OUR LADY OF THE DIVINE WEEPING

Day 239: January 06

Our Lady of the Divine Weeping, Cernusco sul Naviglio, Milan, Italy

Rather atypical this apparition of Mary Most Holy with a baby Jesus crying in her arms. The apparition took place in a nursing home for sick and elderly nuns and the visionary cured of a bad illness was one of them.

The year 1924 has just begun. In Cernusco sul Naviglio, near Milan, in the birthplace of the Marcelline Institute, used as a retirement home for the sick and elderly Sisters, a young Sister, Sr Elisabetta Redaelli, who had been ill for two years, was almost at the point of death: paralyzed, blind for a year, undermined by an uncurable disease.

On January 6, 1924, late in the evening, the Sisters heard the Sr Elisabetta speak loudly. They thought she did it in a dream, but she was not asleep; she was conversing, instead, as she will say the next morning, with a "beautiful Lady" who went to visit her.

The "Lady" comforted the Sister, asking her to suffer well for the love of God. It inspired so much confidence in her! Sr Elizabeth commended herself to her prayers and said: "My Lady, how good you are! Pray to Him who is so good. I am sure that if you pray, the Lord will hear my prayers, because you have compassion on the sick!"

The Lady encouraged her: " Pray, trust and hope: I will be back from the 22nd to the 23rd" (Sr Elisabetta understood it as from the 2nd to the 3rd of the following month...). The Sister, forgetting herself, prayed to the Lady to go and comfort the other sick women as well. The Lady smiled and – as Sister Elizabeth would later say – "she went away composed."

The next morning, the nurse Sister in her report on the course of the night reported: "Sr Elisabetta spoke aloud last night, in a dream." The sick sister, amazed, intervened: "But no, I didn't dream, I spoke with the Lady who came to visit us sick." I saw her; she spoke to me and will come from 2 to 3 ... Sister Elizabeth had been blind for more than a year: how could she "have seen"? It was thought of as a dream. She spent the night from 2 to 3 February in vain waiting for the visit of the good Lady. This convinced the Sisters of the House even more that the dear sick woman had dreamed of and never spoke of it again. Sr Elizabeth, on the other hand, said: "She didn't come, because I wasn't good enough."

Meanwhile, the disease was making rapid strides. It was the night of February 22nd to 23rd. For fifteen days the progressive paralysis had also taken away the use of speech, swallowing limbs, so much so that no movement is possible for her anymore. The attending physician had declared: "It is a matter of hours; continue to watch over her." In fact, two sisters watched over her: the nurse nun and another who would later be the witnesses of the prodigious event. It was just after 11:45 pm. The sickly sister started: the Sisters jumped to their feet, believing the end was imminent. Sister Elizabeth cried out: "Oh, the Lady, the Lady!"

The Blessed Virgin smiles sadly. More silence.  "Oh, Our Lady, Our Lady and the Child... but the Child (Sister Elizabeth becomes sad, almost crying) the Child weeps... Does he cry for me? Does he weep for my sins?"

The Child was supported by his mother's arms, his long snowy robe was lost in the Virgin's mantle; two tear drops ran down his cheeks from his eyes; lips closed in heartfelt tears! To the anxious words of the Sister Our Lady replied: "No, the Child cries because he is not loved enough, sought, desired even by the people who are consecrated to him... you have to say this!"

Sister Elizabeth did not grasp the mission that the Virgin wanted to entrust to her, and exclaimed: "My Lady, My Lady, take me to Paradise!" "You should, but you have to stay to say this." The Sister now understood, measured her misery, her incapacity and was immensely frightened by it.

"Oh My lady," she insisted, "I am the last of all, I know nothing, I am a burden for my Community: take me to Heaven!" "You have to stay to say this!" "My Lady, who will believe me? … I'm ignorant... I don't know anything... I am not even able to speak anymore; Who will believe me?"

The reply was a period of silence from the Virgin, who looked at her tenderly and sadly. At this point, Sr Elisabeth confessed that, desperate in her soul for not being able to reconcile the desire of the Virgin Mary with her intellectual and physical incapacity – in the conversation she thought she was mute and dying – she had, in the height of her pain, a sudden light and felt inspired to say: "Oh, My Lady, give me a sign!" The Virgin Mother smiled benevolently, but remained sad. She bowed slightly towards the Sister and said: "I give you back your health!" and she disappeared with the Divine Son.

Sr Elisabetta confessed that she felt terrible pain throughout her body, which was followed by a sense of well-being and life that flooded all over her body. She jumped out of bed and to the Sisters who were keeping vigil, trembling and moved, who had heard her part of the conversation: "I am healed, I am healed: Our Lady has healed me!"

It was about 0:15. The Superior rushed to Sister Elizabeth's room. Standing, bright, shining in her eyes, throwing her arms around her neck she said to her: "Superior, Superior, Our Lady healed me and told me to say... to say that Jesus weeps, because he is not sufficiently loved, sought, desired even by the people who have consecrated themselves to him." And after a brief silence, she continued, "What tears, what tears, poor Jesus!" 

The Congregation of the Marcellines took up the divine message with commitment and love. In Cernusco, the room of the apparition was transformed into a chapel: a statue of Our Lady, specially made under the instructions of Sr Elisabetta, reminds everyone of the message of which the Virgin has made us custodians. Countless votive offerings attest to how much Our Lady likes to be honored under the title of Our Lady of Divine Weeping.

St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"O Mary, O Mary! O Full of Grace, O Full of Glory, look with compassion on this crown from your loving servants, your loving faithful, your loving children."

(Justin Russolillo, Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, Newark, 1996, p. 153)