Week two: Getting to know Mary - Day 6

The Immaculate Heart of Mary as our refuge

Prayer to the Holy Spirit 

O Holy Spirit, inspire me. God’s love, engulf me. Holy Mary, my Mother, guide me in the right ways, look at me, and together with Jesus, bless me. Keep me from all evil, from all delusions and all threats. Mary, The Spouse of the Holy Spirit, obtain for me the grace of getting to know you and unable me to constantly stay in your Immaculate Heart. Amen!

The Word of God 

“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit  and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (Lk 1:41‒45).

Meditation 

When Our Lady appeared in Fatima on May 13th, 1917, she opened her hands, and there came the light. “Its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors.”23 Personal encounter with Our Lady always brings the light into the darkness of our lives. It teaches us the truth about ourselves and how God sees us. How to meet Mary to immerse in this light? We can find the answer on June 13th, 1917, as Sister Lucia recalls it: “As soon as Jacinta, Francisco, and I had finished praying the Rosary, with a number of other people who were present, we saw once more the flash reflecting the light which was approaching.”24 After praying the rosary… The rosary generates the light! That is why Mary tirelessly calls us to pray the rosary. In Fatima, she promises that the rosary will bring peace to the world plunged in the darkness of World War I that killed 8 million people and left 6 million disabled.

However, the Message of Fatima is not focused only on private devotions, although Mary—like a true Mother—sees the needs of her particular children and promises healing to individual people if they persevere in praying the rosary. The focal point of the Message of Fatima is the call to pray and do penance in view of the dramatic moral situation of the world. In the third part of the secret, we read: “At the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’.”25 The Immaculate Virgin comes into the world of politics with such power and authority that even the analyst of that time couldn’t have foreseen its results. Our Lady of Heaven comes at the end of World War I when people couldn’t even imagine that there would be a much worse World War II, which would claim 75 million lives.

The event confirming that these words: “if people do not cease offending God,” were inevitable was the light phenomenon—the northern light that flashed over Europe and North America at night on January 25th, 1938. “When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.”26 Thus, there are two kinds of light: the one coming from the Heart of Mary that lights up at the prayer and illuminates the ways of our life, and the other one coming from the natural phenomena, as a sign of the coming of God’s justice.

Mary’s apparition in Fatima concerned both the Church’s and the world’s situation. Therefore, both the Church and the world cannot stay indifferent to this incident. During his pilgrimage to Fatima on May 13th, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said: “We would be mistaken to think that the prophetic mission of Fatima is complete.”27 This mission continues, and it is the mission of light among the world plunged in the darkness of sin. Our Lady warns in Fatima, both against the war and against hell. This is a thoroughly evangelical message: “What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?” (Lk 9:25).

On July 13th, 1917, in Fatima, Our Lady told Lucia: “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.”28 Along with announcing the second part of the secret, Our Lady heralds the triumph of her Immaculate Heart once some specified provision is met. What are these provisions?

On December 10th, 1925, Mary with the Child Jesus appeared again to sister Lucia and showed her own Heart encircled by thorns. The Child said: “‘Have compassion on the Heart of your most holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.’ Then the most holy Virgin said: ‘Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”29 That is how the Five First Saturdays Devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary started.

Mary in Fatima makes the greatest and the most wonderful promise of our time: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”30 This will be the triumph of the light manifesting the Truth! Then, for some time, there will be peace in the world. But it will come after some time. Now, there is the time of battle. Our Lady doesn’t hand us the political schedule scenario, but she gives us the rosary. “I want you to continue going to the Cova da Iria, and to continue praying the Rosary every day.”31 The intimacy with Our Lady in prayer creates a safe place in our life: “My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.”32

Mary in Fatima presents God’s plan of saving humanity from the punishment that threatens it and from the battle described in the Book of Revelation between the Woman and the Dragon. It is not a harbinger of destruction but the salvation of the world that we read in the Book of Zechariah: “And I will put this third into the fire, refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’” (Ze 13:9) John Paul II has the confidence that “Only God knows how the future will be. We know, however, that in any event it will be a future of grace; it will be the fulfilment of a divine plan of love for all humanity and for each one of us. That is why, as we look to the future, we are full of hope and are not overcome with fear.”33 The Immaculate Heart of Mary is our safe refuge. We can enter into this ark of refuge through a trusting consecration of our hearts to her.

Prayer for Deliverance from Evil by St. John Paul II

Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!

From famine and war, deliver us.

From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.

From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us. From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us.

From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us.

From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us. From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us.

From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us. From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us

Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies. Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the “sin of the world,” sin in all its manifestations. Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!

Mother of Church, be our Mother!

Following the example of St. John Paul II and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, we entrust to you once again our country, Europe and the entire human family. Be for us the Mother of Hope. Amen!

Spiritual reading 

“It is by Mary that the salvation of the world has begun, and it is by Mary that it must be consummated. Mary has hardly appeared at all in the first coming of Jesus Christ, in order that men, as yet but little instructed and enlightened on the Person of her Son, should not remove themselves from Him, in attaching themselves too strongly and too grossly to her. This would have apparently taken place, if she had been known, because of the admirable charms which the Most High had bestowed even upon her exterior. This is so true that St. Denys the Areopagite has informed us in his writings that when he saw our Blessed Lady, he should have taken her for a Divinity, in consequence of her secret charms and incomparable beauty, had not the Faith in which he was well established taught him the contrary. But in the second coming of Jesus Christ, Mary has to be made known and revealed by the Holy Ghost, in order that by her Jesus Christ may be known, loved, and served. The reasons which moved the Holy Ghost to hide His Spouse during her life, and to reveal her but a very little since the preaching of the Gospel, subsist no longer.” 

St. Louis de Montfort, A Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 49

Homework 

So as to satisfy Our Lady’s wish, I will practice the Five First Saturdays Devotion. 

Prayer of consecration 

I am all Yours, and all that I have is Yours, O most loving Christ, through Mary, Your most holy Mother. Amen!