Every year during the month of February, different cultures around the world celebrate Carnival, or Mardi Gras.
This celebration takes place the two days before Ash Wednesday, the date that marks the beginning of Lent for Catholics.
Various saints, including St. Philip of Neri and St. John Bosco tried promoting activities that would reconcile this celebration with the Catholic faith, especially due to the contradiction between the austerity of the Lenten spirit and the excesses of Mardi Gras (Carnival).
However, St. Faustina Kowalska and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque experienced visions of Christ on the Cross and the sins committed on these days.
The visions of Jesus about Mardi Gras
St. Faustina recounts three times in her diary the revelations she had during the time of this celebration.
In Feb. 1933, St. Faustina said, “My physical sufferings have intensified. I am uniting myself more closely with the suffering Savior, asking Him for mercy for the whole world, which is running riot in its wickedness. Throughout the day, I felt the pain of the crown of thorns. When I lay down, I could not rest my head on the pillow. But at ten o’clock, the pains ceased, and I feel asleep; but the next day I felt very exhausted.”
“During the last days of the carnival, when I was making a Holy hour, I saw how the Lord Jesus suffered as He was being scourged. Oh, such an inconceivable agony! How terribly Jesus suffered during the scourging! O poor sinners, on the day of judgment how will you face the Jesus whom you are now torturing so cruelly: His blood flowed to the ground, and in some places His flesh started to fall off. I saw a few bare bones on His back. The meek Jesus moaned softly and sighed,” she wrote in excerpt 188.
Finally, in 1938, the visions occurred again.
“During the last two days of the carnival, I experienced the overwhelming flood of chastisements and sins. In one instant, the Lord gave me a knowledge of the sins committed throughout the whole world during these days. I fainted from fright, and even though I know the depth of God‟s mercy, I was surprised that God allows humanity to exist.”
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque also received special revelations during this time prior to Lent.
“During the three days of Carnival, I would have wished to tear myself to pieces in reparation for the outrages perpetrated against His Divine Majesty by sinners; I fasted on those days as much as possible, on bread and water, and the food which was given to me, I gave to the poor.”
On another occasion, Jesus “presented himself to her after receiving Communion, under the figure of an Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), loaded with his cross, all covered with sores and bruises and his adorable blood flowing from his whole body.
With a painfully sad voice, he said, “Will there be no one who has pity on me and wants to feel sorry for me and take part in my pain, seeing the pitiful state in which sinners put me, especially at this time?”
In a letter written on Jan. 17, 1690, St. Margaret Mary wrote that during Carnival, “so many sinners offend him and abandon him! It seems to me that this is my time of pain and bitterness in such a way that I cannot see or like anything other than my suffering and abandoned Jesus.”
Pray for the conversion of sinners!