ERICHO MARCH
“LET THE CHURCH ROAR!”
December 12, 2020

Dear brothers and sisters,

I greet all of you on this day dedicated to prayer for our beloved Nation, the United States of America. Let’s ask God to make truth and justice triumph! Let’s ask Him to dispel the lies and deceptions of the children of darkness!

You have organized these marches in many cities in America, and named them after a Biblical event: the siege of Jericho. Jericho was the first city that the people of Israel came to after they crossed the Jordan River and entered the Promised Land. The way that God commanded the Hebrew people to conquer Jericho shows us the wonderful ways of the Lord, which are so different from our ways! The Book of Joshua tells us that Jericho was walled up and completely closed – it appeared to be an impregnable fortress! It appeared that a long siege would be necessary to conquer it by hunger, or else that huge weapons of war would be needed to break down its walls. And yet the only thing God commanded was that the people walk around the city with the Ark of the Covenant, blowing the Jubilee Trumpets, as the soldiers and people followed in perfect silence, for seven days.

God did not want to make the city of Jericho fall immediately, in order to show mercy to its inhabitants and invite them to do penance. As Saint John Chrysostom says, “The Lord, who took six days to create the heavens and the earth, took seven days to destroy a sinful city.” The Jubilee Trumpets that sounded around the city were used by the Jews to announce pardon and forgiveness. God would not have made them sound without an ending that was full of goodness. In the same way, an ending that is full of goodness inspires our prayer today, for our Country and for our President!

Even the little children walked with their mothers around the city: those little ones were the most chosen portion of all, because they embodied the innocence that overwhelmed wickedness. Thus, moral strength fought against brutal violence, faith fought against unbelief, obedience fought against arrogant rebellion, humility fought against pride, and faith in the Lord fought against the presumption of man. God revealed the superiority of the power of Good over the power of Evil through an astonishing intervention.

We too, in this hour of great tribulation for our Nation, are praying that truth will triumph over lies, justice over abuse and fraud, honesty over corruption, honor over infamy, faithfulness over betrayal, and that order will triumph over destruction.

We are the silent army of the children of Light, the humble ranks who overthrow evil by invoking God, the praying army that walks around the walls of lies and betrayal in order to bring them down.

We fight the battles of the Lord with faith and courage, carrying the Ark of the Covenant in our hearts, remaining faithful to the teachings of the Gospel of Our Lord! We do not need material strength to fight, because we have the Lord of Armies at our side! Nothing can resist the power of the prayer. The walls of the Deep State, behind which evil is barricaded, will come crashing down!

Jericho was also the place where Jesus Christ converted the tax collector Zaccheus (Luke 19: 1-10). We pray for the conversion of public officials who have become complicit in public fraud and have betrayed their oath to serve our Nation.

Along the road that led from Jerusalem to Jericho, the Good Samaritan stopped to help and care for the traveler who was attacked by robbers (Luke 10:25-37). May his fraternal charity be an example for Patriots who are called to serve our homeland that has been attacked and wounded by both internal and external enemies.

It was also in Jericho that the Lord healed Bartimaeus of his blindness (Mark 10:46-53). May the blind man’s faith spur us on to conversion, so that we place our trust once again in God and that He may hear the cry of our prayer for our beloved Nation.

We are citizens of Heaven: this is the homeland that awaits us for eternity. On this earth we are also children of a homeland that gave us birth and in which we were raised and educated, a homeland we have served with dedication and courage. Be proud, as Christians and as Patriots, to be able to give witness today to your faith in God and your love for the United States of America, for its Constitution, and for its President Donald J. Trump.

Let us pray…

O Lord, Almighty God, prostrate before Thee we invoke Thy powerful protection in this hour of great turmoil, when darkness seems to be spreading over our beloved Nation.

Make vain the assaults of those who, blinded by vice and hatred of Thee, wish to subject our Nation and the whole world to the tyranny of sin and rebellion. Grant wisdom and courage to those who are called to decide the fortunes of the United States of America, and to those who serve their country with fidelity and honor.

Lord, bless our President and our public officials. For those who exercise the power entrusted to them from above, obtain the graces necessary to carry out their duties with integrity and justice.

O Almighty God, who many times hast manifested the power of Thy right hand at the side of Christian armies, place Thyself at the head of this army of Thy children. Let the prayer we address to Thee through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Patroness of the Americas, rise up to Thee, so that we may attain the freedom and peace that Thou hast promised us.

And just as in the time of Joshua, raise up holy heroes and courageous witnesses of the Faith, so also today hear the prayer we raise to Thee, and break down the walls of the City of darkness, granting victory to those who serve under Thy holy banner. Amen.

 ONE NATION UNDER GOD

 + Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Former Apostolic Nuncio in the United States of America

 GOD BLESS OUR PRESIDENT

 GOD BLESS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 ONE NATION UNDER GOD

 + Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
Former Apostolic Nuncio in the United States of America

December 24, 1929
When Jesus speaks of His truths He unleashes light.  The truths, read and reread, are like wrought iron.

I was thinking about all that my sweet Jesus, with so much goodness, deigns to tell to my poor soul, and which, as I reread them in the circumstances, sparkle with light.  And my always lovable Jesus told me:  “My daughter, when I speak I unleash light of truth, and I want that it be accepted and caressed by the soul.  If this light is accepted and put in a place of honor in her interior, it calls for another light; so, one calls for another.  Otherwise, it goes back to its source.  And when the soul returns to read them, if they are written, and to ponder them, my truths are like wrought iron – as the iron is beaten, it becomes red-hot and gives out sparkles of light; while, if is not beaten, the iron is hard, black, and an ice-cold metal.  So it is with my truths; if the soul reads them over and over again in order to suck the substance that is inside my truths that have been communicated to her soul – which is symbolized by the iron, its blackness and coldness – she remains red-hot; and by pondering them, she strikes blows over herself, who has received the good of hearing my truth, which, feeling honored, sparkles with light of more truths.  But if my manifested truths are put into oblivion, nor are they put in a place of honor, they remain as though buried.  But the living are not buried; in fact, they are light which possesses and brings life; therefore, since they are not subject to dying, the time will come in which others will treasure them, and will condemn those who have kept them in oblivion and as though buried.  If you knew how much light there is in everything I have manifested to you on my Divine Will, and how much more light would sparkle if they were read and reread, you yourself would remain eclipsed and amazed at the great good they would do.

+Christmas 2020

Dear brothers and sisters,

Holy Christmas in the light of the Divine Will of the Child Jesus!

                We would like to thank so many of you who sent us their greetings and their testimony in this time of trial and suffering. Our families, our children, our work, our formative activities, our projects, everything we live every day has been impacted and often transformed by the global health crisis. Isolation, illness, work difficulties, like a veil before the sun, have often covered the inner light that dwells in the depths of our hearts: a flame that allows us to see and that warms us!

               We are heartened to know that in her long life Luisa also experienced moments similar to ours. In her writings she told us how she faced them. That flame, or as Luisa liked to call it, “the spark”, is precisely the Divine Will that dwells in us. Nothing can ever extinguish it, nothing can obscure it because it is divine. In the birth of Jesus we contemplate precisely this “prodigy of prodigies, God and man, man and God! Without leaving the Father and the Holy Spirit, He comes to dwell in our midst, taking on human flesh, because true love never separates”. (Diary, Volume IV, December 25, 1900).

               All our strength lies in the hope that God and man are no longer separable.  Not only does God live in us but also – and this is decisive – we live in God, we live of God. This life that is both human and divine within us is the gift, the inheritance or, as Luisa called it, the Christmas gift. It is only missing – but many do not know it yet – that we decide to live this life, doing all our acts in the Divine Will of Jesus, even those acts that belong to this time of pandemic trial.

               We like to unite our wishes for you to those that Luisa made to St. Annibale Maria Di Francia: “With all my heart I wish you holiness in the Supreme Fiat, that holiness willed by our Creator, that is, not holiness in our will, but in His Will. May the divine Infant come into your heart and bring to you the eternal Sun of His Will, which, placing itself as its center in your soul, may direct your whole being towards this Will” (Letter of December 19, 1926).

Fiat!

Vincenza Arbore, president of the Association

Don Sergio Pellegrini, ecclesiastical assistant

info@luisapiccarretaofficial.org

A Meditation in expectation of the birth of the Most Holy Redeemer

Sleep, O Celestial Child:
The nations do not know
Who has been born;
But the day will come
When they shall be
Your noble heritage;
You who sleep so humbly,
You who are hidden in dust:

They will know You as King.

Manzoni, Il Natale

In less than two weeks, by the grace of God, this year of Our Lord 2020, which has been marked by terrible events and great social upheavals, will draw to a close. Allow me to formulate a brief reflection with which to turn a supernatural gaze both towards the recent past as well as the immediate future.

The months that we leave behind represent one of the darkest moments in the history of humanity: for the first time ever, since the birth of the Savior, the Holy Keys have been used to close churches and restrict the celebration of the Mass and the Sacraments, almost in anticipation of the abolition of the daily Sacrifice prophesied by Daniel, which will take place during the reign of the Antichrist. For the first time ever, at the Easter celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection, many of us were forced to assist at Mass and Holy Week services through the internet, depriving us of Holy Communion. For the first time, we became aware, with pain and dismay, of being deserted by our bishops and parish priests, who were barricaded in their palaces and rectories out of fear of a seasonal flu that claimed about the same number of victims as in other years.

We have seen – so to speak – the generals and officers abandon their army, and in some cases they even joined the enemy ranks, imposing on the Church an unconditional surrender to the absurd reasons for the pseudo-pandemic. Never, down all the centuries, has so much faint-heartedness, so much cowardice, so much desire to pander to our persecutors found such fertile ground in those who ought to be our guides and leaders. And what most scandalized many of us was the realization that this betrayal involved the highest levels of the Hierarchy of the Church much more than the priests and the simple faithful. Precisely from the highest Throne, from which we should have expected a firm and authoritative intervention in defense of the rights of God, of the freedom of the Church and the salvation of souls, we have received instead invitations to obey unjust laws, illegitimate norms, and irrational orders. And in the words that the media promptly spread from Santa Marta, we recognized many, too many, nods to the insider language of the globalist élite – fraternity, universal income, new world order, build back better, great reset, nothing will be ever be the same again, resilience – all words of the new language, which testify to the idem sentire of those who speak them and those who listen to them.

It was a true act of intimidation, a thinly-veiled threat, with which our Pastors ratified the pandemic alarm, sowed terror among the simple, and abandoned the dying and the needy. In the height of a cynical legalism, it even reached the point of prohibiting priests from hearing Confessions and administering the Last Sacraments to those were abandoned in intensive care, depriving our beloved dead of religious burial, and denying the Blessed Sacrament to many souls.

And if on the religious side of things we saw ourselves treated as outsiders and barred access to our churches like the Saracens of old – even as the implacable invasion of illegal immigrants continued to replenish the coffers of the self-styled humanitarian associations – on the civil and political side we discovered that our rulers had a vocation to tyranny: using a rhetoric now disproven by reality, they wanted to make us think of them as representatives of the sovereign people. By heads of state and prime ministers, by regional governors and local mayors, the fullest rigors of the law were imposed on us as if we were rebellious subjects, suspects to be placed under surveillance even in the privacy of our own homes, criminals to be chased even in the solitude of the woods or along the seashore. We have seen people forcibly dragged by soldiers in anti-riot gear, elderly people fined while they were going to the pharmacy, shopkeepers forced to close their doors, and restaurants that first took costly measures in an effort to comply with the government’s demands only to then to be ordered to be closed.

With bewilderment, we have heard scores of self-styled experts – most of whom are lacking any scientific authority whatsoever and largely in grave conflict of interest due to their ties to pharmaceutical companies and supra-national organizations – pontificating on television programs and on the pages of newspapers about infections, vaccines, immunity, positive tests, the obligation to wear masks, the risks for the elderly, the contagiousness of the asymptomatic, and the danger of seeing one’s family. They have thundered at us, using arcane words like “social distancing” and “gatherings,” in an endless series of grotesque contradictions, absurd alarms, apocalyptic threats, social precepts and health ceremonies that have replaced religious rites. And as they have terrorized the population – all while being paid lavishly for their pronouncements made at every hour of the day – our rulers and politicians have flaunted their masks in front of all the television cameras, only to then take them off as soon as possible.

Forced to disguise ourselves as anonymous people without a face, they have imposed a muzzle on us that is absolutely useless for avoiding contagion and actually harmful to our health, but indispensable for their purposes of making us feel subjugated and forced to conform. They have prevented us from being cured with existing and effective treatments, promoting instead a vaccine that they now want to make obligatory even before knowing if it is effective, after only incomplete testing. And in order not to jeopardize the enormous profits of the pharmaceutical companies, they have granted immunity for the damage that their vaccines may cause to the population. The vaccine is free, they tell us, but it will actually be paid for with taxpayers’ money, even if its producers do not guarantee that it will protect from contagion.

In this scenario that is similar to the disastrous effects of a war, the economy of our countries lies prostrate, while online commerce companies, home delivery companies, and pornography producers are booming. The local shops close but the large shopping centers and supermarkets remain open: monuments to the consumerism in which everyone, even those with Covid, continue to fill their carts with foreign products, German cheeses, Moroccan oranges, Canadian flour, and cell phones and televisions made in China.

“The world is preparing for the Great Reset,” they tell us obsessively. “Nothing will ever be the same again.” We will have to get used to “living with the virus,” subjected to a perpetual pandemic that feeds the pharmaceutical Moloch and legitimizes ever more hateful limitations of our fundamental liberties. Those who since childhood have catechized us to worship freedom, democracy, and popular sovereignty today govern us by depriving us of freedom in the name of health, imposing dictatorship, arrogating to themselves a power that no one has ever conferred on them, neither from above nor from below. And the temporal power that Freemasonry and the Liberals ferociously opposed in the Roman Pontiffs is today claimed by them in reverse, in an attempt to submit the Church of Christ to the power of the State with the approval and collaboration of the highest levels of the Hierarchy.

Out of this whole humanly discouraging scenario, an unavoidable fact emerges: there is a chasm between those who hold authority and those who are subjected to it, between rulers and citizens, between the Hierarchy and the faithful. It is an institutional monstrum in which both civil and religious power are almost entirely in the hands of unscrupulous people who have been appointed because of their absolute ineptitude and great vulnerability to blackmail. Their role is not to administer the institution but to demolish it, not to respect its laws but to violate them, not to protect its members but to disperse and distance them. In short, we find ourselves facing the perversion of authority, not due to chance or inexperience but pursued with determination and following a pre-established plan: a single script under a single direction.

We thus have rulers who persecute their citizens and treat them as enemies, while welcoming and financing the invasion of criminals and illegal immigrants; law enforcement officers and judges who arrest and fine those who violate social-distancing rules, even as they ostentatiously ignore criminals, rapists, assassins and treacherous politicians; teachers who do not transmit culture or the love of knowledge but instead indoctrinate students into gender and globalist ideology; doctors who refuse to treat the sick but impose a genetically-modified vaccine whose efficacy and potential side-effects are unknown; bishops and priests who deny the faithful the Sacraments but who never miss an occasion for propagandizing their own unconditional adherence to the globalist agenda in the name of Masonic Brotherhood.

Those who oppose this overturning of every principle of civil life find themselves abandoned, alone, and without a leader who would unite them. Loneliness, in fact, allows our common enemies – as they have amply demonstrated themselves to be – to instill fear, despair, and the feeling of not being able to stand together to resist the assaults to which we have been subjected. Citizens are alone in the face of the abuse of civil power, the faithful are alone in the face of the arrogance of heretical Prelates given over to vice, and those who wish to dissent, raise their voice, or protest within institutions are likewise alone.

Loneliness and fear increase when we give them ground to stand on, but they vanish if we think of how each one of us merited that the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity became incarnate in the most pure womb of the Virgin Mary: qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis. And here we come to the Mysteries which we are preparing to contemplate in these coming days: the Immaculate Conception and the Lord’s Holy Nativity. From these mysteries, dear friends, we can draw renewed hope with which to face the events that await us.

Above all, we must remember that none of us is ever truly alone: we have the Lord at our side. He always wants our good, and so he never fails to send us His help and His grace, if only we ask for it with faith. We have the Most Blessed Virgin at our side, our loving Mother and our secure refuge. We have near us the hosts of Angels and the multitude of Saints who from the glory of Heaven intercede for us before the Throne of the Divine Majesty.

The contemplation of this sublime community that is the Holy Church, the mystical Jerusalem that we are citizens of and living members, should persuade us that the last thing we ought to fear is being alone, and that there is no reason to be afraid, even if the devil rages to make us believe that there is. True loneliness is in Hell, where the damned souls do not have any hope: that is the loneliness we should truly fear, and before it we must beg for the grace of final perseverance, that is, to be able to merit the grace of a holy death from the Mercy of God. A death for which we ought to always be prepared by keeping ourselves in a state of grace, in friendship with the Lord.

Of course, the trials that we are facing in this moment are tremendous, because they give us the feeling that evil is triumphing, that each of us is abandoned to ourselves, that the wicked have managed to get the better of the pusillus grex [little flock] and of all humanity. But was not our Lord perhaps alone in Gethsemane, alone on the wood of the Cross, alone in the Tomb? And returning to the mystery of Christmas that is now fast approaching: were not the Blessed Mother and Saint Joseph perhaps alone when they found themselves forced to take refuge in a stable because non erat locus illis in diversorio [there was no room for them in the inn]? Imagine how the putative father of Jesus must have felt seeing his Most Holy Spouse ready to give birth in the cold of the night of Palestine; think of their worries during the Flight into Egypt, knowing that King Herod had unleashed his soldiers to kill the Infant Jesus. Even in these terrible situations, the solitude of the Holy Family was only apparent, while God arranged everything according to His plans. He sent an Angel to announce the birth of the Savior to the shepherds.

He moved no less than a Star to call the Magi from the Orient to adore the Messiah. He sent choirs of His Angels to sing over the cave of Bethlehem. He warned Saint Joseph to flee in order to escape the massacre of Herod.

Also to us, in the solitude of the lockdown which many of us are forced to endure, in the abandonment of the hospital, in the silence of the deserted streets and the churches closed to worship, the Lord comes to bring his company. Also to us He sends His Angel to inspire us with holy purposes, his Most Holy Mother to console us, the Paraclete to give us comfort, dulcis hospes animae.

We are not alone: we are never alone. And it is this, in the end, that the authors of the Great Reset fear most: that we become aware of this supernatural – but no less true  – reality that makes the house of cards of their infernal deceptions collapse.

If we think of how we have at our side She who crushes the head of the Serpent, or the Archangel who has drawn his sword to drive Lucifer into the abyss; if we recall that our Guardian Angel, our Patron Saint, and our dear ones in Heaven and Purgatory are with us: what can we ever be afraid of? Do we want to believe that the God of armies drawn up for battle has any hesitation about defeating any servant of the eternally defeated one?

She who in the year 630 saved Constantinople from siege, terrorizing the Avars and Persians by appearing tremendous in the heavens; who in 1091 at Scicli in Sicily was invoked as Our Lady of the Militia and appeared on a shining cloud chasing away the Saracens; who in 1571 at Lepanto and again in 1683 at Vienna was invoked as Queen of Victories and granted victory to the Christian army against the Turks; who during the anti-Catholic persecution of Mexico protected the Cristeros and repelled the army of the Mason Elias Calles – She will not deny us Her holy assistance; She will not leave us alone in the battle; She will not abandon those who have recourse to Her with trusting prayer in the moment in which the conflict is decisive and the confrontation is nearing an end.

We have had the grace to understand what this world can become if we deny the Lordship of God and replace it with the tyranny of Satan. This is the world that is rebellious against Christ the King and Mary the Queen, in which each day thousands of innocent lives in the wombs of their mothers are sacrificed to Satan; this is the world in which vice and sin want to cancel every trace of good and virtue, every memory of the Christian religion, every law and vestige of our civilization, every trace of the order that the Creator has given to nature. A world in which churches burn, Crosses are knocked down, statues of the Virgin are decapitated: this hatred, this Satanic fury against Christ and the Mother of God is the mark of the Evil One and his servants. In the face of this total Revolution, this accursed New World Order that would prepare the way for the kingdom of the Antichrist, we cannot still believe that any brotherhood is possible if not under the Law of God, nor that it is possible to construct peace if not under the mantle of the Queen of Peace. Pax Christi in regno Christi.

The Lord will give us the victory only when we bow down to Him as our King. And if we cannot yet proclaim Him as King of our Nations because of the impiety of those who govern us, we can nevertheless consecrate ourselves, our families, and our communities to Him. And to those who dare to challenge Heaven in the name of “Nothing will be the same again,” we respond by invoking God with renewed fervor: “As it was in beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.”

Let us pray to the Immaculate Virgin, Tabernacle of the Most High, asking that in our meditation on the Holy Nativity of Her Divine Son which now draws near, She may dispel our fear and solitude, gathering us together in adoration around the manger. In the poverty of the crib, in the silence of the cave of Bethlehem, the song of the Angels resounds; the one true Light of the world shines forth, adored by the shepherds and the Magi, and Creation itself bows down, adorning the vault of heaven with a shining Star. Veni, Emmanuel: captivum solve Israël. Come, O Emmanuel, free your imprisoned people.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

13 December 2020
Dominica Gaudete, III Adventus

A Letter From Luisa Piccarreta

10. To Sister Remigia, her niece.

In Voluntate Dei!

My good daughter in the Divine Volition,

May the Divine Will give you the peace so desired by Jesus and also by me.  Your letter says clearly that you do not enjoy peace.  My daughter, what are you doing?  Peace makes us see things as they are before God, and not as creatures see them.  And since peace gives us divine sight, in circumstances, in humiliations – we see what God sees.  We remain with a peace that no one can take away from us – the only treasure we can possess on this earth of exile; and it is the bearer of the Divine Will as life within us.

Therefore, my daughter, never be disturbed; these are storms that go by.  Creatures who today call us saints, tomorrow will call us wicked – devils.  Both things must not affect us, because God alone knows what we are.  Rather, try to be really good, to do nothing without being subordinate to Mother Superior, to trust nobody, and in speaking, never to say anything which does not regard sanctity and the Divine Will.  May nobody’s name ever arise on your lips.  Think that Jesus continually says to you:  “My daughter, forget about everything, and remember only that your Jesus wants love in order to give you love.  If you love Me, you will form chains of love, and binding Me with them, you will hold Me tightly in your arms, and I will be your defense, your help, your company, your life.”  So, make Jesus content, and do not lose simplicity; do not lose time.  Each thought of yourself is a gap of love that you form; you deny Jesus an act of love, and keep Jesus sighing for your little love.  Think about it, and be attentive.

Now, my daughter, my sorrow for you ended since the time Mother P. came and assured me that the doctor had said that there was no need for surgery.  My concern was the concern of a mother who wanted to know about the health conditions of her daughter.  But now everything is ended.  Try to be always tranquil; thank the Lord for you don’t suffer much.  I hope that you will get even better, and will be able to do your office better, being attentive in making each of the girls a tabernacle in which each one will keep her Jesus, and in teaching them how to make Him grow and be happy.

And leaving you in the Divine Volition as though in a safe place, so that you may cross Its sea with courage and peace, I say,

The little daughter of the Divine Will

Patris corde

With the Apostolic Letter “Patris corde” (“With a Father’s Heart”), Pope Francis recalls the 150th anniversary of the declaration of Saint Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church. To mark the occasion, the Holy Father has proclaimed a “Year of Saint Joseph” from today, 8 December 2020, to 8 December 2021.

In a new Apostolic Letter entitled Patris corde (“With a Father’s Heart”), Pope Francis describes Saint Joseph as a beloved father, a tender and loving father, an obedient father, an accepting father; a father who is creatively courageous, a working father, a father in the shadows.

The Letter marks the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pope Pius IX’s declaration of St Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church. To celebrate the anniversary, Pope Francis has proclaimed a special “Year of St Joseph,” beginning on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception 2020 and extending to the same feast in 2021.

Church grants plenary indulgence for year of St. Joseph

The Holy Father wrote Patris corde against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, which, he says, has helped us see more clearly the importance of “ordinary” people who, though far from the limelight, exercise patience and offer hope every day. In this, they resemble Saint Joseph, “the man who goes unnoticed, a daily, discreet and hidden presence,” who nonetheless played “an incomparable role in the history of salvation.”

Link to Luisa Piccarreta Official Website

Loreto: Sanctuary of the Incarnation

by Msgr. Vincenzo Faraoni – Link to web page

THE SANCTUARY of Loreto has always been regarded as the greatest Sanctuary of the Christian West. Practically all the Supreme Pontiffs from the year 1330 to John Paul II have considered it so. As such it has been venerated by thousands upon thousands of the faithful coming from every land who come to kiss the walls of what was at one time the Holy House of Nazareth.

This Sanctuary, the glory and pride of Italy, is truly a part of the Holy Land. It is the first temple of the living God on earth, the sanctuary of sanctuaries, the temporal paradise on earth. “Hic Verbum caro factum est” (Here the Word was made flesh.) The thrill that pervades the pilgrim who reads these words is not a simple emotion but an indefinable and irresistible attraction towards the heights of the Infinite.

In coming to the Loreto Basilica for the first time, no one thinks of the imposing lines of the basilica, of the cupola of Sangallo, of the marble structure that surrounds the Holy House no one recalls the beautiful facade, the beautiful fountains, the welcoming double Loggia of the apostolic palace that encloses the square of Roman serenity. The apses of the chapels rise as gigantic bulwarks crowned by a passage for sentinels dominating the hills and the sea. Are enemy armies coming by land? Are pirates still threatening from the sea? No. The formidable towers of the apses defend and hide the rectangular structure of sculptured marble that portrays prophets and Angels, the biblical world and the classical world, foretelling the Incarnation. And this jewel of art in turn protects and conceals the poor room recalling to mind the great mystery of Mary. “Hic Verbum caro factum est.”

These bare and naked walls heard the “yes” of Mary, that mysterious assent which opened Paradise to misfortunate humanity, stained and wounded by Original and actual sin. It saw the flourishing infancy and adolescence of Jesus, the serene work of Joseph, the sweet and gentle relations of the Holy Family. That humble and unknown girl from a humble and unknown land was greeted as “full of grace.” Here, she heard the eternal God ask her consent to fulfill the greatest mystery of all time… the Incarnation of the Word. God had chosen her alone because of her humble virginity and her virginal humility to be the “light of the East”… so sang the Prophets… from which the Redeemer would appear in the world. And the Word of God was made flesh through her liberating words: “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.” (Be it done to me according to Thy Word.”) At the creation of the universe, the “fiat” of the omnipotent God was enough. For the redemption of mankind, God asked the “fiat” of this little Virgin, His favored and Immaculate One, so that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity could be made man, through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. It was in this Holy House of Loreto, transplanted miraculously from Nazareth, that the eternal Word was made flesh. Indeed, as Pope Pius XI expressed it, this shrine “holds the first place among all the churches dedicated to the Mother of God.” Thus, we are children of two “fiats”: created by the first, redeemed by the second and therefore sons of God and sons of the Virgin. From the “fiat” of God, our human nature was created, from the “fiat” of Nazareth, grace was restored. Here then was accomplished the greatest event in history for Christ is indeed the center of the universe, of history, of theology, of all life. Vito Fornari writes: “The universe inasmuch as it is a mystery knows and explains everything, because everything is a sign of Christ… or yearning for Christ; He is the reason and truth of everything. He is the ultimate purpose for the entire planetary system as well as for the atom, for the human species as well as for a blade of grass or a flower.” History shows everything in the continuous advancing of the ship of Christ: “from the lake of Tiberias to the Mediterranean Sea, to the ocean; from the ocean to the infinite heavens without distinction of worlds or succession of time.” And French poet Peguy adds: “The incarnation, this eternal adventure of God, of the Word, is the only interesting story.” Full of emotion we therefore enter the Holy House and with the faith of love and the love of faith let us kiss those burnished walls, brighter and clearer than the sun.

Taken from Loreto Magazine

 

Act of Consecration to Our Lady of Loreto

O Immaculate Virgin Mary, we come to thee with confidence: welcome this day our humble prayer and our act of consecration.

O Mother, thou didst carry thy Divine Saviour in thy most pure womb: receive our homage of faith and filial love as we come in spirit into thy Holy House. It is also, by the presence of the Holy Family, the holy home par excellence. And it is our wish that every Christian family be inspired by it.

From Jesus, all children learn to obey and to work. From thee, O Mary, all women learn humility and the spirit of sacrifice. From Joseph, who didst live for Jesus and for thee, all men learn to believe in God, to live in and for you, all men learn to believe in God, to live in the family and in society with fidelity and honesty. O Mary, we pray for our Pope and for the Universal Church, for our country and for all the nations of the world, for the suffering souls for all sinners. And we all wish to consecrate ourselves to thee.

Spiritually present in the Holy House, where thou didst conceive by the Holy Spirit, we want to repeat with lively faith the words of the Archangel Gabriel: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!” We want to invoke thee still, saying: “Hail Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church!”

We turn to thee O Mary. Receive our consecration to thine Immaculate heart. Totally thine, we wish to confirm by this act of love our unlimited love for Jesus, thy Son, and our hope in thee, our Mother. And thou, O Queen and Mother of Mercy, grant to thy children an abundance of heavenly blessings. Amen.

As The little Virgin Queen was Conceived, the Kingdom of the DIVINE Fiat WAS CONCEIVED IN HER; in being born, She gave back to us the rights to possess It.

Book of Heaven
Volume 24; September 16, 1928

My abandonment in the Fiat is continuous; and while I was following Its acts, my poor mind paused to think about the Conception of the Celestial Queen and Her great fortune of being exempted from original sin.

And my Beloved Jesus, moving in my interior, told me:  “My daughter, the seed with which the Celestial Sovereign was conceived was taken from the human stock, because She too had Her human life as all other creatures, as I too had.  However, there is this great difference, not conceded to any other creature:  before Her beautiful soul was conceived, My Fiat, with Its omnipotence, concentrated Its rays in this seed, and with Its light and heat It annihilated the evil that was in it, and made it die, purifying the seed completely, and rendering it pure and holy, and exempt from original sin; and then, the Immaculate Baby Girl was conceived in this seed.

“So, the whole portent of the Immaculate Conception was operated by My Divine Will.  It did not make another human seed, nor did It destroy it, but It purified it; and with Its heat and light It removed from it all the humors that this seed had contracted from the sin of Adam, and It restored in Her the human seed, just as it had come out of Our creative hands.  Therefore, as the little Virgin Queen was conceived, the Kingdom of My Divine Will was conceived in Her and in the human generations, because in forming and giving surprising graces to one creature, in her We look at the whole humanity of the human family, as if it were one alone.  See, then, as the Virgin was conceived in this seed exempt from every stain—which was all work of the Divine Fiat—Its Divine Kingdom was conceived again within humanity; and as the Immaculate little Virgin was born, the right to be able to possess It was given back. 

“Now, when I came upon earth to take on human flesh, I made use of the seed of the Sovereign of Heaven, and it can be said that We worked together to form again this Kingdom of Ours in the human generations.  So, there is nothing left but to know It in order to possess It, and this is why I am manifesting what belongs to My Kingdom and to My Divine Will, so that the creature may cover Its ways, follow Our steps, and take possession of It.  And My Divine Will, with Its light and heat, will repeat the prodigy of removing the bad humors that the human seed possesses; and in order to be sure, It will place the seed of Its light and heat, and will constitute Itself life of that seed.  And so they will exchange possession:  My Divine Will will take possession of the seed in order to form in it Its life of light, of heat and sanctity; and the creature will return to take new possession of the Kingdom of My Divine Fiat.

“See then, My daughter, everything is ready—nothing else is needed but to make It known.  And this is why I so much yearn that what regards My Divine Will become known—to cast into creatures the desire to possess a good so great, so that My Will, drawn by their desires, may concentrate Its luminous rays and, with Its heat, perform the prodigy of giving back the right to possess Its Kingdom of peace, of happiness and of sanctity.” . . .

Link to Our Lady of America Site