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The Holy Father will have much to suffer
March 24, 2017 by Eric Sanders in fatima and tagged catholic, catholic church, errors of russia, fatima, july 13, july 13 1917, july 13 apparition, rosary, the holy father, the holy father will have much to suffer | Leave a comment
Simon son of John, do you love me? (John 21: 16)
The bond between the Message of Fatima and the Papacy is iron clad. On July 13, 1917 Our Lady told Lucia that she would come day to ask something of the Pope, something befitting his high office, and how he responded would determine the subsequent history of the papacy, the Church, and the world.
It is important to remember that the Lady of the Rosary did not request anything of the Holy Father in 1917, she merely said that she would come later to make this request. Perhaps this was because God did not desire the ten year old Lucia to go marching from the hill country of Portugal straight into the Apostolic Palace in the middle of a world war to make known Heaven's demands, or perhaps it was another reason. The actual request would come later and I will deal with that in another post.
I should make it clear here that Our Lady did not make her request only of the Holy Father. There was something there for all of us to do as well. And she made a declaration of what would happen if her requests were heeded, and what would happen if they were not. Here again is what she said:
I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.
She asked the Holy Father to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart AND she asked us to make the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturday of each month. Presumably these things did not happen since the state of the world since 1917 could in no way be called 'peace.'
She said the Holy Father would have much to suffer. What does this mean? In truth by the time 1917 rolled around the Holy Father had been suffering for quite a while. One could make the argument that the Holy Father had been suffering quite a bit for the previous 175 years or so since the rise of the secret societies during the early part of the 18th century. The suppression of the Jesuits followed by the terrible revolution conspiracy of 1789 that destroyed the Catholic foundations of the European political order followed by the growing indifference to religion and morality as the nineteenth century progressed. Fanatical nationalism replaced the Catholic religion as the primary driver in the lives of many Europeans and in all of their political elite. This led to the unification of Germany and Italy: in the latter case the temporal Papal kingdom was destroyed and the Holy Father, whose predecessors had once upon a time helped to bring these very nations into existence, was now reduced by them to being a 'prisoner in the Vatican.' The other consequence of this rise in fanatical nationalism was the World War that was in the process of destroying what was left of Catholic civilization in Europe when the morning of July 13, 1917 dawned.
So how would the Holy Father suffer more than he already had been suffering? To understand better we may want to look at the errors of Russia
1) Russia will spread her errors throughout the world
On July 13, 1917 Russia was a mess. She had been fighting and losing World War I for three years, and three months earlier the Romanov dynasty that had ruled the country for three hundred years had been removed from power by a revolution. That summer Russia was in the throes of chaos. A so called 'liberal democratic' regime that followed the ideology of 1789 had taken power from the Czars but was tottering. Four months after this apparition the Bolshevik revolution brought the first completely atheistic government in the known history of our world. Not even the vague 'Supreme Being' of the French revolutionary governments would be allowed.
God did not find fault with Russia for having a centrally planned economy or a bloated bureaucracy or even a government that was run by murderous terrorists. These things were not new in the world in 1917. Contrary to what we are taught in history class they are as old as the hills: the only thing that perhaps was new was the accelerant poured on to all of this mayhem by the industrial revolution of the previous two centuries. The only new thing was the atheism. For the first time in history a nation was to banish God entirely from its borders. This was the error of Russia.
And the Bolsheviks were not content with destroying the idea of God just in Russia. This was about world revolution. In truth the Communist takeover of Russia in 1917 was just the vanguard of a global revolution that sought to remove God from the life of the human race, with all the tragic consequences that flow from that. Russia in 1917 was just a convenient starting place.
Our Lady promised that this error would spread throughout the world, and it has. The atheism of 2017 is not the militant atheism enforced by the barrel of a gun like in 1917. Rather it is a soft atheism enforced by cultural norms and peer pressure and the threat of ridicule, but it is atheism nonetheless. And since this is a soft and easy atheism it has infiltrated everywhere, even into the highest ranks of the Church. All of us have been the victims of it at some point in our lives I can imagine. We don't deny God outright, we just forget about Him. We do not make our Creator and our Redeemer the prime focus of our existence. Rather we go to Mass on Sunday, try to stay awake through the priest's homily, ignore everything else, walk up to grab that strange tastless bread they are passing out and then walk out the door still chewing to get to the head of the line for brunch or get the beer in the fridge quick enough to get it cold by the time your buddies show up to watch football. This is atheism. Of course that is only the case for the extremely small percentage of Catholics who bother for reasons they know not why to even show up anymore. The other 95 percent of the population is just completely oblivious if not downright hostile to even the idea of God much less any notion of Him taking on a human nature, founding a Church his Mystical Body, and establishing Sacraments that are necessary for each and every human being to achieve their destiny: to become, as Saint Peter tells us, partakers in the Divine Nature.
Russia spread her errors well, but of course she had a lot of help. This is the source of the Holy Father's terrible suffering during the twentieth and twenty first centuries. This man is charged by the God-Man to preach the Gospel in some way shape or form to the whole world and to baptize the nations with the saving waters of the Sacrament. And now even the baptized scoff at the very notion of God and his laws. Even the ordained scoff at his Sacraments and his laws. Even the bishops scoff at his Sacraments and his laws. Even the cardinals scoff at his Sacraments and his laws. From all sides the Mystical body of Christ is beset with wounds and with the gravest wound of all: treason.
We do not know where this will lead. But stay with God. Stay with Our Lady. Stay with the Church. Stay with Pope Francis, whatever people say about him. He is the only Pope we have. Pray for him, sacrifice for him. If you stay with God He will stay with you and will deliver you in the day of evil.
Pray the Rosary every day.
The Apparition of July 13, 1917
March 1, 2017 by Eric Sanders in fatima and tagged catholic, catholic church, cova da iria, fatima prayer, hell, july 13 1917, july 13 apparition, our lady of fatima, rosary, russia, sacrifice for sinners, secret, the holy father, vision of hell | Leave a comment
Thou art beautiful, O my love, sweet and comely as Jerusalem: terrible as an army set in array.
(Song of Songs 6:4)
March 1, 2017 Ash Wednesday
In a certain sense the July 13, 1917 apparition is the mother lode. The heart of the Message of Fatima is a call to penance and to make reparation. The prophetic warnings and the Secret revealed in the July 13 Apparition are what give this call to penance its great urgency. And that is why any attempt to make Fatima a "part of the past" is a grave threat to the future of the human race.
William Thomas Walsh in his 1947 work, Our Lady of Fatima, that word had gotten out and two to three thousand people gathered with the three children on the Cova da Iria on July 13, 1917. He describes the scene as follows (p. 78):
On this particular thirteenth of July, in 1917, there was something unusual afoot in all the villages and fields of the Serra. Even before the children arrived within sight of the Cova da Iria they must have become aware of it. For all over the mountains and beyond people had been hearing, by the mysterious grapevine that disperses news so thoroughly and so fast in country places, of what had taken place on the feast of Saint Anthony. An astonishing number had made up their minds to be on hand for the next apparition.
Lucia herself describes the momentous revelation of Our Lady this day as follows in Volume IV of her memoirs:
A few moments after arriving at the Cova da Iria, near the holmoak, where a large number of people were praying the Rosary, we saw the flash of light once more, and a moment later Our Lady appeared on the holmoak.
"What do you want of me?" I asked.
"I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, to continue to pray 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, because only she can help you."
"I would like to ask you to tell us who you are, and to work a miracle so that everybody will believe that you are appearing to us."
"Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe."
I then made some requests, but I cannot recall now just what they were. What I do remember is that Our Lady said it was necessary for such people to pray the Rosary in order to obtain these graces during the year. And she continued:
"Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially whenever you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."
As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened her hands once more, as she had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellant likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. Terrified and as if to plead for succour, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us, so kindly and so sadly:
"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. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.
"To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc… Do not tell this to anybody. Francisco, yes, you may tell him.
"When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need."
After this, there was a moment of silence, and then I asked:
"Is there anything more that you want of me?"
"No, I do not want anything more of you today."
Then, as before Our Lady began to ascend towards the east, until she finally disappeared in the immense distance of the firmament.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as the saying goes. There are very many things to say about this Apparition. Each sentence in some way shape or form warrants its own post but I won't go to that length. The one thing to keep in mind is that Heaven does not issue empty threats, but the Almighty bides his time to give a chance for repentance. Very many of the things Our Lady warned us about have already happened, but not all of them, and not the worst. We still do not know the rest of what she told the children: the "etc…" was not included or clarified or even commented on in any way, shape, or form in the Vatican's 2000 release about the Secret of Fatima. And we have not stopped offending God, but rather have made things much much worse. You do the math.
O Jesus, it is for the love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.