Author: Essy Dias

14. Night has fallen upon the world

August 28, 1973

“Night has now fallen upon the world, my son: this is the time of darkness, Satan’s hour; this is the time of his greatest triumph.

How I have accepted with great appreciation your prayer and your suffering offered in reparation for the great outrage, the most horrible blasphemy that has been directed against my Son….Neither during his public life, nor during his trial and the horrible carrying out of its sentence was my son Jesus ever so denigrated.Even before the Sanhedrin no accusers were found, so limpid and pure had his whole life been.

But . now they are attempting to attack his purity, they are spreading such a horrible and satanic blasphemy that all Heaven is, as it were, dismayed and incredulous! How is it possible that they could have reached such a point? What a tremendous and now Inevitable storm is about to break upon poor humanity!

The Pope suffers and prays: he is on a cross which is consuming and killing him. This time he has again spoken but his voice falls on a desert. My Church has become more barren than a desert.

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. Yours is the duty to defend the honour of my Son which is being trampled upon: with your life, with your words, with your blood. Yours is the duty to judge and to condemn the world, because more than ever this world is in the power of the Evil One. (…)

Some Thoughts:

There are some who don’t believe in sin or the devil, but somehow proclaim belief in Jesus. The thing is that if sin didn’t exist, then Jesus’ great sacrifice on the Cross was for nothing. He didn’t die so that we could all be tolerant and ‘loving’. He died to take away our sin… so that we could become holy and become united to God the Father with Him.  Many in the hierarchy of the church do a great dis-service to the Body of Christ, by preaching a watered down, fake gospel that although may be more appealing to the worldly, it fails to feed them. Love and Truth don’t always appear very loving to a decaying world.

A parent who screams out to their small child as they release their hand and run off to cross the street by themselves, does not sound very loving at that moment. The child may even cry and throw a tantrum. But honestly, would it be more loving to let the child go? This may seem ridiculous to us, but we fail to apply the same principles to what is happening in the world around us. We fail to speak up in the name of ‘love’ although the one we love the most is likely our selves and our own reputation. We want to be loved at all costs. By doing this we are succumbing to the ‘world’s ways’ instead of battling against it and working to expand the Kingdom of God.

A hard battle. . . (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man’s situation and activity in the world. By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails “captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil”.²⁹⁸ Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action²⁹⁹ and morals.

408 The consequences of original sin and of all men’s personal sins put the world as a whole in the sinful condition aptly described in St. John’s expression, “the sin of the world”.³⁰⁰ This expression can also refer to the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social structures that are the fruit of men’s sins.³⁰¹

409 This dramatic situation of “the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one”³⁰² makes man’s life a battle:

The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.³⁰³

13. The great goal of sanctity

August 24, 1973

“Your life is so precious, son, that you must not waste it even for an instant. Therefore train yourself to remain in Me, in my Heart, and to always act with Me: to think with my mind, to see things with my eyes, to touch them with my hands, and to love them with my Heart.

There are moments when you are particularly aware of this, and this is when you are in prayer with Me: it is then that you feel that you are truly a child upon the Heart of its Mother and thus your soul tastes these moments of paradise, which I reserve jealously for my beloved sons. When you come from prayer, it seems that everything else becomes tiresome and boring. This is another gift which I am giving to you.

Even when you are not at prayer, you must always be in the attitude of prayer, and you truly are if you live habitually in Me. So then even when you are talking, or amusing yourself, or taking a trip, you always remain in Me, because you do everything with Me…

I want all the Priests of the Marian Movement of Priests to be like this. They must be: my Priests! I say it again: Mine! From the time that they are consecrated to my Immaculate Heart they can no longer belong to themselves. Their life, their soul, their mind, their heart, their possessions, even the wrong they have done and the defects they possess: all is mine, all belongs to Me. My Immaculate Heart is a furnace of most pure fire; it burns all, it consumes all, it transforms all.

Because these Priests are mine, they must become accustomed to letting themselves be guided by Me: with simplicity, with abandonment. My joy is that of leading them, as a Mother, to the great goal of sanctity. I want them to be fervent, I want them to have great love for my Son Jesus, I want them ever faithful to the Gospel.

They must be docile in my hands for the sake of the great plan of Mercy; and through them I will save an immense number of souls.They will be my joy, the most beautiful crown of my Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart which still wants to be the means of salvation for the Church and for humanity.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church (<–click on this heading to read more. It’s really worth your effort.)

2000 Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.

2001 The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, “since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it:”⁵⁰

Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing.⁵¹

12. Close to my Heart in prayer

August 21, 1973

Feast of Saint Pius X

“Why do you not write down everything that I make known to your heart? You tell Me that these things are too intimate, too beautiful. But some day it must be made known how much I have loved you, and what great things I have worked in you.
And this only because you have offered your nothingness totally to my Heart.…

Accustom yourself to being trampled on, to being put aside, to being neither understood nor esteemed. It is necessary that this happen to you! And when you feel an interior rebellion within yourself which causes you to say to yourself ‘Why? This is not right! I must claim my rights!’, answer immediately: ‘Get behind me, Satan! Will I not drink the chalice which the Father has prepared for me?'(…) I myself will come to the aid of your great weakness!

But as for you, remain at every instant close to my Heart in prayer. Let Me work ever more and more within you!“

Some Thoughts:

One of my favorite sayings is ‘pray and obey’. But living in a state of obedience is not an easy undertaking. It’s just not natural for the majority of us, we (speaking for myself mostly here) can be quite rebellious at times. Needing to watch for number one…our selves. This self protective stance can become a block in totally uniting our will with His. This is where Mary comes to our aide. She is always the first to tell us ‘do whatever he tells you’ and she shows us how.

One, Holy, Catholic, and Neuter  by FR. TIM MCCAULEY

The Marian mystery is one of humble, feminine receptivity to the grace of God and the love of Christ. It is modeled on Mary’s fiat in the Annunciation—”Let it be done to me according to your word”—followed by the Incarnation of Christ in the womb of Mary. All of us are first called to imitate this Marian fiat before receiving the grace of Peter’s boldness in proclaiming the Gospel. As the Latin legal maxim reminds us, Nemo dat quod non habet. “No one can give what he does not have.” Applying this phrase to the spiritual life, it is clear that no one can give to others what he has not first received from God. As Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “What do you have that you did not receive?”

Catechism of the Catholic Church:

773 In the Church this communion of men with God, in the “love [that] never ends,” is the purpose which governs everything in her that is a sacramental means, tied to this passing world.¹⁹² “[The Church’s] structure is totally ordered to the holiness of Christ’s members. And holiness is measured according to the ‘great mystery’ in which the Bride responds with the gift of love to the gift of the Bridegroom.”¹⁹³ Mary goes before us all in the holiness that is the Church’s mystery as “the bride without spot or wrinkle.”¹⁹⁴ This is why the “Marian” dimension of the Church precedes the “Petrine.“¹⁹⁵

10. It will be a new Church

August 1, 1973

“‘O my Jesus, give me your Heart because I want to love Our Lady as You have loved her.’ This is the prayer, my son, which I myself have inspired in you: no one in fact has ever loved Me as my Son Jesus.

With what tenderness He surrounded Me! He has always been within Me; we grew up together in his hidden life, and in his public life; we were as one during his Passion and his death on the Cross.The sight of the sorrow of his Mother who assisted Him in his atrocious agony shortened his life; more than his physical sufferings, his Heart-of-a-Son could not withstand this unspeakable agony. ‘Mother!’ was his last agonizing cry, the loud cry with which He expired on the Cross.

At this present time, Jesus is greatly saddened, even angered, at seeing how numerous those Priests are who have turned away from Me in their hearts, who have forgotten Me in their lives, who have blotted Me out in the souls of so many of the faithful. Through their fault, devotion to Me, always such a living thing in the Church, has now become greatly weakened; in some places it is practically dead.

They say that I-the Mother-cast a shadow on the glory and the honour which is due to my Son alone! My poor children, how senseless they are, how blind! How the Devil has known how to capture them! They have reached such blindness because they have listened neither to Jesus nor to Me.

They have allowed themselves to be led by themselves alone, by their intelligence, by their pride and thus they have allowed themselves to be made the sport of Satan, who was the one to succeed-at last-in obscuring my place in the Church and in obliterating me in souls!

I will again have to go about searching out from among Priests those who are faithful, those who listen to Me, those who love Me. Through them I will again shine more resplendently in the Church, after the great purification … The Mother has received from Jesus the power to bring back home the children who have gone astray.

But I have need of humble and courageous Priests: ready to let themselves be laughed at, ready to let themselves be trampled on for Me. It will be through these Priests, humble, laughed at and trampled on, that I will form the cohort that will make it possible for Me to bring to Jesus an innumerable number of children, now purified by the great tribulation.

My Thoughts:

We (all of us, priests and laity) are living in such times that to follow our Catholic faith fully, means to be mocked and accused …this is our cross to bear…do not brush it off so easily. God can bring good out of it, but we need to be willing to do our part. Seeking peace from the worldly at all costs is in fact attempting to avoid the cross. ‘Get behind me Satan’ should be our reply, like Jesus’ when He was put to the temptation. And we are all tempted at one time or another to worship the kingdom of this world with its apparent ease, and merriment. However all of that comes with a cost, all that is under Satan’s domain binds the soul to it and throws it into knots, while all who find freedom in Christ are free indeed. “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34-36).

So then if true freedom means freedom from sin, or ‘fullness of grace’.  Mary makes a greater partner for us on this journey towards freedom, which is what our whole entire life is about.

 
Prayer for Personal Troubles:
Mother of fair love, I look to you.
Take into your hands the ribbon of my life,
and see the snarl of knots that keeps me bound
to sin, anxiety, and hopelessness.
I beg you, Mother, by your powerful intercession
and long fingers of love and grace,
undo the knots in my heart and in my life.
Free me to love as Christ loves.
Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us.
 

I. MARY’S MOTHERHOOD WITH REGARD TO THE CHURCH (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

Wholly united with her Son . . .

964 Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”;⁵⁰⁴ it is made manifest above all at the hour of his Passion:

Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross. There she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of his suffering, joining herself with his sacrifice in her mother’s heart, and lovingly consenting to the immolation of this victim, born of her: to be given, by the same Christ Jesus dying on the cross, as a mother to his disciple, with these words: “Woman, behold your son.”⁵⁰⁵

965 After her Son’s Ascension, Mary “aided the beginnings of the Church by her prayers.”⁵⁰⁶ In her association with the apostles and several women, “we also see Mary by her prayers imploring the gift of the Spirit, who had already overshadowed her in the Annunciation.”⁵⁰⁷

9. The heart of my Priests

July 29, 1973
“Be ever in my Heart and, at each moment, you will find peace. Do not be worried about what you are to do!

One who has consecrated himself to Me belongs totally to Me. He cannot, at any moment of the day, decide freely what he is to do with himself. If you remain with Me, I myself will tell you at every moment what I would like you to do, and then whatever you do will always be according to my will. I myself will take you by the hand and together we shall do everything. With you, I am like a mother who is teaching its child to take its first steps.

Now that I have snatched you definitively away from my Enemy, you are now taking the first steps along the road of love: how necessary it is that I stay with you! I am so very much a Mother for you; I am also very jealous of you, just as I am a good but jealous Mother for all the Priests of my Movement.

They must understand that to belong to the Movement nothing external nor any juridical act is necessary: what is indispensable however is an interior consecration of one’s whole self, and the total offering of their Priesthood to my Immaculate Heart.

Tell them that this is all I ask of them, this is what I want of them. Tell them that this is the first and most important thing they must do to belong to my Priestly Movement. Tell them to entrust themselves to Me like children, giving everything to Me and renouncing all attachment to anything,-however beautiful, honourable or virtuous-that is not my very self. (…)

I will make them understand how they must be detached from everything and live only for my Jesus; how they must defend Him from every attack, love Him unconditionally, in living out the Gospel to the letter.

I will cause them to experience a great love for the Church and for the Pope, whom I love so dearly and who will be comforted, defended and saved by the cohort of my Priests.

I will prepare them for great things and I will make them invincible in the decisive battles.

Let them entrust themselves completely to Me: they will receive sure signs of my motherly tenderness for them!”

In the school of Mary we learn perfect obedience to the will of God, it was by her Fiat at the Annunciation that Salvation entered the world. She cooperated with God not only then, but continued to do so throughout both her earthly life, as she cared for, taught  and guided her Son, and her life now in total Union with Him. She now does the same for us, and leads us into this same total Union that she herself has acquired.

Mary – “Blessed is she who believed” (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

148 The Virgin Mary most perfectly embodies the obedience of faith. By faith Mary welcomes the tidings and promise brought by the angel Gabriel, believing that “with God nothing will be impossible” and so giving her assent: “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be [done] to me according to your word.”¹² Elizabeth greeted her: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”¹³ It is for this faith that all generations have called Mary blessed.¹⁴

149 Throughout her life and until her last ordeal¹⁵ when Jesus her son died on the cross, Mary’s faith never wavered. She never ceased to believe in the fulfillment of God’s word. And so the Church venerates in Mary the purest realization of faith.