Take courage; I have
conquered the world!’ (Jn 16:33)
Dear
friends,
It takes a lot of
courage today to go against the flow, against the nice sounding
slogans and rhetoric from the very powerful psychological bombardment
of the mass media and from the educational institutions (including
seminaries), as well as well planned diversion tactics. But without
the daily Rosary, without Sunday Mass and monthly confession, without
Eucharistic adoration, today it is almost impossible to not slide
into the great apostasy of relativism. Saint Paul tells us that
before the second coming of Jesus Christ, “that day will not come,
unless the rebellion (apostasy) comes first” (2Thess 2:3).
The virtue of perseverance, which is part of the virtue of fortitude,
is fundamental. Many Catholics pray only when they feel like it, when
there is a personal motive, when there is something in it for them,
but few pray gratuitously to console the Sacred Heart of Jesus and
the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and for so many souls who cannot pull
themselves out of the habit of mortal sin without the prayers and
sacrifices of others, as Our Lady of Fatima asked us to do with much
insistence!
As you know, I am a
member of the Marian Movement of Priests. During the International
Spiritual Exercises, at Collevalenza – Sanctuary of Merciful Love
(Madre Speranza), June 24-30, 2012, Father Francis
Geremia C.S. offered to over 200 priests and to over 10
bishops of the movement these words in a meditation, with the title
of the meditation, “The Age of Confusion”:
(The dates after the
citations are when Our Lady gave the message to Don Stefano Gobbi.)
THE AGE
OF CONFUSION
Part I
On
July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart was reaching the end of her
round-the-world fight. She had already flown 19,000 miles in her twin
engine Lockheed Electra airplane. She was crossing the South Pacific
on the final stage of her journey before landing in California.
However there was to be one last stop for refueling at Howland
Island. It was a tiny speck of an island in the sea. Amelia had it
recorded on her charts, but, unfortunately, she could not find it, as
she flew back and forth searching for it. At 8:44 a.m. she radioed a
U.S. Coast Guard cutter and said, "We must he above you, but we
cannot see you." These were her last words before the plane was
lost in the ocean. What happened? One researcher claimed that Amelia
could not find Howland Island because the navigational charts at that
time showed the island in the wrong location. She was following the
wrong co-ordinates. So tragic! - and all because of incorrect numbers
on a chart.
The
point of the story is that, for Amelia. confusion and error meant
death. What about us on our long journey of life? We too arc
searching. What exactly are the co-ordinates of truth? What are the
co-ordinates of Heaven? Today these co-ordinates have been tampered
with. They are difficult to discern. As a result, many are off-course
and in great danger.
The
influence of deceit
The
Evil One has obscured the co-ordinates of truth. And when the truth
is obscured, disaster follows. "How, Satan, my adversary from
the beginning, is succeeding today in deceiving and seducing you!...
He causes you... to make shipwreck of your faith and leads you, all
unaware, into error. (August 22 1976)
“Because
of the spread of these errors, many are moving away today from the
true faith, bringing to fulfillment the prophesy which was given to
you by me at Fatima: ‘The times will come when many will lose the
true faith.’ (June 13, 1989)
The
real power and deadliness of deception lies in this reality - that
very often, sin is preceded by deception. If we were to look back to
the Book of Genesis, one might ask, what was it that preceded the
fall?
Temptation?
Yes, but even more so, it was deception. After eating the forbidden
fruit, did not Eve say to God, "The serpent tricked me"?
This was the first assault on truth, when the Serpent deceived Eve,
telling her, "You will not die!"
This
is the reason why the Evil One is, first and foremost, the Ancient
Liar. He seeks, above everytlng else, to deceive, to falsify the
truth, to hide and cover over the light with his murky darkness,
because it is the light that defeats him. Thus, Satan always wishes
to extinguish the light. "The darkness spreads and the smoke of
Satan seeks to cover everything." (March 10, 1977)
Satan
reigns in the dark
One
night, in the old Basilica of Assisi, St. Joseph of Copertino was
praying before the tomb of St. Francis. Suddenly he heard the door
open violently and he saw a man enter. The man walked so noisily that
his feet seemed to be encased in iron and chains. Joseph watched him
closely. He noticed that, as the man approached, the torch lamps went
out, one by one, as he passed by them, until finally all of them were
extinguished, and the intruder stood at his side in utter darkness.
Thereupon,
the devil, for it was he, furiously attacked Joseph, threw him to the
floor and attempted to strangle him. Joseph however, called out to
St. Francis, and saw him come forth from his tomb. St. Francis,
however, did not take hold of the devil. Instead he went and relit
all the lamps, one by one, with a small candle. And at the gleam of
these lights, the wicked fiend suddenly vanished. It was no secret to
St. Francis, that it is the light that defeats him. (from St. Joseph
of Copertino, by Fr. Angelo Pastrovicchi, p. 81-82)
"The
seductions of the Evil One have become so insidious and dangerous
that they are succeeding in deceiving almost anyone”. (August 7,
1976)
In
our inclination to be deceived, we bear sonic resemblance to the King
and the townspeople in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, "The
Emperor's New Suit". When the two swindler weavers came to town,
they deluded everyone into marveling at the magnificent new clothes
of the Emperor, made from the finest, most exquisite loom-woven
material. It was told that this material possessed the wonderful
quality of being invisible to anyone who was unpardonably stupid. So,
of course, everyone admired the exceedingly beautiful clothes, which
were, in fact. invisible, and which, in fact, did not exist at all!
Satan
the great swindler
So
too, Satan, the great swindler, has deluded the people by artfully
inventing the exceedingly beautiful mirage of a "heaven without
God", which in fact, does not exist at all, but is, in fact, a
grand illusion. Our Lady tells us:
"This
world is constantly drawing further and further from God... thus does
it fall into the darkness of the denial of God, and into the
deceitful mirage of being able to do without Him." (November 20,
1976)
"Paradise,
that is, the real one, is not found on this earth" (August 15,
1976)
"Creation
without the Creator fades into nothingness." (From Vatican II:
The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World).
We
have fallen for the haughty lying promise of the cunning Tempter that
once rang out in the desert, "I will give you all this power and
the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I
give it to anyone 1 choose. Worship me, then, and it shall all be
yours" (Luke 4: 6-7).
How
many said yes to this deception
The
mirage! How enticing it is. Our Blessed Mother said: "He has
made you slaves of pleasure" (October 13, 1987). How many there
are who have chosen an illusory happiness on the other side of God,
east of Eden. How many have said ''yes" to this mirage.
"Satan
has deceived this entire poor humanity, bringing it so far away from
God and building for it idols of his own perversion: pleasure, money,
pride, egoism, amusement and impurity". (December 8, 1993)
“Shield
yourselves from that surge of words and images, which sweeps
everything before it and contaminates it. It is in this way that my
Adversary succeeds in leading you astray.” (March 25, 1980)
The
vision of man has been so distorted by the Evil One that he can no
longer distinguish the genuine from the imaginary. So he chases after
these mirages in vain. "All is vanity and a chase after wind".
(Ecclesiastes). Pursue them as he may, they continually elude him. He
does not seem to know that they are not really what they appear to
be, that they are only mirages. He chases after them, only to
discover that they are very ephemeral, fleeting, transitory, evasive,
ghostly and unsatisfying. And so he ends up being disillusioned,
puzzled, and saddened because his heart is never really fulfilled.
Yet he stubbornly persists in refusing to admit that there is no
heaven to he found in these alluring mirages. How true, Our Lady's
words, "They become intoxicated with emptiness " (December
31, 1984), infatuated with nothingness, enchanted by the mist.
It
is as though mankind has been hypnotized. Has not Satan cast his
spell over so many, drawing them into a deep trance? This trance
consists in having lost consciousness of the reality of God.
A
person in a trance is unaware of reality. He is lost in a
dream-world, a make-believe world. He is like a sleepwalker. His eyes
are open, but lie is asleep, asleep to God, asleep to elernily,
asleep to the approaching judgment, asleep to the existence of Hell.
Sister
Faustina, in her diary, describes her descent into the realms of
Hell. She was surprised to discover that most of the souls in Hell
did not believe in Hell when they lived on this earth. (Diary, no.
741)
The
mission that our Mother has entrusted to us.
(From
the letter of Fr. Gobbi of 2006)
The
task that the Blessed Mother entrusts to us priests and faithful of
the Marian Movement of priests, consecrated to her Immaculate Heart,
is that of being the Apostles of the new
evangelization. We must proclaim with
new strength, with new courage. And with
a renewed and absolute fidelity, the
message that Jesus has entrusted to his Church. For this reason, we
must be fully conscious of the obstacles
that today oppose themselves to the announcement of the Gospel.
These are: the relativism in Dogma; the naturalism in Sacred
Scripture; the permissiveness in Morality; the lack of discipline in
the Liturgy; the disobedience to the Magisterium of the Pope; the
neglect towards the Eucharist; and religious globalism.
A) the
relativism in dogma
We are
living through a profound crisis of faith that leads to an ever
greater diffusion ol'the apostasy.
Pope
Paul VI said. "there is a great uneasiness, at this time, in the
world and in the Church, and that which is in question is the faith."
(Pope Paul VI)
And
Cardinal Ratzinger: "Having a clear faith, based on the creed of
the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas
relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along
by every wind of teaching, "looks like the only attitude
(acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving toward a
dictatorship of relativism
which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its
highest goal one's own ego and one’s own desires. " (Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, April 18, 2005: Homily at Conclave’s Opening
Mass)
As a
result of this relativism that today dominates also in theology,
there is spread the tendency to not accept the definitive character
of the truth of the faith. Thus, a few of these [truths] come to he
denied, and others are completely ignored.
“...You
must announce to all, to the very ends of the earth, the Gospel of
Jesus, in these days of great apostasy. In the great darkness which
has descended upon the world, spread the light of Christ and of his
divine truth." (December 8, 1994)
Let
us preach all the truths of the Catholic faith, especially those
which today are no longer preached. Let us speak again of death, of
the judgment of God, of hell, of purgatory, of heaven, of the Cross
that saves us, of sin that separates us from God, of the obligation
to live our baptism by following the way that Jesus has traced out
for us in his Gospel.
"Spread
my light, by preaching the Gospel of Jesus with force and fidelity.
His divine word must be proclaimed by you with the same clarity and
simplicity with which Jesus has announced it to you.” (November 15,
1995)
B) The
naturalism in sacred scripture
A
quotation from our book: "Jesus is the Truth because it is He
-the living Word- who is the font and seal of all divine revelation.
[Yet some] work to obscure his divine word, by means of natural and
rational interpretations and, in the attempt to make it more
understandable and acceptable, empty it of all its supernatural
content. Thus errors are spread in every part of the Catholic Church
itself." (June 13, 1989)
Above
all, we must defend the historicity of the Gospel and believe in the
truth of the Word and of the miracles perfomed by Jesus. On March 25,
1982, Our Blessed Mother said:
“Often,
a purely human interpretation is given to it [the Gospel of Jesus],
an interpretation which tends to exclude any supernatural
intervention whatsoever. How many of its events are thus explained as
legends or literary forms! Never before has the great mystery of God
been given such a banal and paltry interpretation. As a result of
this, the faith of many has become extinguished, and grave errors are
spreading more and more throughout the Church. You will remain in the
true faith only if you will give your full assent to all that is said
in the Godpel of Jesus. Announce it to the letter; live it to the
letter. Be living gospels; and then, the plan of the Father will be
accomplished, anc the fire of the love of the Holy Spirit will purify
this world…”
C) The
permissiveness in morality
Because
of secularism that characterizes the culture of our epoch, today
there is a general tendency to justify sin, to consider it not as an
evil, but as something valuable and good. To the concept of it being
a transgression of the Law God, there is substituted that of a
legitimate satisfaction of the need for one's own liberty. We must
form the faithful to comprehend sin as a moral evil that consists in
a violation of the Law of God and the rejection of his Fatherly love.
Grave or mortal sin deprives us ol'sanctifying Grace, separates us
front the communion of life with God and, if this separation lasts
until the moment of death, it leads us to hell. It is today urgent to
preach the necessity of individual sacramental Confession for those
who find themselves in the state of mortal sin.
Against
the custom of receiving Eucharistic Conmnution even in the state of
mortal sin, we must recall the faithful to the obligation of
sacramental confession before they come up to receive Communion.
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 305). And here
Fr. Gobbi insists: I invite the members of the Marian Movement of
Priests to frequent confession that must, above all, characterize the
life of our Priests, rendering them always available to the faith who
wish to have recourse to the Sacrament of Reccntciliation.
D) The
lack of discipline in the liturgy
On
Feb. 2nd 1979, the Blessed Mother said: "It is lack of
discipline to disregard with ease the norms which the Church has laid
down for the regulation of liturgical and ecclesiasticl life. Today
each one tends to direct himself according to his own tastes or free
choice, and with what scandalous facility are violated the norms of
the Church…” (February 2, 1979)
Therefore.
I invite the priests of the M.M.P. to be conformed in everything with
regard to that which is ordered in the document “Redemptionis
Sacramentum” ("On certain matters to be observed or to be
avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist", March 25, 2004).
Above all, I ask that you not participate in Concelebrations without
wearing the liturgical vestments, and that you not follow arbitrary
Eucharistic rites and prayers.
In
obedience to what is requested by the Church, I invite all priests of
the M.M.P. to wear always the ecclesiastical garb: clergyman's or
tailored suits for diocesan priests, and the proper habit for the
religious.
We must be
recognizable as priests of the Marian Movement of Priests by the way
we are dressed.
E) The
disobedience to the magisterium of the Pope
“My
motherly Heart is wounded to see how the silence and neglect of my
children often envelop the words and actions of the Holy Father,
whilce he is increasingly struck and impeded by his adversaries…
his ver ministry is not sufficiently supported and furthered by the
whole Church whom Jesus has wanted to be united about the successor
of Peter.” (February 11, 1979)
“You
priests, whom I am now gathering into my Movement to check this
advance of Satan, you must, with the Pope, form a strong barrier. You
must propagate his word; you must defend him, because he will have to
carry the cross in the midst of the greatest storm in history.”
(August 28, 1973)
“Unite
yourself, through love and prayer, with all the priests of my
Movement, whom I myself am bringing to an ever greater love for the
Pope and for the Church united with him. You must support him with
prayer, with you love and with your fidelity. You must follow him,
carrying out to perfection whatever he determines for the good of the
Church. In this, be a good example to all.” (October 17, 1978)
F) The
neglect towards the Eucharist (we are still quoting Fr. Gobbi)
Unfortunately,
the Year of the Eucharist did not bring to the Church a new
blossoming of love, of adoration and of reparation to the Eucharistic
Jesus. This, therefore, is the task that the Blessed Mother now
entrusts to the Marian Movement of Priests, because the
Eucharistic Jesus alone must he the heart and the center
of our new evangelization.
On
August 21, 1987, the Blessed Mother said: "I ask that there be
once again a return to the practice of making everywhere hours of
adoration before Jesus, exposed in the Most Holy Sacrament desire
that there be un increase in the homage of love towards the Eucharist
and that this become manifest also through evident but most
expressive signs of your piety. Surround the Eucharistic Jesus with
flowers and with lights; encircle Him with delicate attention; draw
close to Him with profound acts of genuflection and of adoration.”
(August 21, 1987)
G)
Religious sincretism
In
the face of the subtle and dangerous snare of a religious globalism
which tends to make all religions equal, in these times the
Church must proclaim to all the world,
with the courage and the strength of her witness, to the point
ot'shedding blood, that which St. Peter announced before the
Sanhedrin: “For of all the names in the uorid given to men, this is
the only one [Jesus Christ] by which we can he saved. " (cf.
Acts 4:12)
He
alone is our Redeemer. He alone is our Savior. Jesus Christ is the
First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the
Omega, the luminous Morning Star, who leads us to live the new day of
his glorious return.
With
the greatest love and the most complete fidelity, let us all follow
Pope Benedict XVI who was given to the Church of' these times, not
only by the Holy Spirit but also through the suffering and the prayer
of our most beloved John Paul II, who today is following and blessing
us from Heaven.
He
[Pope Benedict XVI] who has seen tie Church "like a boat about
to sink, a boat taking in water on every side... '' (Station 9 of the
Way of the Cross, Good Friday 2005) has been placed at the helm so
that, in the tempestuous seas of these times, he can guide Her [the
Church] with firmness to the secure port of the encounter with Jesus,
Her Founder and Lord.
The
"sleepwalker"
He
walks and walks, but he knows not where. He walks endlessly, in every
direction. but with no destination, because he is going nowhere. His
soul is in a kind of prison, the prison of the trance. Satan has
imprisoned his spirit like a bird in a cage. Our Blessed Mother says:
"Why are so many of you again sleeping today?” (March 7, 1976)
"Even
those who should he a light for others have been deceived and seduced
by Satan and are now nothing more than shadows walking in the
darkness." (July 24, 1974)
The
“mad search for pleasure” (June 11, 1994), has become so
obsessive and utterly consuming, that it is necessarily accompanied
by a lapse of memory about the existence of God. Materialism leads to
atheism. It is a form of atheism - the "atheism of amnesia".
of the forgetfulness of God. "Men have forgotten God"
(October 29, 1974), Mary said.
And
what is the consequence of this sleepy unconsciousness to God? This
is the consequence, as the Gospel tells us: "Blessed are those
whom the master finds awake when he returns" (Luke 12: 37), and
one might add, "and cursed are those whom the master finds
asleep"! Is not this sleepwalker's trance to be identified
precisely with the "drowsiness" of the "sleeping
bridesmaids" of the Gospel, who were too late, who found
themselves locked out of the wedding hall, only to hear, "Amen I
say to you, I do not know you." (Mt. 25:12)?
Then,
in the parable of the "narrow door", the sleepy latecomers
experience a similar fate when they knock on the door, hearing those
frightful words, "I do not know where you come from. Go away
from me, all you evildoers!" (Luke 13:27)
And
with regard to those sleeping priests, who have sold out to the
world, Our Lady says of them, "They have become walking corpses,
whitewrashed tombs." (March 10, 1977)
Age of
confusion
The
world has witnessed the "Age of Reason", and the "Age
of Enlightenment". And now it has arrived at - the "Age of
Confusion".
It is
because of this pervasive deception, falsehood and illusion that our
modern era can be described as the "Age of Confusion". It
possesses a darkness which is deeper than that of the "Dark
Ages" because the light of truth has been lost sight of, and
there is no deeper darkness than the loss of truth.
Our
Blessed Mother says: "How many there are who are lost each day,
swept along by this widespread and dangerous confusion.” (June 30,
1982)
"Those
who only yesterday were good and generous souls, swept away by the
general confusion, become timorous. insecure and as though
paralyzed." (December 28, 1973)
One
of the effects of this confusion is futility, Confusion leads to an
uncertainty about everything, in particular, about the meaning and
purpose of life. Where the faith is lost sight of in the fog of
confusion, hope dissipates into hopelessness. And so, for many, life
can then seem useless, leading nowhere, and of questionable value,
futile.
John
Bunyan's famous Puritan book, "Pilgrim's Progress", written
in 1678, tells the story of Christian's journey to the Celestial
City. As the good-willed Christian made his way along the road, he
encountered numerous dangers and ordeals. One day he found himself
unavoidably having to pass through the wicked city of Vanity Fair. It
was not long before his presence in the town market square caused an
uproar. This resulted in his being put in irons and chains and locked
in a cage!
The
charge? - his ways and beliefs were seen as contrary to those of the
townspeople of Vanity Fair. Therefore, indictments were brought
against him for "speaking things which ought not to he spoke",
and for the "disloyal notions" of his "principles of
faith", which had caused such "commotions and divisions"
in the city.
Accordingly,
he was condemned for treason, and incriminated as an "enemy and
disturber", a "lunatic and madman"!
On
our earthly sojourn to the Celestial city, we too find ourselves
having entered the unholy precincts of Vanity Fair. Our Lady tells
us:
“These
times of yours are wicked times, because the hearts of men have
become wicked, closed, cold, hard.” (October 13, 1992)
“My
Adversary has succeeded in transforming the world into the city of
Babylon, perverse and sinful.” (October 13, 1987)
Father
Francis Geremia, C.S.
- - - - - - -
An Experience of Life:
I always
thought it would be a great value that people live together and that
human diversity might be a source of great humanity for the world.
This was the strong feeling that I was carrying in my heart, but I
could not succeed in living it concretely in my city of Paris.
Thank God I
met a Christian community that proposed to me to live the Gospel. I
proposed to live that extraordinary dream that was confusedly in my
heart and to live it in an ordinary life. No need to go halfway
around the world. The poor were there at my door, at the gates of
Paris.
What a
discovery! Elderly people living alone at home waiting for a visit,
homeless people in the center of Paris next to the cathedral of Notre
-Dame who just need love, recognition, embodied in the encounter on
the street where they live. Children and young people in the suburbs,
lost at the foot of the towers, who found hope through schools of
peace in which they learn to live together in peace and solidarity.
I've learned
to live concretely the love for others, especially for the poor, as
if they were my family, through common prayer, the daily encounter
with the Word of God and authentic and true friendship.
What a joy to
be able to live this reality, to discover that it is possible to live
together humanly and spiritually in the great secularized Paris.
Prayer, the poor, peace: behold what changes the world. Yes, the
world can change! You can live the extraordinariness of the Gospel in
the ordinariness of Life.
Father Joseph Dwight
