Chapter Twelve
A MESSAGE OF LOVE
When we think of all the suffering that befell France during the 200 years following the refusal of the King of France to fulfill the simple requests in return for which Jesus promised "My protection " and "Victory over all your enemies," we might tend to think that it was all a "punishment " of God for the failure to respond.
The truth is quite, quite different.
The sufferings could have been prevented. Devotion to the Sacred Heart could have turned that nation, then very Catholic, from the degeneration which climaxed in the French revolution. The world could have avoided two hundred years of wars and bitter persecution of religion culminating in the atheist revolution in Russia, which was the evil spawn of the French revolt.
Are we now surprised when Sister Lucia said, in the historic 1993 interview, that all the wars since 1917 could have been prevented if we had responded to Our Lord's desire "To place devotion to the Immaculate Heart of My Mother alongside devotion to My Own Sacred Heart?"
Our sins have brought all this suffering into the world. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are shown to us now to draw us from sin. Our acts of consecration are just that: a renunciation of what would displease Their Hearts.
And there is a special reason why devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is now required by God to draw men from the reign of Satan. This devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is now necessary.
The world has so degenerated since rejection of the appeal of the Sacred Heart in 1673 that now we are told at Fatima: "Only She (the Immaculate Heart) can help you."
"Only She Can Help You"
Again the meaning of these words is quite different from what it first appears. The meaning is that we have gone so far from God, so far from the offered treasures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that we seem no longer capable of turning away from our sins and God sends "the Mother" to help us. It is as though the saving treasures are on a table, and we are starving on the floor too weak to reach them.
The greatest of those saving treasures is the Eucharist. We can reach up through the Sacrament of reconciliation but not enough of us seem to have the light and strength to do so.
Our Lady reaches down the cords of Her Scapular and the chain of Her Rosary to lift us up. At the same time, She makes great promises for individuals and for the world to induce us.
In a word, although we deserve God's chastisement, as Blessed Jacinta of Fatima explained: In His Mercy, He has entrusted the peace of the world to Her. And in fulfillment of that mission, She comes with simple requests which even children can fulfill. Little things! Great rewards!
History Cries Out to Us
At our Lay Saints Retreat in July 1999, we heard a talk by a teacher of history (Sister Margaret Mary, of the Sisters of the Holy Trinity), who explained with great earnestness the need to heed the requests of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. She concluded by saying that in all her study of history she saw no reference to such events as Paray le Monial and Fatima but, in these events of the Two Hearts, all this history is explained.
That is a truth at once revealing and frightening. It reveals God's intervention in the affairs of nations. It also reveals an almost universal rejection of this Divine intervention-this final effort of His constant Love to deliver us from "degeneration, disaster, and war."
In His great Love, after revealing His flaming Heart when we were first getting into great danger, He now sends "the Mother" to promise us, if we will but turn to Him, that we shall have a triumph of love, an "era of peace for mankind."
He points to the Heart of His Mother in the Fatima intervention and says: "Behold the Heart of your Mother..." And She says: "Behold the Heart of your Saviour. The treasures of His Heart have long been open and I come to help you obtain them."28
Why Are These Treasures Rejected?
St. Margaret Mary says Jesus revealed His Heart that men "might be enriched with the abundance and profusion of those Divine treasures of which this Heart is the source... He revealed to me the unspeakable marvels of His pure love, and the excess of love He had conceived for men... He assured me that the pleasure He takes in being loved, known, and honored by His creatures is so great that He promises that no one dedicated and consecrated to Him will ever perish."
In another place, the Saint adds: "His eager desire of imparting graces of sanctification and salvation to well-disposed hearts causes Him to wish to be known, adored, and glorified by His creatures."
Father Verheylezoon remarks: "In this desire of Our Lord, there is no shadow of egoism. He wishes to be loved to induce us to love GOD His Father and to pour upon the world the riches of His Love."
God sent His only Son into the world to reveal that He is Love. He said the night before His Heart was pierced on a cross: "When you see Me, you see the Father." He shows us a Heart flaming with Love to remind us prodigal children that there is nothing that Love will not forgive, and that His Love longs to save us from degeneration, disaster, and the atomic war which will wipe out much of humanity.
What Hope?
The specialty of the history teacher quoted above was the history of the 20th century. Immersion in this history for some forty years must have caused constant wonder that there was never a mention by the writers of history books of the intervention of God at Paray le Monial, which so affected the history of France, or at Fatima, which has so affected the entire world.
There was no mention in history of the two events which explain it.
What hope do we have of focusing attention on these interventions of God when they are so universally ignored and, when not ignored, rejected?
Despite the great miracle of Oct. 13, 1917, despite the great sign of 1938, and despite the sign of Russia's change in the wake of the collegial consecration of 1984, why do we continue to ignore the loving requests of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary?
One of the reasons is that too few of the laity realize that they must be involved.
This and other books by John M. Haffert
God's
Final Effort | Too Late? | The Day I Didn't Die