Guest Blogger: Lynley Ocampo: Mama Mary Answered My Prayer

 

2024 Update: A Catholic religious book that I collected and edited has a new edition - MAGNIFICAT: MAMA MARY'S PILGRIM SITES gathers 24 people's accounts of Marian sites wherein they found comfort, solace, and sometimes miracles. The pilgrim sites include familiar shrines in Lourdes, Vailankanni, Guadalupe, Fatima, Ephesus, as well as lesser known ones including several in the Philippines (Antipolo, Manaoag, Odlot, Caysasya and more).  It is available from Amazon.

The book was issued an Imprimatur by Archbishop Antonio G. Tagle D.D. of Manila and Nihil Obstat by Rev. Fr. Rufino C. Sescon, Jr. Chancellor. 

Bishop Leopold C. Jaucian, SVD. DD, Bishop of Bangued, Philippines praises the book as follows:

 Profoundly Marian and beautifully written by the contributors as these are personal experiences! To our fellow devotees and would-be-devotees of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you will surely fall in love with Magnificat: Mama Mary's Pilgrim Sites, and love Our Blessed Mother ever more."

This book is part of the Marian Collection at the  Marian Library of the University of Dayton, Ohio.

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I was thrilled to hear back from a contributor, Atty. Lynley Ocampo, a lawyer from Cebu City, who emailed me to say her prayer has been answered with the help of Mary:

"I am happy to announce that my family and I have moved to our new home in ____. This was an answered prayer -- as I mentioned in MAGNIFICAT .. more than two years in the making. We moved in last 12 June, significantly as if to declare our independence from abusive and oppressive landlords/landowners. Bittersweet, as we’ve spent almost 80 years - beginning with my grandmother, mother, down to the more recent generation - in our old place."  

She included two photos of their beautiful pristine and airy home and said, "Our new home."

I am sharing the original article Lynley Ocampo wrote for the book, MAGNIFICAT: MAMA MARY'S PILGRIM SITES, wherein she attests to religious changes in her after visiting our Lady of Odlot in the Philippines. Please read the excerpt with her writeup:

Promoting the Beatification of Bishop Camomot of Cebu, Philippines

The Philippines is one of two Asian countries with a predominantly Catholic population (the other is East Timor).  Eighty-six percent Filipinos are Christians, with eighty percent being Roman Catholic. Religion plays a large part in their lives. In shopping malls for instance, a loud speaker will blare the Angelus prayer at 6 p.m. Many shopping malls will have a chapel with regular Masses.

Feastday of Our Lady of Velankanni & Our Lady's Birthday today

Novena Prayer to Our Lady of Velankanni


Oh Most Holy Virgin! You were chosen by the Most Adorable Trinity from all eternity to be the most pure Mother of Jesus. Permit me, your humble and devoted servant, to remind you of the joy received in the instant of the Most Sacred Incarnation of our Divine Lord and during the nine months you carried Him in your chaste womb. I wish most sincerely that I could renew, or even increase that joy, by the fervour of my Prayers.


Oh! Tender Mother of the afflicted! Grant me under my present necessities that special protection You have promised to those who devoutly commemorate this ineffable joy. Relying on the infinite mercies of your Divine Son, trusting in the promise which He has made that those who ask should receive, and penetrated with confidence in your powerful prayers, I most humbly entreat you intercede for me. I beg you to obtain for me the favours which I petition for in this novena, if it be the Holy Will of God to grant them; to ask for me whatever graces I most stand in need of.

(Here specify your requests)

I desire by this novena, which I now offer in your honour, to prove the lively confidence I have in your intercession. Accept it, I beseech you, in honour of that supernatural love and joy, with which your Immaculate Heart was replenished during the abode of your divine Son in your womb; in veneration of which, I offer you the sentiments of my heart.

(Repeat the Hail Mary nine times)
and then say the following prayer:-

Oh! Mother of God! accept these salutations in union with the respect and veneration with which the Angel Gabriel first hailed you, "Full of Grace" I wish most sincerely that they may become so many gems in the crown of your incidental glory, which will increase in brightness to the end of the world.

I beseech you, Oh! comfortress of the afflicted, by the joy you received, when the word was made flesh, to obtain for me the favours and graces, which I have now implored through your powerful intercession. For this end I offer you all the good works which have even been performed in your honour. I most humbly entreat you for the love of the amiable Heart of Jesus, with which yours was ever so inflamed, to hear my humble prayers and to obtain my requests.
- Amen.