Madrid, Spain, Feb 15, 2007 / 10:01 am
In order to commemorate the 81st anniversary of the apparition of the Child Jesus to Sister Lucia in 1926, various activities will held on February 15 at the Shrine of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Pontevedra, where the apparition took place.
Activities will include Eucharistic adoration, spiritual talks, the recitation of the rosary and the celebration of Mass. “If time permits,” organizers said, a special procession with the statue of the Child Jesus will take place at the shrine.
The apparition
Sister Lucia was a novice at the Convent of the Dorotea Sisters in Pontevedra, today the Shrine of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, where the Blessed Mother entrusted to her the great promise of the first Saturday devotion.
Sister Lucia was out on the patio of the old convent when a supernatural event she described in memoirs took place:
“On February 15, 1926, I was very busy with my work, and I almost forgot about that (the apparition that took place on December 10). And I was going to take a bucket of trash out to the garden. It was there where a few months earlier I had encountered a child who I asked if he knew the Ave Maria. Answering me yes, I told him to pray it so I could hear it. And since he did not want to pray just that, he was not able to only pray the Hail Mary, I asked him if he knew where the Church of Holy Mary was. He told me he did. I told him to go there everyday and to say: ‘O my Mother of heaven, give me to your Son Jesus.’ I taught him this and I left.”
On February 15, 1926, going back to the same place as usual, I found a child that I thought was the same one and I asked him, ‘Well, did you pray to the Mother of Heaven to give you to Jesus?’ The child looked at me and said, ‘And have you spread throughout the world what the Mother of Heaven asked you to?’ And with that he was transformed into a brilliant Child and I realized he was Jesus.”