"Of course this is a perfect segway to the greater question which has brought us here Aldo...thank you for the meal, the desert and the sterling conversation but shall we get down to business?" Father Tim asked.
The priest were kind enough not to have begun the inquisition of Aldo until they all had settled in the living room with coffee and pound cake frozen with raspberries and whipped cream.
"Is this where the sighting took place Aldo?" Monsignor Voght asked.
"Well the actual event took place up stairs in my bedroom, which I will show you if you like...shall I call you Monsignor or Father?" Aldo asked.
"What ever makes you most comfortable Aldo...we do not stand on formalities during these proceedings." He said.
They walked up the solid stair well with coffee mugs in hand. Aldo assumed that this meant they intended to spend some time up there.
"This was my room at the time of the visitation." Aldo said.
"Show us if you can Aldo exactly what happened." Father Tim asked.
Aldo went to the bed, sat his mug on the stand beside the vase of fresh cut flowers and lay down as he had been on that evening.
"I was in bed and fast asleep by eleven o'clock...that was when the first visit took place. I was awaken by a slight movement of the bed, the wind picked up and blew through the drapes... and then the brilliant lights shown through the frame and holes in the door. They were very bright but not blinding. I opened the door...a woman was elevated... standing at the door and her body filled the space around it." Aldo continued.
"I said nothing but was so frightened that I immediately slammed the door in her face."
"What was she wearing?" asked the Monsignor.
"She had on a long dress...a gown of several layers and veils...it was of a color which I refer to as Blue Heaven." Aldo said.
"And she said nothing?" the Monsignor asked.
"I am afraid that I did not give her time to speak." Aldo said.
"Now this was on August 15, 1955."
"That is correct." Aldo said.
"When did she next appear to you?"
"She returned on the seventeenth of August."
"What happened Aldo?"
"I had said the rosary with my family down in the living room. We all went to bed and it was about nine o'clock when I went to sleep. The same thing happened with the bed moving, the wind picked up and the lights came through the door. I got up from the bed and knelt at the door as I opened it. I held up the cross and began to pray the Our Father in Latin."
Pater Noster, qui es in caelis: ( the priest joined the prayer as Aldo lead) sanctificetur nomen tuum: adveniat regnum tuum: fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra. Panem nostrum quatidianum da nobis hodie: et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicuit et nos demittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. Sid libera nos a malo. Amen."
The priest stood in silence.
"She stood there elevated, filling the doorway. She said that she wanted me to paint a portrait of the Holy Family. A simple scene with Mary holding the infant Jesus and Joseph leading the burro."
"I told her that I was just a rudimentary painter and that I would not know how to begin to paint the likeness of the Blessed Mother, Joseph or the Christ Child. She said that I was not to be concerned about the features that they would appear on Mary and Joseph in 2005 on the feast day of the Assumption and that the Christ Child would be disclosed in 2055 on the Feast of the Nativity."
"She told me that I was not to disclose the command to paint the portrait until the first miracle had been completed and then they were to be shared only with the Holy Father in Rome."
"Tell noone Aldo...you are the handmade of the Lord." She said.
"So each day for the past fifty years I have prayed the rosary to the faceless portrait and then on the fifteenth of August I watched as the faces took shape...faces that noone could ever imagine nor can I describe." Aldo said as he made his way to a chair and sat down, seemingly exhausted from the exchange.
"Well its getting late, and I know Aldo goes to bed with the chickens." Father Francis said trying to introduce a little levity into a heavy moment.
"Yes I always pray the rosary...before bed and I invite you to join with me now." Aldo asked.
The priest knelt in place as Aldo began the Sorrowful mysterious. It took little time to pray the five decades and then Father Francis prepared to leave. It was very dark so Aldo turned on the large strobe to light his way to the car. He promised to return the next day, after lunch, to pick up the priest from Rome.
Was the parking strobe light, the light, which awoke Aldo? Father Dalton thought to himself.
As the visitors prepared for bed, Monsignor Voght requested to stay in Aldo's boyhood bedroom where the visitation took place. In only a few moments the house was quite and all the lights were out. Aldo was extremely tired and it was now an hour past his bedtime. In a moment he was fast asleep. Father Tim Dalton was feeling the effects of the flight from Rome. He tossed for a few moments and then fell into a deep and peaceful sleep as the sounds of the night prepared a cacophony of sounds and lights unheard in the city. The Monsignor wasted no time and seemed to be asleep before his head hit the thick goose-down filled pillow.
Then it happened...the wind picked up and whistled through the windows of the Monsignor's bedroom...the bed began to shake. The Monsignor woke and held the sides of the bed, which seemed to be adrift at sea as it rocked from side to side. The lights, which Aldo had described, blasted through the frame of the door and through the cracks as well. Monsignor Voght attempted to pick up his two hundred fifty pounds from the rocking bed... put he was unable to gain any momentum. The door opened, but the Monsignor saw no one...he called out!
"Who is it...Blessed Lady, I adore and worship you. I lay down my life for you, please grant me this moment so that I may die in the peaceful knowledge of your loving embrace."
There was no vision... the light dissipated, the wind calmed and the bed set down on the floor. The Monsignor got out of bed and went to the door. He looked out from the doorway and down the hallway... only silence unfolded. He knelt down where the light had been so intense and he felt a field of sensation throughout his body. The hair stood on his head, neck, hands, legs, arms and pubic area. He did not know how long he had been kneeling in this place but his knees seemed to have been frozen...locked into the floor so that he was unable to get up. The Monsignor first sat down on the floor and then he rolled over on his side and tried to straighten his legs. They would not permit him to do so without intense pain but slowly the pain began to subside. He lay there flexing the knee joints and then he got back into the bed.
He began to smell coffee and frying bacon. He knew that the incident had taken him through the night. A caller leaving him with a thought from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner... 'He prayeth best, who lovest best...all things large and small.' The Monsignor could not sleep so he prayed as he watched the formation of the sun and then new day.
*******************
Aldo had completed the breakfast and set the table in the dinning room before he called for the priest to come down. Father Dalton had risen to the smell of the coffee and bacon, showered, shaved and dressed in his compulsory black suit and white cleric collar. The Monsignor had on the same dress code with the exception that a small slice of red had been sewn beneath the white cleric collar to denote his rank as a Monsignor.
The breakfast table was as inviting as was the dinner table. A large platter of scrambled eggs sat in the middle of the table. A platter of fried country cured ham, Job Bacon from the smoke house and sausage patties which Aldo had rendered from the hog killing last November after the first real hard freeze. A bowl of homemade applesauce sat beside cruets of freshly made strawberry, grape, peach and pear preserves. Steam rose from the biscuits and the gravy containing bits of sausage delivered the pungent smell of the