Chapter Nineteen
THE CROSS AND THE TWO HEARTS
Following the inspiration on the day of Bl. Padre Pio's beatification, we have looked at the message of Fatima in the context of history, focusing specifically on the history of the messages of the Two Hearts.
As was said by the teacher of history quoted earlier, we find nothing of those messages in our history books, but all our recent history is explained by them.
The remaining big question is: What are we going to do? More specifically: What will ordinary lay Catholics do when they come to the realization that it is up to them to take the initiative?
The Two Hearts Medal
Before coming to that most important question, there is one last look we should take at the history of the Two Hearts.
Louis XVI went to the guillotine in 1789, just one hundred years after the requests of the Sacred Heart. Now Paris was to become the hatchery of a world atheistic revolution, and, in 1824, Our Lady appeared there on Ferry Street (Rue du Bac). She asked that a medal be struck with an image of the Two Hearts surmounted by a cross and surrounded by twelve stars. It came to be known as the miraculous medal.
Perhaps we may come to call it the Two Hearts medal.
The opposite side shows Our Lady dispensing rays of graces upon the world. Around Her are the words: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you." Beneath Her heel, She crushes the head of a serpent.
Dogma of the Two Hearts
The message of the Two Hearts began to glimmer in the 13th century and was growing brighter and brighter at the time of St. John Eudes and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Finally, it began to shed its great light of hope at Fatima and in the revelations of Our Lady of All Nations in Amsterdam (which, after more than 50 years, were approved on May 31, 1996).
Our Lady appeared in Amsterdam as She had in Paris, with Her hands extended, dispensing floods of grace upon the world. Represented on the globe as vast flocks of various colored sheep were the peoples of all nations. She asked us to pray that Our Lord would send NOW His Holy Spirit over the earth. She said that when the Church defined as a dogma that She is co-redemptrix and mediatrix, the triumph would take place.
That dogma could be called the dogma of the Two Hearts.
We said earlier that saints have spoken of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary as one. But they are not equal. One is human, the other Divine. Mary is the co-redemptrix, mediatrix, advocate. And when we understand those titles, we understand the relationship of the Two Hearts.
The Cross
A symbol of Their union is the Cross.
At Amsterdam, Our Lady appeared standing in front of the Cross. At Akita, appearing in the same manner, Our Lady spoke terrible words of warning, at this late hour, if the messages of the Sacred Hearts continue to be ignored.
Also, in the very first apparition to St. Margaret Mary, the Sacred Heart was surmounted by a cross: "The Divine Heart was shown to me as on a throne of flames, more dazzling than the sun and transparent as crystal, with that adorable wound and surrounded by a crown of thorns, signifying the pricks caused to It by our sins. Above, there was a cross, which meant that from the first moment of His Incarnation, that is, as soon as the Sacred Heart was formed, the cross was planted in It, and that It was filled at once with all the bitterness which humiliation and poverty, and pains and scorn, which His Sacred Humanity was to suffer throughout all His lifetime and in His Sacred Passion."
The Same Cross, the Same Love
When one gazes at this vision of the Sacred Heart and at the vision of the Immaculate Heart at Fatima, one seems to be gazing at the same Heart.
Our Lord said the cross was planted in His Heart from the moment of His Incarnation. In like manner, Our Lady has revealed that from that same moment of the Incarnation, illumined by the Holy Spirit that the Child just conceived would die on a cross, she began to feel the piercing sword seen by Simeon-a sword which plunged deeper and deeper with every passing day until Her heart was pierced through at the foot of the cross itself.
The more one looks at the cross, the more one understands the mystery of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary as the Hearts of the new Adam and the new Eve undoing the sin of our first parents.
But what we often fail to see is that WE are called to that cross where St. John the Evangelist represented us. We are called to share in co-redemption. The Sacred Hearts call to us to help make reparation for the sins of men.
We may shy away from this call as we would shy away from suffering, but that is a deceit of Satan. We are not asked to suffer any more than daily life demands. We are asked only to sanctify our daily doings. This is the basic request in the message of Fatima.
Chasm of Realization
What could be called "the extra" asked of us is to make the Communions of Reparation. They have greater reparatory power than all other acts of our entire lives.
Our first call to the foot of the cross is to Holy Mass, consummated in us in Holy Communion. Unfortunately, most believe this but few realize it.
Bl. Padre Pio said the value of the Mass is beyond our imagining. And perhaps the greatest blessing of this stigmatic priest to our age is that he SHOWED this in his wounds and as he actually suffered in pronouncing the words of consecration.
But even the average good person has difficulty in crossing the chasm of "realization," the chasm between seeing and really believing.
We may cross it at special moments-special moments of illumination or special moments of spiritual "contact," such as touching the rock on which Our Lady stood at Lourdes, or coming out of the baths of Lourdes and being suddenly dry.
But, we should be able to cross that chasm every time we pray, and especially in the miracle of every Mass and Communion.
Bl. Padre Pio's Wounds
Above, I mentioned that one of my personal special memories of Bl. Padre Pio concerned his wounds.
At first, I had difficulty accepting the miracle of his wounds. I saw the blood on his hands, but everything about him was so very human, so very natural. Even the fragrance from his wounds, and even the fragrance from the crucifix he had kissed, did not seem miraculous but just remarkable. There is a big chasm between belief and realization.
I crossed that chasm with Bl. Padre Pio in an extraordinary encounter.
I had no reason for being there. It was an almost unforgivable intrusion (although, may I say in my defense, not one altogether my fault).
With a man from San Giovanni, I was searching for Bl. Padre Pio and we were told he was "downstairs." So we went down to the cellar (which, if I remember rightly, had a packed dirt floor) and opened first one door, and then another. And there, looking up in surprise at the intrusion, Bl. Padre Pio was seated on a stool, and two friars were bathing the wounds on his feet.
In that brief moment, several impressions swept over me.
First, there was the humility of Bl. Padre Pio and the reverence of the friars, his brothers in the monastery. It was reverence for the mystery-for the bleeding wounds of Jesus which they were bathing.
Bl. Padre Pio's own fellow friars, the priests living with him day after day in the same community, could not be mistaken. Their reverence for Bl. Padre Pio as a "living crucifix" became my moment of realization.
And I recalled that Bl. Padre Pio seemed to suffer from the moment he left the sanctuary to go to the altar to celebrate Mass. I remembered he once said, as though reading my mind as I saw this: "But do you think these wounds are decorations?"
God gave us Bl. Padre Pio to SHOW us the identity of the Mass with Calvary-that the very moment of Jesus dying on the cross becomes present to us. We are privileged to stand with Our Lady at the foot of that cross and offer the infinite merits of the sacrifice in union with Her Immaculate Heart and then to join in its consummation in the great wonder of Holy Communion.
Their Hearts ask a Communion of Reparation only twice a month. And, They promise that if enough Communions of Reparation are made, the reign of Satan will be brought to an end.
Shared Reparation
As explained in more detail in my book NOW the Woman Shall Conquer, the primary message both in Amsterdam and in Akita is that we are to share in the sufferings of the cross.
This was shown by a bleeding wound which appeared on the statue in Akita and on the hand of the nun to whom Our Lady appeared. And in Amsterdam, when Our Lady would move slightly from the front of the cross, the visionary was struck with pain shared from the cross.
As was said above: Do not be frightened. We are not asked to add to our sufferings. We are asked only to accept and to sanctify them.
This is the very heart of the message of Fatima. "Will you be WILLING," was the first question Our Lady put to the children, "to accept whatever God will send you and to offer it up in reparation for sin and for the conversion of sinners ?"
It took nothing more than a simple "Yes," and immediately, the children were bathed in light from Our Lady's Heart, causing them to "feel lost in God."
Oh, how much suffering is wasted! How much each of us, each day, wastes the precious gold of offering up even small disappointments, contradictions, even inconvenience which, if offered to Their Hearts becomes as tons of gold for the ransom of souls.
If only more persons realized the power of the Morning Offering!-offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in union with the Immaculate Heart of our Mother, all God asks of us in our few waking hours-in reparation for our sins and the sins of the world.
That simple practice, made so easy by Our Lady's gifts of Scapular and Rosary, can make saints and change the world.
This and other books by John M. Haffert
God's
Final Effort | Too Late? | The Day I Didn't Die