I am most grateful to Lisa who asked if I would write reviews on some of the Lighthouse Catholic CDs. They provide a wonderful opportunity to evangelize ourselves as well as our family and friends.
Take for instance, a recent CD entitled Our Lady of Good Success by Matthew Arnold. This approved apparition was not widely known until the last century. Our Lady appeared to a holy sister, Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres (1563-1635) at various times during her life.
Matthew tells of his visit to Quito, Ecuador where the apparitions took place. In a very engaging way, he draws you into the celebration of this dire, yet hopeful message that mirrors the events of our time. In fact, in the apparition, Our Lady warns of terrible events that would occur in the last half of the 20th century.
Given three hundred years before Fatima, these prophecies seem to tie directly to Our Lady’s messages in Portugal. But these warnings are particularly detailed. The listener is struck by the amazing accuracy of predictions that we have seen unfold over the last 50-60 years.
Imagine Our Lady speaking to someone in that time about:
- A total corruption of customs – Matthew points to attendance at the Holy Mass. He mentions a statistic that in 1958, three out of every four Catholics attended Mass. Now, he says, it is more like one in four.
- A loss of innocence – He relays that Our Lady said that innocence will almost no longer be found in children, nor modesty in women. Look at the decline in women’s religious orders and of course the assault on our children with television and the internet.
- An attack on the sacraments – For example, Our Lady said that there will be attacks on the Sacrament of Marriage and laws will be passed making it easy to sin.
Mathew conveys more of these dire prophecies from Our Lady to Mother Mariana. However, I said that this is a message of hope. It is in a very real sense.
You see, with the moral chaos that exists in our world, Our Lady said to Mother Mariana that when almost all would seem lost and paralyzed, there would be a restoration of the Church. Signs of that restoration have begun. Matthew shares some of these near the end of the talk.
In 1906, they opened the sarcophagus of Mother Mariana and found her body and that of some of the other founding Mothers to be incorrupt. She is currently declared Servant of God and on the path to Sainthood.
I recommend this inspiring message for our times. You can order this CD/MP3 at Lighthouse Catholic Media. Then, spread the word about Our Lady of Good Success!
God Bless
Because this had been promoted by certain people in my local area, I looked extensively to try to find out any hard information about it. There simply is none available from any source I can find. I searched in English and Spanish and even requested an acquaintance going there on a TLM pilgrimage to try to get me some kind of information about it from a diocesan or other Catholic Church official source so I would have clearer information, but I never heard back from that person after their trip. There is some really confused information on the internet based on the fact that devotion to Our Lady as Our Lady of Good Success and similar titles was circulating at that time in both Europe and the New World. Some internet sources are totally falsely equating Pope Paul V’s approval of devotion to OL of Good Success that was connected to a statue in Madrid in 1606 with being an approval of the purported Mother Mariana locutions! Clearly this was not so. There is approval of an OL of Good Success statue in Ecuador that is related to Mother Mariana, but none of the official accounts of that mention locutions. The purported locutions surfaced in the early 20th century and it remains unclear what the real source of them was. They do read like something that originates in the early 20th century to be honest, so to have a stronger credibility there would need to be some better evidence that they were really lost/hidden till then and really originated with Mother Mariana. None of the people circulating claims about the OL of Good Success private revelations seem to have any information that comes from the actual local diocese there, which would help a great deal. No amount of web pages about “The Church Approved Locutions of Our Lady of Good Success” really substitute for some evidence of them being actually Church approved.
Dear ElizD,
I appreciate your concern. Too often, “visionaries” claim to know the future and draw gullible followers. In this case, we are in good hands. It might be helpful for you to listen to Matthew Arnold’s CD, shown above. He actually travelled to the diocese in question and interviewed the Mother Superior and others. He explains the other statues and the historical progression of events. He was pretty thorough. The history, based on his account, seems to be very well known to the Church. And since the original visionary, Mother Mariana, is now a Blessed, it would seem that she has been thoroughly investigated by the Vatican. This is a devotion we can enjoy with confidence, allowing Our Lady, under this title, to work through our prayers for the good of the Church.