half-century, a hidden gem in the vast spiritual treasure now known as Fatima.
An ever-spreading cancer, these offenses against the Virgin Mary are effecting among the faithful a decrease of belief in her special role as Mediatrix of All Graces, producing a corresponding dwindling of those graces. At the same time, these sins preclude the possibility that the people in large numbers will seek special, extraordinary graces from her Heart, powerful graces offered to all by our Redeemer through trust and confidence in her Immaculate Heart. A decline in the flow of grace permits the forces of evil to grow in power, resulting in a massive surge of sin, both in quality and quantity. Were this development to continue, ultimately Divine Justice would demand a severe worldwide chastisement, never before experienced by the human race. This is precisely one of the Fatima prophecies of Our Lady-----to be fulfilled or avoided.
The Divine Will is clearly defined both by our Savior and His Mother, revealed to us in the Fatima Message. The initial expression occurred during the second apparition of June 13, 1917. Our Lady addressed the visionaries as follows: Yes, I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon [to Heaven]. But you are to stay here some time longer. Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved. He wants to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. Those prophecies have indeed been fulfilled. The two seers, Francisco and Jacinta, passed on to their eternal reward in 1919 and 1920. Lucia became a nun in the Order of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy and immediately received many visits from Our Lord and Our Lady, most of them from the Redeemer Himself. Thus, she has served as the "Apostle of the Immaculate Heart" in revealing to the world much information about the Savior's will concerning His Mother. A second reference to this desire of Our Lord came in the third apparition in the following month, 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. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. Then after her entry into the religious order, the Savior appeared several times to Lucia, clarifying this great desire of the Holy Trinity, and His own ardent wish, concerning this Immaculate Heart Devotion. Since it is a wish and not a command, He did not and does not now oblige the Church collectively or individually to honor this request. He leaves our free will intact, preferring the generous offering, freely given. An Overview of the Problem By way of a brief survey, we can list a few propositions and then examine them in detail so that we can judge whether these sins are truly a most urgent matter for the human race. (1) Mary is the Mediatrix of All Graces. (2) It is God's will that we seek unique, powerful graces from the Virgin by means of a special devotion to her Immaculate Heart. (3) These extraordinary graces will, in turn, help remove the obstacles (the five sins) which currently restrict the ordinary flow of graces from her Heart, producing a condition which permits evil to grow at an alarming rate, plunging many souls into Hell. (4) This Divine wish is a challenge to individual Catholics and to the Church as a whole [the hierarchy] to exhibit a new and higher level of confidence in Mary's Office, the Divine Commission given to her by God which entails all her privileges and roles, under which can be listed all her many titles. (5) Peace or punishment hinges upon fulfillment or disregard for this Divine Plan. Our Lady's role as Mediatrix of All Graces is well established in Church teachings. Not yet a solemnly defined dogma of our Catholic Faith, it has been a constant part of Church Tradition dating back to the early Christian era. In recent times, Popes, again and again in various documents, have accorded her this title. The Fatima Message has introduced a new dimension to this truth. Special, extraordinary graces are now being offered to all by Our Lord Himself through a singular devotion to His Mother's Immaculate Heart, one which will be the successful remedy for Satan's latest and most deadly attack against the Church. Surely, a continued disregard for this Immaculate Heart Devotion requested by Our Lord would permit the forces of evil to score a great victory over the Church. Our Lady did predict [July, 1917] that the good would be martyred. Furthermore, the last book of Sacred Scriptures may contain an affirmation of that prophecy, And it [the Beast] was allowed to wage war with the saints and to overcome them. [Apoc. 13: 7] Father Bernard Leonard in his popular work The Book of Destiny interprets this verse in full agreement with the Fatima prophecy. This latest full-scale aggression from Satan is of such stature that it requires exceptional graces in response, a cascading stream of mercy from the Virgin's Pure Heart, only after the proper level of confidence in her is demonstrated by the Church both individually and collectively. We know that the amount of grace bestowed depends, to a large extent, upon the degree of belief. Consequently, new and very extraordinary graces demand a proportionate level of faith on the part of the recipients. The Five Sins The "Last Vision," as it is now called, made on June 13, 1929, contains one statement by Our Lady which is very much a part of our analysis, There are so many souls whom the justice of God condemns for sins committed against me Why are these sins so serious that those who commit them are condemned in such forceful terms? What makes them so evil as to merit absolute anathema? The answer must be the connection existing between these sins and those many souls being lost to Hell. We now know that the Immaculate Heart Devotion is God's prescription for the saving of many souls. This devotion, then, must counteract the main cause of many persons being separated eternally from Christ. This devotion aims at repairing the five sins committed against the Virgin. Thus, these sins are truly responsible for many who fail to gain salvation and the Beatific Vision. A distinction should be drawn here between those sinners who do not attempt to block the flow of grace which is available to all and the sinners who succeed in curbing the distribution through their sins of blasphemies and ingratitudes. These latter, if permitted, would spread their poison throughout the Mystical Body of Christ. The Immaculate Heart Devotion is the needed antidote to ensure that the faithful would become immune to the noxious effects of the five sins and be provided with new energies for mortal combat with the Devil and his legions. It demonstrates anew the constant love and mercy with which the Holy Trinity would favor that Body, Christ truly present in His members. We are now prepared to see the mystery of iniquity at work in an analysis of the five sins and how they restrict the flow of grace through an undermining of belief in the Sacred Office of the Holy Virgin. While not revealed to us directly, a proper understanding of the evil can be gained by comparing and contrasting the five sins and the four acts of the First Saturday's Devotion. In both we can detect a movement, a progression, from a more general description of her Office to a much more specific, rather developed explication. The five sins are a complete, graduating negation of that Office while the First Saturday's Devotion is a thorough, particularizing affirmation. The five sins attack five prerogatives of Our Lady, each privilege being a further refinement of her Sacred Appointment, each sin more destructive than the previous one, in that it impedes even more the flow of grace from her Immaculate Heart and results in more souls lost. Taking each sin in the sequence given by Our Lord in 1930, we can trace a mounting unfoldment of the Sacred Commission of Our Lady. Each sin reveals a more direct attack against the Blessed Mother and her Mystical Child. The First Sin: Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception The first stage of Satan's total war against the Virgin is the blasphemies committed in the denial of her Immaculate Conception. Did God really create the holy Virgin from the first moment of her life fully immaculate, endowed with the all-encompassing graces of that most pure conception? Does He maintain these graces in her throughout human history? If not, then all those truths which build on this one would collapse. Mary's Sacred Office is entirely dependent upon this truth. Allowing the first sin to weaken this belief in the hearts of the faithful and even to remove it completely is to ensure the loss of innumerable souls. This prerogative of Mary, a solemnly proclaimed dogma of our Catholic Faith, is not just a pious or unnecessary tenet of faith, nor is it of second or third class stature as a few present-day theologians would have it. Without this gift from God she could not have performed the role assigned to her as the "New Eve," involving all those titles and prerogatives of her Sacred Office. She would not have been chosen to be the Mother of Christ and of His Mystical Body. The importance of this privilege will be further highlighted as we continue to assess the other sins. In passing on, we should mark the fact that in this stage Our Lady did nothing. She was totally passive, fully a recipient with no activity on her part. The next four phases, on the other hand, are the story of her acting upon the plenary graces of the Immaculate Conception, an ascending revelation of her Sacred Appointment. The Second Sin: Blasphemies against Our Lady's Perpetual Virginity The second stage: her Perpetual Virginity. The Virgin's perfect response to those all-powerful graces is denied here. A total cooperation, not one moment of let-up, not one flaw! Although her Virginity is the main feature of this mystery, her entire and matchless acknowledgment of these super-abundant graces is very much at issue. Think for a moment of that mystery: All-powerful graces from God and an unblemished, absolute employment of them!
Moreover, not only did she cooperate totally with these graces, she also had the perfect intention for them: fully in accord with the desires of the Holy Ghost regarding the effects of these graces, namely, the redemption of all men and the salvation of the Elect. Her intellect and will, unimpaired and unimpeded by Original Sin, were in absolute union with her Divine Spouse. What would the fruit of so sublime a union be? It is not entirely beyond our imagination. If ordinary people can cooperate with graces and produce wonderful results, and if the great Saints could respond in a more excellent way to achieve outstanding works, then what unbelievable consequences would issue forth from Mary's faultless application of these indescribable graces! The Third Sin:
Blasphemies against
Our Lady's Divine Maternity The Fruit of that Union, that sacred effort, prompted by the Holy Ghost, is the third stage: the Divine Maternity and the Spiritual Motherhood of all Men. A vicious attack against the result of this united effort, the third sin would not only rob the Virgin of her Divine Child and the Mystical Child, it would also, even more perniciously, deny her right to employ her maternal offering. It would nullify her just claim to enlist her Offspring as agents of her Divine Spouse in fulfilling His plan of saving the Elect. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Franciscan priest-martyr of Auschwitz, expounded so clearly this unfathomable oneness between the Holy Ghost and the Virgin of Nazareth.
At all costs, Satan must abolish the belief that the faithful each day, through the re-enactment of Calvary at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, can offer themselves as victims, too, thus becoming an integral part of that Redemptive Sacrifice. Since the graces bestowed each day depend to a high degree upon the disposition of the recipients, then this belief is vital to the eternal destiny of mankind. Any effort to negate or obscure this part of Mary's Divine Commission would aid and abet the diabolical assault against the Mystical Body of Christ, reducing significantly the eventual number of the Elect. The third sin would achieve this goal if left unhindered. The cure for this ailment is to have the children of Mary become so much the more united with her by intellect and will, lending to her their very beings as agents of the first order. Until the Protestant Revolt Satan had little success in subverting this belief. Now the poison of Luther's "doctrine" is widespread to the extent that many Catholics, priests included, no longer view the Mass as the Sacrifice of Calvary made present daily. Rather, they regard it as a commemoration of the Last Supper. Consequently, the ever-more-frequently-heard expression of "banquet" becomes the essence of the Mass for them. What ever happened to the total union of the Divine Head with His Members throughout time until He comes to judge the world? And, how would this loss of faith affect the plans of the Holy Ghost to sanctify the would-be Elect? How will He have His holy Spouse continue to distribute and munificently apply salvific graces through her children who no longer believe that they are truly part of the indivisible Victim offered up daily and therefore can merit graces for themselves and others? The last two sins are an even more venomous campaign against the Immaculate Heart. In these two stages the Evil One directly assails both the Spiritual Mother and the Mystical Child, hoping to prevent her from working through her offspring tomorrow and to separate her from her matured children through whom she works today. Eventually a truth will be forced upon us that has been ignored and contemned: Fatima is the Hope of the World! Continued
forward.
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