Rosary of Our Lady,
Hope of the World
by Father Nicholas Gruner, S.T.L., S.T.D.
(Cand.)
"I want you to come here on the 13th of
next month and to continue praying the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of
the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war,
because only She can help you."
... Our Lady of Fatima, July 13,
1917
Today, the world
and the Church are in the gravest crisis in the history of mankind.
Sin has run
rampant. Good is out, evil is in, even worse than the days of Noah and the
chastisement of the Great Flood.
God almost always
sends prophets and warnings before He chastises, but too many look upon His
warning as not applying to themselves.
Then God allows
some significant disaster or chastisement to happen and many still look upon
this wake-up call as not their fault, as not really fair. Some might be tempted
to blaspheme God by saying that He is without compassion.
They have not
learned sufficiently nor thought sufficiently enough to realize that God allows
this short-term suffering to save us from eternal suffering in
hell.
Mankind, today,
has not learned its lesson and repeats history. God promised there would never
be another worldwide flood but He foretold, through His Holy Mother at Fatima,
of an even greater chastisement about to befall mankind.
It was in 1917
that Our Lady appeared at Fatima to three children with the following
Message:
"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...
"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.
"To prevent
this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate
Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the Five First Saturdays.
"If My
requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not,
she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions
of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to
suffer, various nations will be annihilated...
"In the end,
My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me,
and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the
world...
"When you
pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save
us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in
need."
So, not only did
God warn us, He gave us a solution, a way out. We didn’t have to suffer
through these trying times, but we are, because His Message sent through His
Holy Mother has been ignored. The simple request that the Holy Father, together
with the Catholic bishops of the world, on the same day, to consecrate
specifically Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, has STILL not been done.
The simple request for the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays has
not been widely heeded. (See the end of the section entitled "Reparation for
Sin is Necessary to Restore Peace" for this simple request.)
World Goes
In Wrong Direction
Pope John Paul II
said when he went to Fatima in 1982 that the world has gone in the opposite
direction from the one indicated by Our Lady, that sin has institutionalized
itself.
In 1917, when Our
Lady first told us that we were in a crisis -- abortion was not even yet
legalized anywhere in the world, not even in Russia. It only became legal in
Russia in the 1920’s. And, by now, that error of Russia has spread around
the world so that we now have 50 million babies murdered every year.
As St. Thomas
Aquinas explains, the first fruit of error is injustice. With the error that
God and God’s rights are excluded from our laws and other social
institutions — such as our Hospitals then the false "right" of men and
women is proclaimed, "my body is mine I do not owe any service to God". Today,
mothers proclaim their "right" to legally murder their own children in their
womb. A real right comes from God, and God does not give us the right to kill
our fellow man.
Clearly, mankind
has progressively deteriorated in morality and spirituality at an alarming
pace, even after Our Lady warned of our crisis in 1917. The world has gone in
the opposite direction from that which Our Lady came to show us.
Even
so, Our Lady never ceases to give us hope. Jesus Himself said, "It is never too
late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary."
The
Rosary
Cause for Great Hope
Heaven knew where
the world and mankind was heading. Heaven knew Their urgent message would be
ignored, distorted, silenced. So Heaven sent those of us who would listen, a
coat of armor, a weapon to defend ourselves and our families, and carry us
through these very hazardous days.
That Heaven-sent
weapon, as you will read in this Fatima Crusader is the Rosary.
The Rosary can
heal our countries’ problems, our personal problems, our children’s
problems, our fears, our frazzled nerves, all our troubles. Sister Lucy
tells us:
"There is no
problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot
resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary ..."
All of us have
plenty of problems today; even the Church is being torn apart and attacked from
within and without. But it is our Rosary prayers that will assist us in staying
in the Church by our faithfulness, thus benefiting from Our Lord’s
promise: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church; and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matt. 16:18
Reparation
for Sin is Necessary to Restore Peace
It was the Flemish
mystic Pere Lamy – called "another Cure of Ars" by his bishop – who
was told by God that World War I "had three causes: blasphemy, Sunday labor,
and the desecration of Marriage." At Fatima, the Blessed Virgin confirms this
teaching, when She tells us: "war is a punishment for sin" and announces in the
great Secret: "if people do not cease offending God, another worse war will
begin in the reign of Pius XI." Thus, World War II broke out.
The Fatima Message
is designed to remove the cause of war, which is sin. Just before the great
miracle of October 13, Our Lady had said:
"People must
amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins," and then, growing
sadder: "They must not offend Our Lord any more, for He is already too much
offended."
Many years later,
reflecting on these words, Sister Lucy wrote:
"Of all the
words spoken at this apparition, the words most deeply engraved upon my heart
are those of the request made by Our Heavenly Mother: ‘Do not offend Our
Lord and God any more, for He is already so much offended!’
"How loving a
complaint, how tender a request! Who will grant me to make it echo through the
whole world, so that all the children of Our Mother in Heaven may hear the
sound of Her Voice!"
Later on, in the
Fatima apparitions, Jesus Himself came to tell us that the Immaculate Heart of
Mary has been much offended.
On December 10,
1925 Sister Lucy received a visit from the Virgin and the Child Jesus. The Most
Holy Virgin put Her hand on Lucy’s shoulder and showed her a Heart
surrounded by thorns which She held in the other hand. At that same moment, the
Child said to her:
"Have
compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, surrounded with thorns with
which ungrateful men pierce Her at every moment without there being anyone to
make an act of reparation in order to take them away."
Then the Most Holy
Virgin said to her:
"Look My
daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce
Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to
console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of
death, with all 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."
We Must
Pray the Rosary Every Day
Our Lady
continually encourages us to pray the Rosary and insists that you pray the
Rosary every day. She promised that if you pray the Rosary every day, you will
not fall into heresy. And if you have had the misfortune of falling into
heresy, by praying the Rosary every day, She will pull you out of it.
In his encyclical
on the Rosary, Jucunda semper, Leo XIII teaches:
"The recourse
we have to Mary in prayer follows upon the office She continuously fulfills by
the side of the throne of God, as Mediatrix of Divine Grace ... Now this
merciful office of Hers appears in no other form of prayer as manifestly as it
does in the Rosary."
At Fatima, the
Most Holy Virgin confirms this truth emphatically in each of Her
apparitions:
May 13:
"Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end
of the war."
June 13:
"Pray the Rosary each day."
July 13: "I
want you to come here on the 13th of next month, and to continue
praying the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to
obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only She can help
you."
August 19:
"I want you to continue going to the Cova da Iria on the 13th, and
to continue praying the Rosary every day."
September
13: "Continue to say the Rosary to obtain the end of the war."
October 13:
"I am Our Lady of the Rosary. Continue to say the Rosary every day."
Our Lady made
praying the Rosary a condition for Francisco’s entrance into Heaven:
"He will go
there too, but he will have to say many Rosaries."
After this
apparition, Francisco began to pray the Rosary 6 to 8 times a day.
The Rosary is
often a condition for obtaining even temporal favors, as Sister Lucy reports:
"I then made
some requests, but I cannot recall now just what they were. What I do remember
is that Our Lady said it was necessary for such people to pray the Rosary in
order to obtain these graces, during the year."
All of Us
Must Pray and Tell Others
The Immaculate
Heart of Mary holds in reserve a torrent of graces and favors, which She can
pour out on our souls, our families, on Christendom, and the whole world –
but only in response to the humble, constant supplication of our innumerable
Rosaries.
Sister Lucy tells
us that because of these times, that God has given greater power to the Rosary
than in any other time in history. And so pray the Rosary. It is your weapon,
it is your shield, it is your guarantee, it is your spiritual inoculation
against forces of evil.
Your Rosary
prayers can move mountains, save countries, save souls. What a privilege. And
such a small task. It is so easy that its miraculous power is sometimes
overshadowed with skepticism. Its stupendous miraculous power is too often
buried under fears and doubts.
How many more
miracles we would see if we humbly and trustfully turned ourselves over to Our
Lady of the Rosary. How many pray the Rosary and ask Our Lady’s help with
their burdens, but then continued to fret about them and take their troubles
back as if they didn’t really believe their prayers would be answered.
The Rosary can
bring peace to our troubled hearts. And that peace can spread to others, and
ultimately, that peace can help change the world. The peace, tranquility and
holiness that comes from the Rosary is what we need now.
This little Rosary
booklet, if put in the hands of enough people, can help save the world. I pray
that every one who reads it will pass it on or get extra copies for 10, 20, or
even 100 friends and relatives. Just think of all the graces that would flow
from this effort alone.
In Austria, only
10% (ten percent!) of the people prayed the Rosary and saved their country from
Communist oppression. Read the personal testimony in this issue of a soldier
who was actually there and witnessed it.
Yes, we can
make a difference. We must make a difference.
I am determined to
print one million of these Rosary booklets, just to begin with. And with your
help, we can transform this effort into tens of millions.
I have also
launched a 25 million Rosary Peace Campaign. That is about 0.5% of the world
population. This is a good start. If Austria can do it, together we can do it.
You can do this in your homes, at work, at school, everywhere!
How could we not
accept the Blessed Virgin’s call to pray to Her, especially with Her Most
Holy Rosary? How could we not give just a few minutes of our time to save the
world?
I know when you
have read this Crusader cover to cover, I will not have to ask for your
help. You will be so filled with love for the Blessed Virgin Mary that you will
want to put yourself in Her heart as St. Maximilian Kolbe did, (see the article
entitled "Ideals of the Crusade of Mary Immaculate") and serve Her, and along
with Her, serve Jesus in His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. And this
love, this service to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary will gain graces for the
Holy Father and the bishops to finally heed Her urgent Message of Fatima and
bring true, lasting peace to the world. More importantly, the sooner we achieve
this triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, many, many more souls will be
saved.
In the Hearts of
Jesus and Mary, I am joyful at the thought of serving Them together with you.
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