From Forums of the Virgin Mary [initial translation]:
Our merciful Lord manifests Himself consoling His people when necessary, and uses nature to make himself visible.
It is in difficult times that He and His Mother are present with a word of hope to calm our anguish.
In 1847, the image of the Lord of Mercy of Ocotlán appeared among the clouds for 30 minutes, at a very special moment in the region.
It was a phenomenon that was seen by a multitude and was approved by the Church.
And in 2010, another prodigious phenomenon happened in the Image of Our Lord of Mercy.
When the crown of thorns dried, on a statue of Our Lord, it produced flowers.
These two manifestations of the Lord of Mercy of Ocotlán, like all miracles, can only be seen with the eyes of faith, because without faith nothing is a miracle.
Here we will talk about how the two miracles happened with the Lord of Miracles of Ocotlán, the presence of His image among the clouds, and the flowering of the crown of thorns.
By the mid-1840s, the city of Ocotlan in Jalisco, Mexico, had become a place of vice and licentiousness.
The lives and customs of the people of Ocotlán had seen a great deterioration, to such an extent that there were crimes and vices of a very diverse nature, as well as robberies and murders, even in broad daylight.
But above all, Christian values had almost disappeared, to the point that both religious indifference and debauchery made their presence felt in the hearts of the locals.
But all that abruptly changed on October 2, 1847.
On Saturday, October 2, 1847, around 7:15 in the morning, a violent earthquake took place in that region, giving rise to subsequent aftershocks between 9:00 and 10:00 in the morning, throwing to the ground most of the buildings and rendering the rest uninhabitable.
There was a lot of misery and death and the survivors in this city were in shock.
And the next morning, under the rays of a splendid sun and the clear blue of the cloudless sky, the parochial vicar, Father Julián Navarro, was preparing to celebrate Holy Mass in the cemetery of the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, because the church was unusable.
He had made it known in advance that the ceremony would pay special attention to those who died the day before.
For this reason, faithful from neighboring towns were also present, reaching some 2,000 people.
And just before its start, two peculiar white clouds began to approach each other, joining in the sky to the northwest and appearing the image of Our crucified Lord. [scroll for more]
Those present at the ceremony and residents of the surrounding cities were deeply moved by the sight of such a portent.
Many began to make acts of contrition and cried out to Heaven for forgiveness, pleading, “Lord, have mercy!”
And among the faithful who witnessed the miracle were Father Julián Martín del Campo, parish priest of the community, and Antonio Ximénez, mayor of the city.
Both sent letters to their respective superiors, narrating the event that had happened.
The letter from the mayor of Ocotlán, Juan Antonio Ximénez to the governor of the state of Jalisco stated the following,
“Yesterday, Saturday the 2nd, at half past seven in the morning, a strong earthquake, which lasted more than five minutes, was felt in this city. However, it did not cause any damage.
“But the aftershock, which occurred between nine and ten that same morning, was terrible.
“In an instant, some of the city’s buildings were torn down, and the others were either completely destroyed or in imminent danger of collapse.”
He said that 46 people had been found dead, and it was not possible to know with certainty the number of wounded who miraculously escaped destruction.
But Mayor Ximénez continued his letter by saying,
“This morning, 24 hours after the unfortunate events, the perfect image of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross was seen between the West and the North, formed between two clouds and lasting half an hour.
“During that time, more than 1,500 people who were in the square fell to their knees, performing acts of contrition and crying out to the Lord for his mercy.”
What the mayor described would later be called the miraculous appearance of the Lord of Mercy.
The image was described by various testimonies from a cloudy formation among the clouds in the shape of a cross, to a perfect and resplendent image of a crucified Christ, Whose Face was an expression that combined love and tranquility.
The image was said to have moved northwest before slowly disappearing.
People in the surrounding rural areas also reported seeing the image of Jesus in the clouds.
The news of this miracle spread throughout the region and Ocotlán became the focus of pilgrimages, for people who wanted to venerate the one called the Lord of Mercy.
A new church was built in 1875 to honor this manifestation of Jesus, and was later expanded further into the basilica complex that exists in Ocotlán to this day.
On September 29, 1911, Cardinal José de Jesús Ortiz y Rodríguez, Archbishop of Guadalajara, signed a document in which the written testimonies of 1897 were recognized and the event of 1847 was proclaimed as “The miracle of Ocotlán.”
In his pronouncement, the cardinal wrote:
“We must recognize as a historical fact, perfectly proven, the appearance of the blessed image of Jesus Christ Crucified…
“And that it could not have been the work of a hallucination or fraud, since it happened in broad daylight, in view of more than 2,000 people.”
In addition, Cardinal Ortiz y Rodríguez established a formal feast to recognize Our Lord of Mercy.
It established that the inhabitants of the city should gather, after purifying their consciences with the holy sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion, year after year, to celebrate the anniversary of October 3.
And the following year, 1912, began the formal feast of the Lord of Mercy, which begins on September 20 and ends on the date of the apparition, October 3 , that is, a total of 13 days of celebration, contemplation, and contrition.
Skeptics have said that clouds form images that remind of familiar figures all the time and people attribute meaning where there is none.
This is called pareidolia, which is the tendency of perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous, usually visual, stimulus in order to assimilate it to a known object.
However, the miraculous events of Our Lord of Mercy do not stop here. [scroll past ad for more]:
In December 2010, television crews from all over Latin America arrived in the city of Ocotlán to cover what people throughout the region were considering to be another miracle.
In the Basilica of Our Lord of Mercy, something unusual happened in the main Crucifix behind the altar.
Flowers began to sprout from the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head.
The crown, which had been made from a thorny desert plant that had been twisted into a circle, was immediately removed from Jesús when Father Miguel Ángel González noticed a sprout that had appeared on the back of the crown in early November 2010.
And it had been put under glass and watched by security cameras.
When the television crews filmed the sacred object, it had several pink trumpet-like flowers coming out of the crown and some other green shoots with leaves.
Worshipers from the city of Ocotlán and the surrounding area lined up to see the wreath, because the flowers seemed so special a week before Christmas.
The priest explained that this crown of thorns was given to the church as a gift in 1994 by a bride after a wedding.
The crown was placed at the foot of the Cross and then moved to the praying hands of a statue of the Virgin of Sorrows.
And then it was moved to its rightful place above Christ, in the main Crucifix in the basilica.
The botanists’ explanation is that after 15 years of being dormant, the plant from which the crown was made came to life.
Presumably due to the humidity of the place or the coalescence of water droplets on the back of the statue’s head where the crown rested.
Now, God is present in the world actively working, sustaining it and many times reminding us of His Presence.
And he uses natural phenomena, such as the blossoming of a plant that was asleep, or clouds, when He wishes, to communicate with His children.
The appearance of Jesus in the sky has been scrupulously studied by thousands of witnesses; the image of Jesus was indeed seen among the clouds.
And science itself was able to verify the flowering of a crown of thorns that was “dead.”
Miracles after all occur and are seen with the eyes of faith; if there is no faith, nothing is going to be seen as a miracle.
Well, up to here what we wanted to talk about the miracles of the Lord of Miracles of Ocotlán, which can only be appreciated with the eyes of faith.
And I would like to ask you if you consider that these manifestations were real miracles or that they were just coincidences.
[resources Spirit Daily online retreat, October 29]
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