Let us this Lent turn ever more fully to the Blessed Mother for her motherly help and Protection before it is too late.

Mark: 1: 12-15 First Sunday of Lent February 26th, 2012

So Lent is upon us. The season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving is here. Lent is a time in which the Holy Spirit wants to lead us to the desert, which is away from the distractions of the world, in order to hear the small still voice of the Lord. The desert is primarily interior, in the depths of our soul. Our Lenten prayer is meant to turn our minds and hearts to the Lord to better hear Him speaking in our life.

Lent is to be a season of intense conversion for each one of us. It is a time of turning away from sin, turning away from the lies of this world and a turning more fully to God and to His truth. Lent is a privilege time of listing to the voice of the Lord, the truth of His mouth, and then turning to Him with our whole heart by repenting and then with the help of his grace struggling to live the truth, that is living our lives more deeply in union with Him and His Holy Will.

The discipline of Lent and our struggle to carry it out, is meant to be an aid to help us convert more deeply in order to worship our Lord more sincerely and adore Him more perfectly so we can partake and experience more fully the Joy of Easter in a few months, and the eternal Easter to come, the joy which is our union with God.

But in this struggle we also discover that the devil will come, as he came to Christ, in order to temp us. What does he temp us with? He tempts us to take the easy way out; He tempts us to forgo the struggle to die to self in order to live for Christ alone. He tempts us with the world with its pleasures and its empty promises.

Just like he did to Christ, just like he did to the people in the time of Noah, the devil tempts us to look to the world alone such as in politics for solutions to our problems, he tempts us to turn to the world alone and the things of the world to fulfill the deepest longings our hearts. He tempts us to want only an earthly “messiah,” a king, a president, or some other world leader, one that promises to bring us peace and prosperity in this world and so give us paradise in this world.

Blinded by our earthly “savior” we then failed to turn to the only One that can save us, the one only true Messiah, the one only Savior of the world—Jesus Christ. By putting our hope in an earthly “messiah” we fail to turn to Jesus alone in order to receive his forgiveness of our sins and His Divine Mercy. And, it is the Divine Mercy of God that enables us, empowers us to imitate Jesus’ own perfect worship and adoration of the Father. And then without Divine Mercy we cannot live this adoration out by our obedience to God and His commandments in our daily life. And so without Divine Mercy we cannot love of God and love of neighbor for love of God.

Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross for our salvation not so that we can live in an earthly “paradise” which is nothing but pipe dream anyway; He did so that we could live in a heavenly paradise; beginning on earth in the Kingdom of God, which subsists fully in the Catholic Church, and finally completely in the Kingdom of God in heaven. All “earthly messiahs” no matter how eloquently they talk, no matter how much they talk about freedom are in the end only interested in obtaining power in order to control those who they think are the dumb stupid masses, all of us. God on the contrary is interested in our true freedom, our freedom to be able to worship correctly and so become one with Him in Love.

In Lent, then we should examine our priorities- what do we value most? Is it our relationship with Jesus? Or do other “things” of the world get in the way or better yet distract us from the one thing that matters most, our faith in, trust for and love of Jesus Christ? Are we living according to Christ’s way or are we living according to our way and at the same time trying convincing ourselves that we are living Christ’s way? Are we trying, like many, to redefine religion, religious worship, belief and practice according to what we want, according to what is comfortable or meaningful to us?

In our first reading, we heard about the covenant God made with Noah after the flood. Noah and his family were the only ones to escape the great flood. Noah headed the warnings, because His heart was focus on the one thing that mattered—His relationship with God. Noah always kept his families attention firmly fixed to it’s primarily responsibility; that is, it’s prayer and worship of God and living according to His law of love. Noah turned to God in love and God repaid Noah’s trust by saving Noah and his family from the deluge. Because he was attuned to God and God’s way, Noah heard the voice of the Lord and so headed the “signs of the time.”

Noah and his family were righteous; they had converted themselves to God and His ways and so they able to heed the warnings God sent them and were saved. The others put it off, they were too preoccupied with the distractions of the world; they were blinded and so prevented from heeding the warnings and were drowned. They placed their trust in the world and the world overcame them.

The people of Noah’s day were not unlike the people of our day. We are told that they were, marrying, buying and building houses right up to the day of the flood, oblivious to the disaster that was about to befall them, so distracted they were, so blinded by the things and cares of this world.

In our very day, our Blessed Mother in many of her apparitions around the world has made the comparison between our age and the age before the flood. She has warned us that people today are living like folks did in the time of Noah, oblivious to the danger they have put themselves in; oblivious to the destruction that will befall on them. They have put the things of this world before God Himself; they have placed their trust, not in God, but in the leaders in the “messiahs” of this world to save them. Our heavenly Mother is reminding us that there is no salvation apart from God and His only Son Jesus Christ and the Church Jesus Founded.

How often man has placed his trust in other “messiahs” to save him: Nero, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler. There has been a claimant to the office of “messiah” in every age, the self proclaimed “savior” who will save us from economic woe and disaster. Who will be the next false “messiah” that men will turn to instead of Christ to “save” them. Is that “messiah” already here as some have even proclaimed? Is he already the leader of one of our earthly governments? .

The temptation is always the same; it’s a temptation to give into the pleasures of the world alone to satisfy, to feed the hunger of the human heart; it’s the temptation to conform one’s life to the ways of the world; it’s the temptation to place one’s faith in the power of this world to save us; it’s the temptation to turn to a “messiah” of this world to straighten things out and to save us instead of turning to Jesus as the only true “Messiah.” For there is no salvation in any other name; there is no peace in this world apart from Jesus; there is no true stability, economic or otherwise apart from God’s ways.

You’d think after two centuries of trying, us humans would have learned this lesson by now. But yet we continue to reject God and His ways and place our trust in human beings who we think can deliver us. Yes, we need politics and we need political leaders, but not political leaders who place themselves above God and God’s laws and Commandments, or political leaders who through smooth speech promise us a “paradise” on earth without suffering or self-sacrifice, without dying self in love, without reverence to God. Beware of the smooth tongue leader who promises to give things for free; there is nothing good in this world that doesn’t have to be worked for; better yet, sacrificed for.

On the contrary, the greatest leaders in this world have been those who fear the Lord and struggled to walk in His ways. And any attempt of trying to build a world of peace without God, a world of peace apart from God’s truth and way, and apart from His Cross, is to invite, unless we repent, a disaster upon us greater than the deluge itself.
This was by the way the very message and warning of the Blessed Mother in her appearance to a nun in a convent in Akita, Japan on October 13, 1973. She said ". . . if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never seen before; and it will happen if men do not repent.

The Blessed Mother then ask that the Rosary be prayed for the Pope, the bishops and the priests and said, "The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. She said, “The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres...churches and altars will be sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

Sister Agnes Sasagwa the visionary of Akita, explained what our Lady wanted from us: You must become repentant. Start praying to God with good pure hearts. Convert to God and turn your lives over to Him. It is important to become a Christian and to know the mercy of God. God wants us to amend our lives. The world is so corrupt and egocentric. God loves us so deeply he is trying to save us from the chastisements through Our Ladies messages. Only prayer will accomplish the road of spreading the message

The message of Akita Japan was declared reliable and worthy of belief by both the local bishop and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger the then Prefect for the Sacred Congregation for the Divine Faith and now Pope Benedict the Sixteenth. The message is not one of despair but of Hope given to us from a loving Father who does not want our destruction that would be the result of our own doing. For our sake and the sake of future generations He will purify the world, its up to us whether it is by fire or by grace.

Another message of our times comes to us through a vision of St. John Bosco. He was a priest who gave his life to help underprivileged children. In the vision, John Bosco saw how we and our families can be spiritual safe. He saw a huge ship passing through incredible stormy seas…at the helm, steering this mighty ship was the Holy Father, the pope. The were other smaller row boats, around the ship being tossed about by the fierce waves, some where sinking, others had been broken into, all were in danger…

The Holy Father however, was steering the ship into the safe harbor that lie between two great columns rising out of the tempest seas and leading the Ship to safe port. On top of the larger column was the Holy Eucharist, and on the other was the Blessed Virgin Mary. The great ship was of course the true church which contained the fullest of the Truth because she was founded by the Truth Jesus Christ, who still was with Her in and through the Sacraments, especially the most Blessed of all Sacrament the Holy Eucharist which is His incarnate bodily present in the world.

IN the end, the Message is always the same. Not until us Catholic turn to the Holy Eucharist with greater faith, hope and love, and with holy fear adore Jesus truly present there begging for His mercy upon us and on the whole world, and begging Him for the grace of conversion for us and for the whole world, not until we do this with ever greater believe, trust, and love, will the current instability be over come and peace restore in our world.
Let us this Lent turn ever more fully to the Blessed Mother for her motherly help and Protection before it is too late. Let us read the signs of the times. Our Blessed Mother loves each one of us, and she will lead us to her Son Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. She will help us to adore the Godhead hidden there so that we will grow in a deeper intimacy and union of love with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and become instruments of our Lady, her remnant working with her for the Conversion and salvation of souls and ushering in the triumph of her Immaculate heart and the era of peace promised to us at Fatima.