Our
Lady of America, Our Hope for the States
When the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in Mexico she revealed her title as
“The Perfect Virgin, Holy Mary of Guadalupe.” When Bishop Zumarraga first
saw her miraculous image on St. Juan Diego’s cloak he said, “It is the
Immaculate One!” Similarly, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in the United
States and revealed her title as “Our Lady of America, The Immaculate
Virgin”, another representation of the Immaculate Conception, the
Patroness of the United States.
She appeared to a
young nun in the United States in several apparitions during the latter
half of the 20th century. The nun’s name was Sister Mary Ephrem (Mildred
Neuzil). She was born in Brooklyn, New York, on August 2, 1916. In 1929,
she entered the Sisters of the Precious Blood at Rome City, Indiana. In
1959, she became a Contemplative of the Indwelling Trinity in Fostoria,
Ohio. In 1938, she began to have mystical experiences that continued
until her death in her convent on January 10, 2000 at the age of 83.
Our Lady revealed her
title, her image and messages. Sister Mildred’s spiritual director was
Bishop Paul F. Leibold. He later became the Archbishop of Cincinnati,
Ohio. Bishop Leibold had a medal struck of the image and, on January 25,
1963, he gave his Imprimatur for them. He also approved the printing of
the messages and had two large plaques depicting Our Lady of America made
and displayed, one in the Cincinnati Catholic Chancery.
In the course of
approving the printing of the revelations to Sister Mary Ephrem, Bishop
Leibold considered the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title, “Our Lady of
America”, as basically referring to her patronage over the United States
of America and distinct from her title, “Empress of The Americas”,
basically referring to her patronage over all of the nations of America as
Our Lady of Guadalupe, as declared by Pope Pius XII in 1945.
On September 26, 1956,
then the Feast of the North American Martyrs, the Blessed Virgin Mary
appeared to Sister in a veil, robe and mantle of pure white as “Our Lady
of America.” She requested that Americans honor her by the purity of their
lives. Our Lady promised that greater miracles than those granted at
Lourdes and Fatima would be granted in the United States if the people
responded to her requests.
Later that day, Our
Lady came again and repeated the call to her children in America to
dedicate their lives to her purity. She said,
My child, I entrust you
with this message that you must make known to my children in America. I
wish it to be the country dedicated to my purity. The wonders I will work
will be the wonders of the soul. They must have faith and believe firmly
in my love for them. I desire that they be the children of my Pure Heart.
I desire, through my children in America, to further the cause of faith
and purity among peoples and nations. Let them come with confidence and
simplicity, and I, their Mother, will teach them to become pure like to my
Heart that their own hearts may be more pleasing to the Heart of my Son.
Sister Mildred said
that Our Lady called herself “Our Lady of America” in response to the love
and desire that reached out for this special title in the hearts of her
children in America. This title is a sign of Our Lady’s pleasure in the
devotion of her children of America towards her, and this visit is a
response to the longing, conscious or unconscious, in the hearts of her
children in America.
Our
Lady’s Desire for the National Shrine
On November 15, 1956,
Our Lady of America requested that a statue be made according to her
likeness and that it be solemnly carried in procession and placed in the
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in
Washington, D.C. She wishes to be honored there in a special way as “Our
Lady of America, the Immaculate Virgin.”
Our Lady promised that
the placement of her statue in the National Shrine would be a safeguard
for our country, and the placement of her picture or statue in the home
would be a safeguard for the family. She also promised that the medal
would be a safeguard against evil for those who wear it with great faith
and devotion.
Warning
and Grace for the States
In
April of 1957, Our Lady said, “Unless my children reform their lives, they
will suffer great persecution. If man himself will not take upon himself
the penance necessary to atone for his sins and those of others, God in
His justice will have to send upon him the punishment necessary to atone
for his transgressions.”
Our Lady called on
America to be a nation dedicated to her purity and to lead the world, by
her special mandate, to true peace, to a reform of life so necessary to
avoid the chastisement threatened by sin. She called for the renewal of
the family and of religious life, giving strong exhortations to parents
for spiritual leadership with their children and equally strong
exhortations to
priests and religious to live their consecrated lives in prayer and
penance for sin, leading the faithful toward holiness by the example of
their own lives. She revealed that the youth of America are challenged to
be the leaders of this movement of renewal on the face of the earth and
that they must be prepared for it by instilling in them the knowledge and
study of the Divine Indwelling so that the Divine Presence becomes an
intimate and necessary part of their life and daily living. Those who are
willing wholeheartedly to follow her in her great battle against evil will
bear the special title of “Torchbearers of the Queen,” bearing the torch
of Divine Love that will conquer hate.
On November 22, 1980,
Our Lady said:
Beloved
daughter, the United States is a small one among nations, yet has it not
been said that ‘a little child shall lead them’? It is the United States
that is to lead the world to peace, the peace of Christ, the peace that He
brought with Him from Heaven in His birth as man
in the little
town of Bethlehem. . . .Dear child, unless the United States accepts and
carries out faithfully the mandate given to it by Heaven to lead the world
to peace, there will come upon it and all nations a great havoc of war and
incredible suffering. If, however, the United States is faithful to this
mandate from Heaven and yet fails in the pursuit of peace because the rest
of
the world will not accept or co-operate, then the United States will not
be burdened with the punishment about to fall.
On
May 30, in 2006, the Franciscan Friars of The Immaculate displayed a
statue of Our Lady of America at Our Lady of The Angels Monastery in
Hanceville, Alabama. The Monastery was founded by Mother Angelica.
Bishop Richard Garcia
of Sacramento said, “To have the enthronement of Our Lady of America
statue is a timely testimony and reminder to us all of the blessing Our
Lady is for all of us who live in the United States of America. Our Lady
guides and protects us in this critical time of our history when we need
to value even more closely what she as a mother has taught us: to hold
Christ in the center of our lives; to value the family and its unity; to
do the will of the Father and to evangelize by pointing others to Christ.”
On November 13, 2006, a
new statue of Our Lady of America was publicly displayed for the first
time at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in their
Concelebrated Mass Room in Baltimore, Maryland. (See page 292).
Raymond L. Burke,
Archbishop of Saint Louis, requested the display of this statue at this
conference for the benefit of the Bishops. On November 15th, 2006,
Archbishop Burke blessed this new statue. This blessing occurred precisely
on the 50th Anniversary of the request that Our Lady of America made on
November 15, 1956, to be placed and honored in the Basilica of the
National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
Archbishop Burke, a
world renowned canon lawyer, stated that the devotion to Our Lady of
America was canonically approved. In a letter dated May 31, 2007, he
reviewed the prior history and then state of the devotion as well as the
earlier actions of Archbishop Leibold approving the devotion. Archbishop
Burke wrote, “What can be concluded canonically is that the devotion was
both approved by Archbishop Leibold and, what is more, was actively
promoted by him. In addition, over the years, other Bishops have approved
the devotion and have participated in public devotion to the Mother of
God, under the title of Our Lady of America.”
The
Immaculate Virgin
What did Our Lady of
America mean when she referred to herself as the “Immaculate Virgin?” Pope
Benedict XVI explained this title in a homily:
What
does “Mary, the Immaculate” mean? Does this title have something to tell
us? The liturgy illuminates the content of these words for us in two great
images.
First of all comes the
marvelous narrative of the annunciation of the Messiah’s coming to Mary,
the Virgin of Nazareth. The Angel’s greeting is interwoven with threads
from the Old Testament, especially from the Prophet Zephaniah. He shows
that Mary, the humble provincial woman who comes from a priestly race and
bears within her the great priestly patrimony of Israel, is “the holy
remnant” of Israel to which the prophets referred in all the periods of
trial and darkness. . . .
In the humility of the
house in Nazareth lived holy Israel, the pure remnant. God saved and saves
his people. From the felled tree trunk Israel’s history shone out anew,
becoming a living force that guides and pervades the world. Mary is holy
Israel: She says “yes” to the Lord, she puts herself totally at his
disposal and thus becomes the living temple of God.
The second image is
much more difficult and obscure. This metaphor from the Book of Genesis
speaks to us from a great historical distance and can only be explained
with difficulty; only in the course of history has it been possible to
develop a deeper understanding of what it refers to.
It was foretold that
the struggle between humanity and the serpent, that is, between man and
the forces of evil and death, would continue throughout history. It was
also foretold, however, that the “offspring” of a woman would one day
triumph and would crush the head of the serpent to death; it was foretold
that the offspring of the woman - and in this offspring the woman and the
mother herself - would be victorious and that thus, through man, God would
triumph. . . .
What picture does this
passage show us? The human being does not trust God. Tempted by the
serpent, he harbors the suspicion that in the end, God takes something
away from his life, that God is a rival who curtails our freedom and that
we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside; in brief, that
only in this way can we fully achieve our freedom. . . .
He himself wants to
obtain from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the world, to make
himself a god, raising himself to God’s level, and to overcome death and
darkness with his own efforts. He does not want to rely on love that to
him seems untrustworthy; he relies solely on his own knowledge since it
confers power upon him. Rather than on love, he sets his sights on power,
with which he desires to take his own life autonomously in hand. And in
doing so, he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with
his life into emptiness, into death. . . .
We live in the right
way if we live in accordance with the truth of our being, and that is, in
accordance with God’s will. For God’s will is not a law for the human
being imposed from the outside and that constrains him, but the intrinsic
measure of his nature, a measure that is engraved within him and makes him
the image of God, hence, a free creature.
If we live in
opposition to love and against the truth - in opposition to God - then we
destroy one another and destroy the world. Then we do not find life but
act in the interests of death. All this is recounted with immortal images
in the history of the original fall of man and the expulsion of man from
the earthly Paradise.
Dear brothers and
sisters, if we sincerely reflect about ourselves and our history, we have
to say that with this narrative is described not only the history of the
beginning but the history of all times, and that we all carry within us a
drop of the poison of that way of thinking, illustrated by the images in
the Book of Genesis.
We call this drop of
poison “original sin.” Precisely on the feast of the Immaculate
Conception, we have a lurking suspicion that a person who does not sin
must really be basically boring and that something is missing from his
life: the dramatic dimension of being autonomous; that the freedom to say
no, to descend into the shadows of sin and to want to do things on one’s
own is part of being truly human; that only then can we make the most of
all the vastness and depth of our being men and women, of being truly
ourselves; that we should put this freedom to the test, even in opposition
to God, in order to become, in reality, fully ourselves. . . .
If we look, however, at
the world that surrounds us we can see that this is not so; in other
words, that evil is always poisonous, does not uplift human beings but
degrades and humiliates them. It does not make them any the greater, purer
or wealthier, but harms and belittles them.
This is something we
should indeed learn on the day of the Immaculate Conception: The person
who abandons himself totally in God’s hands does not become God’s puppet,
a boring “yes man”; he does not lose his freedom. Only the person who
entrusts himself totally to God finds true freedom, the great, creative
immensity of the freedom of good. . . .
The closer a person is
to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she
is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings. For
this reason she can be the Mother of every consolation and every help, a
Mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need in weakness and
in sin, for she has understanding for everything and is for everyone the
open power of creative goodness. . . . As a merciful Mother, Mary is the
anticipated figure and everlasting portrait of the Son. Thus, we see that
the image of the Sorrowful Virgin, of the Mother who shares her suffering
and her love, is also a true image of the Immaculate Conception. Her heart
was enlarged by being and feeling together with God. In her, God’s
goodness came very close to us.
Mary thus stands before
us as a sign of comfort, encouragement and hope. She turns to us, saying:
“Have the courage to dare with God! Try it! Do not be afraid of him! Have
the courage to risk with faith! Have the courage to risk with goodness!
Have the courage to risk with a pure heart! Commit yourselves to God, then
you will see that it is precisely by doing so that your life will become
broad and light, not boring but filled with infinite surprises, for God’s
infinite goodness is never depleted!”
Let us thank the Lord
for the great sign of his goodness which he has given us in Mary, his
Mother and the Mother of the Church. Let us pray to him to put Mary on our
path like a light that also helps us to become a light and to carry this
light into the nights of history. Amen.
(Pope Benedict XVI, Papal Homily on the 40th
Anniversary of
Close of Vatican II, December 14, 2005).
On October 5, 1956,
Sister Mildred felt a sudden urge to write a prayer to Mary. Although she
did not hear any words, the thoughts came into her mind with such
profundity; she could not stop until the beautiful Prayer to the
Immaculate Conception was finished. This is the prayer:
Prayer
to the Immaculate Conception
O
Immaculate Mother, Queen of our Country, open our hearts, our homes, and
our Land to the coming of Jesus, your Divine Son. With Him, reign over us,
O
Heavenly Lady, so pure
and so bright with the radiance of God’s light shining in and about
you. Be our Leader against the powers of evil set upon wresting the world
of souls, redeemed at such a great cost by the sufferings of your Son and
of yourself, in union with Him, from that same Savior, Who loves us with
infinite charity.
We gather about you, O
chaste and holy Mother, Virgin Immaculate, Patroness of our beloved Land,
determined to fight under your banner of holy purity against the
wickedness that would make all the world an abyss of evil, without God and
without your loving maternal care.
We consecrate our
hearts, our homes, our Land to your Most Pure Heart, O great Queen, that
the kingdom of your Son, our Redeemer and our God, may be firmly
established in us.
We ask no special
sign of you, sweet Mother, for we believe in your great love for us, and
we place in you our entire confidence. We promise to honor you by faith,
love, and the purity of our lives according to your desire.
Reign over us, then, O
Virgin Immaculate, with your Son Jesus Christ. May His Divine Heart and
your most chaste Heart be ever enthroned and glorified among us. Use us,
your children of America, as your instruments in bringing peace among men
and nations. Work your miracles of grace in us, so that we may be a glory
to the Blessed Trinity, Who created, redeemed, and sanctifies us.
May your valiant
Spouse, St. Joseph, with the holy Angels and Saints, assist you and us in
“renewing the face of the earth.” Then when our work is over, come, Holy
Immaculate Mother, and as our Victorious Queen,
lead us to the
eternal kingdom, where your Son reigns forever as King. Amen.