What “God wills”

IN the midst of the Second World War, during the night of March 5, 1942, “Our Lord seemed to make me feel more keenly that He refused to grant peace because of the crimes that continue to provoke His justice,” Sister Lucy explained to Bishop da Silva, and “also because He is not obeyed in His demands, especially for the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, although He has inspired His Holiness’s heart to accomplish it.”

When one considers that this demand had been announced, after the vision of Hell, in great secrecy, on July 13, 1917: “When you see a night illuminated with an unknown light, know that it is the great sign that God is going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father.”

On June 12, 1929, Our Lady had come to Tuy to ask for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart. The Holy See paid no heed to the message from Heaven. In the evening of January 25, 1938, Sister Lucy and the nuns of her convent contemplated a grandiose atmospheric phenomenon: the sky was set alight with a vivid blood-red glow.

Sister Lucy recognised this as the ‘sign’ announced twenty years earlier by Our Lady in Her Secret of July 13, 1917. It could be seen by everyone. Astronomers chose to refer to it as an aurora borealis. Sister Lucy was not deceived by this: it was not and could not have been an aurora borealis.

In fact, its resplendence, its visibility in the lower latitudes and its spectrum ruled out the solar origin of this polar aurora: “God made use of this to make me understand that His Justice was ready to strike the guilty nations. This is why I began to ask insistently for the reparatory Communion of the First Saturdays and the consecration of Russia.”

She did so, but in vain!

After Pope Pius XI’s death and the election of his successor Pius XII on March 2, 1939, Our Lord renewed His demands and warnings:

“Ask, ask again insistently for the promulgation of the Communion of Reparation in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the First Saturdays. The time is coming when the rigour of My justice will punish the crimes of diverse nations. Some of them will be annihilated. In the end, the severity of My justice will fall most rigorously on those who want to destroy My reign in souls.”

On June 20, 1939, she again warned Father Aparicio of the imminent danger:

“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 lift 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.”

On August 22, 1939, the news of the German-Soviet Pact came as a bombshell. On September 1, Hitler invaded Poland and, two days later, England swayed France into declaring war on Germany.

That was when, in the midst of the war, in November 1943, Sister Lucy received the order from Bishop da Silva to write the ‘Third Secret’, which Our Lady had entrusted to Her three little messengers on July 13, 1917. During the month of December, Lucy picked up a pen five times to write it down, without succeeding. “This phenomenon is not due to natural causes,” she wrote to the bishop of Valladolid, and to Bishop da Silva: “Who knows, it is perhaps the Devil who wants to prevent me from accomplishing this act of obedience?”

Then, the Virgin Mary Herself came to give her the light and strength to write the Secret: “While I was waiting for the answer, on January 3, 1944, I knelt down by my bed, which sometimes serves as a writing table, and I made another attempt, without achieving anything; What impressed me the most was that, during the same period, I could write anything else without difficulty. I then asked Our Lady to reveal God’s Will to me. I then headed for the chapel; it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the hour at which I habitually visit the Most Blessed Sacrament, since it is usually the moment when there is no one else and, I do not know why, I prefer to be alone with Jesus in the Tabernacle.

“There I knelt in the middle, close to the kneeler of the Communion rail, and asked Jesus to let me know what His will was. Accustomed as I was to believing that the orders of the superiors are the sure expression of God’s will, I could not believe that this one was not His will. Perplexed, half engrossed, under the weight of an obscure cloud that seemed to be hanging above me, my face in my hands, I waited for an answer, without knowing how it would come. I then felt a friendly, tender and maternal hand touch me on my shoulder; I raised my eyes and I saw my dear heavenly Mother.

“ ‘Have no fear. God wanted to put your obedience, your faith and your humility to the test; be at peace and write what they have asked of you, but not what you were made to understand about its meaning. After having written it, put it into an envelope, close and seal it, and write on the outside that it can only be opened in 1960 by the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon or by the Bishop of Leiria.’ ”

“And I felt my spirit inundated by a mystery of light that is God, and in Him I saw and heard – the point of a spear like a flame that shoots forth, touches the axis of the earth – it [the earth] quakes: mountains, cities, towns and villages with their inhabitants are buried. The sea, the rivers and the clouds go beyond their limits, overflow, inundate and sweep away with them into a maelstrom dwellings and countless people that cannot be counted. It is the purification of the world from the sin in which it is immersed. Hatred and ambition provoke destructive war! Then I perceived, in the midst of my racing heartbeats and in my spirit, the echo of a soft voice that said: ‘In time, one faith, one baptism, one Church, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. In eternity, Heaven!’ This word Heaven filled my soul with peace and happiness, so much so that almost without realising it, I kept repeating for a long time: ‘Heaven! Heaven!’ As soon as the great force of the supernatural had vanished, I went to write and I did so without difficulty, on January 3, 1944, kneeling, leaning on the bed that served me as a table.”

What did she write?

“At the left of Our Lady and a little higher up we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; it flashed and gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they were extinguished on contact with the brilliant light that Our Lady radiated towards him from Her right hand. The Angel, pointing to the earth with his right hand, cried out in a loud voice:

‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’

“And we saw, in an immense light that is God, ‘something similar to the image a mirror reflects when a person passes in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White – ‘We had the impression that it was the Holy Father.’

“Several other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious were climbing a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a large Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with its bark. Before reaching there, the Holy Father passed through a large city half in ruins and, half trembling, with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the summit of the mountain, falling on his knees at the foot of the large Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him. In the same way there died one after another the Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people, men and women of different ranks and positions.”

“Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels, each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.”

This is how the great Secret ends. Our Lady added:

“Do not tell this to anyone. Francisco, yes, you may tell him.

“When you recite the Rosary, say after each mystery: ‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins! Save us from the fires of Hell! Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have the greatest need of it.’ ”

Commenting on this prayer, Sister Lucy explained: “Through the intimate understanding that Our Lady gave us of Her words, it seems to me that when She said ‘those who have the greatest need of it,’ She was referring to the souls in the greatest danger of eternal damnation, which is the cause of all the bitterness and concern of Her Immaculate Heart.”

This was the obsession of Jacinta, whose heart was one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary. After the vision of Hell, which formed the first part of the great ‘Secret’ entrusted to the little shepherds, Our Lady indicated the condition to be fulfilled in order to escape it: obey Her demands for the Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, and practise the reparatory Communion of the five First Saturdays of the month. Not only did no one pay heed to these ‘little demands’, neither the ‘good’ nor the ‘wicked’, but an Ecumenical Council, convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962, established in its constitution Lumen Gentium that the Church was not to receive orders from the Blessed Virgin, because it only recognised Her as having a ‘subordinate role’. Then Pope John XXIII decided that the third part of the Secret would “never” be revealed!

So, since that ‘baneful Council’, we have been living through the events announced in this Third Secret, which was finally published in 2000. The Church is a “large city half in ruins” through which the Holy Father, stripped of his pontifical vestments, is constantly pacing “with halting step”: “A Bishop dressed in White,” with no strength to feed the lambs and sheep of his flock. “Half trembling, with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prays for the souls of the corpses he meets on his way.” He is deaf to the gentle voice that says: “In time, one faith, one baptism, one Church, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic. In eternity, Heaven!”

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary.