The Wild Tears Fall

But this sibyl, whether she is the Erythræan, or, as some rather believe, the Cumæan, in her whole poem, of which this is a very small portion, not only has nothing that can relate to the worship of the false or feigned gods, but rather speaks against them and their worshippers in such a way that we might even think she ought to be reckoned among those who belong to the city of God.... 


 Judgment shall moisten the earth with the sweat of its standard,
 Ever enduring, behold the King shall come through the ages,
    Sent to be here in the flesh, and Judge at the last of the world...

Did he who penned the blessed hymn draw inspiration from the prophecy of the Erythræan Sybil? How uncanny is both their mention of the dew, which lay so long of the grass this month, before silvering into frost.

When blessed Simeon took the Christ Child in his arms, he lifted up his face and cried: 



Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace; Because my eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared in the sight of every people: A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. Luke II: 29-32


There are so many ways to read, 'in the sight of every people', but when one contemplates the Gentile forerunners of the Messiah, one cannot help but think that here the priest was at least in part acknowledging the universal preparation the world had received for the coming of its Saviour.


Such a catholic expectation in the world is for many proof of this anticipation's validity. Yet, the objection of the naysayer assails this bastion as it does all others. The gauntlet hurled here is that the universal wish recorded of so many peoples was merely one of wishful thinking. The Messiah was just the name given by Hebrews to a man who would draw humanity from the miserable depths into which it had fallen, and the certainty that he would be in part a god was a necessary conjecture for the remedy of such a sad state. Concerning the details so eerily resembling the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ, this pat dismissal is often proferred:


The Christ idea is older than the story of Jesus, and the latter was edited and re-edited until it incorporated all the features of the former and so met the requirements of the age. 



Now such an assertion carries the burden of proof, but the creativity of modern historians does not often never restrict its assertions to those based on positive evidence when it may opine scenarios that confirm the bias of the thinker. As to believers, it is not the inclination of a lover to merely ignore accusations hurled against the beloved, but to eviscerate them. And a true member of Christ's Church is--first and last--His lover.


The first kink in Carus's armour in particular is his inconsistency. On the one hand, he says that the true story of Christ (to which he is somehow privy) has been schewed. Yet, earlier in his work, he not only objected to Christian appropriation of pagan Messianic prophecies, but Judaic ones as well with the claim: 'The Christian interpretation has been superimposed and does violence to the message.' (ibid., 1) Which has been altered then? The prophecy or the fulfillment? On the one hand, the scholar finds the Gospel revelations of Christ's life compelling enough to uphold the catholic Messiah's mantle, and on the other hand he doesn't. 


However, the above point is merely a barb slung against this work in particular, and not the larger argument. Any skeptic may choose one position (violence has been done to the prophecies in applying the Gospels) or the other (violence has been done to the Gospels in applying them to the prophecies) and remain internally consistent.

Carus's first real argument is that rampant warring and weak economies were spread far enough over the ancient world to create a universal longing for a strong leader to save mankind from himself. No inspiration from the Holy Spirit would be required to instill such a wish in the hearts of man. Certain aspects of this Saviour, e.g., that he be divine in some way or even subjected to adversity follow reasonably enough from that. Thus, these aspects of Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, the Sybil's prophecy, or the many fore-tellings of the Old Testament are not sufficient to convince one of their credibility or even to link them to the tale of Jesus Christ.


A fellow student of mine once said in school that if he were to prophesy and give as a token to the people the following sign for his veracity: 'Tomorrow the sun shall rise!' then even the most gullible zealot would lift an eyebrow. For a cult to spring from the seed of prophecy, there must be some sign to indicate that it has been fulfilled. For a cult to achieve the immense success accorded to the might Roman Catholic Church, this sign or signs must have been above reproach in the eyes of many--fierce and dynamic and able to possess the hearts of the fierce and dynamic.


Yet, Carus (and many with him) contest that the Faith which brought forth all the martyrs, crusaders, poets, thinkers, and artists who have etched the mark of Christ into the face of the world forever, need not have come from a very earth-shattering force. This Church was going to happen at that particular phase in history, and it need not have been a Christian one:


Christianity, or a religion such as Christianity, would have originated even if Jesus had never existed...in all essentials, in doctrine as well as in moral ideas, we would have had the same religion. (27)


The ability of a modern to thinker to form such bold projections is staggering. By what rational means could anyone justify saying that the church founded by a Buddha or a 'Brahman Avatar' or a madman from Mecca would be exactly the same in its identity, even down to its moral code? Where is the positive proof of this? Alas, Carus has shown himself again to be rather creative, but not exactly reasonable.


So having erected chimerical, alternate Vaticans alongside the real one, using nothing but the sand of conjecture and imagination, Carus proceeds to dismiss the evidence he does have: human nature and the testimony of the first Christians.

He posits that Jesus of Nazareth was honoured with the laurels of the Christ, where emperors and warriors failed miserably, because he appealed to the sick in His poor life and death, as well as to fanatics like Saul of Tarsus. Human nature would take issue with the first point. The downtrodden do not habitually idolize their fellow downtrodden members simply for sharing their lot. They  either pity them or take advantage of them. Nor do the oppressed do not fall in line with revolutionaries until they are desperate, and if their revolution fails, with the leaders hung ignominiously on gibbets, the effect would be disillusionment, not encouragement.


It would be surprising then that a man who merely comforted the sick and the weak with words should become the leader of the religion 'of women and slaves' unless He had worked miracles amongst them, had indeed cured the blind, sick and, lame brought unto Him. Do Carus, et al., submit that this is a later appendage to the Gospels? How on earth could Jesus Christ have gained enough prominence to be considered for the Messianic role without these signs?


As to the manipulation of zealots who seized upon Christ's story, the moderns here must here accuse them of being deliberately disingenuous. Carus attempts to dismiss without defaming St. Paul in saying that he was honestly self-deluded:


Paul's converion consisted simply in the idea that came upon him like a flash of lightning, that all of his conceptions of Christ could be applied to Jesus, that the majesty of his divine nature was well set forth in his deepest humiliation, his death on the cross... (25)


Carus is ungenerous to St. Luke, in completely dismissing not only the miracle of St. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, but also the evangelist's account of St. Paul's beliefs and characters before his conversion, namely that he had persecuted the faithful, and had even held the coats of St. Stephen's murderers.


Secondly, Carus does great injustice to St. Paul's own account of how he came to believe and to the rationality of every Christian alive. While we have come to adore and even to be sentimental about the kenosis of the Christ--His low birth and dolorous passion--we have not forgotten that it is a paradox:

But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 


   ...O God, the believing and faithless alike shall behold You
   Uplifted with saints, when at last the ages are ended...
   

At least I hope I speak that truthfully. When we were children studying the history of vile deeds, I know we all asked ourselves how common, ordinary people no different from us in essentials, did--without dissent--deeds that most individuals would never contemplate for a moment. Genocide, rape, enslavement, apostasy. 

One of the most chilling moments in the film Beyond the Gates, a vivid recounting of the atrocity of Rwanda, is when the English teacher at a religious school sees one of his Hutu friends after the blood bath has begun. He has known this man for some time; this person even worked for the church to which the school is connected. When the Englishman sees him again after the ethnic cleansing has begun, the man is covered with blood and wielding a machete. Even with the grace of the sacraments, he turned to unspeakable evil.

Will most always be united with grace. While God must always reach out for us, while we can do nothing of ourselves, we must choose to wake when He calls.  A sort of spiritual drowsiness, a deliberate blindness, a surrender of one's reason and volition to a stronger agent is the only thing that can account for the Satanic manipulation of whole peoples. It is strange how often we choke on the submission due to God, yet we render it unto Lucifer quite readily. And all because he presents the act in the form of a bargain, and man thinks he retains his dignity merely because he got something for his soul.

Degenerate evil is fast becoming the theme of our day, and the call for a rescue against our bellicose animosity towards one another has become the anthem even of those who do not believe:




We must be awake! It is hard, especially in this epoch of multitudinous distractions, and even the five wise virgins of the parable dozed while waiting for the Bridegroom. We have drifted off ourselves, but now we must right our course.


The first step of waking is to open our eyes. Every one has talked with that friend who said, 'Of course, I'm listening to you...I'm just resting my eyes.' Indeed. She was soon napping after saying that. When we wake in the morning we open our eyes and draw the curtains immediately, letting the sun's light dispel our bodily lethargy. Well, what is the light of the soul? 


Wisdom is the universal answer, but who is she? And why has her patronage not protected many purportedly wise men from committing diabolical acts? A brilliant musical scholar, Molly Gustin (who strove to show how right reason was wed with good music), was once explaining why the worst music was always made by the educated man. Only scholars produced atonal abominations after all. She said that their education, willfully twisted, had snuffed out the light of truth that a folk musician or even a rocker still retains in his natural state: 'You have to go the university and became an intellectual in order to be perverted.' she gleefully teased her students.


So both the simple brute and the erudite ninny may be drowsing in moral torpitude. Then who is Wisdom, and where may we find her? How can we obtain her when she is found?


Well, the man who has truly awakened himself in mind, heart, and soul, will first say that wisdom cannot be obtained. Remember the ancient image of Wisdom as Athena. She is an armoured woman, and she would skewer any mortal that dared to make her his slave. You bear her yoke; she does not bear yours. The Renaissance made man 'the measure of all things', and until that error is unlearned, we cannot even hope to begin the journey to the light.

And in the multitude of the elect she shall have praise, and among the blessed she shall be blessed, saying: I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures: I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea, And have stood in all the earth: and in every people, And in every nation I have had the chief rule: And by my power I have trodden under my feet the hearts of all the high and low: and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord. (Ecclesiasticus XXIV:4-11)


Humility is the prequisite condition for receiving wisdom. Without it, we may gain knowledge, but will not otherwise profit from any study. For proud creatures, such as fallen human beings, humility has always been hard, but at least it was properly held as a virtue in many creeds and cultures of the past. The postmodern First World however has thoroughly rejected meekness in all its forms, particularly where it concerns feminine-like submission.


The idea of femininity in a position of governance is a concept not to be countenanced by the movers of our times, be they men or women. 'Feminists' did the world a great injustice in choosing to agree with the apostatized West that femininity was of no value and that it was only in imitating man, woman could achieve real worth.


The Catholic neurologist and psychiatrist, Karl Stern, explained the problem thus:


The problem of activism--a lack of balance between action and contemplation--is said to be characteristic of our time...Now whenever we psychiatrists have an opportunity to observe this kind of person as a patient, we find at the bottom of it all a maternal conflict and a rejection of the feminine. (Stern, The Flight from Woman, Chapter I: Introduction)


A 'maternal' conflict. And what is the maternal conflict of our age? Whose motherly voice have we refused to hear? What enlightenment have we refused from fair Wisdom?


Either one believes in a thing, or one does not, so rather than attempting to set the supports for a bridge in the abyss, I shall try to leap it. 


It has been ninety-four years now today that we, both the low and the high of humanity, have chosen to ignore the requests of the Lady of Fatima. That non-Catholics have done so is understandable (even with the well-documented miracle that occurred in Cova de Iria, Portugal on this day in 1917). But that Churchmen and the faithful have done so? Granted, one is not obliged to believe in private revelation. One is also not obliged to exercise his body, illumine his mind, or love from the heart in order to stay alive, but such lack of exertion is generally frowned upon by mankind in general.

So what is one to say of the actions of the Vicar of Christ in 1960 in refusing the request of Fatima? Well, nothing in fact. It is impossible to pronounce on the plans of the Lord's anointed, for there is no way of knowing what instruction he might have received from the Holy Spirit. We have never sat in the Chair of Peter. Yet, as we are meant to pray for the Pontiff, we must be alert in some way to what duties he may have to perform. It is necessary for us to know when to double our mortifications for his sake, to know when the lone, white-robbed figure most earnestly needs our prayers to strengthen his fortitude. In that sense, while we may draw no conclusions, we must to some extent ruminate about the duties of a pontificate.


Now in 1962, a certain spirit was about to be unleashed upon the world from the Roman Catholic Church, and we have come to call it the 'Spirit of Vatican II.' When someone finds the good fruits of that spirit, they must write of it. Until then, the faithful will suffer from its effects (whether consciously or no), and those outside the Faith will see it as a sign of the Church's eventual collapse. 


Papa Roncalli of course did not envision such an effect from his Council. Father Malachi Martin, in spite of what that priest's detractors have said, believed completely in Pope John XXIII's good intentions and wrote this of the kindly pope:


...May...during the second session of the Council. By then, Pope John knew that the Council was out of his control; his agenda for a deep renewal of activist faith in the Church had been set on a course the Pontiff had not foreseen, and it would serve someone else's agenda instead. And he also knew that he would have no time to alter that fact. One June 3, Angelo Roncalli died in his faith and his regrets. (The Keys of This Blood, Book II: The Geopolitics of Faith, Chapter XXX: Papal Training Ground: Under the Sign of Solidarność)

One particular regret may have reached as far back as 1960, when the behest of Our Lady, penned by the hand of a nun who had been a simple shepherdess, was refused by His Holiness. Whether that is true, it must have struck the Pope as very strange with the Polish Primate, Stefan Wyszyński, later approached him with a request bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Madonna's in the very midst of the Second Vatican Council.

Mainly...Wyszyński wanted to urge upon Pope John that he dedicate the Council, the bishops of the Church, and the laity of the world, whose servants they were, to the same bond of servitude to Mary that the Cardinal was preparing in Poland...

...it was nonetheless widely known by now that Mary had called for dedication of more or less the same kind Wyszyński was urging on Papa Roncalli; and that she had apparently done so for more or less the same georeligious and geopolitical reasons that had motivated Wyszyński.

...Roncalli listened with indulgence and interest...and admitted that if he had heard Wyszyński out before he had made and implemented his decision, he might have acted differently. But his attitude to Wyszyński's urgings was the same as it had been when he had first read the secret instructions of Fatima in 1960...was that this time ''our time as Pope'' was not the time for such an act of dedication. Had the Cardinal been privy to the full contents of the ''three Fatima secrets," he might have wondered if there would be another time. (ibid.)

The heads of great men have of late not steered the barque of the world very well. Perhaps, it is time the Immaculate Heart of the Woman Clothed with the Sun took the helm, and we might begin to cede control to her in honouring this day and the bidding connected with it: pray the rosary.

Sister Elena Aiello speaks: “Oh, what a horrible vision I see! A great revolution is going on in Rome! They are entering the Vatican. The Pope is all alone; he s praying. They are holding the Pope. They take him by force. They knock him down to the floor. They are tying him. Oh, God! Oh God! They are kicking him. What a horrible scene! How dreadful!” 

“Our Blessed Mother is drawing near. Like corpses those evil men fall down to the floor. Our Lady helps the Pope to his feet and, taking him by the arm, she covers him with her mantle saying: ‘Fear not!’(http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2011/09/blessed-elena-aiello-mystic-stigmatic.html)


Today, as we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Pope shall also beatify a nun that stood faithfully in the shadow of that monolith. Sweating blood, enduring dire pain, and beholding the most horrific visions, Blessed Elena Aiello lived the Passion all the days of her life. Many of her prophecies have already come to pass, but the worst has yet to come. It seems that our present Vicar of Christ is expecting their fulfillment; may he fear not.

Today he also meets with the Archbishop Fellay, and I doubt that it would be adherents to the Society of St. Pius X that would be so brutalizing the Pope in such a vision. May His Holiness's defenders increase this day! May their dialogue bear fruit!

May also, the nun's grievous suffering on this world bear fruit; may she take the great work of this day under the patronage of her mantle. She endured enough to ask this. Just before the outbreak of WWII, Christ appeared to Blessed Elena and said: 


So she did. Now we must follow suit.

Do we feast today? Let us fast more earnestly then on Friday. After having kissed the rod, let us not afterward defend ourselves from its blows. Pain dispels the cloud of cynicism most readily, and we may find ourselves ready to take up our banners again, when we see the world is not grey with stodgy incompetence and failed plans for good. It is blood red with active crimes and deliberate selfishness.

Mortification can help us to see this! Our sufferings are efficacious! How? This we shall not know until we are dead, but this Friday, let us all together take it upon ourselves to bear a bit of the cross. Or shall we let God's chosen mystics shoulder all our burdens for us? Will an unknown man or woman suffer wretchedly for the sinners beloved by you? For your family, friends, and nation?

As anyone who was spanked as a child knows, it is better to bend over and have it done with. It is certainly best not to put one's hands in the way of the paddle at the last moment. So it must be the most beneficial for us, if we willingly mortify ourselves now, than have it inflicted upon us later. Not today (for today is a feast of God) but at the proper times appointed by Him, let us live closer to the foot of the cross.

When the imperial eagles fell, it was from a pinnacle of heightened entanglement. War had been unthinkable to the royals at that time, because it would have literally been fratricide. Western humanity, in general, thought it had achieved a period of enlightenment that had outgrown the conflicts of the past. Modern man thought he had evolved, but he was about to be reminded that he was, first and foremost, fallen. Pelagius's most burning refutation was coming, and the dominoes began falling rapidly on 31 July, the date of the Russian general mobilization.

As we look back on history through our Epimethean eyes, we often sigh at our backward fathers and perhaps with a magnanimous gesture say, 'O, it was all inevitable!' flattering ourselves that we are enlightened as Tolstoy was; we understand that all things are predetermined. Like Aesop's scorpion, we must sting, even if it means our death. As Dawkins would say, we are all selfish, cocked guns, desiring naught but our own survival, and anything might set us off. The 'natural' Russian wrote that Moscow had burned, because it was made of wood. Europe had exploded, because it was a powder keg.

If reality is really such as this, despair is all that is left to us, and we truly shall 'live without hope.' How can the materialist intelligentsia dominating this world, Dawkins for one, propose whatever kind of morality they would advocate when they are not even 'interested in free will'? How can governments benefit people when their only interests are invested in parties? How can we fight for the good, when the only 'good' we have is the confused definition of a passing generation, and tradition's input is held nil? Whatever the spokesmen of our geopolitical system may say, man has in effect abandoned the humanist optimism of the Renaissance and Enlightenment and plunged into the postmodern gloom of predestination.

Is man right to do so? After all, was not Pelagianism a heresy even in the eyes of a Church devoted to hope? If there is wisdom in accumulation, should not the present generation, living while earth is at her oldest, be wiser than its forebearers? I remember pondering this question in elementary school. The image of a bearded man with the quill did seem impressive to a young girl, but so did the man in the white labcoat with the receding hairline. Which one was wiser?

I asked my father: 'Daddy? Who's smarter? The people from old times or the people right now?' Looking back, I bless God so much for the parents he gave me. They did not subscribe to the Freudian nonsense of not teaching one's children what was right, nor did they stuff my mind with their personal opinions. My father was and remains a liberal-minded man, and he took his time in answering my question. However young I was, he always took my queries seriously. His reply was fair and measured, neither yes nor no, i.e. Scholastic.

'They were smarter in some ways, and we are smarter in others. We may have more records of experience than they did, but I don't know that we make as good a use of them as men of the past did. We know more about the natural world and the sciences, but that does not mean we know more about what is right.' I was satisfied with that, but another question was later provoked.

Is it possible for one generation to be formed by the preceding one? Can remembering the past save us from repeating it? Frank Herbert's well nigh classic saga, Dune, of which at least the first three volumes were masterpieces, explores this notion in the most extreme terms through the descendants of the ancient House of Atreus as they attempt to purge humanity of all its ovine qualities. They do so first by igniting a jihad claiming billions of lives, then crushing mankind with a stiflingly oppressive reign which lasts 3,500 years. The idea is to force man to thirst for freedom and yearn for no more messiahs. This is the 'Golden Path' that would 'teach humanity a lesson that they will remember in their bones.' Through pain, force human beings from man to the overman. Surely though, such a plan is rather optimistic about the influence of history over man's acts.

Though it would be naïve to disregard the influence the past wields over the present (especially as the mind of man is composed of moment and memory) it is impossible for a later generation to imbibe the lessons of life just as the previous one did simply by word of mouth. One's experience cannot be transmitted after the fashion of one's genes. Thus, tales of struggles and hardships may be sobering for one's children, but tedious to one's grandchildren.

There are trends; there are institutions, and there are necessities. These things mold, influence, and precipitate the actions of man, but ultimately a man's acts are his own. Even on the grand scale displayed in the video above, it was possible for individuals to stand against the deluge. They chose not to do so.

Our Lady of Fatima told us that peace depends not only on individuals, but specifically on the sanctity of their personal lives. It is our willingness in our own souls to mortify our appetites and love our fellow man that makes the progress of mankind possible. Pope Benedict XVI writes of this in his magestic encyclical, Caritas in Veritate:

The second truth is that authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension. Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space. Enclosed within history, it runs the risk of being reduced to the mere accumulation of wealth; humanity thus loses the courage to be...at the service of the great and disinterested initiatives called forth by universal charity. (Chapter I, § 11)

Yet, the hanging blade has already swung towards the extreme determinism. Should one adopt the Pope's view, would it be in danger of swinging again into folly of man-worship? This is where philosophers part company, either to the camps of faith or the plains of agnosticism. For what can hope to guide man, who is remade in every newborn child, through infinitely varying epochs? The answer must be a vault made in trust:

Man does not develop through his own powers, nor can development simply be handed to him. In the course of history, it was often maintained that the creation of institutions was sufficient to guarantee the fulfilment of humanity's right to development. Unfortunately, too much confidence was placed in those institutions, as if they were able to deliver the desired objective automatically. In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation, and therefore it involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone. Moreover, such development requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God: without him, development is either denied, or entrusted exclusively to man, who falls into the trap of thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and ends up promoting a dehumanized form of development.(ibid.)

Until the day when the words above are greeted with shouts of joy and a blare of trumpets, we shall wander in the ruins of what has been and send up our sighs in this vale of tears. Paradise cannot be regained, but we still pray that the Kingdom come.

'When a human mother sheds tears in front of her children, there is a serious reason. So I thought that when the Heavenly Mother sheds her tears through a statue, she would have an urgent message for all of us.' _Denjiro Fujimoto


To all familiar with Fatima, that day and that month are extremely significant and mark the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. It is also thirteen years after Pope John XXIII refused to reveal the Third Secret of Fatima, saying 'It is not for our times.' And the Third Secret has still yet to be revealed to the world.

Christopher Ferrara, among others, has produced exhaustive arguments in text and video giving factual evidence that the selection of the message that has been made public is not the full one. I will not reiterate what they have so well demonstrated. Rather, I shall argue that what the Vatican has printed does not in anyway explain the reluctance of previous pontiffs in publishing it. It hardly makes any sense in and of itself! The other messages of Fatima were explicit and brutally comprehensible. This vision of the bishop in white is ambiguous, and it is difficult to see how it is fulfilled by the incident to which the Vatican links it: the assassination attempt on John Paul II.

Does a mad Turk amount to an army? Is a surprise sniping at all similar to a public execution (an act which succeeded in the vision)? What of the 'half-ruined' city's significance? There are a lot of old buildings in Rome to be sure, but only a mad man would say it is in ruins. And in the happy crowd greeting the Pope that day, are we to assume that they were all 'cadavers' spiritually? I do not see how that part of the prophecy and the assassination attempt dovetail at all.

Also, were this the secret, its importance pales in comparison to the first two. Our Lady understands her children and knows what an ignorant, stiff-necked group of people we have become. She knows her warnings must be explicit. For that reason, it is certain that her wishes were not fulfilled.

To be sure, the Pope is not bound by private revelation, and public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. It is not for us to say that any pope has sinned by not obeying a legitimate apparition, but it does make him appear ungracious at best, mad at worst. It must be admitted that we have not sat in the throne of Peter, nor have we been promised such graces as he by the Holy Spirit. However, many are skeptical at the idea that a refusal to obey Fatima would garner any good fruit.

Then again, if the Vicar of Christ does not obey, Christ can always bypass him. We may well know Fatima's Third Secret (or a great part of it), because Our Lady herself returned to Earth again. She left clear signs to link her new visit with the older one: i. the seer's guardian angel appeared to her first, instructing her to the Fatima prayer concluding each decade of the rosary, ii. the Virgin concluded her comings on the most significant day of the Fatima apparitions, and iii. she repeats her exhortation concerning the rosary in the message.

The place where the gracious Virgin deigned to appear on Earth again was Akita, Japan. And she came shedding tears and her own blood. The seer was Sister Agnes Sasagawa of the Eucharist Servants. She had made the journey to God through a great deal of suffering in her health. Though she had grown in strength, perhaps due to the waters of Lourdes so often sent to her, by the time the visions occurred, she was completely deaf (a deafness later cured as she knelt before Blessed Sacrament nine years later).

Eight days before she heard the first message, her hand was given a cross-shaped wound. The day Our Lady spoke to her, a like wound was discovered in the statue's hand. Later, the statue wept and even sweated. Doctors from the faculty of Legal Medicine of the University of Akita pronounced the liquids to be human blood, tears, and sweat. Accompanying these signs was a terrifying message:

My dear daughter, listen well to what I have to say to you. You will inform your superior.

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 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.

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres...churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.

The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of my sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them.

With courage, speak to your superior. He will know how to encourage each one of you to pray and to accomplish works of reparation.

It is Bishop Ito, who directs your community.

You have still something to ask? Today is the last time that I will speak to you in living voice. From now on you will obey the one sent to you and your superior.

Pray very much the prayers of the Rosary. I alone am able still to save you from the calamities which approach. Those who place their confidence in me will be saved.

As it is said in Genesis 3:15 (a verse which Sr. Agnes's angel gave her to contemplate): I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

As we contemplate the horrifying pains of Japan, we ought to intensify our Lenten mortifications for their sake, and for ours. The waves of black waters and the spread of radiation are not yet so terrible that the 'living envy the dead' and we must pray, lest things worsen to that extreme not only for the Japanese, but for the world. The prophecy begins with 'if...' and in that syllable there is a world of mercy beckoning to us. This may v erywell be the Third Secret of Fatima; let us not be deaf to it.

Let us learn from her, the Lady of Advent, to live our daily duties with a new spirit, with the sense of a profound waiting, one only the coming of God can quench. _His Holiness, Benedict XVI



For the lyrics of the above conjoined hymns with an English translation, you may visit one of my previous posts. One of the advantages of being a Catholic, as was admitted to me even by a modern, pluralistic priest, is that we salute two new years. Two chances to make a new beginning.

It was with immense alacrity that I introduced my Advent wreath to my catechism students in our little basement sessions before Mass. I had expected them to be surprised, but not bewildered. Be they American, Polish, English, Chinese, Filipino, Italian, or French, none were familiar with the tradition. Remembering the trouble it had taken me to find appropriately coloured candles, I was hardly surprised at it being a novelty to Poles, but I was unsettled that the same was true for Americans, where Protestants also celebrate the custom. When asked to guess what the wreath was, many opined that it was a menorah.

I do have a menorah: a strikingly beautiful one given to me by an affluent Jewish couple from Memphis, Tennessee. It is not the traditional candelabra we so often see, but a golden relief of the city of Jerusalem. Eight Maccabean soldiers holding torches provide the places for the candles, while the ninth shammas holder stands above them on a street step. I love that the servant stands above the others--yet another echo in the past of what was to be fulfilled in the future. Alas, I cannot post a picture of this beautiful thing, as its weight barred me from taking it to Poland.

At the first Novus Ordo Mass of Advent, the Prayers of the Faithful caused me a little pang, as we remembered the Jews, who would be celebrating Hanukkah on Wednesday. The thought was charitable, but not charitable enough. We did not pray for the Jews' menorah to be entwined with our wreath.

As the Advent season unfolds, we observe two Sundays of sombre purple, with a third of jubilant rose, followed by another of purple. It was oddly asymmetrical to my students that rose should be third and not first or last (how children love reason and order!). I explained that the third week, commencing with Gaudete Sunday, is when we contemplate how our awaiting of the Messiah is nearly over. As when one waits for the visit of a favourite relative, or his coming to the head of the queue, or a sign on the road indicating the nearness of his destination, a wave of giddiness and vindication washes over him. Though this joy will subside into sobriety again, as he still has some way to go, this is a natural and universal experience of man. It is the delight of Wednesday's end: 'I have come to the midpoint; I can endure the rest of the week.' Or of scaling half the mountainside: 'My strength has sufficed me thus far; it shall sustain me that far again.' After walking halfway through dark Mirkwood, the sojourner knows he is walking out.

But one must know what one's destination is and where and when it is to experience this elation. Otherwise one's waiting is sheer misery. I remember shivering at the West Warsaw train station that does not mark each platform with the train coming or its destination. It does not necessarily follow the designations of the timetable either. All changes were announced in hurried Polish, and if my train did come that night I missed it. Hours and hours in the darkness, I waited. I finally comprehended the sentiment behind a proverb I had till then thought rather trite: 'That's a long wait for a train that don't come.' I am more apt to use that metaphor now.

In true charity then, a Catholic ought to remember in his prayers this Advent especially those who wait without any forseeable end to their waiting. They need not be in suspense any longer.