Mary’s Immaculate Heart
and your Salvation
by Archbishop Arulappa, Madras, India
 Some of the moderns who have lost
respect for the Mother of God, may be quite infuriated and shout: “What has
Mary’s Immaculate Heart to do with my salvation? Jesus and He alone is my Savior
and salvation. This is quite objectionable. To give so much part in our salvation
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is certainly an insult to Jesus!” And so on.
This state of mind cannot be but an unfortunate ignorance
of the design which the Eternal Father conceived for the salvation of mankind. It is a failure to
understand the primary and secondary roles assigned to the Son and Mother.
Some people seem to think that after
the birth of the Savior, or at least after the Crucifixion and Resurrection,
Jesus should have, as it were, told His Mother, “Now Mother, Your work of co-operating
with Me is over. You may retire to some corner and not bother about souls who
are taking advantage of My redemptive work and saving their souls!” Whereas,
Jesus seems to have said, “Now Mother, the redemptive work is over. But souls
must benefit from it. It is therefore My wish and decree that as I came to the
world through You, every grace which man will need must pass from Me to Your
hands, and from You to the soul concerned. This is the Eternal Father’s design,
not My pleasure, merely. The Father and I, Myself, want, together with the Holy
Spirit, to honor You thus till the end of time.”
This teaching has been in the Church
for ages, expressed in a simple saying: Per Mariam ad Jesum, “Through
Mary to Jesus.”
If anyone wants therefore to be saved, i.e. to be saved from
eternal hell, he is to appeal first of all to Mary.
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St. John Bosco leads his people to seek refuge in Mary our Mother. |
Two Hearts have suffered together, though in a different manner,
for the salvation of mankind. The primary suffering is in the heart of Jesus, but the suffering of Mary whose
heart was pierced by a sword is not to be set aside. Remember that it was prophesied by Simeon on the 40th
day of the birth of Jesus, implying that it was a part in the design of the divine plan.
But is not Jesus alone our Savior?
“Yes,” would say Saint Louis de Montfort, “He is Mediator of redemption while
Mary is Mediatrix by intercession.”
The final object of all this is the
attainment of Heavenly happiness and not to become prey to the eternal tortures
of hell.
As the Heart of Jesus is concerned about this objective, it can
only be natural that the Mother’s heart is concerned and worried about the same.
Jesus had spoken enough when He was
on earth warning again and again about the danger of souls falling into hell.
It is part of the Christian Faith handed down through the ages, but in this
century, by satan’s propaganda, many have ceased to believe anymore that there
is a hell. It is in this context that Our Lady showed a vision of hell to the
three seers at Fatima. It is, as it were, to confirm and renew Faith in the
existence of hell. It is a broken Mother’s heart that urges Her to show this
vision, hoping that at least some souls would regain their Faith.
Mary made the three seers realize the gravity of sin and that God
was very sad about it.
Jacinta, after hearing it, resolved
to do such penances as a child could. Francisco was affected strongly by the
thought of God being sad and his brief life’s sole concern was to console God.
These two children, their attitude and their early deaths which were real sacrifices,
are a challenge to the modern man of whom, “He who sits in Heaven laughs”. (Psalm
2:4)
The seer Lucy is by a definite purpose
still alive, communicating to a world which is for the most part deaf to the
messages of Jesus and Mary. “Jesus wants to use you,” Mary had said — for the
propagation of the Message given at Fatima. The Message, too, seems to have
fallen on disbelieving ears! It is difficult to understand this, but there it
is.
Pursuing the urgency of Her Immaculate
Heart, Mary goes one step further, to coax simple souls to practice a simple
devotion — called the Five First Saturdays; which is described at length from
page 84 onwards in the book Fatima: Mary's Immaculate Heart and Your Salvation.
Reparation for the sins of the world is the main theme of all the messages (see
page 79 of the same book).
How much the main seer, Sister Lucy, had to suffer and is still suffering because the Message is not taken seriously, is something we cannot understand, but she is herself, as it were, a living reparation.
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