Chapter Twenty
WHO WILL DO IT?
The requests of Their Hearts are so simple to fulfill, and the rewards are so great! Yet who will persuade the world to respond?
Heaven itself has told us. The answer MUST come from the laity. "The clergy are too few," Our Lady said in Amsterdam. "Mobilize the laity."
It was only when the laity acted, after two hundred years of disaster for France and the world, that the requests of the Sacred Heart began to be heard.
Mandate of the Vatican Council
This is not a reflection on the clergy. It is, according to the second Vatican Council, God's Will in our time as expressed in the Vatican documents and in the Pope's 181-page apostolic exhortation Christifideles Laici, which cries out: "You, too, go into My vineyard!"
Often spontaneously, through the power and light of the Holy Spirit, the laity are responding to that cry in ever-increasing numbers.
Following are some examples of lay involvement in the life of the Church today. What is said in a paragraph might fill a book.
We ask the reader to inquire after each paragraph: Are the Sacred Hearts asking too much of me ?
Anatol Kazczuk was a prisoner in Russia for a year. Just before he expected to be executed, an officer to whom he had spoken of God arranged to set him free. He risked his life to return to Poland where he founded the Blue Army and the Legion of Mary. Subsequently, through a Rosary crusade, he opened the door of Poland for the Pope's first visit.
He Made the Sacrifice
Like many apostles, and like almost all the beatified or canonized lay saints, Anatol wanted to give himself entirely to God when he escaped from the Russian prison camp. He became a Dominican novice in Great Britain. When he learned of the Legion of Mary, he thought: "Oh, how Poland needs this apostolate!" Although he trembled to think of going back behind the Iron Curtain, he made the sacrifice. The rest is history.
If we began to give examples of Lay Apostles around the world, this book would not be large enough. Some lay persons, like Anatol in Poland, and Howard Dee in the Philippines, have had a major impact in their nations which has rippled through the world. We have many examples in the United States of almost heroic proportions.
Maureen Flynn, while a mother of two little children, began to help in a pro-life clinic. When she had no money and needed space, she prayed that, if God wanted her apostolate, He would help. Almost at once, large offices in a new building were offered to her free.
Maureen and her husband, while raising their own large family, developed one of the biggest pro-life centers in America. They came to realize that "ultimate victory depends upon prayer." Today, she and her husband run one of the most successful apostolates in America, with publications (magazine Signs of the Times) and videos (Maxkol Productions).
Lay Saints
One of the greatest examples of lay involvement in the life of the church is Blessed Anne Marie Taigi, the amazing mother of seven who was beatified as "the model for young women and mothers." Soon also, we may expect the beatification of the parents of St. Therese, Louis and Zelie Martin, of whom St. Therese said: "I have parents more worthy of Heaven than of earth."
Half a dozen lay apostles have recently been raised to the altars. Yet most laypersons continue to feel that holiness is to be sought only in religious life or the priesthood. They do not see themselves as called to be "apostles," in the lay state, to assist in God's final effort to wrest mankind from Satan's reign.
Jan Connell, author of five books, is a lawyer, a mother, and a grandmother. She has become one of the major lay apostles of our time having founded several of the US Centers for Peace. An apparition at Fatima of Blessed Franciso early in her married life opened her to the supernatural.
Has the reader felt perhaps like St. Margaret Mary: "But I am nobody. Jesus, You make a mistake to count on me!"?
Sometimes God works a wonder to convince us. Sometimes just a sermon, a conversation, a video like that which led to the "conversion" of Kevin Morely, founder of the apostolate for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Australia. Or it could be a book like this one.
It was on a pilgrimage that Dr. Rosalie Turton experienced the urgency of the Fatima message and decided "to be in the front line of Our Lady's Army." She sold her house
and founded the very successful 101 Foundation with pilgrimages, books, videos, and a newsletter reaching tens of thousands.
Dr. Tom Petrisko
Dr. Tom Petrisko runs the Pittsburgh Center for Peace, and has published "newspapers" by the millions on the messages of Our Lady, and on the Eucharist. He has written six books and is actively on the cutting edge of today's spiritual warfare. He gave up a large practice to work as a full time lay apostle.
Likewise, Judge Daniel Lynch gave up his law practice to work full time for Christ the King, and for pro-life especially through Our Lady of Guadalupe. He likens the evil engulfing the world to black asphalt which seems to choke out the good. Like the Holy Father, he sees hope as more and more lay apostles are springing up "like dandelions pushing up through the asphalt." He himself is an inspiring example. Speaking all over America, he calls for the threefold response of consecration, reparation, and adoration.
A sure sign that this explosion of lay vitality is the work of the Holy Spirit is that they all are trying to shake the world with the same message: the response to the requests of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
One of the most amazing of these "lay apostles" (which indeed is what they are!) is Bud MacFarland Sr. with eleven children and thirty grandchildren and a major job in a large company. He began his apostolate with a little business card which said "Marian Speaker." He is today the most-in-demand lecturer on the Two Hearts in the country.
Going on NOW
With the exception of the saints mentioned above, these are all examples of people living at the dawn of the third millennium. Each of us might ask: "Are they people different from me? "
One of the most amazing stories is that of the foundress of Daughters of Zion. She had a dying husband, six children, a business with nine employees, and she herself became grievously ill. It would have seemed impossible that she could feel a calling to found a major apostolate, one which is now flourishing, and is welcomed by bishops wherever it spreads, producing untold good.
Lena Licata, a housewife and beautician in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, organized Rosary groups in homes for the elderly with amazing results. "We witness the power of this prayer," she testified. "A visitor to one of these Rosary groups was healed of cancer. Can we imagine what healing is being obtained for souls?"
We could list dozens who have become involved in the Lay Apostolate Foundation, like Bob and Celeste Behling. Age and limitations of time seem to make no difference.
Produced TV Programs
Julia Ceravolo, who for years had taught CCD classes and had lived the totus tuus consecration, applied to the local cable company for time on TV, after hearing a Protestant evangelical deny Our Lady. She proceeded to produce a whole series of programs, most of which appeared on EWTN. She says: "Daily communicants, living their consecration to Our Lady, can do anything."
Theresa Gleason, who founded an apostolate for nurses, points out that an apostolate can be a part of your present vocation.
Tom Fahy is now a full-time apostle as postulator of the cause of Luisa Picaretta. He is a leader in the apostolate of the Divine Will, which is of MAJOR importance.
Bud MacFarland's son, Bud MacFarland Jr., made a few copies of a tape of one of his father's talks on the apparitions of Our Lady. He began to get requests for more copies. He gave them away free. Soon, he was making them by the hundred. Offerings came in. When he decided to quit his job and produce audio tapes on Our Lady's messages, his father reminded him of the need to support his family. But so much good was being accomplished that, trusting in God, he quit his job and launched what is now the largest Catholic tape apostolate in the world. He also launched CatholiCity, a popular Web site with 100,000 "hits" annually on the Internet.
Bud gives space to other apostolates. Dan Lyons gives away a 1,000 rosaries a month through this website, and promotes the youth magazine Hearts Aflame. The Internet offers opportunities to thousands for apostleship from their own homes. Many also use e-mail. Others use faxes. Perhaps most useful of all are copying machines, making letter size sheets cheaper than the cost of mailing them. Many duplicate leaflets. Sheets for names to place in Our Lady's Heart are multiplied in this way by name-gatherers.
Vigil Apostles and Vox Populi
One of the most timely movements is sponsored by the Missionary Brothers of the Alliance of the Two Hearts. They enlist and train laity in the door-to-door enthronement of the Sacred Hearts in the home and in the conduct of the First Friday/Saturday vigils. They will go anywhere to help start a vigil. They can be contacted at PO Box 357, Dover, Delaware, 19903.
Another major apostolate now involving thousands of lay apostles is Vox Populi, the worldwide campaign to petition the dogma requested by Our Lady of All Nations. In a meeting with the Pope, on July 31, 1999, its founder and director, Dr. Mark Miravalle, S.T.D., was able to give the Holy Father an update of over 550 Bishops, 42 Cardinals, and nearly six million petitions from over 70 countries.
Obviously, this is too important to pass over in a few words. In the Church approved apparitions at Amsterdam, Our Lady said that the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart would begin with the proclamation of this dogma. It is explained at length in my book Now the Woman Shall Conquer.
Millions of Hearts in the Scales of Justice!
Mrs. Helen Bergkamp, of Wichita, Kansas, on a visit to Ars, France, in the company of her late husband, was inspired on seeing a statue of Our Lady on which St. John Vianney had placed a locket over Our Lady's Heart in which he placed the names of all his parishioners.
Her brother is the Bishop of Wichita, and the thought came to her: "Oh, if only all the parish priests of the world could place their parishioners in Our Lady's Heart!" So, she had a large statue made with a recess inside the heart to receive computer discs. She sent the statue to Fatima to be enshrined in the Queen of the World center at the Fatima Castle. Now there is a movement throughout the world to place fifty million names in Our Lady's Heart. A million were pledged from the Philippines alone.
(Editors note: to place your name in the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the Fatima Castle email a list of names to: immaculateheart@101foundation.com. (please list one name per line.) Or submit names online at www.101foundation.com.)
These names will join the millions who have signed the petition for dogma mentioned above which, like the collegial consecration of 1984, will be the sign of a great victory in God's final effort to wrest mankind from the reign of Satan.
Perhaps the Sacred Hearts do not call all lay persons to such degrees of apostleship. But do they not call us all at least to ask our neighbors to place their names in Our Lady's Heart, to be offered to the Sacred Heart of Her Son?
Now, God's final effort, begun in 1673, after more than three hundred years, presents the alternative of "annihilation of several entire nations." And the laity are beginning to realize that the effort must become theirs.
This and other books by John M. Haffert
God's
Final Effort | Too Late? | The Day I Didn't Die