Despite the negative stance of the Church hierarchy, reached through a six-hour verdict of a six-man Special Episcopal Commission led by an inexperienced apostolic administrator, I wish to present here gist of the messages for the sake of the Filipino people who had experienced the spiritual thirst deprived them for over seven decades. They are the following:
Pray for priests and nuns: the Sacred Heart of Jesus bleeds anew for every fallen priest or nun. She asked for prayers and penance for them.
Be faithful to Christ: She instructed the visionary to trust in her, to love her, and to believe in all that she said because she is a loving mother. She reminded her that Jesus Christ is the Truth, the Way and the Life. Praying the holy rosary is a path that leads to Him.
Embrace humility and simplicity: Carmelites should love one another as sisters, and stressed humility and simplicity as the virtues she loves most.
Practice penance and sacrfifice: The Virgin Mary described her own “fiat” as a painful sacrifice and called on all the Carmelites to join her in penance, prayers and sacrifice for the salvation of the world.
Pray the rosary: What she is asking is the same as the one she asked in Fatima, which included the daily prayer of the rosary.
Consecration: on Sept. 24, 1948, she asked the Carmelite community to consecrate themselves to her. On October 7, of the same year, she asked them to become her beloved “slaves”.
Prophetic Warning: in 1949, it was revealed by Ricardo Cardinal Vidal that Our Lady would like us pray hard because China dreams of invading the whole world and that money is the evil force that would lead to destruction.
Among the messages, we are supposed to look at what may be annoying because it’s novel or just a repetition. Perhaps, the SEC which convened in 1951 under Apostolic Delegate Egidio Vagnozzi may have considered the messages either too novel or just a copycat message making the apparitions “spurious”.
One great theological problem which needs to be overcome is the fact that Our Lady introduced herself as the Mediatrix of All Grace (singular) and not the less problematic Mediatrix of All Graces (plural). This however, is not a theological error if one would only understand that Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, is the totality of all graces needed to redeem all mankind or the Ultimate Source of all graces, and this singular Grace was only possible through the mediation of Mary, and this is what our brotherhood adheres to.
Faithfulness to Christ, the exercise of virtues, the application of penance and sacrificed, the praying of the rosary and consecration could be considered to be “copies” of former message, but the use of the word “slaves” in the act of consecration could be questionable. Our Lady is never known to be a slavedriver like an Egyptian princess but the modifier “beloved” could only mean that, in the same vein as in the parable, a loyal slave, can be treated as real child of the King or Queen. Also, the portrayal of priests and nuns to be “fallen” is such an annoyance to church investigators who are steep in pride as what happened in La Salette which is why it had been ignored for long years.
Cardinal Vidal, the peacemaker who figured silently in two EDSA revolutions, also became Bishop of Lipa was in a position to get more information concerning the apparitions and their messages. He found it significant that China had already been mentioned by Our Lady although the Communist party was just beginning in China then. But for Vagnozzi and his bogeyman, it could be source for doubt especially if China which was very weak then would find the Philippines “a favorite” for aggressive action.
