The 400-year-old Marian apparition that is particularly relevant today

The little-known apparition of Our Lady of Good Success includes some dire prophecies—but its fundamental message is one of hope, says apologist Matthew Arnold.

The statue of Our Lady of Good Success at the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito, Ecuador.

Southern California apologist Matthew Arnold, author and founder of the Catholic apologetics organization Pro Multis Media, has placed his apostolate under the patronage of Our Lady of Good Success, a little-known apparition of Mary to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres in Quito, Ecuador in 1594. Arnold, who has hosted radio programs for EWTN and the Radio Maria Network and who is the author of a forthcoming book on traditionalism in the Catholic Church, believes he is called to spread the message of this apparition and encourage devotion to the Blessed Mother under the title of Our Lady of Good Success.

Arnold previously worked in the entertainment industry before converting to the Catholic faith two decades ago. As a new convert he was initially uncomfortable with Marian apparitions, but took an interest in the apparitions at Quito, which were approved by the local bishop in 1611.

“Even though the apparition had occurred 400 years before, she had many interesting things to say about the Church of our day, such as a crisis of faith and morals in the Church and in the world,” Arnold said.

In the interest of spreading the message of Our Lady of Good Success, Arnold makes his presentation on the apparitions free of charge to parishes and other church groups, asking only for travel and lodging expenses. He also has a pamphlet outlining Our Lady’s message at Quito, available for free on his website.

Arnold returned in February from a pilgrimage to Quito, which he organized, and discussed his visit and the apparitions that inspired it with CWR.

CWR: What are the basic facts of the apparition of Our Lady of Good Success, and why is it important in 2017?

Matthew Arnold: In seven apparitions over 40 years beginning in 1594, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito, Ecuador.  Our Lady requested a statue be made of her as she appeared to Mother Mariana: holding the infant Jesus in her left arm and a crozier and keys in her right hand.

The presence of the Divine Infant was to remind people how powerful Mary is in bringing people to her son—“To Jesus, through Mary.” The keys and crozier were to symbolize Mary’s role as true and perpetual abbess of the convent.

The statue resides above the abbess’ chair in the upper choir of the convent church, except when it is displayed above the high altar during the months of May and October and during the yearly novena beginning January 24 leading up to her feast day, February 2, which is also the Feast of the Presentation, or Candlemas.

Our Lady also made many prophecies about the colony [Ecuador was under Spanish rule until the 19th century] and the Church, including a worldwide crisis of faith and morals in the Church and society that would begin in the 19th century and extend throughout the 20th century. She warned that there would be an almost total corruption of customs, and more.

However, Mary also offered a solution to the crisis, namely, devotion to her under the title Our Lady of Good Success. She prophesied that this devotion would not begin to become well-known until the end of the 20th century. She promised that precisely when it seems evil has triumphed, “this will mark the arrival of my hour, when I, in a marvelous way, will dethrone the proud and cursed Satan, trampling him under my feet.”

This is a pretty clear reference to Genesis 3:15 and, I believe, the self-same triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart promised centuries later at Fatima.

The Ecuadoran apparitions of Our Lady to Mother Mariana have been approved by the local bishop since 1611; the visionary, Mother Mariana, has been named “Servant of God” and the cause for her canonization is on-going; and the convent church was named an archdiocesan Marian sanctuary in 1991, making it an official place of pilgrimage.

CWR: In your years of studying the apparitions of Our Lady of Good Success, what have you learned?

Arnold: The prophecies of Our Lady of Good Success for our times are quite dire and, unfortunately, quite evident. By virtually every measurable standard, the Catholic Church has been in sharp decline almost everywhere in the world for decades, and many of Mary’s grim prophecies for our times are disturbingly accurate. It is common for various websites to concentrate on this sensational aspect.

However, the message of Mary of Good Success is not one of “doom and gloom”! On the contrary, it is a message of great hope and consolation; precisely because Our Lady did not prophesy the end of the world, but a marvelous restoration of what has been lost in the Church and the world.

CWR: Did Our Lady of Good Success make any special requests?

Arnold: Specifically, she asked that Catholics invoke her under the title of Our Lady of Good Success, because devotion to her under this invocation would be a great consolation to the faithful in these difficult times. She also promised her “good success” to all who would help to spread devotion to her under this title.

For more information visit www.matthewarnold.org or www.maryofgoodsuccess.org.

Come Holy Spirit, beat in my heart beating to see and hear the things of God.

Come Holy Spirit, think in my thinking to know the thoughts of God.

Come Holy Spirit, breath in the breathing of my soul to be always one with God. 

Sanctify all that is thought, said and done in the Most Holy Divine Will so that all will be for the Glory of God and His Kingdom may Come on earth as it is in Heaven.

Amen

Pentecost June 4, 2017

Bishops Meeting in Indianapolis next week!

Please Pray!

Several Bishops have relayed that the devotion to Our Lady of America and the requested procession are under consideration by various committees of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  This is the first time since the 1956 when Our Lady of America first appeared in Indiana that the Bishops as a group have discerned this devotion.

On June 14-15, 2017 the Spring Assembly of the Bishops Conference will meet in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Archdiocese of Indianapolis is the Metropolitan See of the State of Indiana.  It is also an Archdiocese where there has been good ecclesiastical support for this devotion (See blog). The former Indianapolis Archbishop, Cardinal Tobin would frequently ask about the devotion and progress.

Please pray for these holy men who are called to lead the Church in the United States.  Pray that whatever discussions and decisions they make while in Indianapolis are under the care and intercession of Our Lady of America.  And in particular pray that Our Lady of America’s requests are honored and fulfilled.  Please consider a Novena of Masses, Rosaries, or the Prayer to Our Lady of America, The Immaculate Virgin for this intention.

Christian apologist, born at Flavia Neapolis, about A.D. 100, converted to Christianity about A.D. 130, taught and defended the Christian religion in Asia Minor and at Rome, where he suffered martyrdom about the year 165. Two “Apologies” bearing his name and his “Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon” have come down to us. Leo XIII had a Mass and an Office composed in his honour and set his feast for 14 April.

Life

Among the Fathers of the second century his life is the best known, and from the most authentic documents. In both “Apologies” and in his “Dialogue” he gives many personal details, e.g. about his studies in philosophy and his conversion; they are not, however, an autobiography, but are partly idealized, and it is necessary to distinguish in them between poetry and truth; they furnish us however with several precious and reliable clues. For his martyrdom we have documents of undisputed authority. In the first line of his “Apology” he calls himself “Justin, the son of Priscos, son of Baccheios, of Flavia Neapolis, in Palestinian Syria”. Flavia Neapolis, his native town, founded by Vespasian (A.D. 72), was built on the site of a place called Mabortha, or Mamortha, quite near Sichem (Guérin, “Samarie”, I, Paris, 1874, 390-423; Schürer, “History of the Jewish People”, tr., I, Edinburgh, 1885). Its inhabitants were all, or for the most part, pagans. The names of the father and grandfather of Justin suggest a pagan origin, and he speaks of himself as uncircumcised (Dialogue, xxviii). The date of his birth is uncertain, but would seem to fall in the first years of the second century. He received a good education in philosophy, an account of which he gives us at the beginning of his “Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon”; he placed himself first under a Stoic, but after some time found that he had learned nothing about God and that in fact his master had nothing to teach him on the subject. A Peripatetic whom he then found welcomed him at first but afterwards demanded a fee from him; this proved that he was not a philosopher. A Pythagorean refused to teach him anything until he should have learned music, astronomy, and geometry. Finally a Platonist arrived on the scene and for some time delighted Justin. This account cannot be taken too literally; the facts seem to be arranged with a view to showing the weakness of the pagan philosophies and of contrasting them with the teachings of the Prophets and of Christ. The main facts, however, may be accepted; the works of Justin seem to show just such a philosophic development as is here described, Eclectic, but owing much to Stoicism and more to Platonism. He was still under the charm of the Platonistic philosophy when, as he walked one day along the seashore, he met a mysterious old man; the conclusion of their long discussion was that he soul could not arrive through human knowledge at the idea of God, but that it needed to be instructed by the Prophets who, inspired by the Holy Ghost, had known God and could make Him known (“Dialogue”, iii, vii; cf. Zahm, “Dichtung and Wahrheit in Justins Dialog mit dem Jeden Trypho” in “Zeitschr. für Kirchengesch.”, VIII, 1885-1886, 37-66).

The “Apologies” throw light on another phase of the conversion of Justin: “When I was a disciple of Plato”, he writes, “hearing the accusations made against the Christians and seeing them intrepid in the face of death and of all that men fear, I said to myself that it was impossible that they should be living in evil and in the love of pleasure” (II Apol., xviii, 1). Both accounts exhibit the two aspects of Christianity that most strongly influenced St. Justin; in the “Apologies” he is moved by its moral beauty (I Apol., xiv), in the “Dialogue” by its truth. His conversion must have taken place at the latest towards A.D. 130, since St. Justin places during the war of Bar-Cocheba (132-135) the interview with the Jew Tryphon, related in his “Dialogue”. This interview is evidently not described exactly as it took place, and yet the account cannot be wholly fictitious. Tryphon, according to Eusebius (Hist. eccl., IV, xviii, 6), was “the best known Jew of that time”, which description the historian may have borrowed from the introduction to the “Dialogue”, now lost. It is possible to identify in a general way this Tryphon with the Rabbi Tarphon often mentioned in the Talmud (Schürer, “Gesch. d. Jud. Volkes”, 3rd ed., II, 377 seq., 555 seq., cf., however, Herford, “Christianity in Talmud and Midrash”, London, 1903, 156). The place of the interview is not definitely told, but Ephesus is clearly enough indicated; the literary setting lacks neither probability nor life, the chance meetings under the porticoes, the groups of curious onlookers who stop a while and then disperse during the inteviews, offer a vivid picture of such extemporary conferences. St. Justin lived certainly some time at Ephesus; the Acts of his martyrdom tell us that he went to Rome twice and lived “near the baths of Timothy with a man named Martin”. He taught school there, and in the aforesaid Acts of his martyrdom we read of several of his disciples who were condemned with him.

In his second “Apology” (iii) Justin says: “I, too, expect to be persecuted and to be crucified by some of those whom I have named, or by Crescens, that friend of noise and of ostentation.” Indeed Tatian relates (Discourse, xix) that the Cynic philosopher Crescens did pursue him and Justin; he does not tell us the result and, moreover, it is not certain that the “Discourse” of Tatian was written after the death of Justin. Eusebius (Hist. eccl., IV, xvi, 7, 8) says that it was the intrigues of Crescens which brought about the death of Justin; this is credible, but not certain; Eusebius has apparently no other reason for affirming it than the two passages cited above from Justin and Tatian. St. Justin was condemned to death by the prefect, Rusticus, towards A.D. 165, with six companions, Chariton, Charito, Evelpostos, Pćon, Hierax, and Liberianos. We still have the authentic account of their martyrdom (“Acta SS.”, April, II, 104-19; Otto, “Corpus Apologetarum”, III, Jena, 1879, 266-78; P. G., VI, 1565-72). The examination ends as follows:

“The Prefect Rusticus says: Approach and sacrifice, all of you, to the gods. Justin says: No one in his right mind gives up piety for impiety. The Prefect Rusticus says: If you do not obey, you will be tortured without mercy. Justin replies: That is our desire, to be tortured for Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and so to be saved, for that will give us salvation and firm confidence at the more terrible universal tribunal of Our Lord and Saviour. And all the martyrs said: Do as you wish; for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols. The Prefect Rusticus read the sentence: Those who do not wish to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the emperor will be scourged and beheaded according to the laws. The holy martyrs glorifying God betook themselves to the customary place, where they were beheaded and consummated their martyrdom confessing their Saviour.”

As we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima many are still unaware of the message Our Lady gave to each of us.

Many are side tracked by the secrets she reveled to the three shepherds and are not familiar with the true message and request of Our Lady to the world.

What does she asked of each us?  Four simple things:

1. That we pray the rosary daily in her honor.
2. That we do penance.  Our Lord explained to sister Lucia what form of penance:

“The sacrifice required of every person is the fulfillment of his duties in life and the observance of My law.

This is the penance that I now seek and require.”

3. Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
4. And Communions of reparation on the first Saturdays*.

In the words of Our Lady:

“I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to Confession and receive Holy Communion, recite the Rosary and keep me company for 15 minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to me.”

Through this devotion she promised not only the graces necessary for salvation of those that observe the first five Saturdays but also the conversion of sinners and to atone for the sins of the world.

Our Lord explained to sister Lucia why 5 Saturdays in May 29, 1930.

My daughter, the reason is simple. There are five types of offenses and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
1.  Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception;
2.  Blasphemies against her virginity;
3.  Blasphemies against her divine maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognize her as the Mother of men;
4.  Blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children, indifference or scorn or even hatred of this Immaculate    Mother;
5.  Offenses of those who outrage her directly in her holy images.

*How to fulfill the request of the first five Saturdays devotion:

1. Spirit of reparation
   The spirit of reparation is a loving desire to make reparation to and console the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Our Mother. One should make this intention before carrying out Our Lady’s requests. A renewal of the actual intention at the time is best.
2. Confession in the spirit of reparation
   If one cannot go to confession the first Saturday of the month, one can go within eight days. Even one’s monthly confession would be sufficient, which would need the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
3. Reparatory Communion
   This is the essential act of this devotion.  If a just reason prevents the Communion on a First Saturday, with the priest’s permission it may be received the following Sunday.
4. Recitation of the rosary. To comply with the request of our Blessed Mother, it must be offered in reparation for the offenses committed against her Immaculate Heart  and said properly while meditating.
5. 15-minute meditation
   Also offered in reparation, the meditation may embrace one or more mysteries; it may include all, taken together or separately. This meditation should be the richest of any meditation, because Our Lady promised to be present when she said “…those who keep me company….”