By Father MieczysЕ‚aw Piotrowski TChr,
Love One Another! 2/2003 → Eternal life
After experiencing the vision of hell, the terrified children turned
to Our Lady for help: And she said to us, so kindly and so sadly,
‘You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go.
To save them, God wishes to establish devotion in the world to my
Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will
be saved and there will be peace in the world’.
The second part of the “secret” points out the most
effective means of avoiding hell. It consists in consecrating the
human race to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Holy Father John
Paul II explains: consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart
of Mary means returning it to the foot of Christ’s Cross.
It means consecrating the world to the pierced Heart of the Savior,
bringing it back to the source of its redemption. Redemption is
always greater than man’s sin or the ‘sin of the world’.
The power of redemption is infinitely greater than all the evil
that man and the world are capable of committing. Consecration to
Mary means accepting her help in offering ourselves and all of our
race to the one Savior, Jesus Christ.
It is the Blessed Mother who leads us most surely along the path
of faith, in a spirit of boundless trust in her Son Jesus Christ,
so that, by the power of his infinite Mercy, He may free us from
the slavery of sin. I desire trust on the part of my creatures –
says Jesus to St. Faustina – Let there be no soul so weak
and sinful as to fear approaching me. Even should its sins outnumber
the grains of sand on earth, they will be swallowed up in the abyss
of my mercy… Man will not know peace until he returns to
the source of my mercy.
We are approaching the last days. This – observes Sister
Lucia – the Blessed Mother told her three times. In light
of this, our most effective recourse is to consecrate ourselves
to the Immaculate Heart, and pray the rosary. Our Lady also observed
that since all the means of salvation made available to us had not
been accepted, she would offer up her own tears.
The phenomenon of Our Lady’s pictures and statues shedding
tears, so commonly seen in recent years, is thus another sign and
a warning calling us to return to our senses and to God. Before
the hour of justice comes – observed Jesus to Sister Faustina
– I shall grant the world a period of mercy. Can we go on
being insensitive and indifferent to Our Blessed Mother’s
warnings and requests?
Dear readers! Our Lady requests that every one of us participate
in the task of saving our loved ones our country, the whole world,
and ourselves. We know that only Christ’s love can overcome
the great menace of evil that looms over the human race. But Christ
needs our agreement in order to act through us and reach the greatest
sinners with His love. Thus we are called to unite ourselves with
the Immaculate Heart of Mary. She will teach us how to live with
trust and a lively faith. This trust is to express itself in:
• turning from our sins and living a life according to the
moral norms and teachings of the Universal Church;
• observing the first Fridays and Saturdays of the month
in reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate
Heart of Mary for our own and others’ sins;
• going to Confession once a month and frequent reception
of Jesus in the Eucharist; also, where possible, in fasting on
bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Heeding the request of Our Lady of Fatima is our one recourse.
Sister Lucia explains that the penance required by God means living
a just life according to the commandments of God, and making sacrifices
of all things and offering them to God. He desires that all souls
understand penance in this way, since many people’s understanding
of penance is limited to austere acts of mortification. They do
not see the power and need of working on oneself daily, in the most
ordinary ways. People live their lives as though they were on summer
holidays, and remain in sin. As I was praying in the chapel all
night from Thursday to Friday, God told me: ‘Offering up daily
duties done and keeping my commandments – that is the kind
of penance I require’.
A call to this kind of penance is particularly timely and pressing
these days when we have lost our sense of the spirit of sacrifice
and neglect the responsibilities peculiar to our vocation in life.
Rather than face reality squarely, we tend to shirk responsibility.
In the case of marriages, this spirit of sacrifice means husband
and wife jointly bearing the burdens of everyday life.
The article was published with the permission from "Love One Another!"
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