La Vang, Vietnam Miracle Healings and Protections

 In 1552, the Le family ruled dynasty Vietnam was manipulated by its chief Regent, Mac Dang Dung. It took combined efforts of two political elite families to oust the usurper. As rewards, Vietnam was divided into two regions under the ruling families Trinh and Nguyen. The Trinh family ruled the northern region. The southern region was under the Le and Nguyen families. Several years later, wars broke out between the Trinh and Nguyen families. The Nguyen Lord set up the capital in a remote location called Dinh Cat, distant from the feuds. The Nguyen opened their domain to foreign merchant ships in exchange for guns and ammunitions against their northern adversaries.

In 1593, Catholics introduced into Vietnam by Father Diego Aduarte, a Dominican, who came on board a Spanish merchant ship, and he established a mission in Dinh Cat.

Mary years later, Rev. Francisco Buzoni, Jesuit order priest, who maintained his predecessor's mission, with good relations with the Nguyen family. With the arrival of Father Francisco de Pina, an Italian Jesuit who was fluent in Vietnamese language, many people converted to Catholicism, including the king’s aunt. Thirty-seven parishes were established around Dinh Cat near the coastal line of Vietnam while the Jesuits continued the Dominican works.

In 1624, Father Alexander de Rhodes, a French Jesuit, arrived and initiated the Vietnamese alphabets that are being used today. For more than forty years, Catholicism was marginally tolerated to flourish due to the opened relations with European powers, such as Spain, France and Portugal. In 1788, the Nguyen dynasty expanded their territory southward and re-united the north and south regions into what is now Vietnam. The capital was moved once again, sixty kilometers southward, to Hue, and became the official capital of Vietnam in 1789.

Persecution of Catholicism dated back in 1640, when the Nguyen lords grew dissent of the Spanish merchants and killed two missionaries. In 1645, Father Alexander de Rhodes was extricated out of Vietnam after a number of parishioners in the Dinh Cat area were killed during a skirmish with the local bandits. The periodic persecutions of the Vietnamese Catholics continued escalated in 1798, when the Nguyen Dynasty decreed Catholicism as a religious sect, introduced by foreigners, with the purposes to recruit and influence the working class to revolt against the Nguyen dynasty. A few months later, direct attacks were aimed at all thirty-seven parishes in Dinh Cat with the purpose of exterminating the misled commoners and leveling the parishes. More than 100,000 Vietnamese Catholics died as martyrs.

The first apparition of the Lady of La Vang to the Vietnamese people was noted during this great persecution in 1798. This was the year, when King Canh 'Minh issued an anti-Catholic order to destroy all Catholic churches and seminaries. Many Christians took refuge in the jungle situated in proximity of Quang Tri, a village in central Vietnam, where they experienced hunger and sickness, and prepared themselves for martyrdom. Many Catholics from the nearby town of Quang Tri sought refuge in the deep forest of La Vang. A great number of these people suffered from the bitter cold weather, lurking wild beasts, jungle sickness and starvation. At night, they often gathered in small groups to say the rosary and to pray. Unexpectedly, one night they were visited by an apparition of a beautiful Lady in a long cape, holding a child in her arms, with two angels at her sides. The most beautify lady comforted them and told them to boil leaves from trees to use as medicine. She also told them from that day, all those who came to this place pray, their prayers heard and answered. This took place on the grass area near the big ancient banyan tree where the refugees were praying. All those who were present witnessed this miracle.

From the first time the Lady appeared, the people who took refuge there erected a small desolate chapel in her honor. During the following years, her name was spread among the people in the region to other places. Despite its isolated location in the high mountains, groups of people continued to find ways to penetrate the deep and dangerous jungle to pray to the most beautiful Lady. Gradually, pilgrimages came with axes, spears, canes and drums to scare away wild animals were replaced by those holding flying flags, flowers and rosaries. New pilgrimages went on every year despite the continuous persecution campaign. After the persecution had officially ended, Bishop Gaspar ordered a church built in the most beautiful Lady.

Due to its precarious location and limited funding, it took 15 years for the completion of the church. The church inauguration by Bishop Gaspar, a solemn ceremony participated by over 12,000 people, and it last from August 6 to 8, 1901. The bishop proclaimed the most beautiful Lady as Lady of La Vang, and she is protector of Catholics. In 1928 a larger church was built to accommodate the increasing number of pilgrimages.  But result from Vietnam war the church destroyed in the summer of 1972!

The history of the Lady of La Vang continues to gain greater significance as more claims from people whose prayers were answered were validated. In April of 1961, the Council of Vietnamese Bishops selected the holy church of La Vang as the National Sacred Marian Center. In August of 1962, Pope John XXIII elevated the church of La Vang to the Basilica of La Vang. On June 19, 1988. Pope John Paul 11 in the canonizing ceremony of the 117 Vietnamese martyrs, publicly and repeatedly recognized the importance and significance of the Lady of La Vang and expressed a desire for the rebuilding of the La Vang Basilica to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first apparition of the Lady of La Vang in August of 1998.

           Our Lady of La Vang continually accompanying those who seek God, and teach them pray to God the Master and sole owner of the universe, and make their sacrifices of their love and services to one another, for benefit their souls and build Kingdom of Heaven for human souls.

Fatima, Portugal Sun Dancing on Sky

             On May 13, 1917 the three children took their flocks out to pasture on the small area known as the Cova da Iria. After lunch and the rosary they suddenly saw a bright flash of something like lightning, followed quickly by another flash in the clear blue sky. They looked up to see in Lucia's words, "a lady, clothed in white, brighter than the sun, radiating a light more clear and intense than a crystal cup filled with sparkling water, lit by burning sunlight." The children stood there amazed, bathed in the light that surrounded the apparition, as the Lady smiled and said: "Do not be afraid, I will not harm you." Lucia as the oldest asked her where she came from. The Lady pointed to the sky and said: "I come from heaven." Lucia then asked her what she wanted: "I have come to ask you to come here for six months on the 13th day of the month, at this same hour. Later I shall say who I am and what I desire. And I shall return here yet a seventh time."

           About fifty people turned up at the Cova da Iria on June 13, as the three children assembled near the holmoak tree where the Lady had appeared. The children then saw a flash of light followed immediately by the most beautiful Lady, She spoke to Lucia: "I want you to come on the 13th of next month. I will tell you what I want."

       On 13 July the three children assembled at the Cova and again they saw the indescribably beautiful Lady over the holmoak. Lucia asked what she wanted, and the Lady replied: "I want you to come here on the 13th of next month….”

           As 13 August approached, the story of the apparitions had reached the anti-religious secular press, and while this ensured that the whole country knew about Fatima, it also meant that many biased and negative reports were circulating, and the three children kidnapped on the morning of the 13th by the Mayor of Vila Nova de Ourem, Arturo Santos. They were interrogated about the secret; but despite his threats and promises of money, they refused to divulge it. In the afternoon they were moved to the local prison and threatened with death but determined that they would die rather than reveal the secret.

              On August 19, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta were assembled at a place called Valinhos, near Fatima, late in the afternoon, they again saw the Lady, who spoke to Lucia: "Go again to the Cova da Iria on the 13th and continue to pray …..”

              On September 13 very large crowds began to converge on Fatima from all directions. Around noon the children then arrived, and after the customary flash of light, they saw Mary on the holmoak tree. She spoke to Lucia: "Continue to pray in order to obtain the end of the war. In October Our Lord will come …. “ Lucia then began to put forward the petitions for cures, to be told: "Yes, I will cure some, but not others. In October I will perform a miracle so that all may believe." With that she rose, moved to the east, and disappeared.

               13 October 1917, the proclamation of a public miracle caused the most intense speculation throughout Portugal, and the journalist Avelino de Almeida, published a satirical article on the whole business in the anti-religious newspaper O Seculo. People from other parts of the country descended, in their tens of thousands, on the Cova, despite the terrible storm that lashed the mountain country around Fatima, on the eve of the 13th. Many pilgrims went barefooted, reciting the rosary as they went, all crowding into the area around the Cova, as by midmorning the weather again turned bad and heavy rain began to fall.

             The children reached the holmoak around noon, and then they saw the flash of light as the Lady appeared before them. For the last time, Lucia asked what she wanted: "I want to tell you that a chapel is to be built here in my honor. I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue always to pray the Rosary every day. The war is going to end, and the soldiers will soon return to their homes."

Again Lucia made her requests, being informed that people must amend their lives, and ask forgiveness of their sins, if they wanted healings or conversions. She reported too that Mary grew very sad and said: "Do not offend the Lord our God any more, because He is already so much offended." Then rising into the air and opening her hands towards the sun, growing more brilliant as she did, she disappeared, being replaced by various visions seen only by the children.

             At the same time the vast crowd saw a true miracle. The black clouds parted, and the sun became visible, looking like a dull gray disc that could be looked at directly quite easily. In O Seculo Avelino de Almeida would adopt a very different tone from his earlier satirical article on Fatima:

            "...one could see the immense multitude turn towards the sun, which appeared free from clouds and at its zenith. It looked like a plaque of dull silver and it was possible to look at it without the least discomfort. It might have been an eclipse took place. But at that moment a great shout went up and one could hear the spectators nearest at hand shouting: "A miracle! A miracle!" Before the astonished eyes of the crowd, whose aspect was Biblical as they stood bareheaded, eagerly searching the sky, the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws - the sun "danced" according to the typical expression of the people. ...

           "People then began to ask each other what they had seen. The great majority admitted to having seen the trembling and dancing of the sun; others affirmed that they saw the face of the Blessed Virgin; others, again, swore that the sun whirled on itself like a giant Catherine wheel and that it lowered itself to the earth as if to burn it with its rays. Some said they saw it change colors successively. ..."

            Other witnesses too, such as Maria Carreira, testified to the terrifying nature of the solar miracle: "It turned everything different colors, yellow, blue, white, and it shook and trembled; it seemed like a wheel of fire which was going to fall on the people. They cried out: 'We shall all be killed, we shall all be killed!' ... At last the sun stopped moving and we all breathed a sigh of relief. We were still alive and the miracle which the children had foretold had taken place."

             Other people witnessed the solar miracle from a distance thus ruling out the possibility of any type of collective hallucination. A final intriguing, and important, point was that the heat of the sun, as it descended on the people, also had the effect of drying their clothes and the ground, so that they went from being completely soaked to being dry in about ten minutes.

              "In virtue of considerations made known, and others which for reasons of brevity we omit; humbly invoking the Divine Spirit and placing ourselves under the protection of the most Holy Trinity, and after hearing the opinions of our Rev. Advisors in this diocese, we hereby: Declare worthy of belief, the visions of the shepherd children in the Cova da Iria, parish of Fatima, in this diocese, from the 13th May to 13th October1917.

Lourdes, France Healing Miracles

In 1858, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Salubrious had a series of eighteen visions of the Virgin Mary who appeared in a niche in the grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes, a village on the Gave de Paul river in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southern France. The first apparition occurred on 11 February 1858.

During her ninth apparition, on 25 February, Bernadette claimed to have been directed to a spring that had hitherto not existed in the grotto. Its discovery by Bernadette, witnessed by hundreds of onlookers, was eventually declared miraculous. Later studies have shown that the water is pure and contains chlorides of soda, lime and magnesia, bicarbonates of lime and magnesia, silicates of lime and aluminum, oxide of iron, soleplate of soda, phosphate, and organic matter. Otherwise, it is believed to contain no therapeutic ingredients.

Subsequently, however, the water was claimed to be capable of healing the sick and lame. Of the many thousands of pilgrims who visit Lourdes every year, some claims to be have been miraculously healed. It is estimated that the spring has produced 27,000 gallons of water each week since it first emerged during Bernadette's visions.