“We come to you, before your sacred image, with love and trust, eager to offer you what we are and have and to ask you for everything we need.”
Through this writing I wish to bear witness to my faith, and to how I came to know a Virgin who was strange to me, with a strange, peculiar name, the Virgin of Sorrows of Chandavila.
It all happened on June 15th, around 10:30 p.m. That afternoon, like every Saturday, my 22-year-old son Javier left home around 8:30 to go to work as a delivery driver on a motorcycle for a food delivery company. He left happy and content because he had just graduated the day before, and a long summer ahead of him to enjoy more time with, lots of plans, his friends, and fishing, his hobby since childhood.
But fate sometimes doesn’t follow our planned path, and in less than a second, it turns everything upside down. And so it was, that afternoon/evening, my son’s plans were cut short. At an intersection, a car ran a red light, and Javier jumped over it, falling unconscious on the asphalt. Surrounded by a crowd, he waited for the emergency services, and he didn’t know what his prognosis was given the severity of the accident.
It was a colleague who alerted us, without even knowing how he was, but his nervousness at that moment made me even more uneasy. It’s incredible how in tenths of a second, 22 years of his life flash through your mind. We headed to the hospital, and the minutes felt like ages until the ambulance arrived. It finally arrived, and the impression I got upon seeing it wasn’t too encouraging.
Once he was admitted to the hospital, a CT scan was performed, and the prognosis was 13 stitches in his forehead, four broken metatarsal bones, a fractured knee, and a dislocated shoulder. The worst part was “a small blood clot in his head.” We thanked God; at least he was with us, and despite his serious condition, we just had to monitor the progress of the blood clot.
While they were treating him, between tests and treatment, they gave us his clothes, including a pair of pants. To my surprise, I checked the pockets and found a picture of the Virgin Mary, which immediately shocked me. It was a black and white, laminated picture.
It was none other than the Virgin of Chandavila, accompanied by a medal and a prayer, which I read in a fluttery and nervous manner and immediately, at that moment I had no doubt “it was a miracle”, ‘it was a miracle’ and so I said to everyone around me, “look what has appeared in my son’s pocket”, I entrusted my son to that Virgin “unknown” to me, with a sad and painful face, like a mother who has just lost her Son, “help him Mother”, “help him little Virgin” was the only expression that came out of my mouth for a long time. They did a new CT scan, and the clot had disappeared, “Thank you Mother”, “Thank you Virgin of Sorrows of Chandavila”. Javier was admitted to the ICU and left the hospital in a wheelchair, and today he only goes to rehabilitation to recover from minor injuries.
When we told him what had happened, with the mysterious appearance of the image, he posted it on social media to try to thank that person, who at that time I considered that my son needed the protection of the Virgin of Chandavila more than he did, or perhaps he had her with him because she also helped him in a difficult and critical moment. The truth is that despite our attempts to locate him or her, we were unable to find him, what’s more, no one saw anything or anyone.
Thank you from here! You have succeeded in awakening faith in a young man, poor in faith, like so many others in these new generations.
And after his recovery, we still had one more task to do: visit Our Lady of Sorrows in Chandavila. And so it was that last Saturday, August 31st, in addition to visiting Our Lady’s sanctuary, we were able to share our testimony with a wonderful group of people who had already heard the news and prayed to Our Lady for Javier, who kept him in their prayers, and who truly felt and shared with us this very special encounter with your Virgin, now also ours.
In Badajoz on September 3, 2024.
Ana Muñoz Fernández.
