Fr. Casey Spiritual Combat #4 - CONF 216

let's begin once again with a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of thy faithful and kindling in the fire of thy love sand for thy spirit and they shall be created now shall turn to the face of the earth and let us pray o God who did instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit grant us in the same spirit to be truly wise and ever to rejoice in his consolation through Christ our Lord Mary Mother of mercy st. Joseph st. Louie De Montfort us in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen just for my own information I was wondering how many of you made the retreat with me here three years ago okay that's good to know not many yeah uh-huh okay mm-hmm yeah well I would feel somewhat remiss if I preached retreated did not devote at least one talk and to our Blessed Mother Mary and since this is a retreat which has as its theme the spiritual battle of our time I want to get around to talking about Our Lady's place in the spiritual warfare that we are now in um in one time they were airing my Lenten mission series on EWTN and I got a letter from a nice Baptist lady in Oklahoma I want to share this with you she wrote this I found EWTN on my TV in February and Lent was being observed my first time learning about land is my church doesn't observe it to me it was a wonderful season of renewal I watched often I saw four of your talks I saw the one you preached explaining why Catholics Revere Mary I hadn't heard the why before I was quite interested in one place he reminded me of a favorite Scripture I have heard many times in my 80 years of life where from the cross Jesus gave the care of his mother to st. John the thought came to me as you spoke Mary really knew all Jesus disciples she lived among them as we do our friends it seemed so real suddenly I smelled the odor of roses I could feel the pressure of a small wind holding the odor around me for several minutes then slowly drift away the house was closed there was no way a wind could have blown in and there were no roses in the house it's only me the odor definitely came as a result of the words that I heard in my thoughts at the time left me a wonderful memory and who quote while I always saying that I attribute my vocation my call to the priesthood to the power of the Holy Rosary and the intercession of our Blessed Mother there's no question in my mind it had it not been for Our Lady's influence or profound influence in my life that I would not be here today a priest there's no question when I was a teenager in junior high in high school I had a friend his name is Tony and we were good friends and classmates we used to pal around together after school and visit each other's homes quite a bit we had a lot of classes together we played the same sports on the same teams and we graduated from high school together then went on to college we were a couple years at temple together we had gotten to be close friends in those days when we were in high school Tony never went to church he had no affiliation with any denomination that I never knew about but while we were in college he had gotten involved with a very fundamentalist Protestant prayer group in Bible study and we used to get into these big discussions about the Bible now neither one of us knew we were talking about but Tony started bringing up the subject all the time and the good that came out of that was that it gave me some incentive to start reading the Bible so that I could at least have some basic knowledge of what it was all about that I was reading it out of curiosity for the most part but for my Bible study I chose the old douay-rheims version which my mother had there at home and the douay-rheims version you may know it has a wonderful concise Catholic commentary in it by the grace of God that turned out to be one of the best things that I ever did reading the sacred scriptures really planted the seeds of my vocation of the priesthood and in so many ways more ways than I could describe to you had changed my life and changed my whole way of looking at life you know when I began to read the sacred scriptures the more exciting it became for me and I love history in any case but um but when I began to read the Old Testament and through the new all of a sudden the pieces began to fit together it all began to make sense to me and I knew that for me there was no turning back you know the truth is compelling and here we've got the inspired Word of God and it changed my way of thinking and feeling and acting and you know the Holy Spirit speaks to us speaks to our hearts the inspired Word the sacred scriptures so think of that combination you know I've always heard it said in the spiritual life there's a very basic formula simple equation right a Holy Spirit plus Mary brings forth Jesus Christ just as it did at Nazareth right that should make sense to you because Mary is the spouse of the Holy Spirit well um while all this was going on Tony started thinking about becoming a minister and when he finished college he enrolled in a seminary there in the Philadelphia area and the seminary he enrolled in just happens to be one of the most anti Catholic institutions in the whole country it is to this day a bastion strict rigorous Protestant fundamentalism strict Calvinism staunchly vehemently anti-catholic now I didn't know any of this at the time and I didn't know what Tony was doing and I really didn't care because after all I had my own plans and my own future to think about at that time of course I knew very little about the controversies between Catholics and Protestants Tony knew that I was a Catholic and that had never been an issue between us before but one day Tony called me on the phone and he invited me to come to a party a little social gathering he was having with some of his new circle of friends friends from his new prayer group and this I was told a was an ecumenical prayer group my nondenominational kind of gathering you know just good fellowship and all that's now I can see by the reaction that I am getting from some of you that you have had the same experience that I have you know what this is going right okay when I got there I was foolish enough to accept the invitation when I got there that Saturday night I found out very quickly that it was a non-denominational gathering as long as you were not Catholic all right now this bunch found out that I was a Catholic and not ashamed of it it was like an icy chill came over the room they were very friendly toward me at first but when they found out that I was a Catholic all that changed very quickly into what you might call passive hostility polite antagonism and I mean the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife this was my first experience of anti-catholicism this was a very uncomfortable awkward situation for me and for them and not knowing what else to do the true papist in their midst they decided to close in for a quick kill like a pack of theological wolves and they kept on bringing up all the old predictable lame convoluted arguments against the Catholic Church and I kept on shooting them down one by one and they were becoming more and more frustrated with me at every passing moment now if you have ever been in the situation like this you know that trying to defend the Catholic faith to dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist is kind of like being an American in Iran mm-hmm well not that extreme maybe Pakistan right um you know in in the Islamic world in so many places all that they know about America is what they have heard from their own leaders the Islamic radicals the Imams the mullahs America is the Great Satan all right that's what that's all that they know you don't cut through years of that brainwashing very easily hmm well back then I didn't know my faith all that well but I well enough to try to defend it and when Tony and his friends realized that we're getting nowhere with me they decided to try to make one last attempt one final assault one last argument they were going to fire the ultimate weapon drop the big bomb and what do you think that would be Mary of course Mary Mary Mary they attack devotion to Our Lady now there's nothing unusual about that and that's exactly what you would expect from such people but what struck me what astonished me about this particular group and I'm talking about this group and this group only right was the fact they had this terrible aversion repugnance an actual hostility not just to Marian devotion but to our Blessed Mother herself right now what I am describing is not representative of Protestants in general right don't get me wrong right I am NOT trying to paint all Protestants with the same brush that would be ridiculous wouldn't it there are literally tens of thousands of different Protestant denominations from the the mainline churches to the storefront churches and I would have to say that in general in my travels I have found that of late Protestant people seem to be much more open to Marian devotion in many ways and they have been in the past it's just my experience a a pastor friend of mine a good priest friend of mine was having lunch he took me to lunch with a friend of his a Baptist minister and the subject got around to Mary and I remember this this Minister saying at one point you know for all these years we thought you Catholics had said too much about Mary and then we came to realize that we had said too little mmm that was great but again back to this particular group that I'm talking about they had this awful aversion hostility to our Blessed Mother herself they became agitated I mean visibly incensed at the very sound of her holy name now I explained to them clearly the distinction between the worship the adoration we give the God alone the Holy Trinity and the honor we give to Mary in the Saints but they did not want to hear that they were not going to accept that because obviously they wanted to go on believing that Catholics are idolaters they had come to feel very comfortable and that belief and they were not going to let it go it's like the old saying my mind is made up don't confuse me with the facts right then they told me what they think of our Blessed Mother and this blew me away and I'll never forget it they were very flippant about what she means to them hmm they told me that as far as their faith is concerned Mary is nothing nothing she was just a body nothing more than a body a vessel God made use of to bring Jesus Christ into the world they said theoretically it could have been any woman any woman could have served the same purpose just as well God just happened to choose this one named Mary all the while I was thinking that what kind of theology is this how incredibly shallow they are intellectually how incredibly weak their understanding of the mysteries the faith is the Incarnation the hypostatic union the virgin birth the theology of redemption the perfections of God how incredibly superficial their knowledge was this was not just bad theology it was worse than that to me this was actually perverse twisted to hear it said the mother of our Savior is nothing - he her life her faith her sorrows her incomparable holiness her perfect virtues reduced the insignificant triviality is one of the most outrageous errors that I've ever heard the sad part was that they were simply too blind to see it now I know this was not their intention they were not trying to be offensive but I took this to be not just an insult to my faith myself as a Catholic not just an insult to our lady but ultimately an insult to Christ himself now don't get me wrong I want to make this clear to you um I don't mean to seem in any way antagonistic or uncharitable I am NOT anti fundamentalist I'm just anti anti-catholic right there is a distinction right you've got to wonder some of these people good well-meaning people that having been said did they honestly believe they could honor our Lord by belittling and trivializing his mother no way it's common sense now the sad part of this was that turned out to be one of the last times that I saw Tony and that night turned out to be the end of our long friendship more than 25 years passed I know that he got married and he's got a family he became a minister he got ordained that he has he has a church in a congregation somewhere in North Jersey but we never got together again and I wonder if we could ever have been friends again and I guess it could not have been otherwise but you know what it doesn't bother me at all um why because they had insulted our mother the mother of our personal Lord and Savior the Queen and mother of all Christians to me this was very deadly serious business and you know there are some things in life that are far more important than mere human friendship yes on all things at all times we've got a practice Christian charity and I'm all in favor of acumen ISM it is good and necessary but we can't forget that true humanism has got to be founded upon mutual respect mutual interests not insult and offence friendship true friendship that I think is another matter all-together for me true friendship has got to be based upon common Goods common bonds for me that common bond has got to be the truth for me when it comes to friendship there can be no unity at the expense of the truth just my opinion mmm this was about the mother of God the mother of the church the spouse of the Holy Spirit the Immaculate Conception the arc of the New Covenant what is at issue here is the truth the dignity of womanhood motherhood nothing less than the honor of God it's common sense human nature it's the way that we are the great Protestant writer CS Lewis understood this very well he said this about devotion to the Virgin Mary quote the Roman Catholic believes on that subject are held not only with the ordinary fervor that attaches to all sincere religious belief but very naturally or the peculiar and is it were chivalrous sensibility that a man feels when the honor of his mother his beloved is at stake end quote mm-hmm oh how true it is most of us tend to think very highly of our mothers hmm if you brought a friend home to meet your family and that person proceeded to show disrespect or contempt towards your mother chances are you would not be friends for very long and I would suggest to you so it is with our Lord when we were kids remember the quickest way to start a fight in the playground and salt the other kids mother that would always do it right this has to be understood the Lord Jesus Christ loves his holy mother with an infinite love more than any son ever loved the mother or ever will and he honors her with the greatest the most perfect honor a son can ever give he has given her an incomparable degree of heavenly glory he has crowned her the Queen of Heaven he has clothed her in the Sun the moon crowned her twelve stars that is about as biblical as you can get hmm you know I've always wondered about this it's kind of like saying to our Lord we love you we accept you as our personal Lord and Savior come and abide with us forever come into our lives come into our hearts and our homes just don't bring your mother around here we have no use for her no time for her all she does is get in the way we don't want to see her or hear about her don't want to be bothered with her we don't even want the mention of her name she means nothing to us but Oh Lord we want you how could that ever be pleasing to the son of God and the son of Mary just my opinion for what it's worth not to say that I'm the opinionated type as you know I all right Archbishop Fulton J Sheen used to say in that in the mind of Almighty God there are two images two visions of each one was first God sees us as we are then he sees us as we could be as he wants us to be so for all of us the objective in the spiritual life is to make those two images in the mind of Almighty God to be one from all eternity there has only been one human person for whom God has only had one image Mary God made something great happen and Mary the greatest event in the history of the world the Incarnation took place within her virginal womb Mary's virginal womb became the bridal chamber where heaven and earth divinity and humanity were joined together we're in a kind of mystical marriage that is something God intends to be known and understood and honored Jesus Christ the Eternal Word made flesh true God and true man took his sacred humanity the bridge between heaven and earth from the Holy humanity of the Blessed Virgin he is truly flesh from her flesh blood from her blood and in this sense we are profoundly related profoundly close to her in holy communion in the Holy Eucharist she is the sinless spotless uncorrupted Ark of the new covenant chosen by God before time began not at random not by chance but by the sovereign will of God and no human person ever loved God as much as Mary does God did not choose just anyone to be the Virgin Mother of the Redeemer he chose Mary Mary is the mother specially chosen by God prepared by God informed by God to be his own now friends there is nothing so difficult to understand about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception I can explain it so the most fundamental fundamentalist can get it get it easily if you just think of it like this hmm God created his own mother did he not if you could create your own mother how would you make her I know how I would make my mother all beautiful all holy all pure all immaculate that is exactly what God did Mary's perfect faith response to God's call perfect obedience to God's holy will countered and reversed the disobedience of Eve and set into motion the events that would make the Paschal mystery a reality that is something that God intends to be known and understood and honored the point is this Mary said yes to God an eternal yes that shook the heavens on the earth and change the rule forever great things happen when you say yes to God when you make the personal sacrifice to conform your life totally to God's wisdom and will all your heart and soul you are imitating Mary's faith hope love and courage you are placing yourself at the foot of the cross that's what makes the same see a saint is someone who not only accepts God's will or is resigned to God's will in some minimal way a saint is someone who truly seeks God's will loves God's will embraces God's holy wills truly loves and wills what God wills even if what God wills is the cross although we meant not understand how and why of things until the next life Mary entrusted herself completely to God holding nothing back from him ready to be his perfect instrument no matter what the cost matter what the consequences God is the divine artist Mary is the model the masterpiece and do you think that a great artist is insulted or offended with his masterpieces admired and honored did no way to embrace the Christian life is to do exactly what Mary did to say yes to God means total abandonment the divine providence it is in a sense to say to God I am the stone you be the sculptor I am the clay you be the Potter I am the instrument you be the composer I am the canvas you be the painter the master artist of my life be able to understand the greatness of Mary's Fiat that is her perfect faith response to God's call I think it is necessary to understand what Mary was risking what she had to lose by saying that eternal yes by saying I am the handmaid of the Lord let it be done unto me according to thy word you have to understand the customs and the culture of the ancient Hebrews their attitudes toward marriage and human sexuality needless to say in first century Palestine it was not like it is today in our American pop culture right where most people seem to have the idea that marriage is temporary spouses are disposable fidelity and chastity optional sex recreational just so much fun and games to gratify yourself with no necessary relationship human life love divorce rate about 50% cohabitation and norm single parenthood pregnancy out of wedlock the order of the day now that kind of life sensuousness was an abomination to the first century Hebrews sexual immorality marital infidelity was a very very serious matter to the Jews of our Lord's Day I like the people of our time they saw it for what it really is grave sin what it is in the sight of Almighty God the law of Moses prescribed a very severe dire penalties especially for women were thought to be unfaithful and of course in extreme cases it could have meant the death penalty think of the woman caught in adultery in the gospel st. John hmm would have happened to that woman had our Lord not been there hmm she could have been stoned to death even today in the Islamic world under Sharia law women often are stoned to death on a mere suspicion of being unfaithful can you imagine the risk that meri was taken by consenting to be the Virgin Mother of God's only begotten Son by saying yes of the Archangel Gabriel she knew what it meant for a girl was betrothed there already given in marriage to be found with child by another for such a girl it could have meant the loss of her reputation the loss of a husband loss of her ability to marry any respectable man disgrace upon her family ostracism banishment in the community the ruin of her life and maybe even death Mary was ready to risk all that and more for the love of God her trust in God was immediate no reservations no doubts no hesitation was totally courageous absolutely heroic when Saint Gabriel came to call our Blessed Mother to be the Virgin Mother of the Redeemer he spoke to her in words that no angel had ever addressed to a human being before he said hail hail full of grace that was a heavenly salute the salute of the angels Mary Mary full of grace before baptism full of grace before our Lord's birth what better evidence could we need for the reality of the Immaculate Conception than the words of the Archangel who stands before God's throne and if the Archangel who stands before God's throne God's own messenger could honor Mary with a heavenly salute tell me why any Christian should ever be ashamed or afraid to give Mary the honor that she deserves the honor that is rightly due to her as the Virgin Mother of God's only begotten Son she is the one full of grace the Greek word used by the Evangelist Saint Luke and his gospel is king Cara Jimena which means exactly that full of grace to be grace filled now some of these modern translations drive me nuts hmm I you know the first chapter Saint Luke's Gospel the the Annunciation um they have Saint Gabriel saying to Our Lady rejoice o highly favored one rather than full of grace right it drives me nuts now there is a great distinction as you should know right now a lot of people are predicting um that the Detroit Tigers are highly favored to win the pennant this year all right that does not mean the tiger is a full of grace all right mm-hmm again common sense right Mary is the perfect instrument in God's hands the perfect mother of His only begotten Son and there are no words that can be spoken on the face of this earth that can ever diminish the greatness of that in the sight of Almighty God now we call Abraham our Father and faith because Abraham was ready to sacrifice his beloved son at God's command and we know that the sacrifice God asked of Abraham was only a test never carried out recall that the angel the Lord prevented the bloody sacrifice of his son Isaac on Mount Moriah but the sacrifice that God asked of Mary the sacrifice of her only son was carried out before her very eyes on the bloody cross a blood-soaked soil of Calvary that is where the words of the Prophet Simeon were fulfilled at the presentation of our Lord in the temple forty days after his birth Simeon foretold that a sort of sorrow or pierce her heart so the hearts of many could be revealed recall if the Roman soldier thrust a lance into the side of our Lord and pierced his sacred heart and there flowed out blood and water symbolic of the price of our salvation but Jesus was already dead there on the cross Jesus never felt that cutting blade that pierced his divine heart there on Calvary the one who bore the terrible pain of that blow was Mary in a spiritual sense the point of that spear pierced her maternal heart as she looked on in horror on Calvary Mary made the greatest sacrifice God could ever call upon a mother make she suffered the worst pain a mother could ever endure that is why we rightly call Mary our mother in faith her Immaculate Heart is the hard devotion the heart of devotion one of my favorite books on Our Lady is true devotion written by st. Louie de Montford if you want to have some insight into the role of Our Blessed Mother in the spiritual battle of the latter days all you need do is to read the works of st. Louis de Montfort especially true devotion and to sum it up st. Louie de Montfort said something to this effect I'm paraphrasing here he said the greatest Saints will be those most greatly devoted to Our Lady because only those Catholics were truly devoted to Our Lady would be preserved free from all theological error he said something to this effect also the most sure way to recognize a priest of bad doctrine is in one who has no devotion to our Blessed Mother and for a priest dr disdain for devotion to Our Lady is he said the sign of reprobation did you ever in your experience come across a priest wanted nothing to do with our lady there nots huh there was a story I tell you not to digress but um there's a story about a newly ordained priest arm in a diocese in Kentucky and he came out of a very Maggie Seminary in that part of the country and I mean he was taught to have nothing to do with Mary and devotion of the Rosary anything like that so in celebrating the Feast of the Assumption the solemnity of the Assumption this priest went into the pulpit to give his homily carrying with him three props a small statue of Our Lady a rosary and a trashcan hmm and he proceeded to tell everyone that devotion to our Blessed Mother is nothing more than a sign of infantile Pietism not something a mature Christian should be doing we've got to move beyond these old superstitions pietistic devotions you see then he said that vatican ii did away with all that don't you know and then for dramatic effect he held up the statue of Our Lady one hand trashcan and the other and he slammed the statue of Our Lady into the trash can then the rosary bind right um two years later that young priest had left the priesthood and he got himself arrested out in California did two years in San Quentin because of a sex scandal mm-hmm again st. Louie de Montfort's words are as relevant today as they ever were but he said this these things about Mary's part of the spiritual battle of our time right he was of the opinion that the greatest Saints would be those of the latter days because the Saints of bygone eras would have to defeat Satan chained but the Saints of the latter days would have to defeat Satan Unchained let me let me quote st. Louie De Montfort here on our ladies role in the last days to marry alone God gave the keys of the sellers of divine love and the ability to enter the most sublime and secret ways of perfection and lead others along them this means that the greatest Saints those richest in grace and virtue will be the most assiduous and pray to the Most Blessed Virgin looking up to her as the perfect model to imitate and as a powerful helper to a system I said this will happen especially toward the end of the world and indeed is soon because Almighty God and His Holy Mother are to raise up great Saints who will surpass in holiness most other Saints as much as the Cedars of Lebanon tower above little shrubs these great souls filled with Grace and zeal will be chosen to oppose the enemies of God who are aging on all sides he will be exceptionally devotion devoted to the Blessed Virgin illumined by her light strengthened by her food guided by her spirit supported by her arm sheltered under her protection they will fight with one hand and build with the other with one hand they will give battle over throwing and crushing heretics and their heresies says Maddox and their citizens idolaters and their idolatrous their wickedness on the other hand they will build the temple that true Solomon the mystical City of God by word an example they would draw all men to a true devotion to her and through this will make many enemies who also bring about many victories and much glory to God alone these latter times Mary must shine forth more than ever in mercy power and grace in mercy to bring back and welcome lovingly the poor sinners and Wanderers are to be converted in return to the Catholic Church in power to combat the enemies of God will rise up menacingly to seduce and crush by promises and threats all oppose them finally she must shine forth in grace to inspire and support the valiant soldiers and loyal servants of Jesus Christ or fighting for his cause lastly Mary must become as terrible as an army and battle array to the devil and his followers especially in these latter times for Satan knowing he has but little time even less now than ever to destroy souls intensify as his efforts and his onslaughts every day he will not hesitate to stir up savage persecutions and set treacherous snares for Mary's faithful servants and children when we find more difficult to overcome than others thus the most fearful enemy that God has set up against the devil is Mary his holy mother hmm oh listen to the voice of the saints hmm I'm always fascinated with what the saints had to say about our lady from the earliest days right from you know the most immediate successors of the Apostles for every century Saint Ignatius of Antioch is that a direct disciple the apostle st. Peter and st. John he says he who is devout of the Virgin Mother will certainly never lose his way say Ouray s bishop and martyr the second century wrote the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary what the Virgin Eve had bounded unbelief Virgin Mary loosed through faith st. Augusta greatest theologian of the early church said Mary conceived Christ in her heart through faith before she ever conceived him in her womb all the tongues of all the men in all the world were to praise Mary throughout their entire lives it would be far less than she deserves st. Cyril of Alexandria 5th century champion of the faith the council of ephesus wrote this but anyone could doubt at the right of the Holy Virgin to be called a mother of God fills me with astonishment surely she must be the mother of god of our Lord Jesus Christ is God and she gave birth to him our Lord's disciples may not have used those exact words but they delivered to us the belief those words enshrine this has also been taught to us by the Holy Fathers st. Ambrose 4th century said that the soul of Mary being each of us to magnify the Lord and the spirit of Mary being each of us to rejoice in God seen Methodius apostle of Eastern Europe and Russia vote he who said honor your father and your mother that he might observe his own decree gave all Grace and honor to his own mother seen in some of Canterbury 12th century said divine spirit love itself of the father and the son came corporally into Mary and reaching her with Grace's above all creatures reposed in her and made her his spouse the queen of heaven and earth st. Thomas Aquinas said the Blessed Virgin by becoming the mother of God received a kind of infinite dignity because God is infinite this dignity therefore is such a reality the better is not possible just as nothing can be better than God Saint Alphonsus Liguori wrote the classic work of Mary and spirituality the glories Mary said she is truly our mother not indeed carnally but spiritual var souls of our salvation for she by giving us Jesus gave us true life and afterwards by offering the life of her son on Calvary for our salvation helped bring us forth the life of grace you see the Saints believed this is clear from studying their writings the Saints believed that God will never refuse the prayers of our Blessed Mother because she never refused God anything he asked of her when she was on earth not even her only Son last year in October I was invited to speak at the annual convention of the Chicago chapter the blue army of Our Lady of Fatima and I got the invitation I was all excited and I was all pumped up you know I thought this is going to be great there'll be thousands of people there to my great astonishment um there were only about a hundred and fifty people at that conference and and of course they rented space in a huge hotel ballroom but there were less than 200 people present there the vast majority of them were elderly women I was just amazed amazed because the message of Fatima is so incredibly important at our time and it will be until it is fulfilled you know that at Fatima our Lady to reveal many things to those three Shepherd children Francisco Jacinta and Lucia she told them there would be wars world war persecutions of the church the spread of atheism the loss of countless souls scandal disobedience and division in the church the Holy Father would have much to suffer but by far the most frightening thing that she showed the children was the vision of Hell on July the 13th 1917 she showed the children the vision of hell and she told them that souls were falling into hell by the thousands her exact words were that souls were falling into hell like snowflakes that it was over 95 years ago how terrifying it is now because so many people have lost the faith lost their sense of sin lost their sense of God we are seeing what is in essence the great apostasy but I believe it is a great apostasy predicted in Scripture by the Apostle st. Paul there is a desperate need for the world to accept the message of Our Lady of Fatima and the mercy that God offers through her intercession while there is still time one secular writer reflecting on the events of Fatima are dismissed at all again as you know the the silly superstitions of ignorant Catholics see and made the statement that come 2017 the Fatima message will become the Fatima myth Pope Benedict the sixteenth has said that 2017 will be a very very significant year for the church and for the world he didn't say exactly what significance it would have but I would ask you to consider this hmm think of what is coming in October of 2017 in October 2017 in the span of that one month we will see the 100th anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions at Fatima at 100th anniversary of the miracle the Sun our ladies final apparition in that same month we will also see 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution the Communist revolution responsible for an estimated 70 million deaths worldwide untold heartache October 2017 will also be the 500th anniversary of the Protestant revolt hmm all the span of that one month now Archbishop Fulton sheen who I've always considered to be a prophetic man used to say before the hand of God comes down upon the world it always comes down upon the church well it seems that the hand of God has come down upon the church in so many ways especially through the scandals have done so much to destroy the public image of the church at a priests in particular but he also said calamitous events come upon the church in five hundred year intervals so if the words of Bishop Sheen were truly prophetic or do something is common right we don't know what but we must be prepared my friends to me the question has always been this why do we hear so many reports of our Blessed Mother appearing in so many different parts of the world in in recent centuries and even in recent decades places like Lourdes knock Fatima Akita and of course um we have the newly approved apparition site in champion Wisconsin which is now being operated by fathers of Mercy mm-hmm um why why so many apparitions why so many warnings I believe it is because clearly our lady is the prophetess of our time she has never cease to be our most loving mother she is a mother whose love never grows cold she never abandons her children when a mother rushes to her children it is because she knows they are in danger souls are in danger families are in danger the church is in danger our country is in danger hmm um let me say this to you um I was up at the shrine of our lady of good help in champion Wisconsin which was approved about two years ago by Bishop David Rickon of the Diocese of Green Bay and it is the only approved Marian apparition site in the United States but if you get a chance to visit please take advantage of it because it is truly a blessed and amazing place it's a simple and a humble place where our Lady appeared as sister Adele Bryce in October of 1859 and Our Lady appeared as sister Adele only one time but it was awesome our lady predicted the coming of the Civil War right two years later hmm but the essence of the message with sister Adele and her confreres were teaching sisters the essence of the message at champion from Our Lady of Good help was the awesome awesome responsibility for the spiritual formation and religious education of our young people and what the dire consequences would be if we fail to hand on the faith to them now we know what our lady was worried about don't we you see what has happened the tremendous colossal failure of Catholic education in the last 50 years which has gotten us into the mess we are in today but without going into that you know I found the Shrine of Our Lady good helped to be an amazing and truly blessed place where you really sense in a profound way the presence of our Lea and when you go down into the Crypt Chapel which is almost like you know at this point somebody's basement which has been converted into an equipped chapel and there is this magnificent statue of Our Lady which stands on the exact site where our Lady appeared is sister Adele and just to be in prayer in that little is is an awesome thing and it is truly inspirational if you get a chance to go there by all means take advantage of it the rector there is my old friend Father Peter Stryker great guy and I can tell you they are staying very very busy there especially in the summertime in the summertime they have been getting sometimes up to a thousand pilgrims per day mmm when I was there in October it was just a steady stream of of tour buses pilgrims seniors groups school groups students but it was truly amazing so if you get a chance by all means see it hmm bottom line is this friends before I close today our lady is calling on us to become a great force of Prayer and reparation in the world and again by the grace of God she has given us the weapon to fight with in the spiritual battle of our time and that weapon is the Holy Rosary sister Lucia dos Santos one of the three children Our Lady appeared with Fatima and one of the last interviews that she granted said this quote most holy virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Holy Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem no matter how difficult it is in the personal life of each one of us or of our families or even a people's and of Nations which cannot be solved with a rosary with a holy rosary we will save ourselves we will console our Lord and obtain the salvation and many souls so we pray again tonight Mary conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee I will ask you just to check out again the CD sets that we have on the back table and we also have the new Eucharistic rosaries and when you see them you will know immediately why they are called Eucharistic rosaries right the Our Father beads are shaped as drops of blood and red and of course the mother-of-pearl Hail Mary beads are shaped as the disc right to represent the sacred host and Blessed Sacrament so check those out it is your spiritual weapon and there was another talk that I would like to be able to give during this retreat but I will not have the time to do that and the title of that talk is what do you know about marriage I've got about 20 copies along and I'm going to give them away we don't have enough for everyone but if we could just give away maybe one per family or one per couple all right and to to our young people I think we'll have enough to go around so yeah you're welcome to stop by the table and pick up a free copy of the talk entitled what do you know about marriage you you

Channel: franciscanfriars

Views: 43,618

Rating: 4.8993711 out of 5

Keywords: Religion, Christian, Catholic, Franciscan, Spirituality, Blessed Virgin Mary, Fr. Casey, Mary, spiritual combat

Id: --q_9OQpsVs

Length: 56min 6sec (3366 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 17 2013