The Living will envy the dead

In a TV ‘cop’ show I watched the other day, as they were about to introduce a new character they used the phrase – “He’s old testament” to let us know this muscled giant would dispense justice swiftly and squarely without compromise or any faffing around. And so he did. 

The God of the old testament, the one who flooded the earth in Noah’s day, poured fire from heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah, rescued His people from the Egyptians and gave us the ten commandments has not taken early retirement. 

It is said that the Father, in this post Resurrection era, views the world through the wounds of His son. It is no less horrifying to Him but sees that the price of our iniquity has been paid by the sacrifice of the Son. And even though the state of the world is far worse now than ever in human history, His anger is held back by the merit of Jesus’ sacrifice. The purpose of that sacrifice was to cancel the debt, to make mercy & forgiveness available. For humanity’s part, we are required (as a minimum) to seek mercy and accept forgiveness and turn back to God. 

What happens when humanity stops turning back to Him, when a tipping point is reached where the sin is so great and the desire to repent or change is almost entirely absent? He sends a warning. I was reading about the approved apparitions in Akita in Japan in the 1970’s where Our Lady spoke to a Japanese nun about what would happen. One message reads “As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and priests” 

It’s hard to imagine what ‘envy the dead’ might look like but surely it’s better to avoid it by heeding this and the many other heavenly warnings we are receiving. The local bishop called it an update on Fatima and if we pay attention to this and the more recent apparitions which point to the same end (although in our day with greater urgency perhaps) disaster can be averted or lessened. Some people wonder why so many apparitions of Mary in our days, it’s because she is pleading with us to change, to pay attention, to see how precious human souls really are and how tragic when lost for lack of prayer or vigilance. 

Maybe this time of year is a good opportunity to begin again.

A weapon against evil...more Rosary stories

 (from the Secret of the Rosary St Louis de Montfort)

While Saint Dominic was preaching the Rosary in Carcasone, a heretic made fun of the miracles and the fifteen mysteries of the Holy Rosary, and this prevented other heretics from being converted. As a punishment God suffered fifteen thousand devils to enter the man's body.

His parents took him to Father Dominic to be delivered from the evil spirits. He started to pray and begged everyone who was there to say the Rosary out loud with him, and at each Hail Mary Our Lady drove out one hundred devils out of the heretic's body and they came out in the form of red hot coals.

After he had been delivered he abjured his former errors, was converted and joined the Rosary Confraternity. Several of his associates did the same, having been greatly moved by his punishment and by the power of the Rosary.

The learned Franciscan, Carthagena, as well as several other authors, say that an extraordinary event took place in 1482: The Venerable James Sprenger and other religious of his order were zealously working to re-establish devotion to the Holy Rosary and also to erect a Confraternity in the city of Cologne.

Unfortunately two priests who were famous for their preaching ability were jealous of the great influence they were exerting through preaching the Rosary. So these two Fathers spoke against this devotion whenever they had a chance, and as they were very eloquent and had a great reputation they persuaded many people not to join the Confraternity.

One of them, bound and determined to achieve his wicked end, wrote a special sermon against the Rosary and planned to give it the following Sunday. But when it came time for the sermon he never appeared and, after a certain amount of waiting somebody went to fetch him. He was found dead, and evidently had died alone without any one to help him and without seeing a priest.

After convincing himself that death had been due to natural causes, the other priest decided to carry out his friend's plan and hoped to put an end to the Confraternity of the Rosary. However, when the day came for him to preach and it was time to give the sermon God punished him by striking him down with paralysis which deprived him both of the use of his limbs and of his power of speech.

At last he admitted his sin and likewise that of his friend and immediately, in his heart of hearts, he silently besought Our Lady to help him. He promised her that is she would only cure him he would preach the Holy Rosary with as much zeal as that with which he had formerly fought against it. For this end he implored her to restore his health and speech which she did, and finding himself instantaneously cured he rose up like another Saul, a persecutor turned defender of the Holy Rosary. He publicly acknowledged his former error and ever after preached the wonders of the Most Holy Rosary with great zeal and eloquence.

"The Rosary is the 'weapon' for these times." Padre Pio

To enroll in the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary , the oldest prayer group in the world.. click link:-

Enrol in the Rosary Confraternity

Vengeance or Forgiveness ?

An inmate at a jail in the Bronx had an interesting insight, distilled from his life experiences:- “When someone wrongs us, we want the maximum amount of punishment. But when we do wrong, we want the maximum amount of understanding and forgiveness.” As a teenager he was robbed of his paper round earnings of $27 by 3 older boys. He got a knife, found them and stabbed all three and this began his own criminal life.  His response or reaction to the evil inflicted on him took him down that same road.

A former inmate from Manila city jail that I met recently had a different story. He was framed by an acquaintance for a multiple murder, a forced confession under torture was obtained by Police officers eager for promotion and he was sentenced to death by electric chair. (This was during the Marcos era when the death sentence was still used). He spent the next 6 years on death row, mostly in solitary. During that time, through the Prison ministry and a life in the Spirit seminar, he had a conversion and was able to forgive the people who had contributed to his woes. He accepted all as coming from the hand of God, whilst still pleading for his life to the new president. Soon after, his appeal was referred to the Supreme Court and he was found not-guilty and released. Since then he travels between jails to reach out to inmates, telling his story and bringing them what little relief he can, grateful to God and compassionate to his brother inmates, whose sufferings he understands all too well.

How we respond to the evil we encounter in life has a profound effect on the result.

For the Lenten season this year I was inspired to pray for the people who had caused pain and suffering in my life, I decided to have Masses offered for the more malevolent and malicious among them. And as I prayed during these first weeks of lent, I found many names and faces from the past come up who still had some capacity to affect me as I relived the incidents and then prayed for them. For example I thought of a sadistic school teacher, a false friend, an overcritical work colleague, a bully during my school days. The worse they were, the more I pitied them. Forgiveness is a must as we need it too, from those we have wronged and of course from God.