Post by mikemac on Aug 11, 2017 22:59:19 GMT -5
Little Jacinta Marto didn't just die from the so called "Spanish" Flu. She suffered a great deal with bronchial pneumonia, pleurisy, an abscess in the delicate membranes of her chest cavity, an open wound in her side and tuberculosis.
If anyone was ever looking for an intercessor to Heaven for problems to do with the lungs I can't think of a better Saint to ask to pray for you.
THE TRUE STORY OF FATIMA
Father John de Marchi, I.M.C,
www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/tsfatima.htm
Saint Jacinta Marto pray for us.
If anyone was ever looking for an intercessor to Heaven for problems to do with the lungs I can't think of a better Saint to ask to pray for you.
THE TRUE STORY OF FATIMA
Father John de Marchi, I.M.C,
www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/tsfatima.htm
Through the spring and much of the summer that followed Francisco's death, his little sister suffered greatly. After a siege of bronchial pneumonia, a punishing form of pleurisy set in. An abscess formed in the delicate membranes of her chest cavity, and there was an agony of unrelenting pain. Except for a few brief days of reprieve, she had not been able to leave her bed since October of the year before. Lucia came to be with her not only every day but for every moment and every hour she could contrive.
...
Jacinta, in the months of her illness, had been reduced from exuberant, bounding health to a state of pathetic frailty. Life clung as thinly as breath, and the local doctor, examining both her condition, and the limited facilities of her home, advised that she be sent without delay to the hospital at Vila Nova de Ourem, a few miles away.
The little girl did not protest, for the reason that she knew she was going, anyhow. "You will go to two hospitals," she had been told by her Lady, "not to be cured, but to suffer more for the love of God, and for the conversion of sinners, and to make reparations for the offences against my Immaculate Heart."
Does this seem a cruel and unnecessary burden for the power of heaven to set upon a shrivelled, powerless, dying child? Jacinta did not think so. She understood very clearly this reverse—gravity of divine Love. In joyous imitation of her Saviour she accepted her Lady's directive, knowing beyond the wisdom of prudent and self-protecting men that the heart can best ascend to the Father of Christ when it is weighted with a cross.
...
Early in July her thin little body was raised by her father, and placed as tenderly as possible on the family donkey's back. Her mother made the journey to Vila Nova de Ourem with her. She was at the hospital for a period of two months, and though the treatments were radical and severe, they brought no visible benefit. It was a time of actual martyrdom, relieved by nothing but the two brief visits that Lucia was able to make.
...
By the end of August it all seemed depressingly hopeless. The hospital treatment was useless, and the expense to Jacinta's family was much beyond their very limited means. It was decided the child should come home. By now, in her side, she carried an open wound that required its being attended and dressed each day, not so much with the object of any cure, but to prolong such life as remained. After a while, in the rather primitive surroundings of home, the wound became infected, and Jacinta weakened and wasted day by day. At about this time she was visited by her warm friend, Dr. Formigao, who had come from Santarem to see her, and this is the priest's reaction to what he saw:
Jacinta is like a skeleton and her arms are shockingly thin. Since she left the local hospital where she underwent two months' useless treatment, the fever has never left her. She looks pathetic. Tuberculosis, after an attack of bronchial pneumonia and purulent pleurisy, is undermining her enfeebled constitution. Only careful treatment in a good sanatorium can save her. But her parents cannot undertake the expense which such a treatment involves.
...
Toward the end of December, 1919, Jacinta confided to Lucia that she had been privileged with another visitation.
"Our Lady told me that I am going to another hospital, this time in Lisbon, and that I shall never see you again, Lucia—you, nor my father, nor my mother. She has told me that I will have to suffer much, and die alone, but that I must not worry or be afraid, because this time she is coming to take me home to heaven with her."
...
As to the operation she was to undergo, its outcome meant little or nothing to the child. Amid the hopes and prayers of others, she dictated a letter to Lucia, declaring very simply that our Lady had appeared to her, and had revealed the day and hour of her death.
...
Dr. Castro Freire, the child specialist, operated on Jacinta February 10, 1920. Her suffering was intense for the reason that in her condition nothing more radical than local anaesthesia was possible. But the result was clinically rather good, with two ribs being extracted from her left side, leaving a wound in which a grown-up's hand could be comfortably inserted. Jacinta was an accommodating and stoic patient, and though the required daily dressings of the great wound in her side were a frightful agony, her only cries were repetitions of her beloved Lady's name.
...
Her Lady did not desert her. At the conclusion of her most terrible suffering she was able to confide in Mother Godinho, "I am much better now, thank you. Our Lady said that she would come to take me almost right away, and that there will be no more pain."
...
It does not appear that these last apparitions were in any way wispy or vague, for Mother Godinho, choosing a place to sit at the bedside, heard Jacinta protest with anxiety, "Not there, Mother, please; that is the place where our Lady stood." 31 Jacinta Marto, an almost certain saint of God, died on the Friday before Ash Wednesday, 1920
...
Jacinta, in the months of her illness, had been reduced from exuberant, bounding health to a state of pathetic frailty. Life clung as thinly as breath, and the local doctor, examining both her condition, and the limited facilities of her home, advised that she be sent without delay to the hospital at Vila Nova de Ourem, a few miles away.
The little girl did not protest, for the reason that she knew she was going, anyhow. "You will go to two hospitals," she had been told by her Lady, "not to be cured, but to suffer more for the love of God, and for the conversion of sinners, and to make reparations for the offences against my Immaculate Heart."
Does this seem a cruel and unnecessary burden for the power of heaven to set upon a shrivelled, powerless, dying child? Jacinta did not think so. She understood very clearly this reverse—gravity of divine Love. In joyous imitation of her Saviour she accepted her Lady's directive, knowing beyond the wisdom of prudent and self-protecting men that the heart can best ascend to the Father of Christ when it is weighted with a cross.
...
Early in July her thin little body was raised by her father, and placed as tenderly as possible on the family donkey's back. Her mother made the journey to Vila Nova de Ourem with her. She was at the hospital for a period of two months, and though the treatments were radical and severe, they brought no visible benefit. It was a time of actual martyrdom, relieved by nothing but the two brief visits that Lucia was able to make.
...
By the end of August it all seemed depressingly hopeless. The hospital treatment was useless, and the expense to Jacinta's family was much beyond their very limited means. It was decided the child should come home. By now, in her side, she carried an open wound that required its being attended and dressed each day, not so much with the object of any cure, but to prolong such life as remained. After a while, in the rather primitive surroundings of home, the wound became infected, and Jacinta weakened and wasted day by day. At about this time she was visited by her warm friend, Dr. Formigao, who had come from Santarem to see her, and this is the priest's reaction to what he saw:
Jacinta is like a skeleton and her arms are shockingly thin. Since she left the local hospital where she underwent two months' useless treatment, the fever has never left her. She looks pathetic. Tuberculosis, after an attack of bronchial pneumonia and purulent pleurisy, is undermining her enfeebled constitution. Only careful treatment in a good sanatorium can save her. But her parents cannot undertake the expense which such a treatment involves.
...
Toward the end of December, 1919, Jacinta confided to Lucia that she had been privileged with another visitation.
"Our Lady told me that I am going to another hospital, this time in Lisbon, and that I shall never see you again, Lucia—you, nor my father, nor my mother. She has told me that I will have to suffer much, and die alone, but that I must not worry or be afraid, because this time she is coming to take me home to heaven with her."
...
As to the operation she was to undergo, its outcome meant little or nothing to the child. Amid the hopes and prayers of others, she dictated a letter to Lucia, declaring very simply that our Lady had appeared to her, and had revealed the day and hour of her death.
...
Dr. Castro Freire, the child specialist, operated on Jacinta February 10, 1920. Her suffering was intense for the reason that in her condition nothing more radical than local anaesthesia was possible. But the result was clinically rather good, with two ribs being extracted from her left side, leaving a wound in which a grown-up's hand could be comfortably inserted. Jacinta was an accommodating and stoic patient, and though the required daily dressings of the great wound in her side were a frightful agony, her only cries were repetitions of her beloved Lady's name.
...
Her Lady did not desert her. At the conclusion of her most terrible suffering she was able to confide in Mother Godinho, "I am much better now, thank you. Our Lady said that she would come to take me almost right away, and that there will be no more pain."
...
It does not appear that these last apparitions were in any way wispy or vague, for Mother Godinho, choosing a place to sit at the bedside, heard Jacinta protest with anxiety, "Not there, Mother, please; that is the place where our Lady stood." 31 Jacinta Marto, an almost certain saint of God, died on the Friday before Ash Wednesday, 1920