Dear Knights of the Immaculata!
Entering a new year, we must remember its purpose.
Each year, each month, week, day, hour, minute and second has just one sense – to come closer to Our Lord through the Immaculata. And since our consecration to HER, we Knights should add: this New Year I should win, more than ever before, many more souls for HER, that they may recognize and love HER as Mother and Queen and so be saved by Her Son, Our Lord.
Each year has also its particularity: either the celebration of an important anniversary, of a jubilee, or another important event (baptism, first communion, marriage, final exams, professional achievements etc.). Generally such exceptional events are sources of special graces bestowed by Divine Providence to those who celebrate or attend these events for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. We Knights should be thankful for these showers of God’s love and eagerly profit from them to grow in virtues and apostolic zeal.
The year 2016 is marked by two very particular events: the year of Divine Mercy and the solemn preparation to the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima and the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the MI.
Our thoughts and meditations should often revolve around these realities: the INFINITE MERCY OF GOD offered to the poor sinners for their conversion and sanctification.
Now, according to Saint Bernard, Our Lord entrusted “the order of Mercy to His Mother”.
Logically this year SHE will be in a special manner ‘Mother of Mercy’. She wants to extend more widely the treasure of graces of conversion, so that the merciful goodness of GOD would enter into more souls living in the darkness and shadows of eternal death. She wants to make it yet easier to pour into poor sinners the showers of graces.
For us knights this is an incredible motivation to give ourselves yet more to her services: if in normal times our little prayers and sacrifices would save maybe one or two souls per day, thanks to the ‘year of mercy’ Our Lord will be even more generous in his answer to our small nothings and for the same prayers and sacrifices would save maybe 10 – 20 souls.
In other words, our little apostolate as Knights, thanks to His mercy, becomes much more efficacious. This should bring us to increase our desires: O Immaculata, you love me so much, that you want to put into your little broom such a power to paint numerous beautiful pictures. How much more generous I MUST be to answer your request and appeal: “My beloved child, please help me to save souls!”
The best means to increase in us the fervor to be the instruments of the Mother of Mercy to save souls from eternal fire is the second event we have to realize during this year of 2016: the preparation to perhaps the most important of all apparitions of Our Lady in the latter times: when she gave us in Fatima her Immaculate Heart as the last means of salvation, as the easy and sure way to become saints. Therefore we should now seriously begin to become ‘apostles of Fatima’.
Allow me to suggest to you special resolutions to take this year, to draw abundantly from the fountain of God’s infinite Mercy.
RESOLUTIONS FOR 2016 TO BECOME A TRUE “APOSTLE OF FATIMA”:
1. FOR THE INTELLECT:
a) If possible, every day for a few minutes and at least one hour a week, to read or listen to profound texts, articles, books about the message and spirituality of Fatima (you will find abundant literature in
www.fatima.org/resources/books.asp,
b) Read and meditate the texts about Fatima published in this newsletter (“TOWARDS FATIMA”) at least 3 times, if possible on each Saturday (Day of Our Lady).
2. WILL AND HEART:
a) Daily, as often as possible, say ejaculatory prayers for the conversion of sinners, especially: "Jesus, Mary, I love You, save souls."
b) Daily, if possible at least three times, the prayer of the Angel of Fatima.
c) Daily Rosary in the intentions of Our Lady of Fatima.
d) If possible, on the 13th of each month, fasting in the intentions of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (if that day is Sunday or feast of obligation, defer the fasting to the previous or following day).
e) Participate in all first Saturday devotions (Holy Communion, Confession during the month, Rosary, mediation on the 15 mysteries of the Rosary, in the spirit of reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart).
3. ACTION:
Zealous participation in the apostolate of the MI (distributing the Miraculous Medal, leaflets etc.)
If you try to practice these resolutions, you can be very sure, that the Immaculate Heart will accomplish in you Her promise in a very special manner this year of 2016: “My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge, and the way that leads you to God”.
Singapore, 4 January 2016
Fr. Karl Stehlin
TOWARDS FATIMA 2017 (4)
AUTUMN 1916 – THE THIRD APPARITION OF THE ANGEL
This time the 3 little shepherds were with the flock at the same place, where the angel appeared to them for the first time (Loca de Cabeco).
<As soon as we arrived there, we knelt down, with our foreheads touching the ground, and began to repeat the prayer of the Angel. I don't know how many times we repeated this prayer, when an extraordinary light shone upon us. We sprang up to see what was happening, and beheld the Angel.
He was holding a chalice in his left hand, with the Host suspended above it, from which some drops of blood fell into the chalice. Leaving the chalice suspended in the air, the Angel knelt down beside us and made us repeat three times:
-“Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the sacrileges, outrages and indifferences by which He Himself is offended. Through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners”.
Then rising, he took the chalice and the Host in his hands. He gave the Sacred Host to me, and shared the Blood from the Chalice between Jacinta and Francisco, saying as he did so:
–“Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men! Make reparation for their crimes and console your God”.
Once again, he prostrated on the ground and repeated with us, three times more, the same prayer “Most Holy Trinity…” and then disappeared.
Moved by a supernatural force which enveloped us, we had imitated the Angel in everything, that is, we prostrated as he did and repeated the prayers that he said. We remained a long time in this position, repeating the same words over and over again.>
Meditation:
The central mystery in this third apparition is the most Holy Eucharist.
The angels guide us always to Our Lord, and concretely to Jesus Christ dwelling in the most Blessed Sacrament. And in this brief account we find so much light and truth:
1/ He was holding a chalice in his left hand, with the Host suspended above it, from which some drops of blood fell into the chalice.
Before we enter into the proper mystery which is being spoken of, this sentence itself is a deadly blow to all who deny the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament. It underlines the catholic truth and is a strong refutation of the protestant errors, which are repeated by the modernists. In fact, one of the worst attacks of the enemy in latter times will be to diminish (and if possible to destroy) the faith within the faithful by introducing the so called 'ecumenical way', to present the different christian religions as options and participants in the invisible 'kingdom of God', where everybody has to appreciate and learn from each other. The result of such a 'brotherly dialogue' is an internal contradiction: either Jesus is really present in the Host or not! Protestants say “no”, Catholics say “yes”. If both are only options, then there is no objective truth any more, but just subjective 'views', and everybody can believe what he wants.
Against this plague the angel of the Eucharist rises up in Fatima declaring the Catholic doctrine as the only true one.
Moreover, he insists on making the following precision: I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all tabernacles of the world… This is almost a verbal repetition of the text in the Roman Catechism and the dogmatic formula of the Council of Trent. It specifies the very presence of Our Lord in the most Blessed Sacrament.
Even more: the presence of Jesus in all tabernacles of the world is another insistence that he is in all tabernacles and only there: but where are the tabernacles? Only in Catholic Churches! What an incredible and amazing statement in 1916, when exactly 50 years later the post-vatican reforms provoked a universal diminishing of the Real presence of Our Lord in the tabernacle among Catholics.
Let us now meditate the contents of the vision itself:
What does “blood coming out of the Host” mean?
The Holy Host is the true Body of Our Lord united with His soul, His humanity and divinity. If blood comes out of a body it means, that the body is not in his normal healthy state, but he is ill, he is wounded, and the more blood he looses, the more his life is in danger. And wounds mean sufferings! This happened to Our Lord when He suffered His passion and died on Calvary, suspended on the Cross.
If now the Host shows the same flood of blood coming out of his body, that means, that the Holy Eucharist, and specifically the Holy Mass IS the renewal, the presence of Calvary, of our Lord crucified. And here we have the following amazing teaching of Fatima like a prophetic warning for the times to come.
As the angel would say: “Attention, you children of God, the Eucharist, the Holy Mass is NOT the “paschal mysterium”, the “gathering of the people of God” around the table to commemorate the Pascha of the Lord, a joyful banquet. It is not the definition of the Mass, which will be issued in the first edition of the Novus Ordo Missae in 1969.
But it IS the sacrifice of Our Lord on the Cross, its presentation and renewal on the altar. And you should kneel before the Host as I kneel with the children to adore the Holy wounds of Jesus, His incredible suffering and death “for the remission of sins”.
God foresees all things. He has foreseen the most terrible crisis to come into the world and Holy Mother Church. Therefore He wants to assist us, to console us, to give light in the darkness. We must see the apparitions in Fatima in this dimension.
Finally,let us now ask what happened in the second half of the 20th century?
Who in the Church upheld the reality of the Real Presence of Our Lord?
Who kept the Catholic traditional faith in the Most Blessed Sacrament?
“The Society of Saint Pius X must therefore orient the priest towards – and have him concretize in his daily life his raison d'etre: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, what it all means, all that flows from it, all that complements it” (Statutes 2,2).
For almost 20 years the Society of Saint Pius X was almost the only church institution to defend, proclaim and promote the traditional faith in the Holy Eucharist and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. When all over the world the Novus Ordo Missae devastated the faith of the Catholics, destroyed the altars and brought into the minds a protestant conception of the Eucharist, Archbishop Lefebvre and his spiritual sons were almost alone to uphold the message of the angel of Fatima, and therefore they were severely punished. It was for these times, that God sent the angel and afterwards Our Lady herself to comfort his faithful children, to give them courage in trials and persecutions, to show clearly what the Truth is, and not to let themselves be discouraged even by the highest churchmen, who are only servants of the Truth and not their masters.
2/ “Leaving the chalice suspended in the air, the Angel knelt down beside us”:
We should never forget that the differences between the angels and human beings are almost unlimited. Saint Thomas proves that the inner value of one angel is more than the whole visible world. However, before the most Blessed Sacrament, the angel joins the children and accomplishes the same acts of adoration. Who must be GOD, if the angels humble themselves before Him and consider themselves as dust and nothing, similar to all other creatures?
Another aspect is the very fact, that the angel joins the children.
It is God's will that men and angels, visible and invisible world, form one choir, one congregation united to praise and worship him. The more the members of the militant Church unite themselves with the members of the Triumphant Church (angels and saints), the more our worship is agreeable to God, the more we are in the right atmosphere to worship Him. In heaven there is no sin nor distraction nor any other remnant of weakness which we unfortunately are full of. Therefore joining the heavenly choirs (see preface of the Holy Mass) we are much more penetrative of the true atmosphere and freed from our own deficiencies.
Finally this gesture of the angel (with the children) shows the attitude which pleases God, because the angel coming from heaven certainly cannot do anything, which would not sovereignly please God: the prostration is a visible sign of making oneself lower, to exalt the object of our veneration – Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is God, and prostrating before Him we recognize that He is our first principle and our last end, our king and cause of all, what we are and what we have. And on the other hand, that we are completely dependent on Him and belong to Him in all things. This attitude of the true condition of a creature (I nothing – God all!) is also the essence of humility, the only attitude which pleases God.
3/ REPARATION:
Another truth of faith, less and less known, which the Angel of Fatima recalls with insistence, is the extreme gravity of sin and the necessity to make reparation through love.
The beginning of his prayer is already an act of reparation: “I ask pardon of You for those, who do not believe …”. It invites us to consider the immense injury done to God by all those who do not believe in Him, or believing, refuse to submit to Him through adoration, who do not hope and do not love him. For all these faults, reparation must be done.
How?
By asking pardon in the name of sinners, in substituting oneself for them to obtain mercy for them!
During the second apparition the angel teaches the children the practice of sacrifice, offered in reparation to God for the sins by which He is offended.
But what is the most perfect act of reparation?
The third apparition will teach us: the sins for which the angel invites us to make reparation are the sacrileges, outrages and indifference by which He Himself is offended.
And how we have to make reparation? “Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men! Make reparation for their crimes…”
We offer to the Father, in the Holy Spirit, Our Lord Himself present in all tabernacles of the world. So we unite ourselves spiritually to Jesus Christ offering Himself at the Mass in a sacrifice of satisfaction and propitiation “for the salvation of many”. We offer His Body delivered up for us, His Blood poured out, His soul in awful agony and finally His Divinity, which is full of “pardon and mercy” (see the Vision of Tuy 13.06.1929). To these infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus we join those of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, His Mother, our Mediatrix and Co-Redemptrix, to offer them together to the Heavenly Father and obtain from Him the conversion of sinners.
This act of reparation finds its ultimate reality in HOLY COMMUNION.
Already at this moment the angel teaches the children the famous COMMUNION OF REPARATION, which will become one of the essentials of the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
We should learn by heart the formula of the angel, when he gives to the children the mystical communion.
This formula, first of all, has a remarkable theological precision: Lucy shall receive the Host, and Jacinta and Francisco the Blood of the Chalice, but to all three the angel says: “Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ”, to show that whoever communicates under either species, receives Jesus Christ whole and entire, His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity.
It also brings to mind, in a striking manner, how Jesus is outraged in the sacrament of His love. And the most perfect expiation and reparation we can make for these “indifferences, negligences and outrages” it to receive Holy Communion in the spirit of reparation, to “console our God”. This practice is so important that Our Lady will ask for it again (in Pontevedra on 10.12.1925).
As a summary of the apparition of the Angel, we can state: When reading the account of these apparitions, one can find in them not the slightest hint of vulgarity, nothing incongruous, childish or banal. Nor is there anything emphatic or artificial, just profound truths, expressed simply and vigorously. With very simple words and gestures the most profound truths of our Holy Faith are expressed. The frequent meditations of these apparitions will bring us into the true divine atmosphere and prepare us (as they prepared the children) to approach Our Lady – or better -to allow Her to approach us. Moreover, if we accomplish, what the angels asks the children to do, we will learn the true attitude of a creature towards God and the true appreciation of His presence amongst us, especially in the Blessed Sacrament.
