Laudet Dominum

Last week, I wrote about the apparitions at Akita, Japan, and the recent message given to the visionary, Sr. Agnes. If you haven’t read last week’s column, I’ve posted it to my personal website, frcory.org, as I will with all my columns going forward.

Although the 3 acts of prayer, penance, and sacrifice encouraged by the recent message are largely connected, they’re worth considering separately. They do feed into each other, and together help us to grow as Christians in love of God and neighbor.

Prayer is not an easy thing. St. Paul tells us in Romans 8:26, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” Prayer is ultimately an openness to God; allowing ourselves to enter into His presence, and love Him, and be loved by Him. It’s been said many times that prayer is a conversation with God, which is true, but the deepest prayer is the silent conversation in which no words are spoken. This is where the Holy Spirit is allowed to “speak” on our behalf.

Most of us aren’t there. In fact, very few saints ever achieved the level of deep, contemplative prayer. For most of us, we struggle to do basic prayers we learned as children, and find a devotional life difficult. So, how do we enter into the kind of prayer requested in the message from Akita?

First, we start from where we’re at, but be more conscious of our prayer life. Prayer is something that should be constantly doing, but should not be on autopilot or ignored. Some people can pray constantly, especially with little emotive prayers throughout their days, but most of us still need to consciously choose to enter into prayer. Also, prayer should be treated as a priority, and not an afterthought.

Second, we need to push ourselves further. If we don’t spend much time in prayer, we need to make an effort to block off time daily for prayer. If we’re currently praying some memorized prayers each day, perhaps we need to focus more on silent times between individual prayers. This is just a couple examples, as we all are at different points in our prayer lives, but all need to move forward in our prayer journey.

Third, silence must be a part of our daily prayer. Distraction in prayer has always been a concern, but I would argue today’s culture of noise has made attention in prayer more difficult. Yet, if we are to deepen our relationship with our Heavenly Father, we need to learn how to enter into silence and be comfortable with it. This doesn’t mean we won’t be distracted, but learn how to bring distractions into prayer.

This is just a short starting point on how we can develop and deepen our prayer life. There is far more that could be talked about as we seek to enter into that deep contemplation of God. It is important, however, that we heed this call for prayer, especially praying the powerful prayer of the Rosary. More on this next week as we discuss the call for penitential acts.

I’ve recently begun to write a weekly column for the parish bulletin. I’ll also publish it here for a wider audience, and to the articles easier to find in the future.

Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been a number of appearances by the Blessed Virgin Mary and Our Lord Jesus Christ. Although these apparitions are considered private revelation and not binding on any Catholic for belief, many have found great devotion and comfort in these apparitions and messages. Sites of apparitions have become popular pilgrimage destinations, like Lourdes in France, Fatima in Portugal, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, and Divine Mercy Shrine in Krakow, Poland.

For as many well-known apparitions, many more apparitions are relatively unknown. One of these lesser-known apparitions has recently been in the Catholic news: Our Lady of Akita.

Akita is about 550 km (340 miles) due north from Tokyo. A small convent of religious sisters called the Institute of the Handmaids of the Holy Eucharist exists for a quiet life of prayer. It’s into this order that Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa, a 42 year old convert from Buddhism who had recently become totally deaf, entered the novitiate on May 12, 1973. She figured that the rest of her life would be spent in solitude and prayer.

That all changed on June 12, 1973, when Sr. Agnes saw a vision of a bright light coming from the tabernacle accompanied with smoke and visions of angels adoring the Blessed Sacrament. This vision happened several times to her, along with visits by her guardian angel. Later that month, Sr. Agnes was miraculously given a cross-shaped wound that was very painful. This wound would later start to bleed.

On July 6, Sr. Agnes received her first visit by Our Lady. She was directed by her guardian angel to pray in the community chapel. Once there, the statue of Mary seemed to come to life, and Our Lady spoke to Sr. Agnes. The next morning, the statue developed a wound identical to Sr.  Agnes’, which remained until September 29. Sr. Agnes’ own wound would disappear at the end of July.

Throughout the next couple years, various miraculous events would occur surrounding statue, and Sr. Agnes would continue to receive visions. Some were seen by the entire community, others by just Sr. Agnes. The statue changed in appearance and at even would weep tears on an irregular basis over 100 times. In 1982, Sr. Agnes had a miraculous healing of her hearing.

In 1984, the local bishop, John Ito, declared the apparitions as valid, and encouraged local devotion to Our Lady of Akita. This decision was later supported by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

As I said at the beginning, this particular apparition has recently had renewed attention brought to it. It was recently revealed that Sr. Agnes may have received another message about a month ago, on October 6th. While the report has not been confirmed officially, the message is very much in line with the previous apparitions at Akita, as well as Fatima and Lourdes, among others. Sr. Agnes stated that the same angel that appeared to her in 1973 appeared again, and said that she was asked to convey publicly, “Cover in ashes and please pray the Penitential Rosary every day.” Sr. Agnes was also asked to “become like a child and every day please give sacrifice.”

We need to take to heart this request for renewed prayer (especially the Rosary), penance, and sacrifice. Much of the original message of Akita surrounded belief in the Eucharist as Jesus truly present (something that concerns us today), and the need for prayer, penance, and sacrifice to appease the Father’s anger at the evils committed by humanity. We need to listen to Our Lady and do the works asked of us!

For this reason, I’ll be dedicating this column over the next few weeks to these topics of prayer, penance, and sacrifice. It is through these acts that the world will be saved. Our Lady of Akita, pray for us!