The Feast of the Purification commemorates the moment when Our Lady carried Jesus Christ into the Temple to offer Him to the Lord according to the ancient prescriptions of the Law of Moses regarding the first-born son (Ex 13).
Our Lord, “the first-born from among the dead” (Rom 8:29) goes before us – dead in sin – paving our way to Heaven.
In fact, Christ became Mary’s Son to raise us from the death of sin and bring us to life in Grace by His life in our human nature. And this is not merely by a legal imputation as Martin Luther proned, but a real incorporation into Jesus Christ Himself, so that we become members of His Mystical Body (Rom 6 & 12).
Mary, who carries Christ into the Temple, is thus Our Lady of the Good Event, the Event that in a Scripturally official manner opens up the drama of our own salvation – the real and true “Good Event” for us.
In 1594 Our Lady began a series of apparitions to Mother Marianna de Jesus Torres, a Conceptionist nun in Quito Ecuador, asking for a Statue to be made and to be invoked under the title of Our Lady of the Good Event of the Purification*.
Our Lady predicted many historical events of that Province of Spain in South America and promised that She would govern the Convent. But what makes this title so striking is the Good Event, unique in the history of modern times that occurred in Ecuador’s history.
Under the Presidency of the “most Catholic President” Garcia Moreno, the country of Ecuador, with a virtual unanimity of its leaders was solemnly consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus under the spiritual guidance of Archbishop Ignacio Checa, on March 25, 1875.
This good event had been prepared by Missionaries, especially requested by the President, to preach devotion to the Sacred Heart in every nook and cranny of Ecuador. Ecuador thus did in the 19th century what France had refused to do in the 17th.
This event was followed by two more. The President became so hateful to international freemasonry that his death was decreed in European lodges. The very next year he was killed, answering his murderer’s cries of “die you enemy of liberty” with the words “God never dies”.
Following the martyrdom of Garcia Moreno, Archbishop Ignacio Checa, the Religious leader of that good Event, was poisoned the following year from the wine of the ablutions of the Good Friday Liturgy, and so died. The revenge of the Freemasons drove them to strike a severe blow against the Church.
How were these good events? Normally, we consider a good event something like passing a test. But in God’s eyes, a good event is that which shapes our soul into the image of His Son and that gains for us a great reward in heaven. Garcia Moreno and Archbishop Checa became true imitators of the Sacred Heart and gained the crown of Martyrs.
Let us follow the guidance of Our Lady of the Good Event to conquer our enemies and gain a great reward in heaven. The daily Rosary will be both our school and our weapon. Ave Maria!
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*Our Lady of Good Success, should actually be called Our Lady of Buen Suceso of the Purification, as the Governing Sisters of the Royal Monastery of the Conceptionists in Quito stated in an official circular put forth on July 1st, 2017, to clarify the matter. The English speaking world in the last century has come to know Her as Our Lady of Good Success because of a mistranslation of the Spanish “Buen Suceso” to “Good Success”, when it really means “Good Event”.
