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My beloved children,
Before He died, Jesus desired to fill the void that His death was leaving in my heart. He gave you to me. You, indeed are the children of suffering.
In you I see my very Son. Just as I looked after Jesus, so also I look after you. Whenever you are tired, troubled or depressed, never forget that there is a Mother who understands you well. I am always beside you. If you wander away from my Son, never be afraid to approach Him again. I, who in His lifetime, tended Him so lovingly and who lived with Him, know quite well how generous His heart is, and with what ardent desire He is waiting for you.
Do you love me? Do you really love me? If indeed you wish to manifest the love of yours, pray, and never be scared of sacrifice. Be assiduous, so that those who in any way rejected God may once again return to Him. Never forget that those people too are your brethren and that they too have cost my Son His blood. You would be really loving me if you love your fellow humans, your brethren, for they are all my children. For my sake, help them, console them, and give them the love they lack.
When your days on earth come to an
end, do not be afraid. I shall be beside you so as to welcome you and to
make you meet my Son. In the meantime, this one advice I give you:
always do whatever Jesus tells
you.
My dear children, please open yourselves up to God.
You see, my children, just as nature opens up and gives life and fruits, so I beg you to live with God and totally give yourselves up to Him.
My children, I am with you and I always wish to show you to the joy of life.
I wish each of you to discover the joy and love that are only in God and that only God can give. God wants nothing from you but your giving up; so, dear children, seriously bring yourselves to God, as everything else goes by. Only God remains. Pray to discover the greatness and the joy of life that God is giving you.
Thank you for answering my call.
Conchita speaking after an apparition -- "We must make many sacrifices, perform much penance and visit the Blessed Sacrament frequently. But first, we must lead good lives. If we do not, a chastisement will befall us. The cup is already filling up and if we do not change, a very great chastisement will come upon us."
Mary in an apparition speaking to
Conchita-- "As my message of October 18, 1961, has not been made known
to the world, I am advising you that this is the last one. Before, the
cup was filling up. Now it is flowing over. Many priests are on the road
to perdition and are taking many souls with them. Less and less importance
is being given to the Eucharist. You should turn the wrath of God away
from yourselves by your efforts. If you ask His forgiveness
with sincere hearts, He will pardon you. I, your mother, through the intercession
of St. Michael the Archangel, ask you to amend your lives. You are now
receiving the last warnings. I love you very much and do not want your
condemnation. Pray to Us with sincerity and We will grant your requests.
You should make more sacrifices. Think about the passion of Jesus."
Fatima's message
stands;
People must pray and make sacrifices to appease God for the offences of mankind.
Sane people do not have to think long on the present conditions in the world without realising that God is being ignored, His commandments violated on all sides, His Holy Name blasphemed, His very existence doubted.
Within one generation God has permitted the world to be visited by two horrible wars. But mankind has not seen the hand-writing on the wall. How many people have seen in these wars a chastisement visited upon the world for its sins? Not many, if one may judge by the little, if any, improvement in morals.
It is in the power of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary to prevent a further punishment. Should (according to the messages of Garabandal, the nature of the chastisement will not be human in origin) that chastisement take the form of a war, we are certain it shall be more horrible than any former war. If one can judge by the signs, such a situation is not impossible.
What can and ought to be done?
The message of Our Lady of Fatima
must be heeded so that the sins which bring on wars and revolutions may
be atoned for by the faithful.
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These words from the Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council
beautifully speak of the Virgin Mary's maternal care for us, God's people.
There is, one might say, a spiritual umbilical cord from heaven to us in
the Church Militant on earth. We have a mother in heaven looking out for
us and doing her best to keep all children, Catholic and non-Catholic alike,
close to Jesus Christ. This continuing role was willed to her by her Divine
Son at the Cross.
My greatest sympathies are for Catholics who have deliberately kept Mary out of their lives because they consider her unessential or perhaps irrelevant to the modern era. The Virgin of Nazareth, whom Jesus loves and cherishes more than we can realize, remains for these Christians nothing more than a figure in a Christmas manger scene.
There are other Catholics who insist on moving Mary so far out of the human experience that she becomes remote from the day to day lives of all of us. They speak of their love for Mary in fables, insisting , for example, that she never did housework (angels did it all), never experienced grief (yet they call her Mother of Sorrows), and knew everything that would happen to Christ (which only He knew). A woman once objected that I mentioned in a sermon that Mary wept at the Cross. She claimed that because of a lack of interior struggle Mary had complete control over her emotions and thus would not behave in such a way. The woman declared that this was Church dogma! Likewise, a priest criticized the movie "Jesus of Nazareth" because it portrayed Mary wailing at the Cross. What these people overlook is that Mary was not only human-and human beings show emotion-but that she showed these emotions in a particular strong way. The Church has condemned the idea that Mary collapsed of sorrow at the Cross which would indicate an inability to control her emotions, but it has never condemned the notion that Mary expressed her great sorrow in an external way. How could the Church condemn Mary in this manner when scripture openly tells us that Our Lord, who was divine, demonstrated great emotions?
These critics would deny Mary her humanness which they would not deny of Christ.
They are also inconsistent. They
exaggerate Mary's differences from the human order but they are devoted
to Our Lady of LaSalette who showed emotion by hear tears and by putting
her head n her hands. No wonder they were criticized by the Little Flower
in whose company I find myself when I say that such devotion to Mary is
bogus because it misses out entirely on Mary's role regarding us.
True devotion to our Blessed Lady which is alive, centred on Christ and thus fruitful, does not seek to remove her from the grimy parts of society and the shadows of our lives, but instead recognizes that she is, by her Son's command, necessarily involved in the human struggle of this world and immersed in the victories and defeats of our any different from her Divine Son?
God had always concerned Himself with the affairs of Israel but at the moment of the Incarnation, the moment the first words of consecration were ever spoken, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to Thy word," God had irrevocably cast His lot with all men in a deeper way than anyone could have imagined.
How can we dare to remove out of the travail of the human condition she, who all people, was a vessel, the singular instrument of the Incarnation, through whom the all-powerful and transcendent God became a poor, weak and defenceless babe lying in a trough used for feeding cattle? It was because of Mary that Jesus could be hungry, homeless, a refugee, sweaty and thirsty. He became a righteously angry, He knew sadness and disappointment. He shed tears, was betrayed by a friend and felt pain so intensely that He suffered from hematohidrosis-sweating blood. He identified Himself with the rough-edged human condition even to the extremity of a lonely death.
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews
tells us that Christ is a "man like us in all things except sin." The Second
Person of the Most Holy Trinity came among us as a man, as a human being,
with a human will, a human intellect and with human emotions. But He was
all this only because He was born of a woman. He entered the stage of human
history through the orifice of her womb. How can we deny Mary her human
experience if we worship a God Who sat on her knee and slept in her arms
and drank from her breasts? The wonder of the Incarnation is better understood
when we fully understand the human story of Mary.
People who deny that Mary rubbed shoulders with Human conditions do not really know her. She is not removed from us, she is one of us, indeed she has always been one of us. When she was a young girl engaged to Joseph her pregnancy brought with it gossip and ridicule. In dung only God's will she suffered the social shame in silence as many people today suffer ridicule for their faith at the hands of people who do not understand.
When she was ready to give birth to her Son, she felt from people with 'winter hearts,' the coldness and harsh indifference that many welfare mothers feel today. The joy of her maternity was dampened my Simeon's prophecy that her Son would be a sign that would be opposed. Some mothers today learn that her baby has Downs Syndrome or that their child may have leukaemia.
Mary had to flee with her baby into a foreign country whose language she could not speak, whose food she had never tasted, whose culture she was unacquainted with, all because a tyrant sought her Son, How well then she knows the sorrow and the pain of the thousands of refugees today who flee their native land because of present tyrants and have to go to an unfamiliar land. And how she noticed every sound of footsteps outside her door, fearing Herod's men as countless other European mothers centuries later feared those of Hitler's.
Mary knew widowhood. If St. Joseph was 17 when he married Mary who was probably 15, St. Joseph must have died at an unusually early age. Certainly the presence of Jesus made the death of Joseph a peaceful and holy event but nonetheless afterwards there was a gap of loneliness in her life and the increased responsibility of raising her Son.
Mary knew the summit of the cruelty of men as she stood beneath the cross upon which hung disfigured her only Son. How helpless she felt not able to reach up and wipe the blood from His face, remove the nails and bandage His wounds. How she wanted to put her body where His was so that He would not suffer. How many a mother or person stands at the side of a very sick child or relative unable to do anything! How much they wish they could take the ravaging disease upon their own body.
A few years ago I saw on television
a mother whose 12-year-old son had just been accidentally shot to death.
I could tell by her violent grief, her heavy sobs, her endless stream of
tears that somehow, someway, she was bearing in her body his wounds, his
pain, his death. A bullet had entered his heart a sword had pierced hers.
No longer was it the ghetto of Washington, D.C., it was Calvary. Mary the
cause of our joy is found also and most especially in the moments of pain.
Mary of the unlikely places.
Her care today and her apparitions reflect her life and the mission of her Divine Son, Jesus Christ. When our Blessed Mother appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous she could have chosen any place in or near Lourdes to be seen. She could have appeared to the young girl in the parish or by a shrine. Instead she chose to appear Massabielle Grotto which at the time was a garbage dump. Imagine your reaction if someone told you that the Blessed Virgin appeared to them in the nearby trash depot. "Blasphemy",
would probably be the first words from your lips. But this shows how Mary works. She is the Lady of unlikely places. Why does she chose to appear on a barren hill near Mexico City, or in a faithless town in Belgium or in a primitive village in Spain? Why doesn't she appear at the Vatican or on Madison Avenue? Certainly a God who is found in a manger or upon a cross is a "God of unlikely places." So it is fitting that Mary would imitate His mysterious style.
Mary is telling us she is not apart from this world; if any one is apart from it, it is ourselves. She tells us she can be found among the discards of society, among the poor, the oppressed, the lonely, the unlovable. She is found among the oppressed people of Poland because their her son is born in the hearts of all those millions, young and old, who kiss His Cross and love His Holy Mass. She also came to the humble Indian, Juan Diego, in an area that was pagan, in order to kindle in the hearts of eight million Indians, love of her Divine Son.
Mary of the unlikely places.
Today from His throne of glory in heaven, Jesus, our precious Saviour, looks down on all of us whom He deeply loves. He sees the millions of babies who will be aborted, He sees babies with handicaps who will be starved to death, He sees the oppressed people in Poland, Cuba, China, Nicaragua and other anti-God states. He sees the despair of the unemployed, the victims and purveyors of crime. He watches the unconscious in a forgotten alley, the policeman shot in the line of duty, the loyal marines massacred in war, the refugees on the South China Sea and the homeless, war-stricken, poverty-plagued children of the world. He sees it all and once more He turns to His holy mother Mary and says, "Behold your Son!"
Mary has answered the bequest of
her loving Son with the words "I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of
all mankind" when she presented her sacred image which radiates her presence
to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City. Listen to her words, meditate
upon them and find peace and comfort knowing that when you pray with confidence
to Our Lady she understands your needs fully, because she has lived the
full range of human experience. "
And Simeon said to Mary, ""Sorrow like a sharp sword will break your own heart." Tears were upon the cheeks of Our Lady of LaSalette because the world of men would not follow the Lordship of her Divine Son. She warned at LaSalette, no one listened.
The world has grown more evil since those days of the nineteenth century and so she appeared once more in 191 7 at Fatima to decry the growing destruction of war and the spread of communism. She repeated the Gospel message of conversion to three young children. She urged penance, she urged prayer. But no one listened. A few years ago, one of the international Fatima statues toured this great country and toward the end of her trip right before she was to leave our shores she began to shed tears. Many were excited about a statue crying, few paused to consider why the statue would shed tears. They were shed as they once were at LaSalette for the likes of you and me.
Past villages and farms, affluent suburbs and tattered ghettos, past institutions of learning and houses of worship, past human playgrounds and cinema, on asphalt highway and woodland path she travels. Past our muscled structures of steel, past our billboards proclaiming salvation through pain-relievers, toothpaste, mouthwash, and a new car. Past our vast divine arsenal of weaponry able to destroy the entire world she makes her way. SEE, Virgin, what man has done to the things of God! SEE, how we have taken what was given into our charge and remodelled it into our own image and likeness. SEE our power, our strength, our paradise! And the Virgin weeps.
On she travels past hospitals, once built to encourage life, now slaughter houses for thousands of young, murdered before they see the face of the mother who has slain them. Past newspaper stands where an editorial suggests killing all children if they are born 'defective'. Past places of entertainment which flaunt the Commandments and mock the values of the Gospel. Past the city crowds and young women in the latest and shortest fashions. SEE, Virgin, what man has done to the things of God ... . Gay liberation, abortion, contraception, premarital sex. SEE our new-found freedom from the stifling moral code of yesteryear. Behold the New Society! And the Virgin weeps.
From shore to shore she makes her way amidst the children given to her care by her Divine Son at His death. Past colourless rows of houses which once were homes. Now they are mere structures which house, at times, a group of people once known as the family. Now anonymous faces and loud voices, rarely sharing a meal together-never sharing a prayer. She reaches out helplessly to the increasing number of children running away from home. She watches husband and wife enclose themselves in fortresses of snow. The silence is deafening. Parents who will not pause to listen, who will not bend to understand. She overhears the ambitious plans of sons and daughters who want to go to Appalachia to help the indigent White, to go out West to free the exploited Indians, to go into the inner city to bring relief to the impoverished Black, while their father is out mowing both the front and the back lawn and their mother is
"Sorrow like a sharp sword will break your own heart."
washing and drying the dishes. SEE, Virgin, what progress we have made in the quality of life with psychiatry and the behavioural sciences. SEE what man has done with the things of God! And the Virgin weeps.
On her holy sojourn wayfaring past your home and mine, she pauses to overhear a sobbing mother read to her husband the latest letter from their son in college. "Dear Mom and Dad, I know you will find this hard to take, but this is a different world now. I am not going to church any more. I no longer believe." A sword that has pierced the heart of many a good parent today. Some of the fault belongs to the parents' own failure to lovingly instil and foster a devout and reverent faith in their child; some of the fault falls also to the agents of Satan who often don clerical clothing and preach to the young a gospel of their very own, meant to tickle one's ears and not to save one's soul. She sees numbers of young people leaving the Church and she looks in vain for the ordained shepherds to seek them out, but alas, they are out to lunch playing ecclesiastical building blocks. She knows that more than one out of every 100 high school teenagers will attempt suicide this year, that at least 90,000 college students will threaten to do so. And she knows what a recent psychiatric report shows: that the person most unlikely to commit suicide is one who belongs to the Church. SEE, Virgin, what man has done to the things of God. We have filled the stomachs of our young, we have satiated their pleasures, we have stuffed their intellects and increased their bank accounts. We have given them freedom and autonomy from each other, from the Church, and even from God. So what if their hearts are lonely and starved. SEE how happy everyone is... And the Virgin weeps.
At Fatima, Mary requested several
things:
Mary waits for us, her children. But you will not find Mary sunning herself on the seashore, or going from party to party. She can be found still at the foot of the cross. She has given us another message a final one.
In her last Message at Garabandal Mary admonished us, "We should turn the wrath of God away from us by our own efforts." It was a reaffirmation of Fatima, a renewed cry to do penance for sin so as to avert the punishment that we deserve. We must be like Nineveh and repent, and each of us in our own way must make reparation for those who refuse to.
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"I. N., a faithless
sinner--renew and ratify today in thy hands,
O Immaculate Mother, the vows of
my Baptism; I renounce forever Satan, his pomps and works; and I give myself
entirely to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry my cross after
Him all the days of my life, and to be more faithful to Him than I have
ever been before.
"In the presence of all the heavenly
court I choose thee this day, for my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and
consecrate to thee, as thy slave, my body and soul, my goods, both interior
and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past, present
and future; leaving to thee the entire and full right of disposing of me,
and all that belongs to me, without exception, according to thy good pleasure,
for the greater glory of God, in time and in eternity. Amen."
Virgin of Fatima, Mother of Mercy, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Refuge of Sinners, we who belong to the Marian Movement of Priests consecrate ourselves in a very special way to your Immaculate Heart.
By this act of consecration we intend to live, with you and through you, all the obligations assumed by our baptismal consecration. We further pledge to bring about in ourselves that interior conversion so urgently demanded by the Gospel, a conversion that will free us of every attachment to ourselves and to easy compromises with the world so that, like you, we may be available only to do always the will of the Father.
And as we resolve to entrust to you, 0 Mother most sweet and merciful, our life and vocation as Christians, that you may dispose of it according to your designs of salvation in this hour of decision that weighs upon the world, we pledge to live it according to your desires, especially as it pertains to a renewed spirit of prayer and penance, the fervent participation in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the works of the apostolate, the daily recitation of the holy rosary, and an austere manner of life in keeping with the Gospel, that shall be to all a good example of the observance of the law of God and the practice of the Christian virtues, especially that of purity.
We further promise you to be united with the Holy Father, with the hierarchy and with our priests, in order thus to set up a barrier to the growing confrontation directed against the Magisterium, that threatens the very foundation of the Church.
Under your protection, we want moreover to be apostles of this sorely needed unity of prayer and love for the Pope, on whom we invoke your special protection.
And lastly, insofar as is possible, we promise to lead those souls with whom we come in contact to a renewed devotion to you.
Mindful that atheism has caused shipwreck
in the faith to a great number of the faithful, that desecration has entered
into the holy temple of God, and that evil and sin are spreading more and
more throughout the world, we make so bold as to lift our eyes trustingly
to you, 0 Mother of Jesus and our merciful and powerful Mother, and we
invoke again today and await from you the salvation of all your chil-dren,
0 clement, 0 loving, 0 sweet Virgin Mary.
Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, help of Christians, Refuge of the human race, Victress in all God's battles, we humbly prostrate ourselves before your throne, confident that we shall receive mercy, grace and bountiful assistance and protection in the present calamity, not through our own inadequate merits, but solely through the great goodness of your Maternal Heart. To you, to your Immaculate Heart, in this, humanity's tragic hour, we consign and consecrate ourselves, in union not only with the Mystical Body of your Son, Holy Mother Church, now in such suffering and agony in so many ways, but also with the entire world, torn by fierce strife, consumed in a fire of hate, victim of its own wickedness. May the sight of the widespread material and moral destruction, of the sorrows and anguish, of the tortured and agonised souls in danger of being lost eternally, move you to compassion!
O Mother of Mercy, obtain peace for
us from God, as well as those graces which prepare and assure the long-desired
coming of peace. Queen of Peace, pray for us and give peace to the world
in the truth, justice and charity of Christ. Above all, give peace in our
hearts so that the kingdom of God may spread its borders in the tranquillity
of order. Extend your protection to the infidels and to all those still
in the shadow of death; cause the Sun of Truth to rise on them, that they
may unite with us in proclaiming before the one and only Saviour of the
world;
The Holy Father urges all Catholics
to consecrate themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to recite
frequently this Act of Consecration, to which he has attached rich indulgences.
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St. Michael,
the archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the malice
and snares of the devil. We humbly beseech God to command him, and do thou,
O prince of the heavenly host, by the divine power thrust into hell Satan
and the other evil spirits who roam through the world seeking the ruin
of souls. Amen.
LET US PRAY:
O God, the Shepherd and Ruler of all the faithful, in Your mercy look down
upon Your servant, John Paul, whom You have appointed to preside over Your
Church, and grant we beseech You that both by word and example he may edify
those who are under his charge; so that, with the flock entrusted to him,
he may attain life everlasting. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
"Say the Rosary every day, to obtain
peace for the world."-
-Our Lady of
Fatima, 1917
In his encyclical Mense Maio, Pope
Paul urged Christians to pray to Our Lady Queen of Peace for world peace.
He laid special emphasis on the Rosary, "the prayer so dear to Our Lady
and so highly recommended by the supreme pontiffs."
"There is no surer means of calling
down God's blessings upon the family..... than the daily recitation of
the Rosary-
-Pope Pius XII
"If families will but listen to my
message and give Our Lady ten minutes of their twenty-four hours by reciting
the daily Family Rosary,
I assure them that their homes will
become, by God's grace, peace, prayerful places--little heavens, which
God the Author of home life has intended they should be!"-
-Father Peyton
".....a powerful means of renewing
our courage will undoubtedly be found in the Holy Rosary,....."-
-Pope Leo XIII
.nbsp;
".....We have elsewhere brought it
to the attention of the devout Christian that not least among the advantages
of the Rosary is the ready means it puts in his hands to nurture his faith,
and to keep him from ignorance of his religion and the danger of error."-
-Pope Leo XIII
"We do not hesitate to affirm again
publicly that We put great confidence in the Holy Rosary for the healing
of evils which afflict our times."-
-Pope Pius XII
".....Therefore we are sure that
Our children and all their brethren throughout the world will turn (the
Rosary) into a school for learning true perfection, as, with a deep spirit
of recollection, they contemplate the teachings that shine forth from the
life of Christ and of Mary Most Holy."-
-Pope John XXIII
"I think that I do not miss a single
day in reciting it, including the most terrible times of battle when I
had no rest night or day. How often did I see her manifest intercession
in the decisions which I made in choosing a precise tactic. Take, then,
the advice of an old soldier seasoned by experience: Do not neglect the
recitation of the Rosary for any reason."-
-Marshal Foch,
great military leader of WW.1
"Among all the devotions approved
by the Church none has been favoured by so many miracles as the devotion
of the Most Holy Rosary."-
-Pope Pius IX
"Those who say it fervently and frequently will gradually grow in grace and holiness and will enjoy the special protection of Our Lady and the abiding friendship of God."
"No one can live continually in sin
and continue to say the Rosary--either he will give up sin or he will give
up the Rosary."-
-Bishop Hugh
Boyle
NOTE:
It is customary to pray the Joyful Mysteries on Mondays and Thursdays and
the Sundays from the beginning of Advent until Lent; the Sorrowful Myteries
on Tuesdays and Fridays and the Sundays of Lent; and the Glorious Mysteries
on Wednesdays and Saturdays and the Sundays from Easter until Advent.
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V/ Pray for u o Holy Mother
of God.
R/ That we may be made worthy
of the promises of Christ.
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O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass being offered throughout the world, I offer You all my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day in reparation for the offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for my sins and the sins of the whole world.
Recitation of the Morning Offering means:
1. Every act you do becomes a "sacrifice."
2. All that you endure in your state
in life becomes penance.
3. By your offering of penance and
sacrifice to the Blessed Mother, she, in turn, converts sinners.
4. She frees souls in purgatory
and strengthens the Church.
If you forget to say the Morning
Offering, you have wasted a day as far as graces are concerned, Jesus said,
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