called the assassination attempt a "mysterious
coincidence with the anniversary of the first apparition at Fatima" in a
speech he gave as a pilgrim to Fatima on May 13, 1982. During this pilgrimage,
John Paul also conducted a service where he consecrated the world and, indirectly,
Russia, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. His actions since his recovery appear
to confirm that he is operating on a timetable established by Heaven; he
acts as if what he does and how successful it will be are dependent on conforming
to the sequence of events established by the Lord of history and provided
to him by Our Lady of Fatima. A partial confirmation of this is based on
the consecration of Russia and the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
that John Paul performed on March 25, 1984. This act was an attempt to fulfil
Mary's request to Sister Lucia, first in 1917 at Fatima, and again at Pontevedra,
Spain on December 10, 1929. At Pontevedra, Sister Lucia was again visited
by the Blessed Virgin. During this apparition, Our Lady told her that God
wanted "the Pope, together with all the bishops of the world, to make the
consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart." In a previous apparition
at Tuy, Spain on December 10, 1925, the Blessed Virgin told Sister Lucia:
" Look, my daughter, at my Heart encircled by these thorns with which men
pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least,
strive to console me, and so I announce: I promise to assist at the hour
of death with the grace necessary for salvation all those who, with the intention
of making reparation to me, will, on the first Saturday of five consecutive
months, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say five decades of the
beads, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen
mysteries of the rosary."
In 1989, Sister Lucia told one of her relatives that the Consecration conducted
by Pope John Paul and the bishops in 1984 was accepted by Heaven and Russia
would be converted. (She did not say when this would occur.) The statement
by the Mother of God that she could assure that sufficient graces would be
available to anyone who made reparation to her Immaculate Heart combined
with her promise that the dedication of Russia to her Immaculate Heart would
lead to the conversion of Russia places Mary squarely at the heart of the
world in which we now find ourselves. Our responses to her requests will
determine the course of history - not in some far away future, but right
now in the last half of the last decade of the second millenia after the
birth of her Son.
It is astounding then, that in light of this, there has been a dramatic decline
in all forms of devotion to Mary during the last thirty years just at a time
when the world desperately needs it. John Paul's dedication to the Blessed
Virgin, reinvigorated by the vision he had at the Policlinico, represents
a real hope in mitigating against a near-term global period of stress.