Chapter 5

The Consecration of Russia

On June 13, 1929, at Tuy, Spain, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucy to fulfill the second part of Her promise: that She would come to ask for the Consecration of Russia. Sister Lucy was in prayer in the convent chapel during the Holy Hour of Adoration and Reparation. Even among the annals of recognized heavenly apparitions to the saints of the Catholic Church, this one was extraordinary. In her own simple but dramatic words, Sister Lucy recounted what transpired:

“I had requested and obtained permission from my superiors and confessor to make the Holy Hour from 11:00 p.m. until midnight from Thursday to Friday. Being alone one night, I knelt down before the communion rail in the middle of the chapel to say the prayers of the Angel, lying prostrate. Feeling tired, I got up and knelt, and continued to say them with my arms in the form of a cross.

“The only light came from the sanctuary lamp. Suddenly a supernatural light illumined the whole chapel and on the altar appeared a cross of light which reached to the ceiling. In a brighter part could be seen, on the upper part of the Cross, the face of a man and His body to the waist. On His breast was an equally luminous dove, and nailed to the Cross, the body of another man.

“A little below the waist, suspended in mid-air, was to be seen a Chalice and a large Host onto Which fell some drops of Blood from the face of the Crucified and from a wound in His breast. These drops ran down over the Host and fell into the Chalice. Under the right arm of the Cross was Our Lady with Her Immaculate Heart in Her hand. (It was Our Lady of Fatima with Her Immaculate Heart in Her left hand …) Under the left arm (of the Cross), some big letters, as it were of crystal-clear water running down over the Altar, formed these words: ‘Grace and Mercy’.

“I understood that it was the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity that was shown to me…”

Frère Michel has rightly called this apparition “the Trinitarian Theophany.” As with the Miracle of the Sun, there is nothing else like it in the history of the world. By this apparition, God Himself signified the singular importance of what Our Lady was about to tell Sister Lucy:

“The moment has come when God asks the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.”

God Himself had requested this. Sister Lucy had been in the presence not merely of the Mother of God, but the Most Holy Trinity. Of course, Sister Lucy immediately conveyed the divine request to her confessor, Father Gonçalves, as reflected in her published correspondence with him.

When Sister Lucy later asked Our Lord why He would not convert Russia without the consecration of that nation to the Immaculate Heart, He replied:

“Because I will that My whole Church acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so as to extend its devotion later on and to place the devotion to Her Immaculate Heart alongside devotion to My Sacred Heart.”

For at least the next seventy years Sister Lucy—the same Lucy who would not deny the truth even though threatened with a horrible death by “the Tinsmith”—gave the same testimony: Our Lady, as God’s messenger, had requested the public Consecration of Russia, and only Russia, in a ceremony to be conducted jointly by the Pope and all the world’s bishops.

We have already been given a foretaste of the incomparable benefits God will bestow on the Church and the world once Our Lady’s simple request is honored. The three-fold miracle that took place in Portugal when that nation was consecrated to the Immaculate Heart demonstrates God’s beneficence when His creatures worship and obey Him as He has requested.