Satan Is 100% Afraid Of The Immaculate Virgin Mary

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 them the fire of thy love send forth thy spirit and they shall be created now shelter into the face of the earth and let us pray oh 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 saint joseph saint louis de montfort for 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 [Music] yeah well i would feel somewhat remiss if i preached a retreat and did not devote at least one talk 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 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 um 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 you reminded me of a favorite scripture i have heard many times in my eighty years of life where from the cross jesus gave the care of his mother to saint 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 seems 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 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 well i always say that i attribute my vocation my call of the priesthood to the power of the holy rosary and the intercession of our blessed mother there's no question in my mind that 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 ever knew about but while we were in college he had gotten involved with a very fundamentalist protestant prayer group and 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 and i was reading it out of curiosity for the most part but for my bible study i chose the old douay rheems version which my mother had there at home and the douay rheims version you may know 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 it changed my life it changed my whole way of looking at life uh 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 uh you know the holy spirit speaks to us speaks to our hearts the inspired word the sacred scriptures so think of that combination i've always heard it said in spiritual life there's a very basic formula simple equation right the holy spirit plus mary brings forth jesus christ just as it did in 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 uh 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 uh it is to this day a bastion of 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 and at that time of course i knew very little about the controversies between catholics and protestants now 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 was an ecumenical prayer group a non-denominational kind of gathering you know just good fellowship and all that stuff now i 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 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 in 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 with 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 a situation like this you know that trying to defend the catholic faith to died in the wool fundamentalists it's kind of like being an american in iran well not that extreme maybe pakistan right um uh 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 muellers america is the great satan right that's what that's all that they know you don't cut through years of that brainwashing very easily um well back then i didn't know my faith all that well but i know well enough to try to defend it and when tony and his friends realized that were getting nowhere with me they decided to try to make one last attempt one final assault one last argument they were gonna fire the ultimate weapon drop the big bomb and what do you think that would be mary of course mary mary mary they attacked 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 uh was the fact that they had this terrible aversion repugnance an actual hostility not just a marian devotion but to our blessed mother herself all right now um 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 um protestant people seem to be much more open to marrying devotion in many ways than they have been in the past it's just my experience uh a pastor friend of mine a good priest friend of mine [Music] was having lunch he took me to lunch with a friend of his 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 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 explain to them clearly the distinction between the worship the adoration we give to god alone the holy trinity and the honor we give to mary and 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 in 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 it what she means to them 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 and all the while i was thinking 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 to hear her life her faith her sorrows her incomparable holiness her perfect virtues reduced to insignificance 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's a distinction right you've got to wonder some of these people good well-meaning people that having been said do they honestly believe they could honor our lord by belittling and trivializing his mother no way 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 have passed i know that he got married he's got a family he became a minister he got ordained that he has he has a church and 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 in all things at all times we've got to practice christian charity and i'm all in favor of ecumenism it is good and necessary but we can't forget that true ecumenism has got to be founded upon mutual respect mutual interests not insults and offense friendship true friendship that i think is another matter altogether 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 this was about the mother of god mother of the church the spouse of the holy spirit the immaculate conception the ark 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 c.s lewis understood this very well he said this about devotion to the virgin mary quote the roman catholic beliefs on that subject are held not only with the ordinary fervor that attaches to all sincere religious belief but very naturally with a peculiar and as it were chivalrous sensibility that a man feels when the honor of his mother his beloved is at stake end quote so how true it is most of us tend to think very highly of our mothers 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 insult the other kid's 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 a 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 called her in the sun the moon crowned her 12 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 right 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 all right archbishop fulton j sheen used to say that in the mind of almighty god there are two images two visions of each one of us 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 in mary the greatest event in the history of the world the incarnation took place within her virginal womb mary's virgin womb became the bridal chamber where heaven and earth divinity and humanity were joined together where than 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 especially 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 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 her 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 and eternal yes that shook the heavens and the earth and changed the world 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 us sane see saints 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 will truly loves and wills what god wills even if what god wills is the cross although he meant not understand how and why 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 no 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 no way to embrace the christian life is to do exactly what mary did to say yes to god it 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 chastity optional sex recreational just so much fun and games to gratify yourself with no necessary relationship human life love divorce rate about 50 percent cohabitation and norm single parenthood pregnancy at a wedlock the order of the day now that kind of licentiousness 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 unlike the people of our time they sought for what it really is grave sin what it is in the sight of almighty god the law of moses prescribed very severe dire penalties especially for women who are 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 of saint john what would have happened to that woman had our lord not been there 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 mary was taken by consenting to be the virgin mother of god's only begotten son by saying yes to the archangel gabriel she knew what it meant for a girl who was betrothed or 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 the loss of her ability to marry any respectable man disgrace upon her family ostracism banishment from 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 hell full of grace that was a heavenly salute a salute to the angels to 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 is 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 kikaratha mene which means exactly that full of grace to be grace-filled now you know some of these modern translations drive me nuts right um you know in the first chapter of saint luke's gospel uh the the annunciation um they have saint gabriel saying to our lady rejoice oh 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 um a lot of people are predicting um [Music] that the detroit tigers are highly favored to win the pennant this year all right that does not mean the tigers are full of grace all right 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 in 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 of 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 on the blood-soaked soil of calvary and that is where the words of the prophet simeon were fulfilled in her at the presentation of our lord in the temple forty days after his birth simeon foretold that a sort of sorrow would pierce her heart so the hearts of many could be revealed recall that 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 to make she suffered the worst pain a mother could ever endure that is why we rightly call mary our mother in faith and her immaculate heart is the heart of devotion the heart of devotion one of my favorite books on our lady is true devotion written by saint louis de montfort if um you want to have some insight into the role of our blessed mother um in the spiritual battle of the latter days all you need do is to read the works of saint louis de montfort especially true devotion and to sum it up uh saint louis 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 who were truly devoted to our lady would be preserved free from all theological error he says 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 to have disdain for devotion to our lady is he said a sign of reprobation did you ever in your experience come across a priest wanted nothing to do with our lady they're nuts huh there was a story i'll tell you not to digress but it was a story about a newly ordained priest um in a diocese in kentucky and he came out of a very wacky seminary uh in that part of the country um and uh i mean he was taught to have nothing to do with marian devotion of the rosary anything like that so in celebrating uh the feast of the assumption the solemnity of the assumption um 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 trash can 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 pietastical devotions you see then he said that uh vatican 2 did away with all that don't you know and then for dramatic effect he held up the statue of our lady one hand trash can to 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 uh he got himself arrested out in california and did two years in san quentin of a sex scandal [Music] again saint louis de montfort's words are as relevant today as they ever were but uh he said this these things about mary's part in the spiritual battle of our time all 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 saint louis de montfort here on our lady's 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 they will be exceptionally devotioned 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 overthrowing and crushing heretics and their heresies systematics and their schisms idolaters and their idolatries sinners and their wickedness with the other hand they will build the temple of the true solomon the mystical city of god by word an example they will draw all men to a true devotion to her and through this will make many enemies but also bring about many victories and much glory to god alone in 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 who are to be converted and returned to the catholic church in power to combat the enemies of god who will rise up menacingly to seduce and crush by promises and threats all who oppose them finally she must shine forth in grace to inspire and support the valiant soldiers and loyal servants of jesus christ are fighting for his cause lastly mary must become as terrible as an army and battle ray 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 intensifies 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 whom he finds more difficult to overcome than others thus the most fearful enemy that god has set up against the devil is mary his holy mother listen to the voice of the saints 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 the direct disciple the apostle saint peter in saint john he says he who is devout of the virgin mother will certainly never lose his way saint irenaeus bishop and martyr of the second century wrote the nod of eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of mary while the virgin eve had bound in unbelief the virgin mary loosed through faith saint augustine greatest theologian of the early church said mary conceived christ in her heart through faith before she ever conceived him in her womb if 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 saint cyril of alexandria 5th century champion of the faith the council of ephesus wrote this that anyone could doubt that the right of the holy virgin to be called the mother of god fills me with astonishment surely she must be the mother of god if 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 enshrined this has also been taught to us by the holy fathers saint ambrose fourth century said let the soul of mary be in each of us to magnify the lord and the spirit of mary be in each of us to rejoice in god satan bethodius the 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 it's an end psalm of canterbury 12th century said the divine spirit the love itself of the father and the son came core poorly into mary enriching her with graces above all creatures reposed in her and made her his spouse the queen of heaven and earth saint thomas aquinas said the blessed virgin by becoming the mother of god receives a kind of infinite dignity because god is infinite this dignity therefore is such a reality that a better is not possible just as nothing can be better than god saint alphonsus liguori wrote the classic quirk of uh marion spirituality the glories mary said she is truly our mother not indeed carnally but spiritually of our souls and 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 of the blue army of our lady of fatima and when i got the invitation i was all excited i mean i was all pumped up you know i thought this is going to be great they're going to be thousands of people there to my great astonishment um there were only about 150 people at that conference 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 in our time and it will be until it is fulfilled you know that at fatima our lady revealed 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 to 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 and it was over 95 years ago how terrifying it 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 and i believe it is a great apostasy predicted in scripture by the apostle saint 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 uh dismissed it all again as you know the the silly superstitions of ignorant uh catholics see and made the statement that come 2017 the fatima message will become the fatima myth pope benedict xvi 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 think of what is coming in october of 2017. in october 2017 in the span of that one month we will see [Music] the 100th anniversary of our ladies apparitions at fatima at 100th anniversary of the miracle the sun our lady's final apparition in that same month we will also see the 100th anniversary of the bolshevik revolution the communist revolution responsible for an estimated 70 million deaths worldwide untold heartache october of 2017 will also be the 500th anniversary of the protestant revolt right all in 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 they've done so much to destroy the public image of the church in a priest in particular but he also said calamitous events come upon the church in 500 year intervals so if the words of bishop sheen were truly prophetic or do something is coming 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 we have the newly approved apparition site in champion wisconsin which is now being operated by the fathers of mercy why why so many apparitions why so many warnings i believe it is because clearly our lady is the prophetess of our time and she has never ceased 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 um let me say this to you 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 ricken of the diocese of green bay and it is the only approved marion 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 to sister adele bryce in october of 1859 and our lady appeared to sister adele only one time but it was awesome our lady predicted the coming of the civil war right two years later but the essence of the message with sister adele and her confrares 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 we 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 the day but without going into that you know i found the shrine of our lady of good health to be an amazing and truly blessed place where you really sense in a profound way the presence of our lady and uh 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 equip chapel and there is this magnificent statue of our lady which stands on the exact site where our lady appeared to sister adele and just to be in prayer in that little chapel is is an awesome thing and uh 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 striker a 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 when i was there in october it was just a steady stream of of tour buses pilgrims um seniors groups school groups students but it was truly amazing so if you get a chance by all means see it 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 uh one of the three children our lady appeared with fatima and one of the last interviews that she granted said this quote the 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 of peoples 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 of many souls so we pray again tonight o mary conceive without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee

Channel: Classic Catholic Audiobooks

Views: 70,988

Keywords:

Id: IXQR9h268u8

Length: 54min 26sec (3266 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021