The news has come in that Sister Sasagawa of Akita, Japan, died on the feast of the
Assumption, August 15th 2024

I went to Akita to visit Sister Sasagawa’s community some years back, after I made a promise to Our Lady that if ever I could not leave Japan after one of my many trips, I would come and visit her. This particular day it was snowing heavily, I got to the airport only to find my flight had been cancelled. A rational decision would be to stay put, but true to my promise I said to Our Lady that I would make the trip to see her, with no idea how I would get there. That is a story for another day, needless to say however, it was a miraculous trip where impossibility was melted away by Faith.

Here’s some background about Sister Sasagawa, if you don’t know about this apparition, perhaps it’s time to take note:

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SOURCE: globalsistersreport.org

On July 6, 1973, light surrounded a wooden statue of Our Lady of All Nations at a convent in Akita, Japan, and the statue spoke to a novice, asking her to pray for the reparation of the sins of humanity and to be obedient to her superior. When the statue ceased speaking, the novice and other nuns discovered the statue had a bleeding wound in its hand.

The novice, 42-year-old Sr. Agnes Sasagawa, would hear the statue of Mary talk two other times that year, on Aug. 3 and Oct. 13. In the meanwhile, Sasagawa would encounter visions of her guardian angel and experience the stigmata, the wounds of Jesus Christ, as a wound in her left hand. She, the sisters of the Institute of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, and hundreds of visitors also would witness the 3-foot-tall statue sweating as well as shedding tears, a phenomenon that continued sporadically, 101 times total, until 1981.

With the 50th anniversary of the miraculous events from Mary now known as “Our Lady of Akita,” her messages to Sasagawa continue to resonate, said Mark Miravalle, a theology professor who holds the St. John Paul II Chair of Mariology at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio.

Like Mary’s messages with other reported apparitions, he said, they compel Catholics to an examination of conscience to “see if we can be more generous” in prayer, especially the rosary, and offering sacrifices for the reparation of sins.

Before joining the Handmaids of the Eucharist, Sasagawa had ill health, including paralysis. Just months before she entered in May 1973, she lost her hearing. In her first month at the convent, she experienced supernatural light and beings in the convent’s chapel, which she reported to the local bishop, Bishop John Shojiro Ito of Niigata. The bishop later witnessed the convent’s apparently miraculous events himself. In 1984, he approved their supernatural character and encouraged the veneration of “the Holy Mother of Akita.”

In a pastoral letter announcing the miraculous occurrence’s approval, Ito said he witnessed the statue’s tears, and that what was observed by at least 500 others and studied at the University of Akita could not have been achieved by “human maneuvers.” It also was broadcast on Japanese television.

Sasagawa received both messages from her guardian angel, whom she saw in a vision, and Mary, whose voice seemed to come through the statue.

In her first message, Mary told the novice her hearing loss would be healed, to pray in reparation for “the sins of men” as well as for priests and bishops.

In August, she told Sasagawa that God the Father was “preparing to inflict a great chastisement on all mankind,” but “prayer, penance and courageous sacrifices can soften the Father’s anger.”

Mary repeated that message in October, and also said that “fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity,” and called for daily recitation of the rosary. She also warned that the devil would infiltrate the church, with “cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops” and “priests who venerate me will be scorned and condemned by their confreres.”

Robert Fastiggi, a theology professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Milwaukee and Mariology expert, said while it can be difficult to imagine God as wrathful, the messages’ theology reflects Scripture.

“Wrath is there in the Bible, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “St. Thomas Aquinas says that God’s wrath is really the effects of our sins. It’s what we experience, a kind of wrathful effect when we are not following God. It’s not like God is not loving and he’s a wrathful, angry God. But it’s just that he wants conversion, and there are effects of sin, which is why God grieves over our sins.”

As to the message about clergy, “a lot of this has been happening,” Fastiggi said. “It’s happened in the past, but it’s more prominent these days.”

Mary’s message at Akita “is a universal message,” Miravalle said, despite the mystical phenomena taking place in Japan, where less than 1% of the population is Catholic.

“It’s not just Akita — it’s the whole Marian message that bespeaks Our Lady trying to intercede so that we do not face the full consequence of sin [and] injustice, but we have mercy. That presupposes our cooperation, and I think that’s why Akita is quintessentially relevant,” he said.

The Akita phenomenon also is one of the few miraculous occurrences with scientific backing, said Michael O’Neill, a Marian apparition expert known as “the Miracle Hunter.”

With other apparitions and supernatural phenomena, bishops rely on the testimony of the visionary and compare it to church teaching, “but there is no scientific way to actually show that something supernatural is happening,” he said. “In the case of Akita, you have a weeping statue that they were able to investigate and validate that it was having human tears and human blood.”

The Akita events are unique in that they are often categorized with Marian “apparitions,” but the approved phenomena describe Mary speaking through the statue, O’Neill said. And, he pointed out, Sasagawa is still alive, now in her early 90s.

In May 1974, seven months after Mary’s final message to Sasagawa, her guardian angel told her she would regain her hearing, and she did, temporarily, on Oct. 13 of that year, the message’s anniversary. In May 1982, she again regained her hearing, this time permanently.

Other miracles have been reported in association with Our Lady of Akita, including the healing of a Korean woman from terminal brain cancer in 1981.

Author Janice Connell and her husband, Edward, both attorneys, traveled to Akita in 1991 at the invitation of Ito, who had retired 1985. The trip was squeezed in amid other travel in Asia, and the Connells described remarkable events in the course of their journey and single overnight visit that they attribute to supernatural intervention.

Connell writes about their experience in The Secrets of Mary: Gifts from the Blessed Mother (2009), and about Our Lady of Akita in general in Meetings with Mary: Visions of the Blessed Mother (1995).

According to her report of Sasagawa’s miraculous experiences, the nun not only heard Mary speak from the statue, but she also experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary, first while recuperating at a hospital four years before joining the convent, and later in the convent itself.

Connell said that during her 1991 visit, she and Edward spoke with Sasagawa for two hours. She had wanted to ask Sasagawa about the “fire falling from the heavens” in Mary’s second message, but the visionary “didn’t want to focus on chastisements. She wanted to focus on the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist,” Connell told OSV News June 27.

While the Connells have traveled to other Marian shrines, Akita “is one of the most amazing places we’ve ever been in our lives,” Connell said. “It’s made me understand how incredibly privileged and blessed I am to have a relationship with Our Lady and to know her Son in the Eucharist.”

Many observers have drawn connections between the speaking statue and other mystical phenomena, especially the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, and the alleged (but unapproved) apparitions of the Lady of All Nations in postwar Amsterdam.

The Akita statue’s final locution was Oct. 13, the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, when thousands gathered near Fatima, Portugal, to witness a promised miracle, and reported seeing the sun “dance,” or move throughout the sky. Some have drawn parallels in Mary’s messages at Fatima and Akita asking for reparation for sins and warnings of future turmoil in the world.

The statue itself — an image of Mary standing on a globe in front of a cross — was carved in 1963 by an Akita artisan and modeled after the Lady of All Nations, reported apparitions of Mary by a Dutch woman between 1945 and 1959 in Amsterdam. While the “Lady of All Nations” image, title of Mary and prayer are approved, the reported apparitions themselves are not approved as supernatural phenomena by the bishop of Haar­lem-Am­ster­dam and remain controversial.

Fastiggi emphasized that Catholics are not required to believe in Marian apparitions, even those the church declares them “worthy of belief.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph No. 67, says that “private revelations,” even one’s recognized by the church, are not part of “the deposit of the faith.”

“It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history,” it states. “Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.”

While some could use Our Lady of Akita’s message to support complaints about the state of the church, especially with the message’s description of church leaders in opposition, Fastiggi said that reading would miss the mark.

“The message is not one of complaint but of peaceful action, and intercession and praying the rosary,” he said, emphasizing that Mary said to pray for the pope, bishops and priests. “The warning could be given to inspire us to be more faithful.”

He added, “People are losing faith. There’s much sin. So we need to return to the Eucharist. We need to pray the rosary. We need to intercede for the conversion of poor sinners. That’s the message, and that is as timely now as ever.”

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It is interesting that there is a notice on the HANDMAIDS OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST website announcing there would be no visitors allowed during the month of August. Have a look for yourself on the following link:

https://seitaihoshikai.com/us/index.html

Robert Nugent has put up an informational video about Sister Sasagawa, I invite you to watch it:

https://youtu.be/TWXhqblICuI?si=9Kl9LXj9eIPV7EhS

I think you might agree we need to take our Catholic Faith more seriously in the current Godless culture we find ourselves in. May God help us all.

Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa, rest in peace

St Michael the Archangel, be with us in these perilous times

Eucharistic Prayer of Akita

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus,

TRULY present

in the Holy Eucharist,

I consecrate my body and soul

to be entirely one with Your Heart,

being sacrificed at every instant

on all the altars of the world

and giving praise to the Father,

pleading for the coming of His Kingdom.

Please receive this humble offering of myself.

Use me as You will for the glory of the

Father

and the salvation of souls.

Most Holy Mother of God,

never let me be separated

from your Divine Son.

Please defend and protect me

as your special child.

Amen.

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John Porteous

Custodian of the Michael’s Arrow Project

michaelsarrow.com

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Bishop Barron explains this mystery of the Eucharist so well, we invite you to watch it

 

THE EUCHARISTIC CONVENTION  –  UPDATE  –  MAY 2024 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKING ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THESE CONVENTIONS The conventions certainly are missed, I hear that from many people. It was lovely to get together every year and listen to great speakers talk about their faith journey. It lifts the soul, doesn’t it? At least the videos of many are still online, and still getting a lot of views. Deacon Mark Rivalland and I have had many discussions about what could be done to rejuvenate these events, and we both agree it would be wonderful to make it all happen again. Realistically though, that is simply not possible for a number of reasons. Deacon Mark is a very busy man now-a-days, with most of his spare time being taken up with his work as Catholic Chaplain at North Shore Hospital, the training of Deacons for the Auckland Diocese and much more. When he met with Bishop Steve some time back to discuss “where to from here” in regards this convention, Bishop Steve suggested that a smaller event may be the way to go. That idea among others is in the think tank for future consideration. The convention website still has a good following, so I have offered to monitor it in the short term, adding content as time allows. There are still a lot of visitors coming to the website so it makes sense to us to keep it going as an evangelical online tool, if nothing else. So that’s what we’ll do. Down the line, who knows, perhaps we could bring people together for a one day programme or similar. It would be lovely to catch up with each other again. SOMETHING NEW: Bernard Moran, long time NZ Catholic journalist and I are working on an online outreach called The Michael’s Arrow Project. It is coming along well. Our objective is to target the young ones who have lost their way and are in danger of losing their souls. Michael the Archangel will help them, but they first need to know about him. This project is also for parents and grandparents who see their young family members, or their friends young ones going off the rails. Most say, “what can we do about it”. We say, “we must do something about it”, we need to put something out there to catch the eyes of the young ones that will hopefully lead them back to the right path. In the news every day now there is violence, hatred, murder, robberies, ram raids etc. It was not like this when the early conventions were happening, but look how far we’ve fallen from truth. As it is turning out, this is a very important work. Many will remember the prayer to St Michael being said after Mass in most parishes in our country. Sadly, in our day and age, devotion to Archangel Michael has been put on the back burner, perhaps it’s time to bring him back into the consciousness of Catholic culture. We will also talk to any interested groups about the project, especially young people’s groups. In a Catholic setting, though, the parish priest would need to agree to us talking about the project in his parish. Nice catching up again John Porteous Custodian of the Michael’s Arrow Project   Email: [email protected] PS: Below is an article about the project written by my colleague, Bernard Moran. Have a read and see what you think ==================== The Michael’s Arrow Project Adolescents, teenagers and young adults live out their lives in social media these days. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Tik Tok are each in their own ways fascinating and addictive. In a recent interview with the Catholic Herald (UK), Catholic convert George Farmer, the founder of Parler, described modern social media:“If you put someone in a room with a drug, eventually they are going to take the drug. We are expecting people who are poorly formed from a virtue perspective to be highly virtuous online. Social media is not the problem. Social media is a catalyst which then causes systemic problems. The fundamental problem is that people who are using this type of communication do not have Christ as their centre. If I look at the social media of some people in our community back home in the US, it is centred around Christ. These people are well-formed and have a scriptural understanding. And you contrast that with other people who clearly do not have Christ at the centre of their lives; well, it is often obscene. They know that the Internet wants this, so they put it up because they have no inner spiritual life. If you sign up to Big Tech, you sign up to being connected, and ifyou have Christ at the centre of everything you do, you can use it as a force for good. But if you sign up and you have nothing inside of you, then you inherently take in what is out there, which is often evil, so you become a consumer and you cultivate your own internal life and become formed by what is out there.” That last sentence captures the spiritual dangers for the unwary, especially when so-called “influencers” are so attractive and well, influential. Have you heard of “Jazz”? He or she, is a major influencer advocating that you can find true happiness through “transitioning” to a new gender. Jazz is a social media version of the Pied Piper, reaching out to those adolescents who are experiencing loneliness and dissatisfaction with their own body and gender. I’ll give you an example of what can happen. One of my daughters had a visit from a distraught neighbour whose 18-year-old son arrived home on holiday from Victoria University. Whilst there, he had come to believe that he needed to transition to become a female. His friends (mainly girls) encouraged him. He went to see a university counsellor who approved and arranged for him to embark on medical treatment. His mother was horrified at the physical changes to her beloved son and because of his age, her powerlessness. In New Zealand, schools can sign up for the Inside Out sexuality and diversity education programme run by Rainbow Youth and funded by the Ministry for Social Development. Ostensibly it’s about bullying, but the real agenda is promoting transitioning to students who could be vulnerable to gender dysphoria. I was reading about the plight of parents in the USA who have lost their teenage sons or daughters to suicide, influenced by dark forces on social media. It’s tempting to throw up one’s hands and cry: “It’s all too hard Lord! What can I do? I can’t protect my children, or grandchildren from this stuff!” Yes, the modern world can seem like Gotham city and we need a Batman to fightthe evildoers. This is where St Michael the Archangel comes in and the battlefield on which he seeks to wield his mighty sword, is social media. St Michael knows all about Satan and his legions of demons, how they operate, their snares and their wiles. God chose St Michael to command the good angels and drive the rebellious evil ones from Heaven. Jesus stunned his apostles with this revelation of his Godhead: “I saw Satan fall like lightening from the sky.” Satan and the demons fear St Michael and his terrible sword. The times are such that St Michael is ready and willing to help vulnerable youth in a new way. We believe that the website “michaelsarrow.com” can serve as his lighthouse tothose in peril. When they learn about St Michael, if they so choose, they can seek his help and be rescued to reach a safe harbour. There is more good news. Thanks to the amazing technological advances now available through Artificial Intelligence (AI) we can act as St Michael’s agents, making him known on a global scale. The Michael’s Arrow project has the potential to be an outreach to the whole of our common humanity, as is written in Genesis 1:26: “Let us make human beings in our own image, after our likeness.” It is reported that Our Blessed Mother Mary recently warned the seers at Medjugorje: “Satan is growing in strength…” It is likely that she is referring to the contemporary evidence of godliness and sinful rebellion among young people as they embrace the occult, drugs, pornography and abortion on an unprecedented scale.You may remember the popular Pan paperback novels of the British author Denis Wheately in the 1950s. They featured occult themes, although he strictly warned his readers to avoid any involvement out of curiosity. His most famous novel was The Devil Rides Out, with its lurid cover of Satan and his demons on horseback riding out of Hell. Well, Satan has ridden into New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Europe, America and the rest of the western worldand we are witnesses to the result. God has given us St Michael for spiritual warfare in such a time as this, under the banner of Michael’s Arrow. We invite you to look at the website, see foryourself the new wonders of artistry made possible through AI and (if you feel so inclined) join “michaelsarrow.com”. Bernard Moran Custodian of the Michael’s Arrow Project Email: [email protected] michaelsarrow.com

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