Our Lady of the Poison Ivy (Nossa Senhora da Urtiga)
One day a mute shepherd girl was watching her sheep, in the parish of Fátima, when a Lady appeared to her and asked her for a sheep. The shepherd girl noticed that her tongue had become loose and she answered that she would ask her father's permission. And she did so. When she found him, he was surprised to see his daughter speaking. He believed in the veracity of the apparition and told his daughter that he would give not only the sheep but anything that Lady asked for. Happy as a lark the shepherd girl ran to the place where she had seen the Lady, who asked her to build a chapel in her honor.
But like the story of the Virgin of the Ferns the story does not end here.
When the father arrived at the place he found a simple image of the Virgin among the poison ivy. "It was here that the Mother of God wanted her chapel built".
But the good father that that place was not a good one for the building of a chapel. "Our Lady certainly would not mind if the place was on a hill or in a sheltered valley: it would be even better for her and for the faithful. So much wind up there..."
So he picked up the image and went home. He called his carpenter friends and chose a good place at Casal de Santa Maria. And he left the image in a temporary niche.
But, on the following day the image was gone. "Who had been the rascal"?
They looked everywhere and found that the image had returned to its place, wild and windy, in the middle of the poison ivy.
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A deaf girl from Casal Santa Maria, a hamlet about a mile and a half from Fatima, saw Mary sometime in the Middle Ages -- in the 1400s -
- over a cluster of ortiga bushes. Here right next to Fatima!
Mary smiled and made an odd request. She asked the girl, who could suddenly hear, for one of her lambs. It was a
test of obedience. Suddenly the girl spoke as if deafness had never afflicted her. "I would have to have permission from my father," she said. And Mary smiled as the girl scurried off to do just that.
Naturally, her father was flabbergasted, awestruck and overjoyed at her ability to speak. He told his daughter that the Blessed Woman could have the lamb and anything else she wanted. We can only imagine his joy. News of the miracle swept the village and
everywhere else word could spread in the era before mass communication. Numerous townsfolk went to see the "mute"child and after hearing her account followed her to the site of appearance. There to their further astonishment they found a wooden statue in
the midst of the ortigas. Mary was holding the Christ Child, this time in her right arm, her cheeks rosy, her stare intent and straightforward.
Full of fervor they took the statue to the village but that night it disappeared and was found back in the bushes, the spot Mary had chosen for a chapel.
Source: Spirit Daily. http://www.spiritdaily.com/fatimacenturiesbefore.htm Retrieved October 13, 2010
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