The Woman Clothed with the Sun from the Immaculate Heart
Reading through the pages of the New Testament is often repeated to recognize “the signs of the times” and what about the times we live in? Loss of faith to apostasy, wide de-Christianization, especially in Europe, the heart of Christianity and the consequent confusion of values and relativism.
But “God’s mercy is everlasting” (Psalm 135), which ruled that “where sin abounds, grace abound” (Rom. 5.20). For this reason since 1900 , the Holy Spirit has poured out powerfully “as a new Pentecost” which hit the world in an ecumenical Christian, through the grace of the current charismatic prayer.
And as Mary was present with His powerful intercession in the first Upper Room, in the modern era, the Bride of the Holy Spirit has multiplied her presence amongst us, , so that according to Father Livio Fanzaga, director of Radio Maria, if you join on an Europe’s map, the points according to the locations where Mother Mary appeared the result will be Her signature an ‘’M’’.
Our Lady has appeared in various parts of the world but in particular Her tireless action has focused on Europe that is the theater of eschatological battle between Christ and Antichrist, the Woman of the Apocalypse against the infernal Dragon, between the Immaculate Woman and the Snake. Perhaps to some, this statement seems excessive, but there are so many observers who share this analysis and several mystics in the past have prophesied the coming of this eschatological battle.
Cardinal Ivan Dias on December 8, 2007, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the apparitions at Lourdes, as an envoy of Pope Benedict XVI, has expressed-placing “these appearances in the broader context of the ongoing fight and fierce between the forces of good and evil from the beginning of human history, in the Garden of Paradise, till the end of times.
The apparitions of Lourdes, in fact, among the first of the long chain of the apparitions that began 28 years earlier, in 1830, at Rue du Bac, in Paris, announced the decisive entry of the Virgin Mary in the heart of hostilities between Her and the devil, as described in the Bible, in the books of Genesis and Revelation.
The medal, known as miraculous, that the Virgin asked to coin on this occasion is representing Her with open arms from where beam of light are spreading out out, signifying that the graces distributed to the entire world.
Her feet resting on the globe and crushing the head of the snake, the devil, giving the victory to the Virgin over the liar and the forces of evil. Around the image written the prayer: “Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.”
It should be noted that this great truth of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was established here 24 years before Pope Pius IX has defined as a dogma of faith(1854): four years later here in Lourdes, Our Lady wished she reveal by herself to Bernadette that She was the Immaculate Conception. After the apparitions of Lourdes, Our Lady has never ceased to show to the world her serious maternal concern for the fate of humanity in all the various appearances.
Everywhere, She asked for prayers and penance for the conversion of sinners,because She foresaw the spiritual ruin of some countries, the suffering that the HolyFather would have been facing, the general weakening of the Christian faith, the difficulties of the Church, the Antichrist and his attempts to replace God in the lives of men:, attempts that , despite their brilliant successes, would be destined to failure.
Here in Lourdes, as everywhere in the world, the Virgin Mary is weaving a huge network in Her spiritual sons and daughters to launch a major offensive against the forces of evil in the world, to prepare the final victory of her divine Son, Jesus Christ. “.
Among the prophecies of the past that relate to our times, particularly St. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, a French priest who lived between 1673 and 1716, predicted “the times of Mary” in which the Mother of God would appear frequently to train and lead the army of believers which would defeat the satanic attack “of recent times.” The consecration to Our Lady Montfort promoted as a way to belong totally to Jesus and prophesied that his paper, “Treatise on True Devotion to Mary,” would disappear only to be rediscovered at the beginning of “the times of Mary.”
Well the “Treatise on True Devotion to Mary” was found posthumously in 1842 in a trunk and just before, in 1830, the Mother of God appeared in Rue du Bac, in Paris, beginning the long series of Marian apparitions of ‘modern era that continue today.
So is Mary as the Immaculate who crushes the serpent’s head, and how not to notice the use of the theme of the Immaculate Conception in Hers first visit:Rue du Bac and Lourdes, as noted by Cardinal Ivan Dias, but also in Fatima , in 1917, where She prophesied that Her “Immaculate Heart” would triumphed over the materialist and atheism and it would spread from Russia. Note that the Bolshevik revolution that started the atheistic communism in Russia, took place in late October just when the apparitions of Fatima had ended, October 13.
How not to detect the initial insistence of the Marian apparitions in the territory of France where She began the offensive anti-Christ with rationalism “of Enlightenment” and the French Revolution (Rue du Bac in 1830, La Salette in 1846, Lourdes in 1858, in Pontmain 1871, Pellevoisin 1876). In particular, at Lourdes Maria seems to have wanted to counter the arrogance of Enlightenment ‘s science that wanted to replace God with the evidence of unexplained healings as signs of the supernatural. Emblematic in this respect the celebrated case of the Nobel Prize for Medicine Alexis Carrel, who converted to Lourdes assisting the healing of a terminally ill’s person.
Cardinal Ivan Dias continues in his inaugural address mentioned above: “Some months before the election of Pope John Paul II, November 9, 1976, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla said:” We are now facing the greatest combat that mankind has ever saw. I do not think that the Christian community has completely understood. We are today before the final struggle between the Church and the Anti-Church, between theGospel and the anti-Gospel. “.
The Great John Paul II explicitly stated in the encyclical “Redemptoris Mater”Montfort “amongst the teachers and witnesses of the ” Marian Spirituality of the whole Church is called to experience and embrace. And ‘array montfortanais the “Totus tuus” that John Paul II spoke to the Virgin to consecrate himself to Her, as well as the influence of the doctrine of Montfort is present in the document of Vatican II, “Lumen Gentium”, ch. VIII,”Mary in the mystery of Christ and the Church.”
With his Marian sensitivity , John Paul II has recognized and responded to the call of Mary to consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, and,as prophesied at Fatima, and then followed, within a few years, with the fall of the communist regime that had millions of Christians’s Martyrs . Historians say it is difficult to explain ourselves how one of the largest dictatorship in the world has collapsed in a short time and without shedding of blood.
Currently, the relentless action of the Mother of God seems to continue in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, since 1981. On these appearances that the Church has not approved definitively, unlike the others so far mentioned, because they are still in progress in progress. Therefore are so many around the world the fruits of conversion related to them, in 2010 the Holy See has set up a special international commission of inquiry and study at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini.
In Medjugorje, Our Lady said that came to call the world to conversion for the last time, and ending the cycle of apparitions of the last 2 centuries. In the vicissitudes of Fatima and Medjugorje God seems to have left his signature even in the dates, as if they were “coincidences .
Let’s look briefly at some of them: John Paul II suffers the attack May 13, 1981, in the same start date of the apparitions in Fatima, 24 June 1981 beginning of the apparitions in Medjugorje, and shortly after the Lady tells to the visionaries that Russia would be the country in which God would be more glorified; March 25, 1984 John Paul II’s worldwide telecast the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, May 13, 1984 the Soviet nuclear arsenal explodes a crucial part of the Cold War which from where had to start the atomic offensive: it seems that our lady has saved us from a nuclear war!; In March 11, 1985 is in power in Russia President Mikhail Gorbachev, who inaugurates the “perestroika” that is a policy of greater transparency and openness; 9 November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, August 25, 1991 the Mother of God in Medjugorje asked to provide a waiver for 9 days because it is realized that began in Fatima, on December 8, 1991, the communist regime ratifies its dissolution: the Immaculate Heart of Mary has triumphed, as she prophesied at Fatima, on the day of the Immaculate Conception! December 25, 1991 is finally lowered the red flag that soared over the Kremlin.
So immediately after the Consecration has been a series of chain events that within only 7 years have brought the fulfillment of the prophecies given in 1917 to three illiterate children, when they still had not even established communism in Russia.
In the homily at the Mass of beatification of Francisco and Jacinta, May 13, 2000, Blessed John Paul II has referred to two times in chapter 12 of Revelation: “By divine design, came from heaven to this earth, the the privileged children of the Father, “a woman clothed with the sun” (Rev 12.1), “the message of Fatima is a call to conversion, which warns humanity so does the game of” dragon “whose “tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.”
Note that at Fatima, “the woman clothed with the sun” has left, as a sign of veracity of the apparitions by seers required, just the “miracle of the sun.” In other words you could say that at Fatima October 13, 1917 “appeared in the sky Now a great sign “(Rev 12.1).
At Fatima were given to the world 3 secrets that have been fulfilled; in Medjugorje we talk about the 10 secrets that will be announced to the world 3 days before their fulfillment. On the other hand, in the last two centuries have been many occasions when Maria gave her maternal warning to her children about the dangers and the correlation between them and the loss of faith, for example in La Salette,France, with Fatima on the two world wars; at Kibeho, in Rwanda, a few years before the killings took place in those areas. In Medjugorje, Our Lady appears as”Queen of Peace” and warns that the devil is pushing the world to the brink of self-destruction because man is seduced by putting himself in place of God.
How Not to mention the apparitions at Akita, Japan, in 1973, where the Virgin prophesied for our future, “fire from heaven” because of the rejection of God by men. The obvious similarities with Medjugorje for the apocalyptic tones, because the most important aspect of the apparitions in Medjugorje is the reference to the eschatological battle between the Woman and the dragon of hell. From the beginning, our Lady has turned to prayer and heartfelt appeals to conversion, defining particularly intense and destructive action of the evil in our times and said She had come for this to awaken the faith and conversion in a time of Grace that God has granted till the third secret, before the occurrence of those secrets that will be the result of the choice of modern man to live without God.
Should also be stressed however that it is not millenarian prophecies about the end of the world: Mary at Medjugorje says that after the realization of the 10 secret there will be a time of spring, so that man will return to accept the Lordship of God As noted by Cardinal Ivan Dias: “one thing is certain: the final victory belongs to God and what will happen thanks to Mary, the Woman of Genesis and the Apocalypse, who will fight to the head of the army of her sons and daughters against the forces of the enemy, Satan and will crush the serpent’s head “. Even when the Montfort spoke of Marian apparitions in the “latter days” is not intended as an “end times” but as times of eschatological battle.
In the introduction I mentionedthe army that according to the Monfort ,Our Lady would have raised to defeat the enemy. Through the apparitions of the past 2 centuries, this prophecy is being fulfilled, in particular there are thousands of people who are coming to faith in Medjugorje, as it is the last stage of the eschatological battle.
Mary is the Spouse of the Holy Spirit and as such She has cooperated with the birth of the Church and the first evangelization since the Upper Room of Pentecost, when the pagan world had to be Christianized . The progressive de-Christianization and apostasy have determined today a scenario similar to the paganism of 2000 years ago. And here again the Mother of God is accompanying the action of the Holy Spirit in the New Pentecost and the consequent new evangelization.
I do not think, in fact, that is a pure coincidence the recent emergence of groups that evangelization groups ,as promoted by John Paul II, that often share the Marian sensitivy and charismatic prayer of praise to God and invocation of the Holy Spirit, the first model of the Upper Room and the first Christian community.
Here is the army of new preachers inflamed by the Holy Spirit and guided by Our Lady…what Montfort prophesied and He had this to say about 3 centuries ago about these soldiers of this army: “… will be blazing fire, ministers of the Lord will put all over the fire of divine love. Arrows are sharp in the mighty hand of Mary to pierce his enemies, like arrows in the hand of a hero. “.
And again: “… will be well purified by the fire of great tribulations and closely united to God will bring the gold of thelove in the heart, the incense of prayer in the spirit and the myrrh of mortification in their body. Shall be everywhere the good odor of JesusChrist for the poor and for small, … “” … teaching the narrow way of God in pure truth, according to the Holy Gospel, and not according to the canons of the world without worries and without looking at anybody in my mouth … They will have a two-edged sword of the Word of God and will shoulder the banner of the bloody cross,the crucifix in one hand and the rosary in the left, the sacred names of Jesus and Mary in their hearts. Here are the great men who are on Mary will shape under the order of the Most Hight to extend his dominion over the sinner ones.
At Fatima, perhaps the core of the modern cycle of Marian apparitions, Our Ladysaid that Jesus wanted to establish in the world devotion to Her Immaculate Heart. I believe that God will show us Mary as the medicine to two ills particularly afflictingmodern man: pride, typically luciferin, which is believed not to need God until you get to His refusal, and to put yourself in His place ; the sexual profligacy which undermines young people and families, which are the two foundations of society.These are the two poisons with which the devil is poisoning us to death;the Humility and Purity of the “Woman clothed with the sun”, her Immaculate Heart, are the two antidotes that God gives us!”.
Giuseppina Righetti, Psychologist and Professor of Religion
Italy
May 2012
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