O Immaculate Co-Redemptrix, our only hope!

OUR Holy Father Leo XIV has signed, approved and ordered the publication of a doctrinal note drafted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, entitled Mater Populi fidelis. Cardinal Fernandez writes in his introduction: “The present Note responds to numerous requests and proposals that have reached the Holy See in recent decades, and particularly this Dicastery, regarding questions pertaining to Marian devotion and certain Marian titles.”

Now, here is what was certainly the latest question, the most recent petition received by the Supreme Pontiff concerning devotion to the Virgin Mary. It was sent from our Maison Saint-Joseph on October 13 last:

Most Holy Father,

When the Vicar of Christ conveys this declaration of love to us: “I have loved you” (the Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi te), with all my heart, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love in return, according to the formula taught in 1916 to the three little shepherds of Portugal by the Angel, not of Philadelphia but of Fatima.

The Angel added: “I beg pardon for those who do not believe, who do not adore, who do not hope, who do not love You.” That is to say, for all those of whom Saint John spoke to the Church of Sardis on behalf of God: “I know all about you: how you are reputed to be alive and yet are dead.” Ap 3:1

And I love. I believe, I adore, I hope and I love. Ah! I love Mary, Whose canticle of victory you mention, Most Holy Father: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent empty away.”

How moving it is to see Mary Magdalene, in what write, “pouring out her love” on the head of Jesus, Who “a few days later would be tormented by thorns” (Dilexi Te, No. 4). Most Holy Father, you could not have said it better in these early days of your pontificate, which coincide with the centenary of the apparitions that Sister Lucy was privileged to have during her first stay in Pontevedra.

Today, it is no longer just the “head” of Jesus, but His Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, His Mother, that are “tormented by thorns”. On June 13, 1917, in Fatima, Our Lady said to Lucy: “Jesus wishes to make use of you to make Me known and loved. He wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.”

Less than ten years later, on the evening of Thursday, December 10, 1925, in Pontevedra, Sister Lucy relates that “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.

“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 I promise to assist at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their souls 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.’

“After this grace, how could I refuse even the smallest sacrifice that God might to ask of me? To console the Heart of my dear heavenly Mother, I would gladly drink the bitterest chalice to the last drop. I desired to suffer every kind of martyrdom in order to offer reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, my dear Mother, and remove one by one the thorns that pierced it, but I understood that these thorns are the symbol of the numerous sins committed against Her Son, and which wound the Heart of His Mother. Yes, because through them many of Her other sons are lost eternally.”

Most Holy Father, we are no longer in the time of the Virgin Mary’s earthly life, when Pilate’s soldiers crowned Her Son’s head with thorns, but we are in the centenary of the apparition of 1925. Ungrateful men, for whom the Virgin Mary has done so much over the centuries, are driving thorns into Her Heart. These are the sacrileges committed against the Virgin, the sins that personally outrage Her. At every moment, ungrateful men are driving these thorns into the Heart of the Virgin, and no act of reparation is being made to remove them.

“We are not in the realm of charity,” you write, Most Holy Father, “but in that of Revelation.” (no. 5) This sentence was inspired by the grace of your consecration, Most Holy and Venerable Father! Indeed, it is the grace of your pontificate to exhort us to console the Heart of our Mother, Who said on August 19, 1917 to the three children of Fatima: “Pray, and pray much; make sacrifices for sinners for many souls go to Hell because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them.”

The “poor” whom “a Cardinal friend” recommended to Pope Francis (No. 6) were those whom Our Lady had shown to Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta on the previous July 13: “You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.”

Most Holy Father! I now come to the subject of my petition. If I console my Mother’s Heart for the ingratitude She suffers from sinners, those sinners will be saved. If I do not console Her, those sinners will be damned! That human beings may fall into Hell because I have not consoled the Virgin Mary and, conversely, that human beings may ‘earn’ Heaven because I have consoled the Virgin Mary, such is the message of Our Lady that you must make known to all our brothers, children of the Church, your children.

Admittedly, in preparation for the centenary of the apparitions in Pontevedra, the Bishops’ Conferences of England, Wales, Scotland and the Philippines recommended the Five First Saturdays Reparatory Devotion. But it is to you, Most Holy Father, that the Queen of Apostles addresses Her urgent and decisive demands to save souls from hellfire, all souls if possible, and to grant the world the divine gift of peace through the miraculous conversion of Russia.

Pope Francis pronounced the consecration of this country in accordance with Our Lady’s explicit and insistent request, and, moreover, together with the whole world, but this consecration remained ineffective because it was not followed by the reparatory devotion that Our Lady demanded.

Therefore, Most Holy Father, we implore you to fulfil the divine will revealed by Our Lady of Fatima, by accomplishing all Her ‘small requests’, namely:

– To recommend to the bishops of the whole world that they organise Marian tours of Our Lady of Fatima to propagate the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in their dioceses.

– To raise the feast in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to the rank of a solemn feast in the universal Church.

– To proclaim the Holy Rosary a liturgical prayer.

– To approve and recommend the Five First Saturdays Reparatory Devotion.

Certainly, difficulties will arise when you seek to fulfil Heaven’s requests to console the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to promote the great divine plan of mercy revealed at Fatima. But divine graces will not be lacking, since the three little shepherds of Aljustrel, Saints Francisco and Jacinta, and their cousin, Sister Lucy, never ceased to pray and sacrifice themselves “for the Holy Father”. “I will pray for the Pope as long as I am on this earth, Sister Lucy said, and I will pray even more when I am in Heaven.”

As for us, Most Holy Father, with your permission, we pray with all our hearts for the Church and for yourself, under the eyes of the Immaculate, Mother of every one of us, forever, in order that She may guard you and make you the diligent instrument of the desires of Her Immaculate Heart which are none other than those of Her Divine Son: Saving souls from Hell by You!

Although unworthy, I nevertheless dare to implore from your mercifulness, the grace of Your pontifical blessing,

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary, Prior General of the Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

THE VATICAN’S LUTHERAN ‘DOCTRINAL’ RESPONSE

Thus, our Holy Father Leo XIV responds, in the note Mater Populi fidelis, to these questions and proposals pertaining to Marian devotion... And his response shows that our Heavenly Mother will have to perform an even greater miracle than the conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne, a miracle similar to the conversion of Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, so that She may triumph over the heart of the Holy Father.

The purpose of this Document is “to deepen the proper foundations of Marian devotion,” as Cardinal Fernandez writes in his introduction... “It is not a question of correcting,” claims this serpent, but rather of enhancing “genuine Marian devotion,” supposedly that of “the faithful people of God,” who see “in Mary a mystagogical and symbolic expression of an evangelical attitude of trust in the Lord”! In fact, the people of God expressed themselves during the presentation of the Document through the voice of a Sardinian Catholic who was so scandalised by Fernandez’s remarks that he interrupted him several times, shouting: “This document does not please God!”

The purpose of this note is therefore « to specify Mary’s place – in other words, to “put Her back in Her place” – in Her relationship with believers in light of the Mystery of Christ as the sole Mediator and Redeemer.”

This “requires a particular ecumenical effort”! It is always the same old story, to keep in line with the Second Vatican Council and its outrageous insistence on the ‘subordinate role of Mary’ (Lumen Gentium, Chpt. 8): Protestants deny the Virgin Mary Her titles of Co-Redemptrix and Universal Mediatrix. It is therefore necessary for our ‘reformed’ pontiffs to strip our Divine Mother of Her crowns, which is the purpose of this document. This is the price that has to be paid for their universal interreligious brotherhood.

Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe wrote: “The Immaculate must become – the soonest possible – the Queen of all men, of societies as well as of each particular individual. He who opposes and refuses to submit to Her reign will perish.”

BEFORE BEING CRUSHED, THE SERPENT BITES HER HEEL

Therefore, these expressions: the Co-redemption of the Virgin Mary and Her universal Mediation had to be denied with the full authority of a supreme magisterium, which not being infallible, is thus fallible.

The theologians of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith found absolutely no support in Sacred Scripture or in the tradition of the Church to contest Immaculate Mary’s title of Co-Redemptrix, quite the contrary. The quotations from Saint Paul on the Primacy of Christ that they put forward in no way contradict the privileges of His Holy Mother! They can only invoke Pope Francis and Cardinal Ratzinger, who opposed this title on the pretext that it would overshadow “the unique place of Christ.” And here is the main assertion, worthy of a Lutheran pamphlet:

“Given the necessity of explaining Mary’s subordinate role to Christ in the work of Redemption, it is always inappropriate to use the title ‘Co-redemptrix’ to define Mary’s cooperation. This title risks obscuring Christ’s unique salvific mediation and can therefore create confusion and an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith.”(no. 22)

“Inappropriate”? “Christ’s unique salvific mediation” must also have been “inappropriate” since at the interfaith meeting on October 29, for the anniversary of Nostra Ætate, Leo XIV did not say a single word about it in front of the Jews and Muslims he had invited!

This is how Vatican II’s religious freedom and ecumenism ends up denying even what falls within the province of the dogmatic Magisterium of the Church. For, like the divinity of Jesus Christ, the privileges of His Holy Mother cannot be ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’. They are either true or false, revealed by God or not, and the answer to the question is the concern of the infallible Magisterium of the successor of Peter. The Church has always judged so, from the proclamation of Mary’s divine Motherhood in 431 to that of Her Assumption in 1950.

But given that, since the second ‘reformation’, the Church has been divided between theologians who deny the glorious titles of the Blessed Virgin in order to please the ‘separated brethren’, and the better part of the flock, who hope that the proclamation of Mary as Co-Redemptrix and universal Mediatrix will bring new life to the dying body of the Church, it is the duty of the Supreme Pontiff to use his extraordinary Magisterium to infallibly confirm his brothers in the faith. He must do it for the honour of the Virgin Mary and the salvation of souls: “He who believes will be saved, he who refuses to believe will be condemned!”(cf. Mk 16:16)

However, Leo XIV, faithful to his predecessors, does not want to define these truths that “bother” him (No. 22), despite the numerous petitions that have been made to the Holy See in recent years, nor can he condemn them either. He therefore publishes this note, which will have no other effect than to “publicly sow in the hearts of children [the children of the Church] indifference, scorn or even hatred of this Immaculate Mother,” according to the very words of Our Lord to Sister Lucy.

Page after page, the Virgin Mary is lowered and humiliated. Her Immaculate Conception is mentioned only to claim that She is merely the “first to be redeemed,” the “prototype of every person who is redeemed” (no. 14)! As our Father wrote: “One would say that She is a ‘foundling’ in the midst of the massa damnata...” They insist that She has no merit, that She has received everything (no. 67), that Her role, even Her motherhood, is subordinate (no. 37). Ten paragraphs (45-55) repeat strenuously that God alone can give grace, in order to deny Her universal mediation: “Not even Mary can intervene in the communication of grace.” (No. 54) They forbid God from passing through Her! And to justify themselves, with pharisaical hypocrisy, they invoke Her modesty: “All that has been said above does not offend or humiliate Mary because Her entire being is oriented to the Lord.” (no. 66) !

WILL GOD NOT AVENGE THE INSULT TO HIS MOTHER?

O Virgin Mother of God and our Mother, it took the arrival of this 21^st century and this great upheaval and this crazy pride in the Church; it took the domination of these men of Belial, partisans of this tremendous Apostasy and revolution that You foretold at Fatima as the punishment to which the world was doomed if it did not repent; it took all this insane politics and false religion for the Princes of the Church, with an air of devotion, to bite Your heel and spread their blasphemy among all the faithful. What an abyss of perversion!

It is You, O Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, Who are, in lost Christendom, the Queen of God’s great battles, the apocalyptic sign of the final ruin of the persecuting atheist Freemasons. This is so because You are the Immaculate One, the Woman blessed amongst all women, all powerful over the Heart of Him to Whom the fury of the oceans is subject. This is why they fight You, because Your glory is unbearable to them.

In the service of Your Son, You accept the battle, You stand by our side, in front of us. The bite of the Beast is cruel to You... You wept at La Salette, and You weep again today, seeing the punishment that Your people bring upon themselves if they do not turn to You, despite all Your efforts:

“If My people are not willing to submit, I am forced to let fall the arm of My Son. It is so heavy and so weighty that I can no longer withhold it. I have suffered for you for so long! If I do not wish My Son to abandon you, I must take it upon Myself to pray unceasingly for you, and you take no heed of this!”

A man cannot bear to see his mother’s honour offended. Even less so a God! Would God not avenge the insult to His Mother? If the Vatican is not struck by the lightning bolt of divine Vengeance, it is the souls who inhabit it, who follow its directives, indifferent to blasphemy, who will be struck, who will have to pay, eternally!

Ah, you have laid a finger on My Holy Mother, you have dared! Terror-stricken!

Reparation must be made. I would like to erect a monument to the glory of Your redemptive compassion, Your maternal mediation, O Mother of God and our tender Mother, Immaculate Co-Redemptrix, our only hope!

THE UNIQUE MEDIATION AND CO-REDEMPTION OF JESUS-MARY

The title of Co-Redemptrix simply expresses the major, unique role that Jesus Christ wanted to give to His Immaculate Mother in our redemption. The note Mater Populi fidelis constantly contrasts this role of the Blessed Virgin with that of Our Lord, as though the Mother were overshadowing Her divine Son! The Holy Father and his theologians are therefore completely unfamiliar with the mystery of ‘the union of Jesus and Mary,’ as Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort used to say. Formerly, even the humblest Christian believed in this central mystery of our faith, in this union nonpareil.

This unique mediation of Jesus and Mary is revealed in Holy Scripture from the time of original sin, because it is only through Her and Him that the miserable human race could obtain mercy, to be saved from the slavery of the Serpent, to whom God said: “I will put enmity between you and the Woman, and between your seed and Her seed; She will crush your head while you shall lie in wait for Her heel.” Gn 3:15

It is impossible to distinguish whether it is the Woman or Her seed who crushes the Serpent. They do it together! She is clearly the Immaculate Conception, Whom the Church in her liturgy invites us to contemplate as mysteriously conceived from the beginning, from all eternity, companion of the Word of God the Creator, living with Him and for Him, making His delight Pr 8:22-31. As Saint John of the Cross so beautifully expressed it in his Romancero●: “I wish to give You, My Son, to cherish You, a lovely bride.”

Adam and Eve, our first parents, were created male and female, in their own image and likeness.

THE IMMACULATE CO-REDEMPTRIX OF OUR FIRST PARENTS IS UNITED WITH THE DIVINE WORD.

Saint Irenaeus, a 2^nd century Doctor of the Church, disciple of Saint Polycarp, himself a disciple of the Apostle John, wrote that the Virgin Mary was the Reparatrix of Eve: “It was just and necessary that Adam be restored in Christ... that Eve be restored in Mary, so that a Virgin, having become the Advocate of a virgin, might erase and abolish the disobedience of a virgin through Her virginal obedience.” (Epideixis, 33)

Following this holy Doctor and Father of the Church of Gaul, Father de Nantes, our Founder, wrote:

“The redemption of mankind is the substitution of Jesus for the guilty Adam and, at the same time, the substitution of the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception, for the guilty Eve. The Virgin Mary, Victim offered to the sword of sorrow foretold by the old man Simeon.

“In Adam, it is the Word of God that is wounded. In Eve, it is the Immaculate Herself, in Her femininity that likens Her to this lost woman; it is Herself Who is wounded in Her most intimate being.

“Now, She sees Her Son redeeming such opprobrium. God’s justice will forgive Her Son, Who assumes Adam’s guilt in order to obtain absolution. The Immaculate Conception, the heavenly ‘Woman’, adheres to His resolution, but She declares Herself Eve’s guarantor. By Her created nature and Her femininity devoted to obedience, She is ready to be sacrificed by Her divine Head, the Word of God. He, the worthy Priest of the Most High, offered to God the Father His Immaculate Conception, worthy, more than any creature, to cooperate in the Redemption.”

Jesus Christ is ‘the one mediator’ 1 Tm 2:5, but “for the honour, merit, eternal glory and happiness of such satisfaction given to the Father, He accepted that His Mother, the Immaculate Daughter of God, should be His associate and spouse through Her presence, Her courage and Her martyrdom: while Her Son suffered a cruel passion and death, a sword of sorrow pierced Her Heart, associating Her with the work of the world’s salvation.”●

THE MOTHER OF THE REDEEMER.

It is an ineffable mystery: the Son of God wished to become Her Child, to be incarnated in Her virginal womb, to receive from Her the Flesh that He would sacrifice for the salvation of the world. Thus, the Virgin Mary is the Mediatrix of the Mediator! She exercised this role prior to Him, in view of His coming. By virtue of His humility, Jesus wished to submit Himself to Her (Lk 2:51), to merit a perfect obedience, to such an extent that nothing noteworthy, nothing great was done without Her participating in it in Her capacity and with Her authority as Mother.

Mother of the Son of God, She is but one with Him: Saint Bede the Venerable (673-735), Doctor of the Church, did not hesitate to say “Jesus Christ, consubstantial with His Mother”! They are therefore one Heart, one Host.

“Near the cross of Jesus stood His Mother.” Jn 19:25 In the 12^th century, Arnaud de Bonneval, disciple and biographer of Saint Bernard, wrote: “The will of Christ and Mary is absolutely one; They both offered in the same way a single sacrifice, She in the blood of Her Heart, He in the blood of His flesh.”

In 1946, our Father, then a young seminarian, commented on a text of the Abbot de Bonneval for a theology competition. In it, he unequivocally justified the title of Mary Co-Redemptrix:

“Mary wants Her Son’s entire will; She ardently desires the Redemption of mankind and longs for the forgiveness of the sin. Beyond Her incredible suffering, Her true part in the redeeming sacrifice is to be found in this unique will that motivated both Mother and Son.

“Mary embraces the same redeeming will that motivates Jesus. He is Victim, Mediator and Saviour. Mary becomes this and thus provides Jesus with another humanity. Pius X wrote in his encyclical ‘Ad Diem illum’: ‘True love alone has the power to unite wills.’

“Mary’s Motherhood is the only reason for such love. As His Mother, She had a certain authority over Jesus, and Christ never broke the yoke of such maternal, holy authority.

“Mary’s place in the Redemption accomplished at Calvary – Her Co-Redemption – is therefore infinite, because it is drawn entirely from God Himself, Who acts in Her and through Her, by virtue of Her divine Motherhood.

“A pure relation to the Son of God, this Motherhood assumed such an important place in Mary that the Person of the Virgin is defined entirely in this relationship with Jesus, Who places Her at the centre of Redemption through Her ‘Yes’ to the Archangel at the Annunciation. Christ, having chosen to come into this world through the consent of the new Eve, could not complete His journey among us by sacrificing Himself on the Cross without involving Her in this holocaust. Just as Jesus abandons Himself to the will of His Father and loses His life, Mary abandons Herself to this will that She sees in Jesus and, losing Jesus, She offers Her Motherhood. The Virgin is as though grafted onto the tree of the divine Cross. But this graft will produce a fruit of Life, an act of Her own that would make Her Her Son’s Co-Redemptrix.

“Jesus, immolated, drew all the sins of the world upon Himself and held all mankind within Himself in order to save them. The Virgin Mary then consented to such a substitution, which tore Her maternal Heart because She embraced Jesus’ suffering and humiliation, which made all men brothers of Jesus, and therefore Her own children, by virtue of Her universal and perpetual divine Motherhood.”

Arnaud de Bonneval wrote: “The Father loved the Son, and the Son loved the Father; as for the Mother, She burned with love for both of Them.”

Now, Mary is the Dove of the Holy Spirit. “Her intercession is therefore infallible. She receives authority and omnipotence to have Her prayers answered from God Himself, through the mediation of Jesus. The Son then makes this prayer His own and offers it to His Father. Arnaud writes: ‘Man now has assured access to God, before Whom he has the Son as Mediator of his cause before the Father, and the Mother as Mediatrix before the Son. Christ reveals to His Father and shows Him His side and His wounds, Mary reveals and shows Christ Her Heart and Her bosom. And She cannot be rejected in any way, presenting together these signal tokens of mercy and charity, united in one prayer, more eloquent than any speech.’ ”

One Redemption, but Co-Redemption.

BRIDE OF THE REDEEMER, SHE GIVES LIFE TO HER CHILDREN.

Mater Populi fidelis. The expression is taken from Saint Augustine, who affirmed that “Mary is truly the Mother of the members of Christ, for She cooperated, through Her charity, in the birth of the faithful in the Church, the members of this Head.” (De sancta virginitate, 6)

Saint Pius X, after quoting the Bishop of Hippo, explained how the Virgin Mary had merited this Motherhood of the redeemed by the “uninterrupted community of life and labours” that united Her to Jesus Christ. “And from this community of will and suffering between Christ and Mary She merited to become most worthily the Reparatrix of the lost world and Dispensatrix of all the gifts that Our Saviour purchased for us by His Death and by His Blood.”●

And so the vision recounted by Saint John in the Apocalypse is shown in a new light: the pains of this Woman Who appeared in Heaven “with Child and crying out in the pains of childbirth” Ap 12:2, are those of Calvary, where, as the faithful Spouse of the Redeemer, She gives birth to redeemed humanity, as our Father explained:

“Jesus turns His gaze towards Her. He is everything; He is the Man Who replaced Adam who had failed. From the summit of the Cross, He engenders to grace all those whom He is saving with His Blood. He is the Head of humanity, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

“She is His Spouse, She is the Woman, but She is not the sinful Eve, She is the triumphant Eve. She is the Eve Who, by following Her Spouse to the Cross and dying of compassion with Him, deserves to become the Mediatrix, that is, the Mother of us all. He gives Her to us. She truly becomes the fruitful womb that will give birth to all generations of Christians and thus She is the personification of the Church, our Mother. The Church is founded in the Heart of the Virgin Mary, pierced by a sword of sorrow.”

“When Jesus saw His Mother, and the disciple Whom He loved standing near, He said to His Mother: ‘Woman, behold Your son!’ Then He said to the disciple: ‘Behold your Mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took Her to his own home.” Jn 19:26-27

John, who is the first to benefit from this redemption, personifies all of humanity. Mary is therefore like Jerusalem, the Bride of Yahweh, Who would give birth to an entire people in a single day, as the prophet foretold:

“Whoever heard of such a thing, whoever saw anything like this? Can a country be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? For Sion, scarcely in labour, has brought forth her children!” Is 66:8

Sion was but the figure of Mary. She personifies this Holy City, Spouse of Yahweh, the Mother of all peoples: “Each one calls Sion, Mother! For in Her is each one born.”●

“In this ‘tradition’ from the Virgin Mary to Saint John,” our Father went on to say, “Jesus completed His entire work: He knows that ‘everything had now been completed and, so that the Scripture might be perfectly fulfilled’.” Jn 19:28 He is content, now they have His Mother Who will truly be the Mediatrix of all graces. He can leave, His Church is founded because there is the Mother, and the children who will entrust themselves to Her.

He then said: “I thirst!” He thirsts after the Church to begin, for souls to be saved, for them to receive milk and life from the virginal breast of the Virgin Mary. “Bowing His head, He gave up the spirit”. Jn 19:30

If the Church is founded, it is because Christ merited, through His saving death, to give us His divine Spirit, of Whom the Virgin is the Dove and the Sanctuary.

STAT CRUX

Nineteen centuries later, on June 13, 1929, the Marian and Eucharistic epiphany of Tuy, whose centenary we will celebrate four years from now, revealed that this Immaculate Virgin with a Heart inflamed with love is still our Co-Redemptrix, Spouse of the Redeemer, Mother and Mediatrix of the redeemed, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, memorial of Calvary. Their one Eucharistic Heart is always the sign and sacrament of the inexhaustible grace of the work of our salvation.

Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis. Jesus Christ still calls the world to the foot of His Cross. Whether we like it or not, all of us, faithful or persecutors, return to prowl about Calvary, haunted by this Mystery. O Jesus, few are those who remain at the foot of Your Cross today, while the world sinks into apostasy and Your enemies celebrate a hellish Sabbath in Jerusalem.

Alone, Your Mother remains faithful, loving. She is the sole Guardian of the dogma of the Faith, the intact and ardent Heart of the Church, whose Body is ravaged.

In these end times, You wished to manifest Her glory by entrusting us to Her in a special way, to save us from Hell on the sole condition that we embrace devotion to Her Immaculate Heart, that we sympathise with Her sufferings which merit such mercy for us.

Yet She, the Mother of the Crucified One, is still humiliated and insulted today by our Sanhedrists, our high priests, because they do not want Her to reign over them.

O Mary, O dearest Mother, You alone have the words and promises of eternal life, because Jesus has placed everything in Your hands. Ah! Keep us faithful to remaining with You, suffering and praying in You and for You. Hold our hand firmly in Yours, so that we do not betray You in this hour of darkness, but remain with You until the radiant dawn of the third day!

We, at least, want to love You, sympathise with You and console You, O Immaculate Co-Redemptrix, our only hope! (To be continued)

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary