Restored post from April 2018
Today we speak of beginnings and endings
A long, long time ago, John was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, as he tells us. And he heard a loud voice as of the sound of many waters, “I am the Alpha and the Omega …” . And John was given visions, the like of which no man has ever seen since until the night of June 13, 1929 in a small chapel.
Sister Lúcia described the vision:
“Suddenly the whole chapel became bright with a supernatural light and above the altar appeared a luminous cross that extended to the ceiling. In an even brighter light appeared above the cross the face of a Man with His body down to the waist. In front of His chest was a Dove, also made entirely of light, and nailed to the cross was the Body of another Man. A little below His hips appeared a chalice floating in the air and a large host, upon which fell the drops of blood that streamed from the face of the Crucified, and from His wounded side. They flowed down upon the host, and from there they fell into the chalice.
“Beneath the cross and to the right was Our Lady with her Immaculate Heart in her hand (it was Our Lady of Fatima with her Immaculate Heart, which she held in her left hand, without a sword or roses, but rather, surrounded with a crown of thorns and all aflame).
“Beneath the cross on the left appeared large letters, as though made of crystal-clear water, that flowed from the hand of the Crucified down upon the altar and formed the following words, Grace and Mercy.
“I understood that the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity was being shown to me, …”
The Blessed Virgin’s message was succinct:
“The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father to make, and to order that in union with Him and at the same time, all the Bishops of the world make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to convert it because of this day of prayer and worldwide reparation.”
This vision is so deep and rich in meaning; in it we see encapsulated the mysteries of the Immaculate Conception, the Most Blessed Trinity, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist and so much more. It is the counterpart to John’s visions on Patmos and bears a similar warning and promise for us.
Yet not one Pope has ever spoken of this vision. Not. one.
A stunning indifference.
An insight from St. Maximilian Kolbe
In one of his last writings, the Apostle of the Immaculata, St. Maximilian, provides us with an excellent meditation on the meaning of the Immaculate Conception and its relation to the Most Holy Trinity. Let’s see how his brief meditation fits in with Lúcia’s mystical vision.
After asking, “Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?” St. Maximilian writes,
“Not God, of course, because He has no beginning. Not an angel, created directly out of nothing. Not Adam, formed out of the dust of the earth (Gen. 2,7). Not Eve, molded from Adam’s rib (Gen. 2,21). Not the Incarnate Word, Who exists before all ages, and of Whom we should use the word “conceived” rather than “conception”. Humans do not exist before their conception, so we might call them created “conceptions.” But you, O Mary, are different from all other children of Eve. They are conceptions stained by original sin; whereas you are the unique, Immaculate Conception.
“Everything which exists, outside of God Himself, since it is from God and depends on Him in every way, bears within itself some semblance to its Creator; there is nothing in any creature which does not betray this resemblance, because every created thing is an effect of the Primal cause.
It is true that the words we use to speak of created realities express the divine perfections only in a halting, limited and analogical manner. They are only a more or less distant echo – as are the created realities that they signify – of the properties of God Himself.
The Father begets the Son; the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son. These few words sum up the mystery of life of the Most Blessed Trinity and of all the perfections in creatures which are nothing else but echoes, a hymn of praise, a many-hued tableau, of this primary and most wondrous of all mysteries. We must perforce use our customary vocabulary, since it is all we have; but we must never forget that our vocabulary is very inadequate.
Who is the Father? What is His personal life like? It consists in begetting, eternally; because He begets His Son from the beginning, and forever.
Who is the Son? He is the Begotten-One because from the beginning and for all eternity He is begotten by the Father.
And who is the Holy Spirit? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. If the fruit of created love is a created conception, then the fruit of divine Love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a divine “conception.” The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the “uncreated, eternal conception,” the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.
The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the “conception” that springs from their love; there we have the intimate life of the three Persons by which they can be distinguished one from another. But they are united in the oneness of their Nature, of their divine existence. The Spirit is then, this thrice holy “conception,” this infinitely holy, Immaculate Conception.
Everywhere in this world we notice action, and the reaction which is equal but contrary to it; departure and return; going away and coming back; separation and reunion. The separation always looks forward to union, which is creative. All this is simply an image of the Blessed Trinity in the activity of creatures. Union means love, creative love.
Divine activity, outside the Trinity itself, follows the same pattern. First, God creates the universe; that is something like a separation. Creatures, by following the natural law implanted in them by God, reach their perfection, become like Him, and go back to Him. Intelligent creatures love Him in the conscious manner; through this love they unite themselves more and more closely with Him, and so find their way back to Him.
The creature most completely filled with this love, filled with God Himself, was the Immaculata, who never contracted the slightest stain of sin, who never departed in the least from God’s will. United to the Holy Spirit as His spouse, she is one with God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be predicated of any other creature.
What sort of union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the “essence” of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives in her. This was true from the first instant of her existence. It was always true; it will always be true.
In what does this life of the Sprit in Mary consist? He Himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love of the Most Holy Trinity. He is a fruitful Love, a “Conception.” Among creatures made in God’s image the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all (cf. Mt. 19,6). In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being. He makes her fruitful, from the very first instant of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.
This eternal “Immaculate Conception” (which is the Holy Spirit) produces in an immaculate manner divine life itself in the womb (or depths) of Mary’s soul, making her the Immaculate Conception, the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary’s body is kept sacred for Him; there He conceives in time – because everything that is material occurs in time – the human life of the man-God.
And so the return to God (which is love), that is to say the equal and contrary reaction, follows a different path from that found in creation. The path of creation goes from the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit; this return trail goes from the Spirit through the Son back to the Father; in other words, by the Spirit the Son becomes incarnate in the Womb of the Immaculata; and through this Son love returns to the Father. And she (the Immaculata), grafted into the Love of the Blessed Trinity, becomes from the first moment of her existence and forever thereafter the “complement of the Blessed Trinity”.
In the Holy Spirit’s union with Mary we observe more than the love of two beings; in one there is all the love of the Blessed Trinity; in the other, all of creation’s love. So it is that in this union heaven and earth are joined; all of heaven with all the earth, the totality of eternal love with the totality of created love. It is truly the summit of love.
At Lourdes, the Immaculata did not say of herself that she had been conceived immaculately, but, as St. Bernadette repeated, “Que soy era immaculada councepciou”: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
If among human beings the wife takes the name of her husband because she belongs to him, is one with him, becomes equal to him and is, with him, the source of new life, with how much greater reason should the name of the Holy Spirit, who is the divine Immaculate Conception, be used as the name of her in whom He lives as uncreated Love, the principle of life in the whole supernatural order of grace?” (St. Maximilian Kolbe, 17 February, 1941).
✝︎ . ✝︎ . ✝︎
When we read Father Karl Stehlin’s “Who Are You, O Immaculata?” (Angelus) it begins to become clearer. Fr. Stehlin, drawing on the works of St. Maximilian Kolbe, describes Mary’s role in our salvation.
“She is the summit of creation and the bridge over which all paths from heaven and to heaven must travel, the nave of the church that bridges the distance between God’s majesty and the guilty sinner and connects these two extremes.”
Fr. Stehlin affirms that the mystical vision at Tuy is meant to direct us to the true meaning of the Immaculata in the mystery of God and redemption.
It is the Crucifix which dominates the Vision of Tuy, and we see Mary standing beside the huge cross, with her heart in her hand. Thus she extends to us her immense suffering forever bound with His, and calls us to love of the cross. The thorns and flames surrounding her heart remind us that our love is perfected in suffering. If we consider this vision prayerfully, we begin to understand the reason this vision was given to us at this particular time in history.
Father Stehlin reminds us, “Through Mary, the salvation of the world began; through Mary it will also be perfected.” In the calamitous ending of the Age of Apostasy, we will see streams of grace and mercy flowing from the wounded hands of our Savior through the Virgin, grace and mercy for us who turn to her. Not for us alone, for none will be saved alone. Long before this vision, Our Lady gave the children the vision of hell, not to scare them but to call them to save sinners. Father reminds us,
“The whole message of Fatima is a Mother’s cry of alarm, which shows her children the great danger and tries to save them from it. The apparition of July 13, (1917) describes the apotheosis, the almost total victory of satan through his accomplices, the materialistic atheism that rules the world. Opposing this is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the sole escape chosen by God and the sure victory.”
We live today in the apostasy of nations; it is not enough to live our consecrations in peace and quiet, no, not at all. For we will either save ourselves and others or we will be damned alone. The very air is infected with narcissistic self-absorbtion, with pride and presumption. Over the past several centuries, the enemy has sown religious indifference and an over-weaning reliance on one’s own aptitudes, leading to a distaste for humility and obedience, the virtues needed now more than ever.
“The time has come …”, Mary began her message at Tuy. At Fatima, the will of God was made visible to the whole world, so that now, in the end times, Mary might be made known to the world as the Mediatrix of All Graces, as the beginning of creation’s return home to God. Mary’s heart gathers the children of God and preserves in them the light of grace in the midst of a dark world. In her heart, we can endure to the end beneath the Cross of Christ. And thus proceeds the return through Mary to Christ in the Holy Ghost to God the Father.” (Stehlin, op. cit., p. 12)
There has been a very helpful series on Our Lady of Knock at Tradition in Action by Gregory Johnson. I highly recommend it. Mr. Johnson shows clearly how the magnificent apparitions of the nineteenth century progressed towards Fatima. Even the weather at the various apparitions progressed towards Fatima which culminated in Our Lady’s miraculous demonstration of total control over the elements with the miracle of the sun followed by the miraculous clearing of the rain and mud. This is highly significant as we shall soon unfortunately see. There is no doubt that the Immaculata is the “Woman clothed with the Sun” of Apocalypse Chapter 12. The eloquent, silent vision of Knock proves that.
My only purpose on this site is to point to the truth about the importance of the Message of Fatima. It is a shame that so few, even after reading this poor “microblog” or even other, better blogs, still prefer to pursue foolish and misleading subjects. Readers often tell me about family members who refuse to grasp the simple message of Fatima. “What can I do?” they ask. Aware of my utter inadequacy, I can only restate the message, we must pray, we must make of everything a sacrifice, we must never cease begging Heaven for the Consecration of Russia, and for a repentant Church to perform the consecration. And I know you are frustrated.
But we are at Golgotha now, and part of of our own cross is to accept this frustration with humility. The very fact that it humbles us should teach us how necessary this humbling of ourselves is.
We are all aware of Sister Lúcia’s warning to Cardinal Caffara and Father Amorth’s warning. Now, this past year, those who occupy the Church have rapidly escalated their attacks against the faith. As this spiritual chastisement intensifies, we see the escalation of political hostilities, and the early beginnings of the horrific natural disasters that we will soon face. We need our Blessed Mother more than ever and we are blessed that she has loved us so much as to place herself openly within history here and now, allowing the enemy to attack her in order to call us, her children, to the safe haven of her Immaculate Heart.
I hope that you will read Mr. Johnson’s series on Knock and that you will, if possible, read Father Karl Stehlin’s book, “Who are You, O Immaculata?” See link above. It has helped me immensely. It is difficult for me to afford books like Father Stehlin’s, but consider the cost a worthy sacrifice to God, and at this late point in my life, much more prudent than most other expenses, since now, we must apply all our efforts to spiritual survival.
The revelation of Our Lady of Fatima in the mystical vision of Tuy is an encouraging promise for us now: She offers her Immaculate Heart to her children, those who are consecrated to her, who live their consecrations moment by moment in this desolate wasteland of the post-synodal church. The greater the trial, the more God’s grace and mercy abounds.
More than ever before, we will pray the Sorrowful Mysteries and open our hearts to the graces Our Lord is offering us through His Mother. The more that God’s justice is mocked and His sacraments despised, the more doubts and errors confuse the faithful, the more firmly we abide with Mary Immaculate, our Queen and our Mother, our sure refuge from apostasy. It is in her Immaculate Heart that we become strong in humilty and obedience, which are so necessary to drive the pride and rebellion from the Church.
For a similar post you might like, see The Message of Fatima for the Synodal Church.
Pray the Rosary and confound satan and those who serve him!
† Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queen of our hearts, Mother of the Church, do thou offer to the Eternal Father the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the conversion of poor sinners, especially our Pontiff.
† Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Thy kingdom come! Viva Cristo Rey!
† Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
† . St. Joseph, protect us, protect our families, protect our priests.
† . St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Pray for a pope and bishops who will obey and do the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary!
~ for love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, King.
Vouchsafe that I may praise thee, O Sacred Virgin! Give me strength against thine enemies!