Matthew 22; 15-21. Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. October 22nd, 2017
Today’s Gospel brings out the darkness of the hearts of those who opposed Jesus intrusion into their lives—they were religious in only appearance, but in their hearts they sought to live a life far apart from God—they refused to give to God what belong to Him, namely their lives, their hearts, their everything in joyful thanksgiving and adoration.
And so, these so-called religious folks try to trap Jesus in catch 22. They pose a very clever question. If Jesus would answer “that the tax should be paid, they would accuse Him to the people of collaborating with the Romans. Because the people saw paying taxes as nothing less than financing Rome’s continual domination of the nation of Israel, the people would then turn against Jesus and no longer follow Him. If Jesus would answer not to pay the taxes, then the ill willed Herodians would have grounds to turn Jesus over to the Romans for His opposition to the state, for his, “Trying to stir up rebellion among the people.”
For His part, Jesus however, gives His enemies a very clever and profound response, a response which goes far beyond their twisted expectations. He doesn’t just give them a yes or no answer; He gives them the true perspective and so thwarts their cunning words—“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. In other words, Jesus teaches them and us the correct relationship between the Church and the state, and of our obligation to support both the Church and the state, but in proper order.
We are to give to the state what is due to it…namely, the payment of legitimate taxes necessary for legitimate state expenses; and obedience to just laws (and the key word here is “just”)…but nothing more, for we are to also, and first and foremost, to give to God what belongs to God. Jesus thus puts back into order what was out of order. First and foremost, Jesus taught the Herodians and all those who were listening, that God is always first.
Jesus teaches us as well then, that the state does not enjoy absolute power and dominion. Yes, it has its own dominion; however, the rights of the state cannot usurp the rights of God and the rights of the human person created in the image and likeness of God. God has revealed what is right and wrong; the government is called to uphold this order. The laws of the state should not contradict the Laws of God: the principles of God should guide the laws of state. By the way, the political debate should be the means, the method, we use to ensure God’s law is respected. And this is why we are obliged, even from the pulpit, to oppose unjust laws-laws which go against the common good of all (yes, politics from the pulpit).
Christians do indeed have a duty to give to the state whatever material and personal services they can in order to support the common good. But the state then has the corresponding responsibility to enact laws and govern with the greatest respect for the common good of all people including, and most especially, the most vulnerable of society. This includes the protection of human life from the moment of conception, the defense of the family and consequently the protection of marriage between one man and one woman, the protection of religious liberty, the rights of parents to be the primary educators of their children, along with their right to provide for their children, including: receiving a just wage; to keep what they earn from their labors-and so, just taxes; along with the right to private ownership of land, privacy and the right to protect their family even with arms.
So, while we must support the state so it can fulfill its earthly natural purpose or end, which is domestic peace and harmony, Jesus also points out our higher obligation to support the Church so that it may carry out its supernatural purpose or end: which is to bring about eternal peace and harmony-better known as the Kingdom of God. One aspect of this support of the Church is that Christ’s faithful have the obligation to provide for the temporal needs of the Church, so that the Church has available to It, those things which are necessary for the prescribed Divine Worship, for the works of the apostolate and of charity, and for the worthy support of priests.
However, this duty goes far beyond just the gift of treasure or tax to the support of Christ’s Church. We must always remember that the collection at the offertory is meant to represent the offering of ourselves to the Father in union with Christ’s Sacrifice on the Altar. This is why the priest says, “Pray brethren that our sacrifice, mine and yours, may be acceptable to God our Father.” We are not asking the Father to accept the Sacrifice of the Mass, that is Jesus’ sacrifice, of course that’s acceptable. We are asking Him to accept our individual sacrifice, not just our money but more importantly what the gift of our money should stand for, that is, the gift of ourselves, all that we have and are, especially our will.
This brings up what Christ does not mean by this verse, “give to Caesar what belong to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Christ doesn’t, does not, mean that we relegate our service to God, that is our faith only to the private sphere. Christ did not intend to relegate religion to a private affair only carried out in the temple, but not in daily life in the world, as if the world could somehow develop apart from God’s law and Christian law and morality. Of course, that is an illusion; the world trying to go along without God’s law is doomed to failure and collapse—God is God, he pervades the entire world—it is His and He gave us organized religion.
Every Christian, each one of us is called and challenged to be light and salt in the middle of the world. We are called to be witnesses. We are all called to go live our mission…Ite missa est!!! Go live your mission, take what you have received in the Holy Eucharist, namely Jesus, and through Him, with Him and in Him, transform the world in which you live and work. We are, each one of us called to transform the world and all men by our holiness of life, thus making the world more humane, more human.
We are called to live as children of God in the halls of our schools, of our governments, our jobs as well as in the living rooms of our friends. We truly do have the answer for our modern age’s terrible moral and religious void and consequently its spiritual darkness. We are the ones called to transform the world we live in, to stand up in defense of human life from its conception, and the marriage between man and women in which every child has a right to be conceived, to speak out against experimentation on human life, poverty or anything else which degrades the human person… “Render to God the things of God…” and the human person belongs to God.
The Lord is the life of every human person from the moment of conception. The Lord sanctified family life in Nazareth and later taught us to respect the sanctity of marriage, its indissolubility and it continual openness to life. Jesus brought the light of these truths to the people of His time even though many did not want to hear them, and now He expects us to bring them to the people of our time even though many don’t want to hear them and may oppose us and even persecute us.
We Christians have so much to give for the good of our society. But we must ourselves believe more firmly and show others more clearly that the teachings of God and His Holy Catholic Church are not an obstacle to human welfare or scientific progress. They are rather a sure guide for the realization of those worthy goals. We Christians must be absolutely convinced that we have a most precious and necessary light to offer amidst so much darkness-the only Light that can penetrate the darkness, Jesus Christ the Light of the World.
Let us with the help of the blessed Virgin Mary mother of all nations, give unto God what belongs to God, our entire life and everything in it, for His honor and glory and for the sanctification and salvation of souls, let us trustingly offer our lives on this sacred altar, for we are His and to Him we belong and are called to return. Amen.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Sunday, October 15, 2017
The wedding imagery that is used in the parable Jesus told in the Gospel today, is found throughout the Holy Scriptures.
Matthew 22;1-10. Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. October 15th, 2017
The wedding imagery that is used in the parable Jesus told in the Gospel today, is found throughout the Holy Scriptures. The wedding “language” when used, is always meant to point out to us, in familiar terms, the intimacy of our Heavenly Father’s call to salvation in and through Jesus Christ. This call to eternal Salvation and happiness in His Heavenly Kingdom (which subsist fully in the Catholic Church) extends to every single person on the face of the earth. It is God Himself, who always initiates this call. While God extends salvation to all, although as is apparent from today’s parable, sadly not all will accept this invitation.
Last Sunday’s Gospel points out that God had prepared His vineyard, which was the House of Israel, for the eventual coming of His only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. The Father continually cultivated the land of the vineyard of Israel by sending the prophets to prepare the soil of the hearts of the tenants, the people of Israel, for the Good News of salvation and liberation from their sins. And of course, as the parable of last Sunday told us, not only did they kill all the prophets the Father sent, in the end, they also kill the Son, the heir of the kingdom when they crucified Jesus Christ on the Cross outside the vineyard walls, that is outside the city of Jerusalem. The Catholic Church is today this vineyard.
In today’s parable, the Father invites the people to a great Wedding Banquet. A wedding banquet that came about by the very death of His Son—Jesus Christ. It was a Wedding that began when Jesus’ bride-the Church, was formed out of His pierced side. Our Father invites all peoples to come to this Wedding. It is in fact, the Wedding of all weddings, to which all earthly weddings point. It is THE place where God doesn’t just want to offer us salvation, but THE place where, through Jesus Christ is Son, He literally wants to marry our soul and make it one with Him.
This Wedding Banquet to which all people are invited is non other than the Holy Mass, the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is the salvation of the world because it is Jesus Christ; along with His once and for Sacrifice for us. Because Jesus loves us so much, He didn’t want his sacrifice of love for us to end. He wanted it to continue, to be made present on earth untill the end of time. He loved us so much that he wanted to continue to pour out His unfathamable love and mercy, to continue to offer us His entire self till the end of time.
Jesus is the Bridegroom-God Himself, who comes at every Holy Mass seeking souls to wed. Jesus wants us to become so intimate with Him that He allow us to litterally receive his whole self, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity into ourselves…this is the marital act of the Holy Mass which is the Wedding Feast of the Lamb--Jesus.
In the love between a husband and wife they both desire to become so close, that they could crawl into each other’s heart. Well in the love between Jesus, and us, He allows that very thing to happen. He comes into own hearts but only if we but open the door to him. He says to us, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and He with me. We open the doors of our heart to the extent we offer our hearts to Him.
The Eucharist is the foretaste of the Heavenly Wedding Banquet. It is literally heaven on earth, althought veiled from our earthly sight.. Even now while we are in this valley of tears, we can come to the Holy Eucharist and participate sacramentally through the eyes of faith in the same banquet as the angels and saints enjoy in heavenly glory-in fact we join with them.
Unfortunately, just as in the parable, many are indifferent to his call. So many in our own day are too caught up in the cares and riches of the world to see the great invitation they are given…one goes to his farm, another to his business. They fail to answer the King’s summons to attend the Banquet or to do so properly prepared and disposed to attend such a great Banquet.
The Lord provides for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, the Lord offers the most food, the free gift of his very self. Jesus offer to us His everything, but all too often He is met with only ingratitude and cold hearts. Jesus must have told today’s parable with a sad heart. He must have thought about how God’s love is rejected so many times.. Blessed Francisco, one the little seers of Fatima spend the last years of his short life trying to spend as much time alone in silence to contemplate, through faith, the face of God. He discovered that there was a saddness to God’s face because of the lack of love of so many human hearts; especially a lack of love toward the Holy Eucharist…
Keeping this saddness of God’s face let us reflect on the following.. At this Wedding Banquet (The Holy Mass) do we bring the gifts of our whole self, and do we openly receive the gift of Jesus’ whole self? In other words, the Holy Mass is a Wedding and at a wedding, vows need to be exchanged before the marital act is performed.. Jesus says His “I do” when he says, “This is my Body given up for you…” Do we then try to give Jesus our complete, “I Do,” in response to His, “I do”?” We do this by offering say back to Him, “this is my body given up to you.. I offer you Jesus, my whole heart on altar, through Mary I place it on the paten completely. Only to the extent we give Jesus our heart can our marriage vows be consummated at the reception of His Heart at Holy Communion and bear fruit in our lives and in our world. (Just like a man or a women who doesn’t say “I do” as a gift of their wholeself at their wedding, their wedding cannot be consumated at the marital act.
Some additional reflections on how we may respond to the Father’s invitation to the heavenly banquet. Do we prepare ourselves to be well disposed to the Love that God wants to give us at this Holy Mass. Do we prepared ourselves as we would if we were invited to a king’s wedding feast (because it is THE KING”S Wedding Feast), or do we attend as if it was just a casual event, not really special in anyway or just as another thing we have to do. Do we follow the Church’s precepts and laws on receiving Holy Communion such as the one hour fast before receiving? Have we cleaned our souls as well as our bodies, in the sacrament of confession or do we receive the King, with serious sin on our souls? Do we dress the part of going to the King’s Feast, not only in our exterior dress, but also by our interior dress of humility and purity of heart? Along with our exterior dress befitting of a royal wedding, are we wearing a interior wedding dress of charity toward our bothers and sisters? It was the garment of charity that the guest in the parable failed to have; in other words, his soul was not in the state of grace and he was promply asked to leave.
Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us make better use of the gifts, or the graces that Jesus gives us at this His Wedding feast, allowing Him to come fully into our hearts that we may be consumed by His Love and transformed by the Holy Spirit into living instruments of His love and Divine Mercy. Then as we go into the mainroads in our daily lives and seek to invite every one we can find to the wedding they will see the love of God, and the image of the bridegroom Jesus Christ in us and as result respond as well to the Father’s heavenly invitation. We will then bear the fruit of the Holy Eucharist and bring them to share in the joy of the Feast and thus share in the salvation of Jesus Christ. And then together we all will be in the Joy of the Heavenly banquet which is the Holy Mass and the Holy Eucharist unveiled for all eternity, the full consumation of the marriage of the soul with the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Let us ask as well today, in this month of Our Lady of the Rosary, the mother of the bridegroom to help us become better prepared to attend this great wedding banquets so we may transform our world.
The wedding imagery that is used in the parable Jesus told in the Gospel today, is found throughout the Holy Scriptures. The wedding “language” when used, is always meant to point out to us, in familiar terms, the intimacy of our Heavenly Father’s call to salvation in and through Jesus Christ. This call to eternal Salvation and happiness in His Heavenly Kingdom (which subsist fully in the Catholic Church) extends to every single person on the face of the earth. It is God Himself, who always initiates this call. While God extends salvation to all, although as is apparent from today’s parable, sadly not all will accept this invitation.
Last Sunday’s Gospel points out that God had prepared His vineyard, which was the House of Israel, for the eventual coming of His only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. The Father continually cultivated the land of the vineyard of Israel by sending the prophets to prepare the soil of the hearts of the tenants, the people of Israel, for the Good News of salvation and liberation from their sins. And of course, as the parable of last Sunday told us, not only did they kill all the prophets the Father sent, in the end, they also kill the Son, the heir of the kingdom when they crucified Jesus Christ on the Cross outside the vineyard walls, that is outside the city of Jerusalem. The Catholic Church is today this vineyard.
In today’s parable, the Father invites the people to a great Wedding Banquet. A wedding banquet that came about by the very death of His Son—Jesus Christ. It was a Wedding that began when Jesus’ bride-the Church, was formed out of His pierced side. Our Father invites all peoples to come to this Wedding. It is in fact, the Wedding of all weddings, to which all earthly weddings point. It is THE place where God doesn’t just want to offer us salvation, but THE place where, through Jesus Christ is Son, He literally wants to marry our soul and make it one with Him.
This Wedding Banquet to which all people are invited is non other than the Holy Mass, the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is the salvation of the world because it is Jesus Christ; along with His once and for Sacrifice for us. Because Jesus loves us so much, He didn’t want his sacrifice of love for us to end. He wanted it to continue, to be made present on earth untill the end of time. He loved us so much that he wanted to continue to pour out His unfathamable love and mercy, to continue to offer us His entire self till the end of time.
Jesus is the Bridegroom-God Himself, who comes at every Holy Mass seeking souls to wed. Jesus wants us to become so intimate with Him that He allow us to litterally receive his whole self, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity into ourselves…this is the marital act of the Holy Mass which is the Wedding Feast of the Lamb--Jesus.
In the love between a husband and wife they both desire to become so close, that they could crawl into each other’s heart. Well in the love between Jesus, and us, He allows that very thing to happen. He comes into own hearts but only if we but open the door to him. He says to us, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and He with me. We open the doors of our heart to the extent we offer our hearts to Him.
The Eucharist is the foretaste of the Heavenly Wedding Banquet. It is literally heaven on earth, althought veiled from our earthly sight.. Even now while we are in this valley of tears, we can come to the Holy Eucharist and participate sacramentally through the eyes of faith in the same banquet as the angels and saints enjoy in heavenly glory-in fact we join with them.
Unfortunately, just as in the parable, many are indifferent to his call. So many in our own day are too caught up in the cares and riches of the world to see the great invitation they are given…one goes to his farm, another to his business. They fail to answer the King’s summons to attend the Banquet or to do so properly prepared and disposed to attend such a great Banquet.
The Lord provides for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, the Lord offers the most food, the free gift of his very self. Jesus offer to us His everything, but all too often He is met with only ingratitude and cold hearts. Jesus must have told today’s parable with a sad heart. He must have thought about how God’s love is rejected so many times.. Blessed Francisco, one the little seers of Fatima spend the last years of his short life trying to spend as much time alone in silence to contemplate, through faith, the face of God. He discovered that there was a saddness to God’s face because of the lack of love of so many human hearts; especially a lack of love toward the Holy Eucharist…
Keeping this saddness of God’s face let us reflect on the following.. At this Wedding Banquet (The Holy Mass) do we bring the gifts of our whole self, and do we openly receive the gift of Jesus’ whole self? In other words, the Holy Mass is a Wedding and at a wedding, vows need to be exchanged before the marital act is performed.. Jesus says His “I do” when he says, “This is my Body given up for you…” Do we then try to give Jesus our complete, “I Do,” in response to His, “I do”?” We do this by offering say back to Him, “this is my body given up to you.. I offer you Jesus, my whole heart on altar, through Mary I place it on the paten completely. Only to the extent we give Jesus our heart can our marriage vows be consummated at the reception of His Heart at Holy Communion and bear fruit in our lives and in our world. (Just like a man or a women who doesn’t say “I do” as a gift of their wholeself at their wedding, their wedding cannot be consumated at the marital act.
Some additional reflections on how we may respond to the Father’s invitation to the heavenly banquet. Do we prepare ourselves to be well disposed to the Love that God wants to give us at this Holy Mass. Do we prepared ourselves as we would if we were invited to a king’s wedding feast (because it is THE KING”S Wedding Feast), or do we attend as if it was just a casual event, not really special in anyway or just as another thing we have to do. Do we follow the Church’s precepts and laws on receiving Holy Communion such as the one hour fast before receiving? Have we cleaned our souls as well as our bodies, in the sacrament of confession or do we receive the King, with serious sin on our souls? Do we dress the part of going to the King’s Feast, not only in our exterior dress, but also by our interior dress of humility and purity of heart? Along with our exterior dress befitting of a royal wedding, are we wearing a interior wedding dress of charity toward our bothers and sisters? It was the garment of charity that the guest in the parable failed to have; in other words, his soul was not in the state of grace and he was promply asked to leave.
Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us make better use of the gifts, or the graces that Jesus gives us at this His Wedding feast, allowing Him to come fully into our hearts that we may be consumed by His Love and transformed by the Holy Spirit into living instruments of His love and Divine Mercy. Then as we go into the mainroads in our daily lives and seek to invite every one we can find to the wedding they will see the love of God, and the image of the bridegroom Jesus Christ in us and as result respond as well to the Father’s heavenly invitation. We will then bear the fruit of the Holy Eucharist and bring them to share in the joy of the Feast and thus share in the salvation of Jesus Christ. And then together we all will be in the Joy of the Heavenly banquet which is the Holy Mass and the Holy Eucharist unveiled for all eternity, the full consumation of the marriage of the soul with the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Let us ask as well today, in this month of Our Lady of the Rosary, the mother of the bridegroom to help us become better prepared to attend this great wedding banquets so we may transform our world.
Monday, October 9, 2017
This week, on Friday, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Last apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. October 13th, marks the date when over 70,000 people present in the crowd, including a hostile atheistic Communistic Press, witness the Miracle of the Sun. Even those when a 6 mile radius of the crowd saw it. It was the greatest public miracle since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
As the three shepherd Children began to see the Virgin Mary, the continuous Rain of three days came to an abrupt stop, the clouds parted and the Sun broke through. Then the sun began to spin and throw off colors. It began to dance about the sky; so violently that at one point seemed to literally break from its obit and plunge toward the earth.
People fell on their knees with fear, some confessed their sins out loud even the bad ones. Then just as it appeared that it was going to crash into the earth and bring the end of the world, the sun stopped and appeared to go back to its normal course. Everybody and everything, including the rain soaked ground was instantly, completely and miraculously dry.
It can never be said enough, however, that Fatima was a message not for just for 1917, but even more so for our times. Our Lady of Fatima warned about the very situation we find ourselves in the modern world. She told us how to avoid the current storms in our culture and in our families and she gave, not a dire prediction of the end of the world, but a great message of hope. That even if we didn’t not head her warnings and so avoid a great chastisement-a great punishment on the world-that in the end her Immaculate Heart would Triumph.
But what is the message of Fatima in its essence? And why is it important to us, to our families and to our world? And how can we, by putting the message of Fatima into action in our lives, bring hope to our world which is so rapidly descending into chaos and as a result is so lacking in hope.
The message of Fatima is in fact the very Formula for bringing down God’s Divine mercy on the world. God is a good Father and He will not let us destroy ourselves; He wishes us to leave sin behind so as to live in the freedom and in the joy of the Children of God, by living under the protection of His Divine Will, which is love and mercy itself. Only then will we have peace.
We must say then that the message of Fatima is a message to be lived. For the message of Fatima is identical to the Message of the Gospel itself, “Repent and believe… for the Kingdom of God is in your midst, because Jesus Christ, the personification of the Kingdom of God, is in your midst, by being truly present in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. (The Gospel today warns, the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will bear its fruit).
So how do we live the Message of Fatima? Fatima lived on a daily basis calls us to daily, with God’s grace, to strive in order to leave sin behind and seek union with Jesus and through Him with the Father in the Unity of the Holy Spirit. To accept the mercy of God in our lives and in our families, we have to be truly sorry for our sins, confess them fully and truthfully and seek with the help of God’s grace to amend our lives and leave sin behind.
God’s wrath, God’s punishment on the world is always directed toward sin. God hates sin so much because He loves us so much—sin is the antithesis of love; and so, sin separates us from God and one another. Sin does not hurt God, but it hurts us.
Therefore, sin is the cause of all the division in the world, in our families and within ourselves; therefore as well, sin is the cause of all the unhappiness in the world and in our lives. And, as our Lady of Fatima said, “War is a punishment for our sin.” In other words, unrepentant sin leads to war…war within ourselves, our families, our communities and churches and yes even in our world. It’s not that God causes war but we do.
Conversely Peace is caused by the world seeking God’s Mercy through the forgiveness of its sins. And since Peace begins in our hearts and in our families, let us be peacemakers by firstly opening ourselves up to God’s mercy by seeking it as individuals and together as families in the Sacrament of Mercy—Confession and let us do it now. For God promises us mercy not tomorrow.
And to atone for our sins; in other words, to help repair and heal the effects of sin in our lives, families and world, as well as to reverse the downward spiral of world by the unrepentant sin in the world, The Angel of Fatima cried out, “Penance, Penance! Penance!
Sister Lucia later said, the Penance that Angel called for her was not taking on some physical hardship like laying on a bed of boards or wearing a hair shirt, it was merely carrying out our daily duties faithfully according to our state in life. Doing everything we are supposed to do on a daily basis for love of God and love of neighbor; this includes both out material duties and our spiritual duties. This necessarily means we must be in a state of grace, with no unconfessed serious or mortal sin on our soul.
In this way, we also begin to fulfil another aspect of the Message, that of daily prayer. Everything we do, when we do it for love of Jesus and neighbor and in the state of grace, becomes a prayer. Prayer also includes, as Our Lady requested the daily praying of the Holy Rosary and wearing the Brown Scapular.
The Praying of the Rosary as a way to chain the devil up in our lives in our families. The Holy Rosary is a family prayer by families for families-individual families, the family of the Church and the Family of man. And the Rosary leads us to the greatest of all prayers…not the “Our Father,” but the Holy Mass. The Holy Mass is the greatest of all prayers because it is the prayer of Jesus to the Father on our behalf; the prayer of the Head of the body, Jesus and the prayer of the body, the members of the church, united to the head.
The members are united to the head, by attending Holy Mass yes, but by offering themselves along with Jesus’ own self offering to the Father in love. The wearing of the Brown Scapular is a way of asking the Blessed Mother to help us to offer ourselves completely at Holy Mass and to do so with out fear; to totally offer ourselves at Holy Mass to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph. The holy Mass is then at the very Heart of the Fatima Message and the end to which that Message directs us..
The Holy Mass participated in with full, active, conscious and fruitful participation is the source of the Authentic Christian life and the end to which that life is directed to—because it contains in His fullness the Alpha and Omega—Jesus Christ our Lord! Hence the Holy Mass provides us with the very means to live the Fatima message and so to life the Gospel itself-it provides us with the means to become one with Jesus and so take His mercy out into our world.
And this brings us to the final aspect of the Father Message--the Promise. The Blessed Mother came to Fatima seeking those little souls who want to love God with their whole Heart, soul and mind and all their strength and their neighbor as themselves. These littles souls, who would give themselves to her so that she could help them live her message of Fatima would become heaven’s instruments of bringing God’s Divine Mercy and Love down upon the world.
Through these little souls of Our Lady, heaven will bring about through Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, the Next Greatest Miracle since the Resurrection, a time of peace that the world has never seen before. This unprecedented time of peace in the world and in families and individual hearts, will be brought about by the conversion of the world to the Truth of the Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Jesus truly present in all the tabernacles of the world and truly being offered on all the Altars of the world at Holy Mass as the only way to the Father—and so the only way to life, eternal life and so eternal salvation...
O most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. And I offer to Thee the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, truly present in all the tabernacles of the world and truly being offered on all the Altars of the world, along with my whole heart, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference for He Himself is offended and through the infinite Merits of His most Sacred Heart and the sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of the blessed Virgin Mary, I beg of thee the conversion of poor sinners (including myself). Amen.
As the three shepherd Children began to see the Virgin Mary, the continuous Rain of three days came to an abrupt stop, the clouds parted and the Sun broke through. Then the sun began to spin and throw off colors. It began to dance about the sky; so violently that at one point seemed to literally break from its obit and plunge toward the earth.
People fell on their knees with fear, some confessed their sins out loud even the bad ones. Then just as it appeared that it was going to crash into the earth and bring the end of the world, the sun stopped and appeared to go back to its normal course. Everybody and everything, including the rain soaked ground was instantly, completely and miraculously dry.
It can never be said enough, however, that Fatima was a message not for just for 1917, but even more so for our times. Our Lady of Fatima warned about the very situation we find ourselves in the modern world. She told us how to avoid the current storms in our culture and in our families and she gave, not a dire prediction of the end of the world, but a great message of hope. That even if we didn’t not head her warnings and so avoid a great chastisement-a great punishment on the world-that in the end her Immaculate Heart would Triumph.
But what is the message of Fatima in its essence? And why is it important to us, to our families and to our world? And how can we, by putting the message of Fatima into action in our lives, bring hope to our world which is so rapidly descending into chaos and as a result is so lacking in hope.
The message of Fatima is in fact the very Formula for bringing down God’s Divine mercy on the world. God is a good Father and He will not let us destroy ourselves; He wishes us to leave sin behind so as to live in the freedom and in the joy of the Children of God, by living under the protection of His Divine Will, which is love and mercy itself. Only then will we have peace.
We must say then that the message of Fatima is a message to be lived. For the message of Fatima is identical to the Message of the Gospel itself, “Repent and believe… for the Kingdom of God is in your midst, because Jesus Christ, the personification of the Kingdom of God, is in your midst, by being truly present in the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. (The Gospel today warns, the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will bear its fruit).
So how do we live the Message of Fatima? Fatima lived on a daily basis calls us to daily, with God’s grace, to strive in order to leave sin behind and seek union with Jesus and through Him with the Father in the Unity of the Holy Spirit. To accept the mercy of God in our lives and in our families, we have to be truly sorry for our sins, confess them fully and truthfully and seek with the help of God’s grace to amend our lives and leave sin behind.
God’s wrath, God’s punishment on the world is always directed toward sin. God hates sin so much because He loves us so much—sin is the antithesis of love; and so, sin separates us from God and one another. Sin does not hurt God, but it hurts us.
Therefore, sin is the cause of all the division in the world, in our families and within ourselves; therefore as well, sin is the cause of all the unhappiness in the world and in our lives. And, as our Lady of Fatima said, “War is a punishment for our sin.” In other words, unrepentant sin leads to war…war within ourselves, our families, our communities and churches and yes even in our world. It’s not that God causes war but we do.
Conversely Peace is caused by the world seeking God’s Mercy through the forgiveness of its sins. And since Peace begins in our hearts and in our families, let us be peacemakers by firstly opening ourselves up to God’s mercy by seeking it as individuals and together as families in the Sacrament of Mercy—Confession and let us do it now. For God promises us mercy not tomorrow.
And to atone for our sins; in other words, to help repair and heal the effects of sin in our lives, families and world, as well as to reverse the downward spiral of world by the unrepentant sin in the world, The Angel of Fatima cried out, “Penance, Penance! Penance!
Sister Lucia later said, the Penance that Angel called for her was not taking on some physical hardship like laying on a bed of boards or wearing a hair shirt, it was merely carrying out our daily duties faithfully according to our state in life. Doing everything we are supposed to do on a daily basis for love of God and love of neighbor; this includes both out material duties and our spiritual duties. This necessarily means we must be in a state of grace, with no unconfessed serious or mortal sin on our soul.
In this way, we also begin to fulfil another aspect of the Message, that of daily prayer. Everything we do, when we do it for love of Jesus and neighbor and in the state of grace, becomes a prayer. Prayer also includes, as Our Lady requested the daily praying of the Holy Rosary and wearing the Brown Scapular.
The Praying of the Rosary as a way to chain the devil up in our lives in our families. The Holy Rosary is a family prayer by families for families-individual families, the family of the Church and the Family of man. And the Rosary leads us to the greatest of all prayers…not the “Our Father,” but the Holy Mass. The Holy Mass is the greatest of all prayers because it is the prayer of Jesus to the Father on our behalf; the prayer of the Head of the body, Jesus and the prayer of the body, the members of the church, united to the head.
The members are united to the head, by attending Holy Mass yes, but by offering themselves along with Jesus’ own self offering to the Father in love. The wearing of the Brown Scapular is a way of asking the Blessed Mother to help us to offer ourselves completely at Holy Mass and to do so with out fear; to totally offer ourselves at Holy Mass to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph. The holy Mass is then at the very Heart of the Fatima Message and the end to which that Message directs us..
The Holy Mass participated in with full, active, conscious and fruitful participation is the source of the Authentic Christian life and the end to which that life is directed to—because it contains in His fullness the Alpha and Omega—Jesus Christ our Lord! Hence the Holy Mass provides us with the very means to live the Fatima message and so to life the Gospel itself-it provides us with the means to become one with Jesus and so take His mercy out into our world.
And this brings us to the final aspect of the Father Message--the Promise. The Blessed Mother came to Fatima seeking those little souls who want to love God with their whole Heart, soul and mind and all their strength and their neighbor as themselves. These littles souls, who would give themselves to her so that she could help them live her message of Fatima would become heaven’s instruments of bringing God’s Divine Mercy and Love down upon the world.
Through these little souls of Our Lady, heaven will bring about through Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, the Next Greatest Miracle since the Resurrection, a time of peace that the world has never seen before. This unprecedented time of peace in the world and in families and individual hearts, will be brought about by the conversion of the world to the Truth of the Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Jesus truly present in all the tabernacles of the world and truly being offered on all the Altars of the world at Holy Mass as the only way to the Father—and so the only way to life, eternal life and so eternal salvation...
O most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. And I offer to Thee the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, truly present in all the tabernacles of the world and truly being offered on all the Altars of the world, along with my whole heart, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference for He Himself is offended and through the infinite Merits of His most Sacred Heart and the sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of the blessed Virgin Mary, I beg of thee the conversion of poor sinners (including myself). Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)