An appearance of the Virgin Mary “alive, and real, as in Lourdes.”

The evening of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1947.

 

Maria Valtorta is confined to her bed, and laments at not being able to participate in the Church’s celebration of the Feast. She has been oppressed for years by the weight of seven chronic diseases.

 

“I was complaining about not being able to see Mary Immaculate passing by, carried in a procession. It is this being deprived of taking part in the rites of the Church that makes me feel the weight of my infirmity. In ten days, fifteen years will have passed during which I have been unable to set foot on the streets, have not gone to church, and have not seen ceremonies. From the balcony Marta [her live-in housekeeper] can see something, but I can see nothing. Alone in my bed I was complaining to myself as I hear the approach of the choirs acclaiming Mary Most Holy.

 

“And Mary came to me: alive, real, as in Lourdes. One of the most intense, and most complete, ecstasies I had ever had. The world utterly obliterated around me. Mary alone with Maria alone. I received much more than seeing a statue passing by.  

 

“I returned to – what shall I call it? – awareness of what the world is, I would say, after about an hour, I believe, for when She came, there was still daylight and when She left me, there was deep darkness. And I found that my face was moist with tears. I did not realize I was weeping with joy while I petitioned Her for the Church, the Holy Father, Italy, the Order of the Servants of Mary, all of the clergy, and the people dearest to me; while venerating and contemplating Her, I said the fifteen decades of the Rosary in front of Her – so lovely, so sweet, so luminous, and so blessed. But it was joyful weeping, and did no harm. It was an outburst of the heart liquefying with joy in those hours of contemplation and heavenly boon.  

 

“How beautiful She was! How beautiful She was! What joy and peace She left in my heart! May She be blessed! And, with Her, her Most Holy Son, who grants me these balms in my great suffering.”

 

This visit was a preamble to a major appearance of the Blessed Virgin three weeks later. 

 

Maria Valtorta, The Notebooks 1945-50, December 8, 1947; page 454. 

 

Disclaimer: A brief ‘press release’ from a Vatican dicastery has proposed, without offering proof, that her writings are not supernatural [Link]. However, according to the dicastery’s own published standards their press release has no canonical validity [Link, no. 22]. Therefore I am not being disobedient by publicly asserting my 100% human faith that the revelations of Maria Valtorta are from Heaven.

 

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