Chapter Fifteen
THE PRODIGAL'S HOUR OF REDEMPTION
Gazing at that final vision of Fatima, at the pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary, we are gazing at co-redemption. That image cries out to us. Our Lady points to Her thorn-pierced heart, pleading with Her children to join Her in offering the passion of Jesus to the Father.
She said at Akita: "So far I have prevented the coming of calamities by offering to the Father the sufferings of the Son on the cross, His Precious Blood, and beloved souls who console Him..."
When St. Paul says that we make up "for what is lacking in the suffering of Christ," he affirms this mission of co-redemption. Our Lady said at Fatima: "Many souls are lost because there is no one to pray and to make sacrifice for them."
Many souls are lost, and the reign of Satan continues because we have failed to respond to this final appeal of love from the pierced Heart of Jesus, pouring His Life out to us in the Eucharist, repeated at Fatima by His Mother.
We begin our response with an act of consecration. We complete it with living our morning offering (aided by Rosary and Scapular) and by First Friday/Saturday vigils.
No Greater Love
In the fourth apparition to St. Margaret Mary (called the "great" apparition), Our Lord said: "You could not show Me greater love than by doing what I have already demanded of you..."
Then Jesus did for St. Margaret what Our Lady did for the children of Fatima, when they said they would be willing to do whatever she asked. He showed her His Heart. And He said:
"Behold this Heart which has so loved men that It spared nothing, even going so far as to exhaust and consume Itself to prove to them It's love. And in return, I receive from the greater part of men nothing but ingratitude, by the contempt, irreverence, sacrileges, and coldness with which they treat Me in this Sacrament of Love. But what is still more painful to Me is that even souls consecrated to Me are acting in this way."
And what Our Lord says of His Sacred Heart, He applies almost word for word, as we shall show shortly, to the Immaculate Heart of His Mother.
If His Heart is pierced with the thorns of ingratitude, and especially by the contempt, irreverence, sacrilege, and coldness with which they treat Him in His Sacrament of Love, so is the Immaculate Heart of Mary who said at Pellevoisin: "What MOST offends my Immaculate Heart are careless Communions."
Is the Heart of Jesus, anxious for so many souls away from God, no longer able to contain It's flames of love? So is the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Now Is the Critical Hour
And now is the critical hour. More than a billion souls are so far from God that they are no longer even cognizant of their Heavenly Father's House which either they themselves abandoned, or their ancestors abandoned before them. And they face the alternative of nuclear self-destruction if they do not awaken to their plight.
Is it any wonder that, in addition to revealing to us the pleading Hearts of Jesus and Mary, the Father Himself adds His voice at this last hour, calling to His prodigal children?
Will they remain unaware of the desperation of their plight? Will they remain unaware that they need no longer eat the husks of despair? Is there some way to make them know that love and safety waits them in their Father's House?
There is a way.
And there is new hope that it will now succeed.
In the "greatest darkness before the dawn" of this third day of Fatima, the prodigal children of the world, having wasted their spiritual inheritance in riotous living, are reduced to eating the fodder of pigs. It is the moment of mercy, the moment of awakening.
Hour of Hope
Even while saying that the Fatima message is important because it gives the "specific response" needed to meet the alternative of man's self destruction, the Pope said in the millennial encyclical that he felt called to lead the Church into the new millennium "In the hope of the definitive coming of the Kingdom!"
Why, in this dark hour of almost worldwide violence, abortion, godlessness, and ever present nuclear weapons, does the Pope feel called to speak of "Crossing the threshold of HOPE?"
This is that day when the prodigal son, facing the alternative of self-destruction, may realize his plight and return to His Father's House. And it is likely that we shall see the first evidence of this in Russia.
Who will bring it about?
The same few chosen by God to have brought about the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990 with the Fatima pledge.
Unrecognized Sign
Jesus said that it was "so my entire Church will know" that the change in Russia was brought about through the Immaculate Heart of His Mother (the Fatima event), that He insisted it would take place only when all the bishops of the world made the collegial consecration. On having received this great sign they were to place devotion to the Immaculate Heart of His Mother "alongside devotion to My Own Sacred Heart."
That act by the Pope and all the bishops of the world was a sine qua non condition for dissolution of the Soviet Union, so that NOW, following that change in Russia, the entire Church would look to the Heart of Jesus next to the Heart of His Mother.
Bl. Padre Pio had said the change in Russia would come "when there is a Blue Army member for every Communist." It would come (which is equivalent to saying the collegial consecration would take place) only when a sufficient number were fulfilling the basic requests of Our Lady contained in the Fatima pledge.
It happened. But do we, and do the bishops of the world, fully appreciate what has happened, and what brought it about?
A Great Sign
The collegial consecration took place on March 25, 1984. And the following May 13, the day of the first apparition of Fatima, a massive explosion in Russia destroyed two thirds of the weapons of the Soviet northern fleet stockpiled at Sveremosk.
Due to Communist secrecy, the news did not leak out for several weeks. The first release by United Press International was on July 11. It quoted Jane's Defense Weekly, a well known civilian intelligence agency in London which reports on world armaments.
Two key Soviet leaders died shortly afterwards. There followed a dramatic change in Soviet leadership with the rise of Gorbachev.
By December of 1984, U.S. intelligence was aware that a radical change had taken place in Russia. An agent, who had been monitoring Russian broadcasts for more than thirty years, said that he could not believe what he was hearing as he listened to Soviet radio at that time-only eight months after the collegial consecration.
Pope Speaks of it as a Miracle
Was this not as great a sign from God as the "great sign" of the apparent fire over Europe in 1938?
In the fall of 1993, when the Pope visited the Baltic countries and spoke for the first time in ex-Soviet territory, he said that in the collapse of atheistic Marxism, one can see "the finger of God." He alluded to a "mystery," and even "A MIRACLE," when speaking of the collapse, after seventy years, of a power that seemed as if it would be around for centuries.30
But most of the world has failed to recognize this great sign of God's intervention. Most of the world ignores even what a great intervention it was.
Most political experts never thought the Soviet Union would end as it did. It was logical to expect that the Soviet leaders, when the people of Russia rejected failed Communist doctrine, would save themselves and Russia by launching a nuclear attack on the West.
This is certainly what they planned when Kruschev pounded the table at the U.N., and said, "We will bury you!"
But just after that event, on October 13, the anniversary of the miracle of Fatima, a super bomb (which the Russians had just developed) exploded, killing most of Russia's top nuclear experts.
And if that were not "sign" enough, as we said above, it was on May 13, 1984 that the devasting explosion took place at Sveremosk, only six weeks after the collegial consecration.
Nuclear War Postponed
Is it a surprise that Jane's Weekly, quoted above, said that a nuclear war would probably have taken place in 1985? Or that Sister Lucia, who knew nothing of that report, said in the October 1993 interview: "There would have been a nuclear war in 1985."
And who prevented it? Who brought us to the moment of mercy, the moment when the Holy Father and all the bishops of the world finally responded to the request of Our Lord concerning His Heart and the Heart of His Mother?
Our Lady told us at Akita. She said that so far She has been able to hold back the chastisement in two ways:
1) By offering the Passion of her Son to the Father (being intensely now the mediatrix and co-redemptrix at the foot of the Cross);
2) By the cooperation of a few generous souls.
As you read these words do you feel they are meant for you? Or, do you just take it for granted that you are too unqualified?
For "Little" People
When St. Margaret Mary was asked by Jesus to make known a message by which He intended to withdraw men from the reign of Satan and to put an end to that reign, she asked:
"But, O Lord, to whom do You address Yourself? To so frail a creature and poor sinner, whose unworthiness might even be capable of preventing the accomplishment of Your designs? You have so many generous souls to carry out Your designs."
"Ah, poor innocent," Jesus replied, "do you not know that I employ those who are weak to confound those who are strong, and that it is usually the poor in spirit to whom I show My power with more splendor, so that they may not ascribe anything to themselves?"
When we get to Heaven, we will be surprised to see how many "unqualified" persons made up that army of spiritual response which finally obtained for us the collegial consecration and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And they inspired many wonderful priests and bishops to act.
After Jesus insisted that He had chosen St. Margaret Mary, she asked Our Lord to give her the means to carry out His wishes. Our Lord then told her the instrument he had chosen:
"Address yourself to My servant, Fr. Claude de la Colombiere, and tell him from Me to establish this devotion to the best of his ability..."
We repeat these words of Jesus here for two reasons:
1) Most lay persons feel they are inadequate, like St. Margaret Mary;
2) St. Claude de la Colombiere, who was chosen for this mission, had another mission very relevant to the Two Hearts.
In a moment we will speak of the role of the laity. Here, in the light of that "other mission" of St. Claude, we must say a special word about the answer given by Sister Lucia when she was asked why Our Lady held the Scapular in the final vision of Fatima. She said: "It is because, as Pope Pius XII said, it is the sign of consecration to Her Immaculate Heart. She wants everyone to wear it."
It is an important part of the response.
This and other books by John M. Haffert
God's
Final Effort | Too Late? | The Day I Didn't Die