This article is based on a talk given by Father Gruner at St. Cloud, Minnesota.

    Today we are on the brink of both tragedy and of triumph. Before I speak about the tragedy, I would like to emphasize that the Message of Our Lady, and my message also, is a message of hope, of triumph.

    We must remember that Our Lady did say, and She meant it and it will take place: “In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph, the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, Russia will be converted and a period of peace will be given to mankind.”

    That is Her prophecy. That is Her prediction. It hasn't taken place yet but it will.

Hope and Feeling Good

    I still remember, many years ago in 1984, speaking to an atheist in Los Angeles, and when I told him the Message of Fatima and the promise of peace that it gave, he said it was the first time he had seen in a long time any sign of hope for our world. Now he didn't necessarily believe the Message, but it was the first message of hope that he could possibly see had any meaning for the world.

    There are two kinds of hope. One is based on an idea that if we just hide the truth from ourselves and don't look at the bad news, then we can have this sentiment of hope in our hearts.

    Christian hope is much more than that. It is recognizing that there is a danger; that there are arduous roads to go through and nevertheless, we have the possibility of winning.

    Now, of course, Christian hope primarily concerns our own personal eternal salvation. We should be aware that there are many dangers for each of us on that road to Heaven. Although, if we follow God's graces and lights, it's a lot easier than the world would have you believe.

World Events and Your Eternal Salvation

    What I am speaking about here is the hope of our eternal salvation because our eternal salvation is tied up, to some extent, with current events. In a way, it is not and in a way it is. It doesn't have to be like the martyrs of old, in times of Rome, or other times. No matter what people do to us, we can be and we must be faithful to God and to Our Lord.

    It is easier for the majority of mankind to save their souls in a time of peace, in a time of non-persecution. There are many heroic examples of martyrs in the Coliseum but we don't often hear about the many of those that were not steadfast and have fallen away.

    Our Lady of Fatima is concerned about the taxes you pay, and the armament and disarmament agreements that take place, about the state of the world, and about all these temporal affairs as well. Not because they are more important than your eternal salvation, but precisely because your eternal salvation is so important.

    When Pope John Paul II went to Fatima he spoke about the different concerns Our Lady addressed Herself to. Pope John Paul II said that because She is our Mother, She is concerned about every aspect of our lives. But She is concerned primarily, and above all, for our own eternal salvation.

Politics and the Common Good

    Some people think that perhaps The Fatima Crusader or Father Gruner is too “political”. If we are truly Catholic, we have to be, to some extent, political. And what do I mean by that? If we love our neighbor as we are bound and commanded to by God, then we should be concerned with the common good. Politics concerns itself with legislation which affects the common good. Diplomacy concerns itself with the common good. Today diplomacy as it is practiced often works to our detriment because it really doesn't serve the common good but only the agenda of God's enemies.

    St. Thomas defines law as the ordination of reason given by one who has charge of the common good of the community. If law is not reasonable, is not promulgated by the one who has authority and if it is not for the common good, it is not law. It is as simple as that.

    All law has to be for the common good, or it is simply not law. All of us have an obligation to the common good. The common good does not simply refer to the good of our wife, children, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers; the common good concerns everyone.

Mortal Sins Against the Common Good

    That is why it is a mortal sin to vote for someone who is for abortion just as it is a mortal sin to vote for a communist. Your obligation to the common good is that strict that you can lose your soul for not taking care of it in fundamental issues.

    Many people understand that our duty is simply toward someone we know or meet or that we have a particular relationship with. That is true but we also have an  obligation to all those people that we don't meet and all those people that we will never meet.

    St. Thomas tells us that fraternal charity is like a fire in a fireplace. It warms those nearest but excludes no one. Obviously our charity for a sinner who is an enemy of God would be expressed differently than our charity for  a person who is a saint and a friend of God.

    Our charity for our enemies, and the enemies of God, is to pray for their conversion, or at least to pray that the harm that they intend to do to the Church and to souls does not succeed, so at least their place in hell will be less bad for them.

We Must Witness to the Truth

    We should have charity for all but one of the things that seems to get lost in that is the obligation to the truth. We are not commanded only to refrain from telling lies against our neighbor, we also have the obligation to tell the truth in private as well as in public.

    The obligation to the truth extends to the common good, therefore when Our Lady speaks at Fatima, She speaks about Russia spreading her errors.

    Karl Marx, as far as I know, never committed a murder but his errors have sent more than one hundred and fifty million people to their violent deaths and that does not even count the abortions.

    When Our Lady speaks about the errors of Russia, She is speaking about something very serious. And so our obligation to the truth is to (a) hold up the truth of what Our Lady has said and (b) point out there are errors being spread even today and even while we are being told that Russia is converting.

    To tell you otherwise is a lie; a disservice and an act of uncharity and injustice to you. It would be unfair to you if I were to use your donations for publishing The Fatima Crusader and broadcasting on Radio and TV if I were to use those vehicles to paint a rosy picture that everything is fine so persecutions of myself would stop. And I have been asked to do that. Certainly it would be a lot easier from a  human point of view for me to do that, but just as certainly, I would lose my soul for unjustly taking money from people if I were to cave in to their pressures and do that.

    The common good and the obligation to the truth is something that is not stressed enough. Especially in this day when we are all brainwashed that life solutions and happiness comes packaged complete in half  hour TV fantasies where everything works out fine so long as you feel good!

    It is important for the truth to be known otherwise when Our Lady's victory comes, we may find ourselves on the wrong side. We may not be with Our Lady or with the victorious.

The Clear, Near and Present Danger to the Faith

    We are in the time that Our Lord speaks of , if it were possible, even the elect would be deceived. That is not just my opinion.

    Cardinal Ratzinger, speaking about the Third Secret, in 1984, was asked: “Have you read the Third Secret?” (referring to the Third Secret of Fatima) He said “Yes, I have.” He was asked, “What does it concern?” He said, “It concerns the dangers to our Faith.”

    This is the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith speaking, who is still in that office today, and whose job is, among other things, to monitor reported and verified apparitions around the world. He  is one of the few who has had access to the actual text of the Third Secret and he said “Yes, I have read it. It concerns the dangers to our Faith.”

    He goes on to say “and therefore (the dangers) to the life of the Christian, and therefore to the life of the world.” He tells us that the Third Secret is contained in Sacred Scripture and that it concerns the i novissimi, ‘the last things, the last times'.

Even The Elect...?

    The Third Secret then, if it refers to the last times, refers to the great apostasy.

    St. Paul tells us in 1st Thessalonians, chapter 2, that the Antichrist will not come until the great apostasy first takes place. What is this word apostasy, what does it mean? The apostasy is the great falling away predicted not only by St. Paul but by Our Lord Himself. He says: “When the Son of Man comes again will He find faith on the earth?” Our Lord, speaking about that time said “if it were possible, even the elect would be deceived.”

    The first time I read the 1907 encyclical of Pope St. Pius X on Modernism, I must say I was frightened. I have read it four or five times now and it is well worth reading at least once a year.

    Pope St. Pius X tells us that the trick of the Modernists is to take away your faith while at the same time making you believe  that you still have the faith. That they do by using Catholic terms and terminology but then, without telling you, giving them another meaning.

    This is what has been happening to a large extent in the Catholic Church since 1960 so that “if it were possible even the elect would be deceived”. That is the burden of the Third Secret of Fatima.

Deception from Within

    Pope John Paul II alluded to this when he went to Fatima: “Can the Mother who with all the force of the love that She fosters in the Holy Spirit and desires everyones salvation, can She remain silent when She sees the very basis of Her childrens' salvation undermined?”

    The Pope answers his own rhetorical question, “No, She cannot remain silent.” The Pope didn't need to explain what the basis of our salvation is. The basis of our salvation is our Catholic Faith. This is the first line of St. Athanasius' Creed which is a Catholic creed and you must believe this creed to be Catholic.

    The Athanasian Creed can be found in Denzinger or any standard Catholic theology book, as well as most official Catholic prayer books, such as the Breviary.

    The creed of St. Athanasius tells us, “Whoever wishes to be saved before doing any good work must above all hold on to the Catholic Faith whole and entire.” That is the teaching of the Catholic Church.

    Our Lady sees that our faith is being undermined, and therefore She cannot remain silent and that is why She came to Fatima. Our faith is being undermined. By use of the word “undermined”, the Pope is suggesting that the undermining is being done from within the Church.

    You don't undermine unless you are doing it from within and that is an act of subversion. If it was just an attack, the Holy Father would have called it an attack but he clearly and purposely used the word undermined.

Depiction of one of Don Bosco's dream painted under his direction. Saint Joseph is dropping onto the sanctuary the roses handed to him by the Child Jesus. The flowers represents the graces offered by Jesus to Mary.

Your Free, Powerful Protection

    A friend of mine, Hamish Fraser, who was known as the ‘dove man', was a communist. He was converted in 1947. In 1950 he was at a Fatima congress and when  doves were released that normally  stayed with the Pilgrim Virgin Statue, one landed on his head and wouldn't leave for a long time. It was as if his speech in honor of Our Lady of Fatima was being especially emphasized.

    Hamish spoke about how he knew that Russia could be converted. He said, “I don't just believe it, I know it because I have lived through it.” Yet he describes in his autobiography how impossible it is for a communist to escape from the mental fog that they are in; how their whole mind is distorted and twisted so that it is impossible, without a very special grace, for them to change their mindset and be open to grace and the truth of the Catholic Faith.

    It is interesting for those who want to know how the mind works and how a whole class and group of people can be closed to the truth. Yet the tricks of the devil who is a liar and a murderer from the beginning are overcome by the simple exercise of the Rosary. If we would only realize how powerful it is; yet how despised the Rosary is in certain quarters.

True Catholic Faith Is an Absolute Must

    Without faith, you can't receive the sacraments properly. Without the faith, you cannot do any good work. Without the faith, you cannot have charity or for that matter hope. You can have a false hope and a false charity but you can't have true charity or true hope without the faith.

    St. Paul tells us that charity is greater than either but the faith nevertheless is the basis of both hope and charity.

    Our Lady promises us victory. Primarily, and above all, it is a victory over the enemies of the faith and of the Church. But while we are concentrating on these spiritual things as we should, we must not lose sight of the other aspects of Revelation either in Scripture or the public prophetic revelation of Fatima.

    St. Thomas tells us that God sends prophets to every generation, not to give a new doctrine, but to remind the faithful what they must do in order to save their souls.

Danger of Fads

    My grandfather who was a cancer researcher pointed out that even doctors go in fads. For a while most doctors said surgery was the way to go, then pills, then this, then that.  This is not to despise the practice of medicine. What I am simply saying is that in professions, and even among the clergy, things go in fads.

    Now there is nothing wrong with certain truths being brought out in a certain profession and for a while receiving emphasis and development. There is a certain logic to that. But what happens is that in a certain age, certain other truths are forgotten.

    Some of these truths are necessary for your salvation. (That is why God sends prophets to remind the faithful what they must do to save their souls.)

Apostles and Prophets Foundation of Church

    The greatest example of that is the choice of St. Paul as a bishop. It was through the voice of prophecy that the apostles recognized that St. Paul was a chosen vessel of election; that he was to be set aside; and he was to be made a bishop.  He was to be consecrated.

    When this message was given, Barnabas and Paul, and others as well, were gathered together in prayer, yet the Holy Spirit, who was evoked at the beginning of this meeting, spoke and said “I want Paul and Barnabas set aside.”

To Set Aside for God

    So the word to consecrate means to set aside and more exactly, to set aside for a sacred purpose. This does not mean that the other Catholics present in that meeting were not important to the Holy Spirit. They also were, in their own way, consecrated by their Baptism. But this was a particular consecration and it distinguished St. Paul and Barnabas, from the others in the room.

    So the word to consecrate has to be understood in its context because the very purpose of the word means, to set aside. You are setting aside something from something else, or someone from others. If you don't take the word consecrate in its context you can certainly very easily misunderstand and misinterpret it.

    I mention this because this word is so much abused today when it comes to talking about the consecration of Russia. Our Lady spoke about the consecration of Russia and in the same sentence, in the same breath, She said “the bishops of the world.” So She knows what world is because She used the expression “the bishops of the world”. She wants all the Catholic bishops of the world to consecrate one country, Russia. She distinguished the country Russia from the rest of the world. So a general consecration of the world does not particularly set aside Russia as She commanded.

Never Lose Hope

    I'd like to come back to the point then that the Message of Fatima is a message of hope. I believe that you will see this within a few years and you will have to hold on to the promise in a way that you have never done before. We must now but especially then remember that Our Lady “will protect Her dear ones”; that the Rosary and the Brown Scapular draw down Our Lady's protection on us. Let us renew and ever more fervently live our personal consecration to Her. This will be our great protection, now and in the perils ahead.  “In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph.” "In the end." Our Lady wants us to realize that there is a struggle,  a great struggle, otherwise She would not have said “in the end”.

    If things get as bad as I believe they will, remember this promise of Our Lady, “In the end” and that She will win. Not only will She win but Russia will become Catholic, not just agnostic or less militant but militantly Catholic.

Fatima and St. Paul

    Just as St. Paul was the greatest enemy the early Church had and he turned into the greatest apostle, that is somewhat the picture of what will happen to Russia, at least that part that survives. It is not a coincidence that the great sign that Our Lady of Fatima gave of the impending chastisement of the world (which we are still living through today) took place on the feast of the conversion of St. Paul.

    On the night of January 25, 1938, the great sign was seen, I have been told, by people from California, Eastern America, Canada, and of course, it was well seen over Europe.

    In North America it was seen as a very bright white light. Some people thought it was the aurora borealis, the northern lights, but it wasn't that. It illuminated the sky of Switzerland so much so that you could read a newspaper by it at eleven o'clock at night.

    I spoke to a priest who was a seminarian in 1938, in Austria, and he told me that the sky was so bright red after dark that the priests in the seminary thought  they would be called out to administer sacraments to those persons who were suffering in an immense fire. They thought a great disaster must have taken place in the city, with all that bright light illumining the sky so they cancelled their prayers waiting for this call for help to come. It never came.

    That was the impression it gave. It looked like the whole city was on fire with this bright light that burned until about three in the morning.

    It was the great sign that Our Lady had promised Lucy that the world would see. “Know that if you see a night illuminated by an unknown light, it is a sign that God is about to punish the world by means of war, hunger, persecution of the Church, and persecution of the Holy Father.”

    Some people interpret that as just meaning the Second World War. But it refers to the ongoing wars, persecutions, and widespread hunger that continue from that time to this day.

War War War

    Our Lady promised that the world, that mankind, would have peace. And when She speaks of peace, She is using the word the same way Her Son uses it. It is not simply the absence of war so we can continue sinning with greater abandon than ever. It is not simply the absence of war so that sin, as Pope John Paul II said at Fatima, can be enthroned in our institutions and in our society.

    Peace, Catholic peace, is not just absence of war, but the reign of Christ, the King of Peace, the Prince of Peace.

True Peace

    But even though we won't break the manufacturer's rules for running a car, we somehow think it is alright to break the Creator's rules for society living in peace. We can't have peace in society, we can't have our society running in order if it goes contrary to the rules set down by its Creator.

    It's easier for you to drive your car with sand in your ball bearings than it is for us to have peace in the world while we institute laws, institutions and propaganda to promote practices against the law of God; that is fundamental things like do not kill, do not steal, do not steal your neighbor's wife, and so forth. Yet if you turn on your television set it broadcasts to you almost continuously that happiness comes from doing these things. Whether it's in the news telling you that abortion is alright because the Supreme Court says so; or whether it's in the soap operas telling you that it's okay to seek happiness contrary to the laws of God; or anywhere else. I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.

Why Our Schools Are War Zones

    A few years ago, the worst crime a high school student would commit was talking out of turn or chewing gum in class. Today a lot of our high schools have devices at the entrances to detect the knives and guns the students are bringing to school so they can be disarmed by the police before they kill either their teacher or their fellow students, or themselves.

    We have excluded God from our schools. It is against the law to pray. Yet it is impossible for us to live the law of God if we don't ask for God's help. St. Alphonsus tells us, “he who prays will be saved, and he who does not pray will be damned”.

    Why does it work that way? It is very simple. The Ten Commandments are impossible to live by if we don't have the grace of God. It is impossible for school children or adults to live by the laws of God if they don't have His grace. But they won't get the grace of God if they don't ask for it. “Ask and ye shall receive.” It's understood if you don't ask, you won't get.

    God gives the first grace; the grace to pray, but if we stifle that grace in our school children across the country, is it any wonder that our schools are war zones?

    The Supreme Court has ruled that you cannot pray in public or during commencement exercises or wherever. The net effect of this prohibition is that people don't pray in public. They don't give God the first respect and honor.

Without Prayer God Cannot Help Us

    It is impossible for God to give the credit to someone else. God knows He is the Supreme Good. God knows that all creatures are as nothing. They are limited; they are only created goods. If we start trying to give to creatures the honor that is due to God alone, God cannot bless our efforts. It is against the very nature of God because He is “All True” and “All Holy” and He cannot witness to a lie, and so it is impossible.

    That is why the secular approach to the pro-life movement, although well intentioned, is ultimately strategically doomed to failure, because it has got to give God the first credit. And without giving God that first credit, God cannot bless their work as well as it needs to be.

    When Our Lady speaks about the errors of Russia being spread throughout the world, the first error, and the primary error of the Twentieth Century, is the exclusion of God from public life.

    In our schools, hospitals and in our laws, in just about every aspect of public life, God is excluded more and more. The more He is excluded from our institutions, the more God has to withdraw His blessings from us. The result is more and more corruption of society and many individuals in it.

The Present Primary Error

    This attack on God's rights is the primary error of Russia, which is still very much alive and very much being spread among us. I don't see any great return in the West or in the East to giving God and His laws public honor. If He is given some sort of honor it is generally only lip service as they don't show by their actions and institutions that God's laws must be obeyed.

    God is not just looking for us to use His name with reverence. We should certainly do that but He is expecting us to do much more. “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord', will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but those who do the will of My Father.”

Russia-God's Chosen Instrument

"Jesus wishes to make use of you to make Me known and loved. He wants to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. To whoever embraces this devotion I promise salvation; these souls shall be dear to God,as flowers placed by Me to adorn His throne." ....Our Lady of Fatima (June 13,1917)

    Our Lady of Fatima talks about things that are political. She speaks about Russia and about the annihilation of nations. In 1946, Sister Lucy was asked by an American professor, William Thomas Walsh - author of Our Lady of Fatima, “What stage of the prophecies are we in today?” And she answered, “We are in the stage of Russia spreading her errors throughout the world.”

    He then said, “Does that mean that communism will overcome the whole world?” And she said “Yes.” He was speaking through a translator and he thought maybe she didn't understand so he asked the question again. This time he said “and does that include the United States of America?” And again she replied “Yes.”

    We are told that the United States is militarily the most powerful nation in the world. We are told that communism has died on the vine, that the danger has passed, and we have no problems in that regard.

Who is right? Newspapers and Politicians
or Our Lady?

    I would love to believe that the danger from God's enemies headquartered in Russia has gone, but it is impossible to believe. By various attentive and well thought out inquiries you too can find out that the grave danger from Russia has indeed not passed at all. I realize this is totally contrary to what you have been taught by the newspapers, by the television stations, by people that have gone and visited Russia or Russians who have visited here. It is considered  foolish to say such a thing  (I have been saying this since 1989, by the way,) and I was considered much more foolish then.

    Today a rare few voices raise up here and there pointing out there are unanswered questions. There are disturbing facts that even the New York Times talks about such as the secret heavily armed military Kobileski mountain in Russia. The Russians refuse to reveal what they are doing there.

    If we had nothing to worry about, if there was nothing suspicious, then why should they not tell us what it is all about? That is not the only thing by any means.

    In the six months leading up to the so-called election in which Yeltsin was declared president again, some facts started to emerge in our newspapers which  point out the possibility that the country could return to totalitarianism, and that there would be the return of communism.

    If you want to understand the strategy and the tactics of the Russian generals who still plan to rule the world, I recommend a book written by Anatoliy Golitsyn. He defected from the KGB to this country in 1961. He has won Congressional awards as well as awards from the British government and the French government for his work in alerting the West about the dangers.

Russia's New Lies for Old Ones

    No CIA, no analyst, no Soviet watcher; no one has his track record. In 1984 he predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, five years before it happened. But what he demonstrates to you is that all Russia's changes have one purpose, to deceive you. That the whole thing is staged from beginning to end, as is the so-called split between China and Russia.

    In the case of the so-called split between China and Russia, he tells you how they were able to pull this off over the CIA. He gives you the details. I would urge you to read it if you find this hard to believe.

The Russian Trojan Horse

    Apart from the inherent sense that he makes with all the evidence and reasons he brings, he is so insightful to this danger because he is also a witness. He was there in 1958, in the highest levels of planning for the KGB and was let in on the KGB's 30-year-plan, which was to be implemented in 1988. In the mid 1950's and after, he tells us that Sun Tsu, a Chinese military genius, who lived five hundred years before Christ and who said that all warfare is based on deception became the ideal of the KGB.

    One of the most famous cases we know in Western culture  of deception winning a war is the battle of Troy in which after 10 years of war the attackers sailed off giving the impression they gave up but they left behind a gift - the Trojan horse.

    The besieged city, very tired of being under attack, believed that their enemies had retreated. They took the Trojan horse into their city and that night the warriors inside the wooden horse came out, opened the gates of the city and let the hidden army come in to slaughter the people of Troy. This is a good picture of what we are being set up for today.

God Must Be Given the Credit

    Now I will also explain from a religious point of view how you can know this to be true.

    I mentioned before that God has to be given the credit. When we go to Confession, we think that is a lot of work, because we are fatigued with this struggling against ourselves, we think that we deserve the credit for all that we do. Theologically that's heretical, but we have that feeling that we do it all.

    The reason why we can convert and make a good confession, is because of grace. To repent we need grace. Now this grace is won for us by Our Lord on the Cross and by our prayers or the prayers of others for us.

    That is why Our Lady says that many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray for them. If we don't pray for ourselves, or someone doesn't pray for us, we may not get the grace we need to convert, to confess just one mortal sin, and sin has a way of being ensconced or established in our souls if we don't get rid of it. People who live in sin for years find it harder to get out.

    God's mercy is greater than any sin or sinner, but we should be aware that there is a process, and the first step of that process is God's grace. Also in confession, the absolution is given in the name of the most Holy Trinity, and the priest calls down the merits of the Blood of Christ on you.

    Pay attention to all the words  the priest says in giving absolution in confession and you will see that God is getting the glory and the credit for doing this to your soul.

There Cannot Be the Fundamental Conversion
of Russia Except by God

    So if some people have established an anti-religious religion, a satanic religion whose purpose is to fight God, then they won't be able to give it up, poof, like that, without the grace of God and without God getting the credit. If it is not a genuine religious conversion, it is not a conversion at all.

    And so the militant atheists, who call themselves “communists” one time and “social democrats” another time; who call themselves “Marxists”, “Leninists”, they have many, many names, faces, and different titles, are substantially the same thing underneath and they cannot be converted without the grace of God, and God getting the credit.

    As Hamish Fraser points out, it is impossible, without grace for the militant atheists, for the secular humanists, for the communists to see their way out of the intellectual dead end that they have talked themselves into.

    It is also  impossible because sin is ensconced in their hearts, and it can't be done without grace and the help of God. It is impossible for you to pick yourself up by your shoe laces and stand in mid air all by yourself without some sort of platform to stand on. The grace of God is our platform to raise ourselves. Without it we cannot succeed; we absolutely need a Redeemer. It is impossible for mankind to get out of sin without a Redeemer. It's as simple as that. That's why God sent Jesus to us to be Our Redeemer. He is not only Our Redeemer, He is the Redeemer of anyone who is redeemed. Mankind is redeemed only through the grace and the merits of Christ.

The Facts and the Buried Fatima Prophecy

    We do not see the conversion of Russia but rather the further perversion of Russia. Today they have more Western-style sex shops and pornography and movies that put even Hollywood to shame. That has gone on since 1989. That is not the conversion of Russia that Our Lady is promising. To suggest that is blasphemy. Now I prefer to think it is ignorance rather than blasphemy, but if they really know what they are saying, then they are blaspheming.

    We do not have the conversion of Russia, not in the sense Our Lady of Fatima spoke about, and we do not have the lessening of the military, or the political, or the psychological, or the disinformational danger from before 1989.

    The manners and tactics have changed. The methods have changed. The substance is the same. And this ties in with what Gorbachev says himself. This ties in with what Lenin did in the past and Gorbachev says he is following the same technique. If you want to read and be informed on that level there is plenty of literature to prove it to you. If you just need to know from the religous level, it is very evident also.

    It is my opinion that we will be enslaved in this country in the very near future. That we will be either  enslaved or annihilated, is the message of Our Lady Herself. I give you Sister Lucy's words, speaking to Father Fuentes, in 1957, on December 26:

    “Tell them, Father, many times the Blessed Virgin Mary told me and my cousins Jacinta and Francisco that Russia is the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation.”

It Doesn't Take War, Taxes, Politics or Diplomacy!

   There is only one way we cannot be enslaved. It's not more military spending. It is not more politics. It is not a lot of things that people put their hope and their trust and their money in. It is only in Our Lady of Fatima.

   “Tell them, Father, that the Blessed Virgin told me and my cousins, Jacinta and Francisco, that Russia is the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world unless” - there is only one unless - “unless, we obtain the conversion of that poor nation.”

    There is only one way to obtain the conversion of that poor nation.

God Promises It

   Again quoting Our Lady of Fatima. She said: “The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father to make, together with all the Catholic bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, promising” - promitendo - “promising 'by this means' to save it”.

    The phrase used is 'by this means' , unlike that which John Haffert published ten years ago in Soul magazine as if the consecration of Russia by the Pope and the bishops was just a sign of the conversion of Russia. No, that is a falsehood. Whether it is malicious, or whether it is through ignorance, it is definitely wrong.

    Who am I to tell you that someone has gravely misled thousands of people? I am not here to judge anybody. The record is there. Our Lady's words are well published. You can find it in Sister Lucy's Documentos, published in 1976. Most of this book is in her own handwriting, which is then accompanied by a typed script. No one has questioned the authenticity of this text.

   Our Lady promises 'by this means'. More exactly, God promises - Our Lady explicitly speaks in His name - but it is God promising 'by this means' . There is no other. As much as I would love there to be, there is no other.

The Necessary “Instrument”

   If we could only get that simple fact through people's heads. Just as you could not write the words on this page without some writing instrument, nor can you be saved without the Sacraments which are all physical instruments.

   Even confessions, which are words, are physical instruments. You can't have confession without words, without there being a sign which is transmitted by some physical instrumentality of the human body. All sacraments are instruments. That is the teaching of St. Thomas, and you will find that this sacramental of the consecration of Russia is an instrument that God has put in the hands of the Pope and the bishops, without which we will not avoid enslavement. There is no other way.

   Now you can say that is simplistic. Some people have even accused me of superstition. It is not. It is blasphemy to say that. To say this is superstition is to say Our Lady of Fatima is promoting superstition. The Message of Fatima is worthy of belief. To accuse it of spreading superstition is to accuse the Magisterium of promoting superstition. The simple fact of the matter is they don't want to believe Our Lady of Fatima.

   This is a whole other discourse. We can say, “Well then, Our Lady of Fatima didn't appear. She didn't say these things. God didn't work a miracle before seventy thousand people. All the prophecies that have taken place really mean nothing.” It is more foolish to believe that than it would be to believe what I am telling you, that there is no other way. There is absolutely and simply no other way.

Our Situation Today Described in the Bible

   If you want a picture of where we are today, you can find it in Sacred Scripture. It's like the people of God in the Old Testament standing on the banks of the Red Sea. If you remember your passage in Scripture, it is in Exodus, that the people were surrounded by the Egyptian army.

    Their swords were drawn. They were ready to cut off the Israelites' heads or run them through, and the Egyptians were bearing down on them at a full gallop and the people had nowhere to go.

    They were unarmed, just like we are, and there was nowhere to go. There is a sea in front of them and the army behind them.  God gave the command to Moses. He didn't tell the whole people. He told only Moses to extend his arm over the sea.

   Now God could have thrown sand in the eyes of the Egyptians. He could have done a lot of things, but He demanded an act of faith and obedience from Moses first. He also demanded that act of faith on the part of all the people. Moses extended his arm over the sea, and the sea opened and they walked through. Now there is a wall of water on one side and a wall of water on the other side, but they walked through believing God would keep the water up there so they could get to the other side. They were led by a virgin by the name of Mary. That is a picture of where we are today. The difference is that some people don't see the army bearing down on us yet. Unfortunately, I am afraid that all of you will see it in the next two or three years, if not before. We are surrounded.

   Our enemies have hidden their weapons and their intentions but are about to burst upon us.

   There is one solution just as there was only one solution for the people of God standing on the banks of the Red Sea 2,500 years ago.

   God asks His chosen Vicar – the Pope – to extend his arms over Russia – in faith, hope and obedience to God and God will convert Russia.

   We must pray for the Pope.

    As Jesus said to Sister Lucy, “Pray much for the Holy Father, he will do it but it will be late.”

(Continued in next issue)

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