Mary
Immaculate: Antidote for Sin and Apostasy
The
explosion of the preventable scandals involving sodomite priests which
have rocked our beloved Church in recent years evidently has weakened
the faith of some Catholics. And this is to say nothing of the scandal
of the abandonment of the authentic patrimony of the Catholic Faith
and her traditional liturgy under the regime of novelty of the past
forty to forty-six years. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to state
the the preventable scandals involving sodomite priests, at least some
of whom were recruited into the priesthood and protected by sodomite
bishops and sodomite chancery factotums, is an expression of the corruption
of the Faith that has been enshrined in the Church's liturgy and the
very humanistic, if not secularist, language that is used to describe
the worsening of problems in the world that have their proximate origin
in the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen.
However,
we have to understand that the Church is divinely founded. She
will last until the end of time, no matter the assaults of the Adversary
against us individually or against the Church Militant on earth collectively.
Indeed, the scandals which are continuing to make news are really negative
proofs of the divinity of the Church. Nothing humanly organized
could possibly survive nearly two millennia of the bad example and scandalous
behavior of those who have made up the Church Militant from one epoch
to the next, including us. In every age of scandal and heresy, however,
Our Lady has raised up men and women of sanctity to help effect a genuine
renewal of the Church, a renewal that is founded in the re-formation
of individual souls in cooperation with the graces won for us by the
shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood on the
wood of the Holy Cross, graces which Our Lady herself helped to make
possible by her perfect participation in her Divine Son's Redemptive
Act.
To
wit, Saint Francis of Assisi lived at a time of terrible scandal and
clerical corruption within the Church. The lives of many in the clergy
and in the laity had grown quite lax, to say the very least. It was
Saint Francis's life of austere poverty, severe mortification of the
flesh, deep Eucharistic piety and devotion to the Mother of God which
helped to bring about the genuine renewal of the Catholic spirit in
the Thirteenth Century. Although many Dominicans might be loathe to
admit this, it is certainly the case that the work of the Angelic Doctor,
Saint Thomas Aquinas, was made possible in no small measure by the seeds
planted by the great saint of Assisi, Saint Francis, who bore the brand
marks of Our Lord on his holy body and who used the Crucifix to perform
many miracles. Saint Francis did not despair in the face of the problems
of his day. He did not lose his faith. He understood that he had the
responsibility to make reparation for his own sins--and that Our Lord
permitted him the opportunity to help make reparation for the sins of
the whole world by getting on the cross with Him on a daily basis.
A
son of Saint Francis, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, showed us more recently
the good that can be done by devoting oneself single-heartedly to the
establishment of the City of Mary Immaculate. Saint Maximilian had no
fewer than twelve publications printing simultaneously to promote total
consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart and to build
up the City of Mary Immaculate as the only antidote to the poisons of
secular political ideologies and Masonry, including its Zionist manifestations,
and naturalism in the world, to say nothing of the infiltration of these
poisons within the souls of baptized Catholics. Saint Maximilian knew
that the only true way to go to Our Lord is through Our Lady. There
is no other way to get to Heaven. There is not other way to grow in
intimacy with the Divine Redeemer than by surrendering everything we
have (our liberty, our merits we earn for the good works we do and the
indulgenced prayers and acts we say and perform) to Our Lady's Sorrowful
and Immaculate Heart.
There
is thus no better way to help heal the self-inflicted wounds the Church
Militant on earth is suffering from at present than to promote total
consecration to Mary Immaculate, especially by relying upon the work
and example of Saint Louis de Montfort and Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Saint
Maximilian Kolbe, for example, knew that more good could be done for
the world by the wearing of the Miraculous Medal and by the daily and
prayerful recitation of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary than by anything
else after Holy Mass itself. We must rely upon Our Lady to resist sin
to the point of shedding our blood, and therefore to grow to the heights
of personal sanctity, striving with each beat of our hearts to desire
the highest place in Heaven below that of Our Lady herself.
Bishops
and priests who are serious about making sure that the scandals still
festering in the news do not occur in the future must eschew psychology
and theological workshops and update programs. So much spiritual pollution.
So much spiritual garbage. No, bishops and priests who are serious about
renewing the Church authentically must be committed to the entirety
of the Catholic Faith, including the restoration of the Traditional
Latin Mass without any of the unjust and illicit conditions that have
been attached to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition in the past twenty
years. And the only way to do this effectively is to promote total consecration
to Mary's Immaculate Heart, either through the formula of Saint Louis
de Montfort or that of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who saw how clearly our
contemporary world needed her and how every aspect of daily life had
to be given to Mary to be used as she sees fit for the honor and glory
of the Blessed Trinity and for the salvation of souls. It is holiness
which is the breastplate and the armor against the attacks of the Devil.
What better way to resist the Devil, who prowls around the world seeking
the ruin of souls, than by relying upon the woman who has crushed his
head, and who wants us to rely upon her to crush the head of the serpent
in our own lives, especially in times of temptation?
To
seek to be holy by being totally consecrated to Our Lady's Immaculate
Heart begins with an admission that we are fallen, imperfect creatures
who are prone to sin. No, not evil, not wicked. Imperfect, disordered,
fallen. We must acknowledge the fact that we have to be reliant upon
Our Blessed Mother to help us to follow her Divine Son in this vale
of tears, trusting in her maternal protection and guidance at all times
to be ever vigilant in our pursuit of sanctity (and never to be slow
in getting to Confession should, God forbid, we fall into mortal sin).
Bishops must be consecrated to Our Lady themselves and thus insist that
every single one of their priests be so consecrated. No man should be
ordained to the priesthood who is not totally consecrated to Our Lady's
Immaculate Heart. Such a consecration is not a guarantee that a priest
will never sin or cause scandal. However, it is a safeguard against
sin and a motivation to scale the heights of sanctity.
Mary's
Indispensable Role in the Economy of Salvation
God the Father
knew from all eternity that the rational creatures He would create through
His only begotten Son would rebel in the Garden of Eden. He knew that
the first woman, Eve (the Mother of the Living), would succumb to the
Adversary's allure to tempt her into disobeying Him. The Mother of the
Living, therefore, became the instrument by which the Gates of Heaven
were tied shut. But just as it was a woman's pride which resulted in
the Fall of Adam, so would it be in the Father's Divine Providence that
the Redemption of the human race would be effected by the humility of
a woman, the New Eve, Mary of Nazareth. The Second Adam, Who would recreate
us on the wood of the Holy Cross, came into this world as a result of
Mary Immaculate's perfect obedience to the Father's will, thereby undoing
Eve's prideful disobedience.
Our Lady was
preserved from all stain of Original and Actual Sin from the first moment
of her conception in her mother's (Saint Anne's) womb. She had a perfect
human nature, the same perfect human nature that Adam and Eve had when
they were created by God. Our Lady had to have a perfect human nature
so as to clothe the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity,
with His Sacred Humanity. As the Co-Eternal Son could not have the stain
of Original Sin on His soul, He had to be conceived in the womb of a
woman who herself had been preserved from all stain of sin. Our Lord
thus received from Our Lady a perfect human nature when He was conceived
in His human nature as a helpless embryo by the power of the Holy Ghost
at the Annunciation.
Our Lady's
preservation from all stain of sin is very important to meditate and
reflect upon at all times, especially during this month of May. Our
Lady's Immaculate Conception has some very real and practical meanings
insofar as her relationship to her Divine Son is concerned. And it has
some very real and practical meanings insofar as her relationship to
us is concerned.
First, as
one who was presevered from all stain of sin, Our Lady had a superior
intellect and a superior will. Unlike those of us born with the stain
of Original Sin on oursouls, Our Lady did not have to struggle to know
or to accept the truth. Her will was in complete conformity to that
of the Father's. Thus, although she asked a question of St. Gabriel
the Archangel when he announced to her that she would conceive and bear
a child outside of the normal course of events, she accepted God's plan
for her in a spirit of docility. Similarly, Our Lady did not understand
why Our Lord had stayed behind in Jerusalem to answer questions put
to Him by the rabbis in the Temple, causing her and her chaste husband,
Saint Joseph, a great deal of grief. However, she accepted what He told
her and stored up all those things in her Immaculate Heart. She had
a preternatural inclination to accept the Word of God with humility
and docility.
Second, Our
Lady did not suffer from concupiscence. There was no trace of selfishness
in her whatsoever. She was the personification of selflessness, of other-directedness,
which she demonstrated so perfectly in hastening to visit her kinswoman,
Saint Elizabeth, to be with her as she carried her own Son's precursor,
Saint John the Baptist, in her womb. Our Lady did not seek to "empower"
herself. She was content to be a "stay at home" mother to
attend to her domestic duties, understanding that it was in the perfect
fulfillment of the duties of one's state in life that she was to give
honor and glory to God. Thus, the woman who said that she had been exalted
by God and that all generations would call her blessed was content to
do menial chores and to care for her chaste husband, Saint Joseph, and
her Divine Son, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. She sought only to
fulfill God's plan for her without demanding anything from anyone. She
requested that her Son provide more wine for the wedding feast in Cana,
but she did not demand it. Her humility, however, is always rewarded
by her Son, Who can refuse her nothing.
Third, as
one who did not suffer from concupiscence, Our Lady had a perfect and
unsurpassed bond of love with the fruit of her virginal and immaculate
womb, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. There was no possessiveness
exhibited by Our Lady with respect to her Divine Son. Our Lady could
not harbor a grudge. She did not lose her temper. She was in perfect
control of her emotions. Yes, she cried as her Son's dead Body was taken
down from the Cross. Her tears were not for herself, though. Her tears
were shed because she saw how the sins of men had torn asunder the Body
she enfleshed in the nine months It was being formed within the tabernacle
of her womb. And she cried justly because she knew that her Son had
died in vain to save people who would refuse entrance into His true
Church and/or refuse sacramental forgiveness right up to the point of
their deaths. No mother has ever suffered the way Our Lady suffered,
precisely because of the perfect bond that existed between the one conceived
immaculately and the Word Who was made Flesh within her.
Fourth, Our
Lady understood that her Son had come into this world through her to
reconcile sinful men to the Father in Spirit and in Truth. She was willing
to suffer with Him out of love for Him and out of love for us. The love
which unites her Immaculate Heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus is
one of complete and perfect compassion. The two hearts, although located
in different bodies, beat as one. They suffer as one, as Pope Leo XIII
noted in an encyclical letter on Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary when he
referred to Our Lady as the Co-Redemptrix of the world. Many people
have been petitioning the Holy See for this title to be ratified dogmatically,
just as the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and of Our Lady's
Assumption body and soul into Heaven were proclaimed infallibly by Popes
Pius IX and Pius XII, respectively.
Fifth, Our
Lady accepted the role given her by her Son to be our Mother. She looked
after Saint John the Evangelist, who had been given the task by Our
Lord to look after her. Saint John had taken our place at the foot of
the Cross to offer Our Lord and Our Lady his consolation. His being
given as Mary's son by Our Lord as He was dying His horrible death by
Crucifixion is symbolic of the fact that we were given through him to
be Mary's children. Our Lady has never shrunk from her role as our Heavenly
Mother, who prays for us now and at the hour of our deaths, nunc
et in hora mortis nostrae. She is the New Eve, the new Mother of
the Living, the Gate of Heaven, and the Ark of the New and Eternal Covenant.
Sixth, Our Lady's
Assumption body and soul into Heaven tells us what a special place she
has in Paradise. She is the Queen of Heaven and of Earth. As her body
was preserved from all stain of sin, it did not have to undergo the
corruption of the grave. It was her right to be assumed body and soul
into Heaven so as to reign there gloriously as our Queen, our Mother,
and our Advocate. And it because of her royal dignity that Our Lord
has seen fit to send her at various times in the past half millennium
to remind us of the need to do penance for our sins, and to honor her
quite publicly as our Queen through consecration to her Immaculate Heart
and by our fidelity to her her Most Holy Rosary. What a tragedy, therefore,
that no pope has seen fit to fulfill Our Lady's Fatima requests, upon
which hinge the fate of both the Church and the world.
Finally, Our
Lady is the singular vessel of honor through which Our Lord entered
the world. And it is the will of the Son that she be recognized through
which we ourselves will ascend to the heights of personal sanctity in
this vale of tears as a preparation for enjoying an unending Easter
Sunday of glory in Paradise. Our Lady is the Mediatrix of all graces,
something that is displayed quite vividly in the original cast of the
image of the Miraculous Medal, which was revealed by Our Lady to Saint
Catherine Laboure. Our Lord wants us to understand that all graces flow
to us through Mary. She, the model of all Christian virtue and perfection,
is thus our only path back to Him.
Our
Lady's Role in Our Own Lives
As the Queen
of Heaven and of Earth, Our Lady is supposed to be honored by all human
beings until the end of time. Each of us would take great offense if
someone slighted our mother, would we not? Imagine, therefore, how much
Our Lord wants us to honor the woman who made possible our salvation.
Mothers have
the natural desire to will the good of their children. Our Blessed Mother
wills our eternal good, the salvation of our immortal souls. She wants
us to despise sin, which is why she gave the Miraculous Medal to Saint
Catherine Laboure and ratified the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
to Saint Bernadette Soubirous. Our Lady knows that each one of our sins,
including our venial sins, disfigures our souls. Indeed, one of the
prayers recited in the Miraculous Medal Novena says, "May we recover
by penance what we have lost by sin." That is, Our Lady wants us
to love God so perfectly that we will be repulsed even by the thought
of sin. For it was sin that caused her Divine Son to suffer unspeakably
on the wood of the Holy Cross. And it is sin which wounds His Mystical
Body, the Catholic Church, today. It is sin which causes all suffering
in the world in all human lives. And the only remedy for sin is to cooperate
with the graces won for us by the shedding of Mary's Son's Most Precious
Blood, administered to us by the working of the Holy Ghost in the sacraments
and by means of actual grace.
Our Lady has
told us that the way to avoid sin and to grow in holiness is through
total consecration to her Immaculate Heart. Saint Louis de Montfort
wrote out his formula of consecration nearly four hundred years ago.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe popularized total Marian consecration in the
first half of the Twentieth Century. Indeed, it is written of the great
saint of the City of Mary Immaculate:
In
order to move souls to love Mary, St. Maximilian ventured to make great,
self-effacing personal sacrifices. He made exhausting journeys on missions
that seemed foolish, so much so that a saying circulated that he wanted
"to make a trip to the moon on a hoe." But he went ahead undaunted,
carrying on with hard work and privation: fainting spells on the train,
having to celebrate Mass while supported by two friars, repeatedly coughing
up blood, becoming emaciated, even proving himself unpopular with certain
persons. His love for the Immaculate would not let him rest from his
feverish activity. There was a time in Japan when people, upon seeing
his tireless activity, thought he must be part of what they called the
"myth of immortality". . . . He was tireless and daring,
and when someone told him to lighten up a little, he answered smilingly,
"I have no time to rest here below. I will take my rest in Paradise."
This is the way with true love." (Father Stefano M. Manelli, F.I.
Devotion to Our Lady, Academy of the Immaculate, pp. 113-144.)
Total consecration
to Our Lady means that we unite ourselves completely to her as her slaves,
pledged to honor her Immaculate Heart by living lives that are totally
worthy of disciples her Divine Son. Remember, we are the adopted children
of Our Lady. No child would want to do anything deliberately to displease
his mother. We must be ever conscious of the fact that we are Mary's
children and that nothing displeases her more than the coldness and
indifference we exhibit concerning the obligations imposed upon us when
we were baptized into the true Church, outside of which there is no
salvation. She wants us to live in a manner befitting our dignity as
redeemed creatures. She wants us to reject the ways of the secular,
godless, materialistic, pleasure-seeking world in which we live. She
wants us to be seen as her children who proudly wear her Miraculous
Medal as a sign of our total consecration--and thus as our pledge to
help, as Saint Maximilian Kolbe wrote, to build the City of Mary Immaculate,
which is the only antidote to the poisons of Modernism running rampant
throughout the Church and the poisons of sin spreading at a rapid pace
in the world as a result of the Church's own abandonment of her authentic
patrimony and the Immemorial Mass of Tradition.
Some
of the Elements of Total Marian Consecration
Total consecration
to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart involves some very simple
elements. Here are but a few:
First,
consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart means that
we give all of the joys and sorrows of our lives to her to use as she
sees fit for the honor and glory of the Blessed Trinity, for the triumph
of her Immaculate Heart, and for the conversion of all souls to the
true Church. If it is natural for us to trust our own earthly mothers
implicitly, is it not only just but right for us to trust our Blessed
Mother completely? Our Lady uses every element of the lives of those
who are totally consecrated to her to effect the greater honor and glory
of God and the salvation of souls. Our Lady will use everything in our
lives. Everything. All of the physical pains and aches were may experience.
All of our humiliations. All of the gossip directed against us. All
of the backstabbing from family members and friends, most of whom do
not have the courage to confront us face to face. She will use our patient
fulfillment of our daily duties, from our getting up in the morning
when we would prefer to remain in bed, to our running of the errands
we do not want to perform, to our dealing with people who try our patience,
to our state of physical exhaustion at the end of the day.
Second,
total consecration to Our Lady requires us to be mindful of our obligation
to be assiduous in prayer, especially by means of the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass and her Most Holy Rosary. The Mass is the perfect prayer.
And the Traditional Latin Mass is, as Father Faber noted in his lifetime,
the closest thing to perfection this side of Heaven. The prayers contained
in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition express more fully and more beautifully
the necessity of relying upon Our Lady than those found in the synthetic
novelty concocted by the Consilium in the 1960s, otherwise known as
the Novus Ordo Missae. We should not want to give God sloppy
worship, that which depends upon a priest or a parish or a diocese.
We should want to give God worship that is as perfect is possible, worship
that grew organically and could never have been devised by men. It is
thus as consecrated slaves of Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart
that we must give to her our sacrifices to get ourselves to the Mass
of tradition so that its glories can flower once more above ground as
the normative Mass of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. As my dear
wife Sharon notes, "If Our Lady could ride on a donkey while nine
months' pregnant, we can make a few sacrifices to drive in an air conditioned
or heated car to get ourselves to the Traditional Mass."
Father Daniel Johnson
noted in his last sermon at St. Mary's by the Sea Church in Huntington
Beach, California, on May 9, 2004, that fighting to restore the Traditional
Latin Mass is more important than fighting against abortion. Without
minimizing the horror of the daily carnage of the preborn in this country
under cover of law, a carnage that de-sensitizes Americans to the torture
and killing of anyone who is deemed to be an enemy of the country (thus
dehumanizing such "enemies" as the preborn have been dehumanized),
Father Johnson's point is correct: that many Catholics support the killing
of the preborn is a direct result of the aborting of the Traditional
Latin Mass and the other-worldly focus that it kept in the interior
lives of the eighty to eighty-five percent of the Catholics in this
country who assisted at it every single Sunday until the revolution
of the Consilium. A consecrated slave to Our Lady offers all of the
humiliation he might experience as a result of seeking out the Mass
of tradition wherever it is offered by a validly ordained priest, trusting
that Our Lady will use that humiliation and calumny and misunderstanding
in ways that will be understood fully only in eternity.
Our Lady is present
mystically each time Holy Mass is offered, just as she was present physically
at the foot of the Holy Cross, upon which hung her Divine Son, the King
of Love. We would not go more than a day or so without eating. Our bodies
need the nourishment provided food. Well, so do our souls, which is
why the habit of Daily Mass is something that a soul consecrated to
Our Lady, Mary Immaculate, finds as something that is absolutely indispensable
as part of his own daily routine. Daily Mass helps us to live the life
of the Church in preparation for living in an unending Easter Sunday
of glory in Heaven. It is not the "religious fanatics" who
assist at Daily Mass. It is those who are truly on fire for love of
God as He has revealed Himself through His true Church who do so. Our
Lady was pleased that Saint John kept her company at the foot of the
Cross. She is pleased with us when we do so by our assistance at the
unbloody re-presentation of Calvary that is the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass.
Those who are totally
consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart understand
the importance of modesty of attire, reverence of behavior, and the
necessity of silence when in Church. Calvary was not a jokefest, it
was not a show. It was not a time for conversation. Well, the same is
true of the Mass. People who wish to engage in conversations can do
so in a vestibule, on the telephone, or in a restaurant. It is disrespectful
of Our Lord's Real Presence (and discourteous to those trying to concentrate
on their mental prayers) to gab in Church. This is beneath the dignity
of Mary's children. Even the pagans are silent in the places they hallow.
Third,
after Mass, obviously, it is Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary which must
be the principal foundation of our prayer lives. The fifteen decades
of the Rosary contain the mysteries of salvation, from the Annunciation
to Our Lady's Coronation as Queen of Heaven and Earth. Those totally
consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart learn that
we can never tire of meditating upon the mysteries contained in her
Most Holy Rosary. We will find that total consecration to Our Lady brings
with it a deepening of the care we take in praying the Rosary in a spirit
of reflection upon each of the mysteries contained therein. And we will
find that the praying of all fifteen decades of the Rosary on a daily
basis is not at all difficult to "fit into" our schedules.
Keeping Our Lady's five First Saturday requests, which includes the
recitation of the Most Holy Rosary, also demonstrates our desire to
do everything Our Lady asks of us, especially by praying the Rosary
with the same fervor and care that she taught Saint Bernadette Soubirous
to maintain when doing so.
Fourth,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart leads
us to become people of abiding Eucharistic piety. Our Lord was enfleshed
in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb. He was the Prisoner of the
tabernacle of her womb. He is the Prisoner of Love in the tabernacle
where He abides in His Real Presence. Just as Saint John the Baptist
leapt for joy when he heard the sound of the voice of the woman carrying
the Child Whose precursor he would be, so are we to leap for joy at
the opportunity we have to be in the presence of Our Eucharistic King.
Our Lady wants to lead us to her Divine Son in His Real Presence. If
we have time to go to the movies (most of which we should not be watching),
or to a restaurant or to talk on the phone for hours on end, we have
time to spend before Our Lord in His Real Presence. One cannot be a
son or daughter of Mary if he or she is not willing to adore Mary's
Son in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
Fifth,
total conservation to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart requires
us to be conscious of our sins. It was our sins that broke her Immaculate
Heart as she watched the Body she enfleshed by the power of the Holy
Ghost be tortured beyond all telling, as is vividly portrayed in Mel
Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. It was our sins that caused
her to grieve as she beheld the same Body after death that she had once
cradled in the stable in the cave in Bethlehem. And it has been our
sins and our indifference which have prompted Our Lord to send her to
us to remind us of the necessity of making reparation for our sins,
especially by being totally consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
A person totally consecrated to Our Lady, therefore, must seek to detest
sin, including venial sin.
A person who is conscious
of his sins realizes that he is in need of the forgiveness which was
won for us by Our Lord on Calvary. Many saints went to Confession every
day of their lives. The more one grows in love with Our Lord through
His Blessed Mother, the more one grows in awareness of his own
imperfections and faults, great and small. A person who is totally consecrated
to Our Lady realizes, therefore, the importance of weekly confession.
One should certainly never go any longer than two weeks without going
to confession. The weeds of venial sin grow up very quickly. Pride and
sloth, two of the capital sins, can lead us into thinking that the lack
of mortal sins to confess means that we are making great progress in
the spiritual life. A good, devotional confession strengthens the soul
by virtue of the grace administered by the priest, who acts in persona
Christi, in the hospital of Divine Mercy that is the confessional.
Moreover,
one consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart understands
that she, the Queen of Mercy, wants us to be merciful to others. There
is nothing any of us can suffer at the hands of another that is the
equal of what one of our least venial sins caused Our Lord to suffer
in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross. We broke Our Lady's
Immaculate Heart on Good Friday by means of our sins. Her Immaculate
Heart breaks today because of the sins of men. Thus, we can never hold
onto any grudges whatsoever. We must forgive all others from the bottom
of our hearts, praying fervently for the salvation of their immortal
souls. Those totally consecrated to Our Lady know that the beneficiaries
of her Divine Son's mercy must be generous in the bestowal of mercy
upon all those who offend or who disappoint them.
Sixth,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart means
that her consecrated slaves trust in her completely to be dealt with
as she sees fit. Consecrated slaves to Our Lady accept all things (sickness,
health, prosperity, poverty, humiliation, consolation, etc.) as within
God's Providence to be given to her in a spirit of perfect self-abnegation
that trusts entirely in her. A consecrated slave of the Immaculate Heart,
therefore, will be content with what he has, whether good or bad, understanding
that his sins deserve far worse than he can ever possibly imagine.
Seventh,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart makes
a consecrated slave grateful to God for all that has been given to him,
including, as mentioned above, his sufferings. Gratitude is a keynote
of a consecrated slave. And we must express that gratitude in our interior
prayers and vocal aspirations.
Eighth,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart requires
those so consecrated to stand apart from the secular world in which
they live. We must dress modestly at all times, not only for Holy Mass,
something that Our Lady addressed in her Fatima apparitions. We do not
live so as to be au courant with the current fashions and styles.
We live so as to give honor and glory to God. We can never dress, act,
or speak in a way which would offend the Mother of God. That is, it
is not befitting Christian dignity to attend most motion pictures (no
matter what their rating), to watch anything on television, to listen
to the satanic fare that passes for contemporary music, designed of
its nature to agitate the soul rather than to lift it up to God, and
to think in ways that are in opposition to the teaching Mary's Son deposited
in Holy Mother Church. Everything we do must be in conformity with the
standard of Our Lord's Most Holy Cross. There are no exceptions. None.
Ninth,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart has
several important external manifestations. Three will be mentioned here.
The first,
the Miraculous Medal, is worn prominently on the outside of our apparel.
It is our statement to the world that Mary Immaculate is the one who
holds the key to following Our Lord through His true Church. My dear
wife, Sharon, hands out Miraculous Medals to waiters and waitresses
and other unsuspecting souls we meet in our travels across the nation.
The Miraculous Medal is a powerful instrument of conversion. We must
display it prominently, and we must give Miraculous Medals away generously.
The Miraculous Medal effected the conversion of an unbelieving Jewish
man in the Nineteenth Century, Alphonse Ratisbonne. As Father Manelli
wrote, "For Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Miraculous Medals were Heaven's
ammunition, Heaven's bullets, which caused grace to be penetrated into
hearts." Indeed.
The second
symbol of total consecration is the Brown Scapular, which is worn around
our necks inside of our clothing, right next to our flesh. It is the
sign of our reliance upon Mary's intercessory power in our lives, especially
at the moment of our own deaths. She has promised never to abandon anyone
who wears the Scapular (and fulfills all of the obligations associated
with its wearing.)
The third
involves invocations to honor Our Lady. Saluting another or closing
a letter with the phrase Ave Maria is one example of such an invocation.
Remembering to say the Angelus outside of Paschaltide (and the Regina
Coeli during Paschaltide) is yet another. These invocations are ways
to remind ourselves and others of our total reliance upon Our Lady as
her consecrated slaves.
Tenth,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart strengthens
families, prompting parents and children to fulfill generously and eagerly
their daily duties. Uppermost in the mind of each member of a Catholic
family, especially one totally consecrated to Our Lady, is the image
of the Holy Family of Nazareth. It is interesting that the Holy Family
had within it the God-Man and a woman conceived without stain of sin.
Neither was the head of that family, though. A sinner, though a just
man, Saint Joseph, was the head of the Holy Family. Our Lord and Our
Lady submitted to his authority, just as we are supposed to submit ourselves
humbly to all lawful authority in those things that are within its competency
and do not violate God's law or His living tradition in any manner whatsoever.
A family, therefore,
is not a sentimental collection of individuals who happen to be related
by blood or adoption. No, a family is the instrumentality by which the
Co-Eternal Son sought to enter human history. It is the means by which
the Church is built up. It is where children are to be welcomed generously
as the natural fruit of their parents' married love. It is where such
children are to be trained to aspire to be saints, to love the things
of Heaven more than they love the things of this passing world. It is
where they are to learn that the family is the domestic cell of the
Church. It is where they learn to love the Church, no matter the problems
that beset her at any given moment in her history. It is where children
learn that each human being is made in the image and likeness of God
from the first moment of his fertilization until the moment of his natural
death. And it is, most importantly, the cradle where vocations to the
priesthood and the consecrated religious life are supposed to be fostered
by mothers and fathers as a first and salutary duty: to give back unto
God and His true Church what He has given so generously to them. All
of this flows quite naturally in a family where each of its members
are totally consecrated to Our Lady, Mary Immaculate.
Eleventh,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart results
in our being unafraid to speak the truth in love at all times. Remember,
Our Lady was in the Upper Room with the Apostles on Pentecost Sunday.
She prayed for her Son's Apostles as they were filled with the gifts
and the fruits of the Holy Ghost. She had become the Spouse of the Holy
Ghost at the Annunciation. She wanted the Apostles to boldly proclaim
the Holy Name of the Divine Son she begot by the power of the Holy Ghost.
She wants us to do the same. She wants us to be fearless in our proclamation
of the truths of the Catholic Faith, no matter what it might cost us
in this passing vale of tears.
The Church's
traditional liturgical calendar is replete with men and women who thought
nothing of offering their very bodies in torture to bear witness to
their fidelity to the fullness of what Our Lord had revealed to the
Apostles and deposited in Holy Mother Church through them. Our very
baptism and confirmation have imposed upon our souls the obligation
to do as the Apostles and martyrs have done. Total consecration to Our
Lady's Immaculate Heart helps us to eschew human respect, the desire
for success in this world at the price of betraying the true Faith,
yes, even with our own family members, from whom we have to become estranged
in order to remain faithful to Our Lord through Our Lady. Our Lady will
help us grow in virtue, to come living temples of the Holy Ghost who
mature in each one of the seven gifts and the twelve fruits of the Third
Person of the Blessed Trinity.
Courage is
need particularly now in the life of the Church. Those who are committed
as consecrated slaves of Our Lady to the restoration of the Church's
authentic patrimony and her living tradition are mocked and caricatured
as schismatic and heretical and disloyal. We must never let such slogans
and mindlessness get in the way of doing now what Our Lady's prayers
helped the Apostles to do nearly two millennia ago: proclaim the full
truths of her Divine Son without fear of how anyone is going to react,
including ecclesiastical officials. In this regard you see, we must
insist that some pope will actually consecrate Russia to Our Lady's
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart with all of the bishops of the world
only and exactly in the manner prescribed by Our Lady herself.
Twelfth,
total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart leads
us to grow more fully in love with the Blessed Trinity. She lived to
please God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. So must we. Remember something
that is worth repeating a zillion times: the purpose of each human
life is to know, love, and serve God here on earth so as to be happy
with Him for all eternity in Heaven. Nothing in this vale of tears is
going to last, nothing that is except our immortal souls and the actions
they have performed. Everything else will be wiped away at the end of
time on the Last Day. Our Lady loved God completely. It is the purpose
of total consecration to lead us to God through the very instrument
through whom He came to earth to redeem us, that is, Mary Immaculate.
Total consecration to Mary Immaculate is the path to eternal union with
God in Heaven.
Pilgrimages:
A Concrete Way to Manifest Total Consecration to Mary Immaculate
There are
some very concrete ways to demonstrate our fealty to Mary Immaculate.
One of the most important is by making pilgrimages in her honor.
There are
two pilgrimages in France to honor Our Lady on the weekend of Pentecost
Sunday. One proceeds seventy-two miles from the Cathedral of Notre Dame
in Paris to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Chartres. The other, sponsored
by the Society of Pope Saint Pius X, proceeds in the opposite direction,
Both of this pilgrimages are made to give public honor to Our Lady and
to promote the restoration of the Traditional Latin Mass as normative
in the life of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Having made the
last day of the Paris to Chartres Pilgrimage in 2001 (a pilgrimage that
my wife, then my fiancee, made in its entirety just days before we were
married), I was dutifully impressed with the reverence and solemnity
with which the pilgrims conducted themselves, singing Rosaries and Marian
hymns through the hills and vales of France. As Sharon noted at the
time, "It was only the grace of Our Lady which kept pulling me
along to the end. I could never have walked the entire distance on my
own strength." Others said the same thing. Both The Remnant
and Una Voce of Orange County, California, sponsor chapters annually
for the Paris-Chartres pilgrimage.
Unable to
make it to France? Well, there is the annual pilgrimage from the Lake
of the Blessed Sacrament (which the English renamed Lake George) to
the Shrine of Our Lady of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville,
New York, each September. Run by the National Coalition for Clergy and
Laity, this pilgrimage is itself seventy-two miles in length, much of
it through the rugged Adirondacks of upstate New York. Many pilgrims
come from throughout the northeast to make the final seven miles on
the last day of the pilgrimage, which concludes with a solemn High Mass
offered by Father Edmund Castronovo. The Society of Pope Saint Pius
X sponsors its own seven mile pilgrimage to Auriesville each June.
Unable to
make to upstate New York? Well, organize your own pilgrimage. There
are plenty of Marian shrines around the nation. The parish of St. Mary's
Assumption in St. Louis, Missouri, has organized a twelve mile pilgrimage
in their neck of the woods. Father Stephen P. Zigrang led parishioners
from Queen of Angels in Dickinson, Texas, and St. Michael's Church in
Spring, Texas, on a similar pilgrimage earlier this year. Una Voce of
Orange County, California, sponsors a fifteen mile pilgrimage from Saint
Michael's Abbey in Silverado, California, to Mission San Juan Capistrano,
which was founded by Blessed Junipero Serra. Get the necessary permits
from the civil authorities and just organize your own pilgrimages. What's
your local bishop going to do? Excommunicate you for giving public honor
to the Mother of God and attempting to build up the City of Mary Immaculate?
(Yes, I know, some might be tempted to threaten to do so.)
These pilgrimages
are positive, concrete steps we can take as sons and daughters of the
woman who is Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix of all graces, and Advocate to
help bring about the restoration of Tradition within the true Church,
which is the necessary precondition for the Church to have more of a
chance to convert the world to the Social Reign of Christ the King and
of her, our Immaculate Queen. We must not be slow about the work we
need to do in honor of Mary Immaculate, starting with our own consecration
if we have not made it ourselves.
Again, I personally
implore every bishop to heed the plea of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who
never offered anything other than the Traditional Latin Mass, to promote
total consecration to Mary Immaculate. All other pastoral work pales
into insignificance when we consider the honor we owe our Mother and
the help she wishes to give us to save our souls and rightly order our
own lives and that of the places in which we live and work. It is total
consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart that serves
as the antidote to the poisons of sin and apostasy running rife in the
Church and in the world. How telling it is that so few bishops have
ever spoken of total consecration. Is this just one of those preconciliar
concepts that is now out of date? Oh, dear Mother of God, please pray
that your Son's bishops will re-discover the solution to the world's
problems is quite simple: it runs through your Immaculate Heart and
total fidelity to your Fatima requests.
We crown Mary
as Queen in parish after parish each May. Each of us should pray during
this month of May, therefore, that we will have the zeal of the Apostles
themselves, who, inspired by Our Lady's prayers, planted the seeds for
a world where Christ was honored as King and Our Lady was recognized
as Queen. Can we do any less?
Our Lady of Fatima,
who promised that your Immaculate Heart triumph in the end, help us
to be ever faithful to our consecration to you as your slaves, to whom
we give freely everything, including life itself, to be used as you
see fit for the honor and glory of God and the salvation of souls through
your Divine Son's true Church.
Saint Louis
de Montfort, pray for us.
Saint Maximilian
Kolbe, pray for us.