Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

THE time has come to display the ‘intelligent traditionalism’ advocated by our Father in the conclusion of his study on the ‘Great Crises of the Church.’●

Let us reread the Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart that Pope Francis pronounced at Saint Peter’s on March 25, on the Feast of the Annunciation, after a ceremony more penitential than festive, and thus consonant with the tone and content of this Consecration. We number the paragraphs as is customary when analysing a pontifical document.

1. “O Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, in this time of trial we turn to You. As our Mother, You love us and know us: No concern of our hearts is hidden from You. Mother of mercy, how often we have experienced Your watchful care and Your peaceful presence! You never cease to guide us to Jesus, the Prince of peace.”

Here, we rediscover Pope Francis as he was at the beginning of his pontificate when he had the Theotokos of the Council of Ephesus acclaimed, asking the multitude to proclaim aloud and in concert: “Holy Mary, Mother of God”! In so doing, Pope Francis was as far away as possible from both the ‘interreligious deism’ and the ecumenical ‘Christocentrism’ of his predecessors (John XXIII and Paul VI, “canonised” since). They considered the expression “Mother of God” inappropriate, and preferred the Protestant formula: “Mother of Jesus”!

It is She and no one else Who leads us to “Jesus, Prince of Peace!” She showed this at Fatima, during World War I, on May 13, 1917, recommending: “Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end of the war.” To Lucy who asked Her: “Can you tell me if the war will go on a long time, or will it end soon?”

‘I cannot tell you that yet, because I have not yet told you what I want.’

She would say what She wanted on July 13:

“I want you to come here on the 13^th of next month, to continue reciting the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, for only She can help you.”

2. “Yet we have strayed from that path of peace. We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars.”

The “lesson” had nevertheless been clearly indicated by You, “O Mary, Mother of God and our Mother,” on July 13, 1917:

“The war is going to end. If, however, they do not cease to offend God another, a worse one, will begin in the reign of Pius XI… To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation of the first Saturdays of the month.”

Pius XI turned a deaf ear. We had to wait until March 25, 2022, at a time when a third global conflagration was threatening, to obtain from the Holy Father, Pope Francis, that he consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Nevertheless, the reparatory Communion of the first Saturdays is still lacking. It is urgent for the Pope to recommend it to the world: “If My requests are heard, Mary added, Russia will be converted and there will be peace.”

There is still time to comply with these demands of our Divine Mother! Otherwise, Pope Francis warns, “we are betraying the dreams of peace of the peoples and the hopes of the young. We are growing sick with greed; we are only thinking of our own nations and their interests; we are growing indifferent and are caught up in our selfish needs and concerns.”

At first, I thought that the Pope was attacking nationalism, and I contrasted Joan of Arc with him. A brother pointed out to me, however, that the “interests of our own nations” at issue here, are capitalist interests connected with heresy in Germany and England, and with revolution in France through the intermediary of a ‘legal country’ that has dominated it for two centuries. The “nationalism” that Pope Francis deplores is based on foundations that are intrinsically Protestant and connected with the Counter-Church which is Freemasonry, particularly in the USA, where the “Community of Nations” has its headquarters. Pope Francis confesses that we have “violated commitments” without understanding the ins and outs of this geopolitics: the violence of Germanic nationalism with its avatars or derivatives from the ‘Croatian solution’ of a while age, to the Ukronazi solution today. Everything can be explained by the harmfulness, the deception of the great international organisations dominated by the USA and satanically intended to cause the downfall of the European Catholic metropolises.

It is this world that Vatican II rallied to, and it is with the social right to religious freedom, a veritable Aids virus, that this Council inoculated the Church, with the result that “we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns.”

“We chose to ignore God,” and thus fall under the power of the Devil. Pope Francis had warned the College of Cardinals of this in his first consistorial address. Either the Devil or the Good God! There is no middle ground. Now, the Devil can be detected by his fruits, because he has been a liar and a murderer since the beginning of time:

“We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons. We stopped being our neighbour’s keepers and stewards of our common home. We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war, and by our sins we have broken the Heart of our heavenly Father, Who desires us to be brothers and sisters. We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves. Now with shame we cry out: Forgive us, Lord!”

Pope Francis sits at the table of sinners, of “those who do not believe, who do not adore, who do not hope, who do not love,” since the original sin that mutilated “the Garden of the Earth” and set Cain against Abel, and who pierced the Heart of “our Father Who desires us to be brothers and sisters” by answering him that he was not his brother’s keeper, after having murdered him!

3. “Amid the misery of our sinfulness, amid our struggles and weaknesses, amid the mystery of iniquity that is evil and war,” what recourse is there? “Holy Mother, You remind us that God never abandons us, but continues to look upon us with love, ever ready to forgive us and raise us up to new life. He has given You to us and made Your Immaculate Heart a refuge for the Church and for all humanity.”

It was so from the beginning, from the promise made that from the ‘seed’ of the ‘Woman’ would be born a Saviour Who would crush the head of the Serpent, until our days when, on June 13, 1917, the Mother of God, after announcing to the three children of Fatima that She would soon come to fetch Jacinta and Francis, She said to Lucy who was grieved to “remain here all alone”: “No, My daughter. Do you suffer greatly? Do not be discouraged, I will never abandon you! My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.”

Thus, “by God’s gracious will,” Mary is “with us” and, throughout the centuries, She “is there to guide us with tender love even in the most troubled moments of our history,” according to a divine orthodromy!

The ‘consecration’ to Her Immaculate Heart that Mary requested a hundred years ago and which Pope Francis accomplished takes on its full meaning here:

4. “We now turn to You and knock at the door of Your Heart. We are Your beloved children. In every age You make Yourself known to us, calling us to ‘conversion.’ At this dark hour, help us and grant us Your comfort. Say to us once more: ‘Am I not here, I Who am your Mother?’ You are able to untie the knots of our hearts and of our times. In You we place our trust. We are confident that, especially in moments of trial, You will not be deaf to our supplication and will come to our aid”

5. “That is what You did at Cana in Galilee, when You interceded with Jesus and He worked the first of His signs. To preserve the joy of the wedding feast, You said to Him: ‘They have no wine’ (Jn 2:3). Now, O Mother, repeat those words and that prayer, for in our own day we have run out of the wine of hope, joy has fled, fraternity has faded.”

Exit ‘Gaudium et spes’!

“We have forgotten our humanity and squandered the gift of peace. We opened our hearts to violence and destructiveness. How greatly we need Your maternal help!”

What an admirable imploration! Like the Holy Father today, our Founder, Father de Nantes, interpreted it with wonderful finesse, with such love! – to have us penetrate the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin and the fullness of love that Her divine Son dedicates to this Immaculate Heart. Today it has earned us the grace of the Consecration of Russia. In the plan of divine Wisdom, Mary’s intercession obtains all graces for all of humanity. Even so, we must beseech Her. More precisely, even if we do not implore Her, She has such generosity that it is She Who comes to us, anticipating our desires and needs, to satisfy them, like a mother does not wait until her child cries because he is in pain, needs to be consoled, or is hungry; she anticipates the child’s need, even before the child becomes aware of it. It is an absolutely exquisite scene. We see the Virgin, Her eyes fixed on Her Bridegroom, on God, to give life to the world, but at the same time Her gaze full of solicitude is turned towards us.

“They have no more wine,” She said to Jesus. She was not asking for anything. She was only making Jesus aware, not of the fact that they no longer had wine – Jesus saw it as well as She did – but She let Jesus know that She saw that they no longer had wine. Since Mary had seen that they no longer have wine, Jesus knows full well that Mary was concerned about them. She did not even need to ask, the very movement of solicitude emanating from Her Heart touches the Heart of Jesus. “What is there between You and Me?” Absolutely nothing! “There is nothing I can refuse You, O Mother.”

Jesus intimated that He was going to do the miracle, although “My hour has not yet come.” This meant that He was going to do the miracle for Her. She turned to the servants: “Do whatever He tells you.”

This extraordinary agreement is not ‘fontal,’ that is, from the origins, because it plays no part in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, as though it were a vocation that the Virgin had received at the beginning of time or in the act of the Incarnation. Rather, it emerges from the daily concern of our families. The Virgin is there, present, She sees; and as soon as She sees and speaks to Jesus, we are sure to be answered: “Do not tell me, gracious Virgin, that You cannot, for Your beloved Son has given You all power, both in Heaven and on earth.” (Saint Francis de Sales)

6. “Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer.”

Pope Francis develops this entreaty in the form of a loving, tender and pathetic litany.

7. “Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.”

Pope Francis expresses the prayer of the Holy Father, the “Bishop dressed in White,” contemplated on July 13, 1917, “in an immense light that is God” by Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta: “Half trembling, with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he found on his way:”

“Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.

“Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation.

“Queen of Heaven,● restore God’s peace to the world.

The Pope addresses Our Lady of Fatima, before Her statue, with these words inspired by Mary’s first words to Lucy on May 13, 1917: “I am from Heaven.”

“Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness.

“Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons.

“Queen of the Rosary,” as She called Herself on October 13, 1917,

“make us realise our need to pray and to love,” through the daily Rosary and Communion of Reparation on the five first Saturdays of the month.

“Queen of the Human Family,” between Jesus, Your Child, and Joseph, Your Spouse, head of the Holy Family, our model,

“show people the path of fraternity,

“Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world,” through the conversion of Russia.

8. “O Mother, may Your sorrowful plea,” Your message that Sister Lucy could not make heard by the Holy Father,

“stir our hardened hearts.

“May the tears You shed for us,” that were seen by Sister Lucy, “make this valley parched by our hatred blossom anew.” May the reparatory devotion to Your Immaculate Heart irrigate the souls who will embrace it and who “will be beloved by God, like flowers placed by Me to adorn His throne,” according to Your promise (June 13, 1917)

“Amid the thunder of weapons, may Your prayer turn our thoughts to peace. May Your maternal touch soothe those who suffer and flee from the rain of bombs. May Your motherly embrace comfort those forced to leave their homes and their native land. May Your sorrowful Heart move us to compassion.”

... for this Heart surrounded by thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Her at every moment by their blasphemies and their ingratitude (Pontevedra, December 10, 1925).

“…and inspire us to open the doors”… of our heart

“…and to care for our brothers and sisters who are injured and cast aside.” Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta saw “the souls of poor sinners” falling into Hell, because no one prays for them.

9. “Holy Mother of God, as You stood beneath the cross,”

…“of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with its bark,”

… “Jesus, seeing the disciple at Your side, said: ‘Behold Your son’ (Jn 19:26). In this way, He entrusted each of us to You. To the disciple, and to each of us, He said: ‘Behold, your Mother’ (Jn 19:27). Mother Mary, we now desire to welcome You into our lives and our history”

…through the reparatory devotion of the first Saturdays of the month that will console Your pierced Heart, convert Russia and give us peace, according to Your promise.

“At this hour, a weary and distraught humanity stands with You beneath the Cross, needing to entrust itself to You and, through You, to consecrate itself to Christ. The people of Ukraine and Russia, who venerate You with great love, now turn to You, even as Your heart beats with compassion for them and for all those peoples decimated by war, hunger, injustice and poverty.

10. “Mother of God and our Mother, to Your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the Church and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine”…

… which formed only one historical community in 1929, when the Blessed Virgin returned to Tuy to ask for “the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation of the first Saturdays.”

“… Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love. Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world. The ‘fiat’ that arose from Your heart opened the doors of history to the Prince of Peace. We trust that, through Your heart, peace will dawn once more. To You we consecrate the future of the whole human family, the needs and expectations of every people, the anxieties and hopes of the world.”

11. “Through Your intercession, may God’s mercy be poured out on the earth and the gentle rhythm of peace return to mark our days.”

As promised! “The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted and a certain period of peace will be given to the world.”

“Our Lady of the ‘fiat,’ on Whom the Holy Spirit descended, restore among us the harmony that comes from God. May You, our ‘living fountain of hope,’ irrigate the aridity of our hearts. In Your womb Jesus took flesh; help us to foster the growth of communion. You once trod the streets of our world; lead us now on the paths of peace. Amen.”

The Communion of Reparation of the First Saturdays

Our salvation, in this world and in the next, depends on our obedience to God’s will. What is this will? Our Lady of the Rosary revealed it at Fatima: “God wants to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.” Is that all? Yes! It suffices to make our own the predilection of the Heart of Jesus for the Immaculate Virgin, His divine Mother. The message of Our Lady of the Rosary is not a message of anger. It is the revelation of the Heart of God and of what is most precious to Him: God wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to reign, because He loves Her. He loves Mary above all, with an unrivalled preferential love, and He wants Her to be glorified, honoured, loved, served by all His other creatures, so that She may be the universal Mediatrix of their salvation.

We are to pray, ask for forgiveness, offer sacrifices to console the sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary for the immense sorrow of seeing the souls of poor sinners fall into Hell, “because there is no one to sacrifice or pray for them.”

Lucy related in her Memoirs: “Jacinta used to tell me from time to time: ‘Our Lady said that Her Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God. Don’t you love It so much? I love Her Heart so much; It is so good!’ ”

Among the ejaculatory prayers that Father Cruz had taught us, Jacinta had chosen this one: ‘Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation! Immaculate Heart of Mary, convert sinners, save souls from Hell!

“Shortly before leaving for the hospital, Jacinta told me: ‘It will not be long now before I go to Heaven. You will remain here to make it known that God wishes to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When the time comes to say this, do not go and hide. Tell everyone that God grants us His graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that it is from Her that people are to ask for them; that the Heart of Jesus wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be venerated together with His; that people are to ask the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace, since God has entrusted it to Her.’

“ ‘Ah! If only I could put in everyone’s heart the fire that I have here, in my breast, that burns me’ – as it burns in the Heart of our heavenly Father! – ‘and makes me love the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary so much!’ ”

The future of both the Church and Christendom is at stake, for “in the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted and a certain period of peace will be given to the world.” Therefore, the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the sovereign remedy to all our ills, the ultimate and unique salvation of our souls, of our nations and of the whole of Christianity, and finally of the Roman Church herself. How will this come about?

THE APPARITIONS OF PONTEVEDRA AND TUY

Francisco died on April 4, 1919, and Jacinta on February 20, 1920. As for Lucy, Bishop da Silva arranged for her to enter the College of Vilar, run by the Dorothean Sisters, to be educated. She remained there from June 17, 1921 to October 24, 1925, in absolute anonymity.

She left the college only to become a postulant in the novitiate of the Dorothean Sisters, in Pontevedra, on October 25, 1925.

On the evening of Thursday, December 10, 1925, after supper, the young postulant returned to her cell. There she was visited by Our Lady and the Child Jesus. Let us listen to her account written in the third person in a letter to her spiritual director, Father Aparicio:

On December 10, 1925, the Most Blessed Virgin appeared to her and, beside Her, borne by a luminous cloud, the Child Jesus.

The Most Blessed Virgin placed Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a Heart encircled by thorns which She was holding in Her other hand.

At the same time, the Child Jesus said to her:

“Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, without anyone making an act of reparation to remove them.”

Then the Most Blessed Virgin said to her:

“Behold, My daughter, My Heart surrounded by thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and their ingratitude.

“You at least try to console Me and say that all those who on the first Saturday of five consecutive months go to confession, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary and keep Me company for fifteen minutes whilst meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, in a spirit of reparation, I promise to assist at the hour of their death with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their souls.”

On February 15, 1926, Our Lord appeared again to Sister Lucy: “Have you revealed to the world what the Heavenly Mother asked you?” When He had said that, He turned into a resplendent Child and gave Sister Lucy practical details about this devotion.

With boundless generosity, the Blessed Virgin promises the grace of final perseverance, because of this love that the Holy Trinity has for Its Immaculate Conception that inclines God to do all to please Her. This is what ‘Assisted Dying’ is; there is none other; even Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, “the greatest saint of modern times,” according to Saint Pius X, owes her crown to this grace that is obtained by imploring fifty times a day this ‘assistance’ by the recitation of the Rosary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us poor sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

THE STIPULATIONS OF A COVENANT OF LOVE

The first article of this covenant of love, i.e. of the devotion of reparation, is the confession of the ‘poor sinner.’ Even Saint Bernadette implored mercy at her last hour for the “sinner” that she confessed to be. All the more so will the soul, which has experienced miserable relapses in a grave sin, obtain the necessary graces of perfect contrition at the hour of death only by reciting the Rosary. In so doing, the soul will receive the forgiveness of “Our Father,” implored at the beginning each decade and enter Heaven to sing the glory of God Whose praise punctuates every decade: “Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.”

The ‘first Saturday’ of five consecutive months fits into the immemorial tradition of Catholic piety. After having devoted Fridays to the remembrance of the Passion of Jesus Christ and honouring of His Sacred Heart, the Church devoted Saturdays to His Most Holy Mother. At Fatima, on June 13, 1917, five years to the day after June 13, 1912 when Pius X granted indulgences to “a First Saturday of the month devotion of reparation,” Our Lady appeared for the second time at the Cova da Iria: “In front of the palm of Our Lady’s right hand was a Heart encircled by thorns which pierced It. We understood, Lucy wrote, that this was the Immaculate Heart of Mary, outraged by the sins of mankind and seeking reparation.”

Why five Saturdays?

Sister Lucy was in Tuy, when Our Lord inspired the answer to her, on the night from May 29 to 30, 1930, during a Holy Hour in the chapel:

I suddenly felt myself more intimately possessed by the Divine Presence and, if I am not mistaken, this is what was revealed to me:

“My daughter, the reason is simple. There are five types of offences and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

“Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception.

“Blasphemies against Her Virginity.

“Blasphemies against Her Divine Maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognise Her as the Mother of men.

“The blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children indifference or scorn, or even hatred of this Immaculate Mother.

“The offences of those who outrage Her directly in Her holy images.

“That, My daughter, is the reason why the Immaculate Heart of Mary inspired Me to ask for this little act of reparation.”

Our Lady descended from Heaven, sent to earth by the Holy Trinity, so that Her Son, when He Himself returns may still find faith on earth, the dogma of faith in His Church. This is summed up in the profession of faith in the privileges of Mary infallibly defined by the sovereign Magisterium, or taught by the ordinary Magisterium, and handed down over the centuries through the faithful to us.

Therefore, those who openly, obstinately and knowingly deny the prerogatives of the ‘divine Mary’ commit odious blasphemy against Her and sin against the Holy Spirit. The main intention of the devotion of “reparation” is to “console” the Immaculate Heart of Mary from these outrages that pierce It. This is attained by a confession of our sins offered in a spirit of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, followed by a Communion offered with the same intention. It had already been formulated in 1916 by the precursor Angel during his third apparition:

“Eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.”

After having eaten their meal, the children kneeling, their faces bowed to the ground, recited the prayer that the Angel had taught them at his first appearance:

“My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You. I beg pardon for those who do not believe, who do not adore, who do not hope, who do not love You.”

Lucy relates: “I don’t know how many times we had repeated this prayer, when an unknown light shone upon us. We sprang up to see what was happening, and beheld the Angel once again. He was holding in his left hand a chalice.” Sister Lucy wrote. A Host was suspended above it from which a few drops of Blood were falling into the chalice. Leaving the Chalice and the Host suspended in the air, he prostrated himself on the ground and three times repeated this prayer:

“Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He Himself is offended. Through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I ask of You the conversion of poor sinners.

“Then, rising, he took the Chalice and the Host in his hands. He gave the Sacred Host to me, and shared the Blood from the Chalice between Jacinta and Francisco, saying as he did so:

‘Eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.’

In February 1946, Father Jongen, a Dutch Montfort father, had a discussion with Sister Lucy to clarify the doubts raised by the Belgian Jesuit Dhanis.

“ ‘Did the Angel really say: I offer Thee the Divinity of Jesus Christ?’

“ ‘Yes’.

“ ‘Some people say that this is an innovation in the manner in which the Church speaks. In their opinion, you must be mistaken on this point.’

“ ‘It is perhaps the Angel who is mistaken,’ said the sister with a smile.”

A reply worthy of Saint Joan of Arc and Saint Bernadette. No, it is not the Angel who was mistaken, but it is ‘theologians’ who ignore the reality of the ‘Eucharistic Heart’ of Jesus and Mary Whose mystery and secret is revealed to us in the Angel’s prayer. For these theologians, the ‘divinity’ of Christ is an abstraction, an idea, a word. Furthermore, they have no understanding of Mary’s Divine Motherhood through which “the Word became flesh.” Sister Lucy received revelation of it, and like her, Father de Nantes, received an understanding of it as ‘theologian’ on the anniversary of his priestly ordination:

“I open the Gospel,” Sister Lucy wrote, “and I see that from the very beginning Jesus Christ united to His redemptive work the Immaculate Heart of Her whom He chose to be His Mother. The work of our redemption began at the moment when the Word descended from Heaven in order to assume a human body in the womb of Mary. From that moment, and for the next nine months, the blood of Christ was the blood of Mary, taken from Her Immaculate Heart; the Heart of Christ was beating in unison with the Heart of Mary.

“Furthermore we can think that the aspirations of the Heart of Mary were completely identified with the aspirations of the Heart of Christ. Mary’s ideal had become the same as that of Christ Himself, and the love in the Heart of Mary was the love in the Heart of Christ for the Father and for all human beings; to begin with, the entire work of redemption passes through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, thanks to the bonds of Her very close, intimate union with the divine Word.

“Since the Father entrusted His Son to Mary, enclosing Him for nine months within Her chaste virginal womb – and ‘All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel (which means, God with us).’ (Mt 1:22-23; Is 7:14)”

“God with us!” If God is with us, is there among the goods that we acquire from the Holy Trinity, a better offering to present to Him?

THE EUCHARISTIC HEART OF JESUS AND MARY

When he built this altar for us, the grandfather of Brother Thibaut and Sister Blanche-Marie carved on the door of the tabernacle the two hearts of Jesus and Mary. It is an expression of our faith whereby, in a very mysterious way, the Virgin Mary, since the Resurrection of Jesus and Her own Assumption, enjoys the same gift of ubiquity as the Body of Jesus, as His holy humanity. If Jesus is in the tabernacle with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, we affirm that the Blessed Virgin is with Him.

This is the great revelation of the Eucharistic and Marian manifestation with which Sister Lucia was favoured on June 13, 1929 in Tuy. Not only did the Blessed Virgin live Heart to Heart with Jesus throughout Her earthly life, but She also received the mission to remain with the Apostles, after the Ascension of Her Son, as a Co-Redemptrix Minister of the Eucharist. She is a servant of the Mass because She is concerned with giving the Apostles, through Her prayer, the graces of their fidelity in their function, which is the celebration of the Mass.

The Blessed Virgin helps us to receive Jesus. She assists the priests who administer the Sacrament, and the faithful who receive it. The priest has a function, but he is taken from among the faithful, eager like them to be nourished by the Body and Blood of Jesus, to be one with us and with Jesus and Mary when They accomplish Their great Eucharistic plan through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This Holy Sacrifice seems to be a Marian thanksgiving, which we love in this perspective because this “action” unites us to our Mother, with increasing joy, in order to better celebrate this divine moment of each of our days.

It is in our devotion to the Eucharist that we discover the Sacred Heart, because It Itself is Eucharistic; It burns with love in this Most Blessed Sacrament. Saint Paul himself was at a loss to express it to us. He, “the very least of all the saints” to whom had nevertheless been “entrusted this grace of preaching to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God Who created all things; that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which He has realised in Christ Jesus our Lord, in Whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in Him (...). Being rooted and grounded in love, you will thus have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the Breadth and Length and Height and Depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.”●

We would have to wait for Saint John Eudes who completed the enumeration that Saint Paul had left unfinished when he was about to reveal the mystery of Jesus’ and Mary’s secret. Indeed, it was through the Immaculate Heart of Mary that Saint John Eudes opened the way to Saint Margaret Mary. It is through her that we learned “the Breadth and Length and Height and Depth”... of this mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

This “mystery” is not the Consecration nor even the sacrifice but “communion,” the sole aspiration of all the works of the Word made flesh. All the centuries have unfolded so as to reach that sacred moment when Jesus comes into our hearts, into each of us in His Body, His Blood, His Soul, His Divinity.

It was a “secret,” the secret of the arcana, which was not to be revealed in the early days of the Church, because of the horrible suspicions raised by the Jews and the pagans about the Eucharist. Now, however, there is no longer need for secret, and we can say that the Blessed Virgin is a Eucharistic Heart. This is why She places Communion with this Body –which She formed with Her own blood, and fed with Her virginal milk – at the centre of the ‘Reparatory Devotion’ of the first Saturdays of the month.

THE ROSARY

In order to measure the “Height,” the “Breadth,” the “Length,” and to sound the “Depth” of the mystery, it is necessary to recite the Rosary, meditating on the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the very unique Heart of Jesus and Mary.

Our holy religion consists of several mysteries. The Son of God became man: the Mystery of the Incarnation of God Who became poor to give us His wealth. The first revelation of the Heart of Jesus is contained in five Joyful Mysteries.

By the Mystery of Redemption, the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus acquired salvation for us by His death on the Cross after having instituted the priesthood and the Eucharist on the eve of His Passion. Thus, after His resurrection, every day of the history of the world, He is close to all men of all times and countries, to distribute its fruits through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Holy Shroud discovered by Peter and John in the empty tomb on the morning of the third day is a testimony to the glorious Mystery of the Resurrection.

Our Lady insistently requested at each of Her six apparitions of 1917 that the five decades of the Rosary be recited every day. Since it is a question of repairing the offenses made to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which make Her tears flow, there is no better ‘reparation’ than this Angelic Salutation: “I love Thee, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.”

On July 13 1917, after having shown to the children, “Hell where the souls of poor sinners go,” Our Lady recommended to them: “When you say the Rosary, say after each decade: ‘My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy.’” Before he died, Blessed Pope Pius IX said to those around him: “The Rosary is a compendium of the Gospel, and gives to those who pray it those rivers of peace of which the Scriptures speak; it is the most beautiful devotion, the most abundant in graces, and the most pleasing to the Heart of Mary.”

“In their devotion to Our Lady the faithful never tire of this wonderful aesthetic image that presents Her to them firstly as youthful and joyful filled with grace and happiness in the infancy of Christ. Then later, in the Sorrowful Mysteries as She tragically accompanies Jesus in His sorrows, Her distraught face, Her grief-stricken gait and Her eyes wounded by what She sees, the Mater Dolorosa willingly submits to martyrdom of the heart. Finally in the Glorious Mysteries, She is Herself assumed into Heaven and is enthroned next to Her Risen Son where She is not crushed by Her too weighty crown of glory but immensely exalted. I ask you: what other religion, mythology or gnosis has anything more grandiose and yet so easily accessible to simple people? What is there, more human, more divine, that has been better received by all mankind for centuries; in a word, what could be more beautiful?●

REPARATION

At La Salette, Our Lady was in tears, like “a mother beaten by her children who had fled to the mountains.” At Fatima, She appeared “in an immense light that is God,” but in which the children perceived the infinite sadness of God Himself. They were upset. Francisco cried at night, his head in his bolster.

From then on, Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta thought only of “consoling God,” as the Angel of the Eucharist had told them when he gave them Communion, during his third apparition, in 1916.

Sister Lucy explained in a letter to her mother, dated July 24, 1927, how to practice the devotion of reparation: “The fifteen minutes (of meditation) might, I think, give you some trouble, but it is quite easy. Who would have difficulty thinking about the mysteries of the Rosary? To think about the Annunciation of the Angel to Mary and the humility of our dear Mother, Who seeing Herself so exalted, calls Herself the Handmaid of the Lord; about the Passion of Jesus, Who suffered so much for our love; and about our Most Holy Mother near to Jesus on Calvary? Who could not spend fifteen minutes in these holy thoughts, next to tenderest of mothers?

“Adieu, dear mother. Console in this way our Mother in Heaven, and try to get many others to console Her in the same manner.”

This shows us that the most precise meaning of the devotion of reparation, requested by Our Lady in Pontevedra, consists not so much in meditating on the sorrowful mysteries that took place two thousand years ago as in considering the offences that the Immaculate Heart of Mary is receiving presently from ungrateful men and blasphemers who reject Her maternal mediation and scorn Her divine prerogatives:

“Behold, My daughter, My Heart surrounded by thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and their ingratitude, without anyone making an act of reparation to remove them. You at least try to console Me.”

Without this general intention, without this will of love which desires to make reparation to Our Lady to console Her, all these external practices are nothing, and are worthless, as Our Lord told Sister Lucy:

“The souls who perform the five First Saturdays with fervour and with the aim of making reparation to the Heart of your Heavenly Mother, please Me more than those who do fifteen, but are lukewarm and indifferent.”

What Our Lord wants to obtain from us is our application in performing loving acts of reparation that will be efficacious in removing the cruel thorns from the Immaculate Heart of His Mother, to console Her, and also to obtain from God pardon for the souls who have had the audacity to offend Her so gravely. This is what Jesus explained to Sister Lucy on May 29, 1930, after having enumerated the five blasphemies which gravely offend Her:

“Here, My daughter, is the reason why the Immaculate Heart of Mary inspired Me to ask for this little act of reparation and, taking it into consideration, move My mercy to forgive those souls who had the misfortune of offending Her. As for you, try incessantly with all your prayers and sacrifices to move Me to mercy toward those poor souls.”

Since, as an ultimate act of mercy, God wants to grant all graces to men through the mediation of the Immaculate Virgin, it seems that their refusal to submit with docility to that volition is the fault which most gravely wounds His Heart, and for which He no longer finds in Himself any inclination to pardon because for our Saviour there is no crime more unpardonable than to despise His Most Holy Mother and to outrage Her Immaculate Heart, which is the Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. It is tantamount to committing “the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which will not be forgiven in this world or in the next.”● 

Soon, on June 13, 1929, in the apparition of Tuy, which is the final fulfilment of Fatima, Our Lady would conclude the great Trinitarian theophany with these striking words:

“So numerous are the souls that the justice of God condemns for sins committed against Me, that I have come to ask for reparation. Sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.”

Yes, Our Lady sadly affirms it, many souls are lost because of their scorn, their blasphemies against Her. Then, giving an example of love of enemies, She Herself intervenes, because She alone can still save these monsters of pride and ingratitude who have rebelled against Her. As ‘Mother of Mercy and Mother of Pardon,’ as we sing in the Salve Mater, She intercedes for us before Her Son: may the filial devotion of faithful souls, and the Communions of reparation offered on the five First Saturdays to console Her outraged Heart, be accepted by Him in reparation for the crimes of sinners. In view of this “little devotion,” and taking account of this “little act of reparation” to Her Immaculate Heart, may Jesus deign to grant pardon, in spite of everything, to the ingrates and blasphemers, to all the wretches who have had the audacity to offend Her – SHE, His Most Holy Mother!

As always, Our Lord grants the desire of His Mother. In this way He makes the devotion of reparation a sure and efficacious means of converting souls, many souls, among those who are in the greatest danger of being eternally lost. So much is this so that ‘the great promise’ of assistance in the last hour of all those who practice this reparatory devotion is relegated to a position of secondary importance behind the primary intention of the Heart of Mary, ‘Mother of every one of us,’ which is the salvation of all sinners:

“It seems to me,” Sister Lucy wrote to Father Gonçalves in May 1930, “that the good God, in the depths of my heart, is insisting that I ask the Holy Father to approve the reparatory devotion, which God Himself and the Most Holy Virgin requested in 1925. In consideration of this little devotion, They wish to grant the grace of pardon to souls who have had the misfortune of offending the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the Most Holy Virgin promises to assist the souls who seek to make reparation to Her in this manner, at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for their salvation.”

To save souls, all souls, “especially those who are most in need,” to snatch them all from the fire of Hell that is threatening them, is thus, in the final analysis, the principal intention of the practice of the first Saturdays of the month. This was already the intention that Our Lady indicated on August 19, 1917, urgently inviting the three shepherds to pray and make sacrifices:

“Pray, and pray much; make sacrifices for sinners for many souls go to Hell because there is no one to sacrifice or pray for them.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary has been established by Her Son as universal Mediatrix and Mother of Divine Grace. By a design of Providence, She wants to need us, She wants our consoling love and our ‘little devotions’ of reparation, to save souls from Hell.

What an exciting and tremendous mystery the Communion of Saints is! It makes the salvation of many souls really depend on our own generosity. What an incentive also! For how can we refuse this missionary action that Our Lady expects of us? She has made it so easy to accomplish, and yet so efficacious, so fruitful, since through this devotion many souls in imminent danger of being eternally lost can obtain, in extremis and as it were in spite of themselves, the grace of their conversion.

To console the Immaculate Heart of Mary pierced with thorns, and to make reparation by prayer and sacrifice for the outrages inflicted on It by sinners, is the most precise requirement of this first part of the Secret of July 13, 1917, which Our Lady came to recall and clarify in Pontevedra in 1925 and in Tuy in 1929 and 1930:

“You, at least, seek to console Me.”

Now, the most perfect sacrifice, the most efficacious prayer, is of course the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Holy Communion offered to God in a spirit of reparation.

Finally, let us not forget that in addition to the conversion of sinners and our own eternal salvation, Our Lady wished to link to the Communion of reparation another magnificent promise: the gift of PEACE:

“To prevent war, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation of the first Saturdays of the month.

“If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace.

“If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and many nations will be annihilated.” (July 13, 1917)

On March 19, 1939, Sister Lucy could write to Father Aparicio:

“War or peace in the world depends on practicing this devotion combined with the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is why I so desired its propagation, also, and above all, because this is the Will of our Good God and of our dear heavenly Mother.”

On June 20, 1939, she wrote once again to Father Aparicio:

“Our Lady promised to postpone the scourge of war if this devotion was propagated and practised. We see Her avert the chastisement to the extent that efforts are made to propagate it. I am afraid, however, that we cannot do more than we are doing and that God, displeased, will withdraw the arm of His mercy and let the world be ravaged by this chastisement. It will be a chastisement such as there has never been before, horrible, horrible.”

Today we have arrived at the same point where the threatening global conflagration will be extinguished by the breath of the reparatory devotion that the Holy Father will recommend to the world that he has recently consecrated to this Immaculate Heart. Thus God’s will is to have the Immaculate Heart of His Most Holy Mother honoured, because He desires Her to receive a solemn, official and public cult everywhere. Furthermore He wants Her to truly reign over the Church and over all peoples. God has entrusted Her with incomparable treasures of grace to be poured out on all Christendom.

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary.