The Mother of Sorrow (September 15th)

Luke 2:34-35 “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted, and you yourself a sword will pierce, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

In the Mother of sorrow, Jesus comes down from the Cross as one who isn’t just suffering for us, but also as one suffering with us. This mother illuminates all suffering, showing it as something that can move the wicked to love and empathy, not a weakness or frailty that needs to be made stoic.

Such as it was, in the year 1945, that the towns and families of Spain were divided; they had suffered the pain of the Civil War where, as a result, an atmosphere of absolute distrust was heavy, especially in La Codosera.

Marcelina, lived this division in her family: her father had been killed at the end of the war, because her grandfather had been mayor of the town at the time of the Republic, who, when the fighting started, warned the village priest who was able to save his life thanks to him. However, at the end of the war, they killed Marcelina’s father when she was 3 or 4 years old, and when her mother was pregnant with her brother.

These terrible events caused Marcelina to face opposition to the faith at home. Nonetheless, she liked to go to the church and pray, though she did it in secret because her mother scolded her; her mother was deeply depressed, working odd jobs, including smuggling- as was usual of border towns- to support her children.

It was on one May 27, 1945, that Marcelina, who was 10, while out with her cousin, encountered shadowy presence in the place known as Chandavila, that manifested before her as a beautiful, but sad Lady, who wore a dark mantle covered in stars. She stood atop a chesnut tree. Recognizing her as the Mother of Sorrows, she told everyone that it was the Virgin she saw, so the villagers escorted her to the tree, so that she might see the apparition again. However, much to everyone’s disappointment, Marcelina saw nothing. A week later however, on June 4th, Marcelina saw the Lady again, who told her to comeback at 3 o’clock that very afternoon. At this, several thousand people gathered to witness.

Marcelina said that as she addressed the Virgin, who asked her to come to her on her knees from where the people were praying- about a hundred feet- telling her “Do not be afraid; nothing will happen to you.” and when Marcelina came to the Virgin and embraced her, and she drescribed the feeling of warmth and the softness of her mantle.

After this, people began to believe in the apparitions, because the ground Marcelina crawled over was littered with sharp chesnut shells, rocks, and other sharp protrusions, and the girl had not a sratch on her at all, when the people who attempted to imitate her were left with bloodied knees. When she went to the Virgin, the Virgin then asked her, “Do you want to come with me?” And Marcelina answered, “Yes, Madam!” The Virgin smiled and kissed her on the forehead, telling her that she could go back, and without taking her eyes off the Virgin, Marcelina reached her mother, who saw that her daughter did not have a scratch on her and began to shout, “I forgive you!”

After this conversation with the Virgin and the event of the intact knees, Marcelina had several more visions. The Virgin asked Marcelina to celebrate a mass in reparation a month there, next to the chestnut tree where she appeared and to build a hermitage for people to go and pray, do penance, convert, and recite the rosary. Thus, people immediately started praying next to the chestnut tree. A small chapel was built while Marcelina went to attended school and, after a few years, she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of the Cross, taking the name Sister Mary of the Mercy of the Cross.

Afra Brigido, 17, was not very religious and so skeptical about everything that was happening, chocking the visions up to a pressumed starvation of some kind. At some point though, she was convinced to go with some friends to the Corpus Christi procession, and while she was laughing with them as they all walked, she was left awestruck, crying out from having seen the Virgin as Marcelina described atop the chesnut tree. While praying the Sorrowful mysteries, she fell into a deep ecstasy and the whole suffering of Christ mystically unfolded before her.

From that moment on, Afra radically changed her life, beginning to go to Mass everyday, and to pray the Rosary throughout her life. Shortly afterwards, she went on a pilgrimage to a small village near La Codosera to visit a hermitage near the Zapatón River. While praying the Way of the Cross there, Afra fell and remained in ecstasy and began to manifest the Stigmata, which was reported by her friends. She had the stigmata until the end of her life, which Afra dedicated to caring for others: first for her mother and then, after her mother’s death she cared for many as a nurse. Unlike Marcelina, who was never to return after entering the convent, Afra returned infrequently to the place of the apparitions before her death in 2008 due to a long illness, which is taken to be a fulfillment of the Virgin’s prophecy of great suffering, though not in vain, for Afra.