Tag Archives: First Saturday Devotion

The Religion of the Antichrist

Abortion, Church, Church and State, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, End Times, Marxism, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , , , ,

When the wall separating east from west in Berlin fell, millions of people were freed from the shackles of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia.  The man who was instrumental in this happening, St. John Paul II, saw it as part of his divine mandate to facilitate this monumental event.  But as a Catholic who had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, he knew that was not the end of the story.  Russia had spread her errors practically unabated for 75 years; reaching even into our own country.  These errors were not Communism itself, but instead the ideology that underlies it—Marxism.  Marxism is alive and well and is poised to become a global religion through the likes of not just China’s hegemonic aspirations, but the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, WHO’s universal healthcare plan (led by Marxist Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), Black Lives Matter and a whole host of other organizations.

A Global Religion?

To call Marxism a global religion, may, at first glance, seem to be an exaggeration.  Of course, properly speaking, it is not a religion at all.  Religion is always ordered to God which means that there can be only one true global religion.  It is the one founded by God Himself in the Catholic Church.  But the Devil is always on the prowl to ape Christ including by forming his own global religion.  Marxism is the “religion” of choice and should properly be seen as the religion of the Antichrist.

That Marx himself was under demonic influence can hardly be disputed.  Several of his biographers, many of whom are sympathetic to his cause, have mentioned this.  Paul Kengor, in his new book The Devil and Karl Marx, does a thorough job of compiling the case for Marx’s diabolical connections.  Viewed in this way, it also helps to understand the beguiling effect that Marxism has on a lot of people because of its inherent power of mass Demonic Oppression.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were aware of this as they included several schemas on “The Care of Souls with Regard to Christians Infected with Communism” in their preparatory documents.  Unfortunately, these schemas never saw the light of day and would have been a great aid in fighting an “invention so full of errors and delusions.”

The Great Imitation

Besides the global aspirations of Marxism, there are other, more insidious ways in which it will imitate the true religion.  In taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, Christ sought to both repair and elevate human nature making it capable of sharing in the Divine Nature.  In simplest terms, Marxism is an attempt to fundamentally transform human nature through the instruments of politics and culture.  It may have failed to control economics, but that was not the end of it.  Using the Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxists have been wildly successful in “transforming” human nature in the sexual realm.  No longer does human nature thrive through monogamous marriage, the family, and private property.  Parents are not uniquely suited to mold their children according to their nature, but instead human nature is malleable and should be molded into the image deemed useful by the State.  Free will, the mark of the Divine image in man (c.f. CCC 1704-1705), is an illusion and replaced through conditioning according to their social structure (or through the correction of “Unconscious Bias” as the remains from obsolete social structures and implemented through “Corporate Training”). 

Christianity worships Christ Who made Himself a victim for our sins (c.f. 2 Cor 5:21) while Marxism worships the Victim Class.  Man’s nature is not social and marked by complementarity but instead is competitive.  It is to be informed by the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed.  There is a never-ending search of the new victim class in order to keep the worship going.  Virtuous men and women, those who are most like God are scorned and those who have been intersected by the most “axes of oppression” are exalted. 

Finally, just as Catholics offer the blood of the Innocent Lamb of God to the Father, Marxists offer the blood of innocent children through abortion to the Devil.  Marxism and abortion are always a package deal because Marxism, like all religions, needs to offer sacrifice.  The Devil throughout history has always demanded the blood of the innocent in sacrifice.  Marxism in all its instantiations always includes abortion.  It was Russia that became the first country to legalize abortion in 1920 and thanks to the Marxist feminists of the 1960s, the United States followed suit.  You can often identify a Marxist by how insistent they are that abortion is a “right”.

The Spirit of Christ animates the Christian religion and so the spirit of the antichrist animates the religion of Marxism.  The globalists who seek a One World Order are Marxists at heart.  Once a critical mass is met, then the world will be ready for the antichrist.  This is not an inevitability however and so Catholics must fight against Marxism in all its manifestations.  The Church was once instrumental in fighting Communism, but now it too has been infected with Marxists.  We need to pray that Christ will once again cleanse the Temple by setting his sights not on the money changers but the Marxists.  We have Our Lady of Fatima on our side and we can fight its spread through the First Saturday Devotion.  We can also zealously combat the errors where we see them and educate ourselves on this most pernicious enemy because there is one other thing the religion of the antichrist does—seeks to wipe out the believers of the True Faith.

The Triumph of the Immaculate Heart

End Times, Mary, Sacred Heart of Jesus,

With the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Our Lady’s appearance to the visionaries in Fatima, there has been a renewed interest in meaning of her visit.  There has been much ink spilled, especially since the release of “Third Secret” in 2000, interpreting all that she did and said.  At the heart of all the visions, miracles and “secrets” is the perennial call to pray and do penance.  But there is one aspect that has, for the most part, remained a mystery.  What did Our Lady mean when she told the visionaries that “in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph”?

To understand what Our Lady meant when she told the visionaries of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart we have to examine a most fundamental truth.  It is the Immaculate Heart that paves the way for the Sacred Heart.  This is not based on some pretended religiosity and obscure connection but the most basic truth that in the fullness of time, it was the Immaculate Heart, a heart completely open to God’s will that led to the creation of the Sacred Heart.  Not only does the Immaculate Heart pave the way in the fullness of time, but also at the end of time.  That is it was the Immaculate Heart that brought about the Incarnation and thus we should expect that it would be instrumental in His return.  Just was we know that it is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that is Our Lord both in His Divinity and His humanity that will reign in the end, we can also know that Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart will reign as well.

The Immaculate Heart

In his theological commentary on the Third Secret of Fatima, the future Pope Benedict XVI explained what it meant to have a devotion to the Immaculate Heart.  He said, in “biblical language, the “heart” indicates the center of human life, the point where reason, will, temperament and sensitivity converge, where the person finds his unity and his interior orientation. According to Matthew 5:8, the ‘immaculate heart’ is a heart which, with God’s grace, has come to perfect interior unity and therefore ‘sees God’. To be ‘devoted’ to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat—‘your will be done’—the defining center of one’s whole life.”  His point is that the Immaculate Heart reigns in our hearts when we allow our own hearts to be cultivated after hers.

Mary’s heart is one that is one that does not grow weary because she is always expecting God to act personally in her life.  Evidence her reaction to the appearance of St. Gabriel.  Throughout the Old Testament record, the appearance of an angel always elicits great fear in the visionary.  The first words spoken by the angel is “do not be afraid.”  But Mary seems to expect the angel and is clearly not shaken by his appearance; even if his manner of greeting her is troubling. Most of the artistic renderings of the Annunciation show her at prayer, but there is little proof of this other than pious tradition.  She was just as likely working as sitting in contemplation.  She knew God can and does come in either situation.  She travels to the Hill Country to visit Elizabeth “in haste” because she is excited to see the mighty power of God at work.  She believes and professes that nothing is impossible for God.  Her response to St. Gabriel’s proposal is “let it be done to me according to thy word.”  Later when she arrives at the home of her cousin Elizabeth she proclaims the “great things that God has done for me.”  It is this change in preposition that shows how deep her trust in God truly is.  A living faith like that of Our Lady is one that sees those things that God does to us, ultimately are for us.  But this is a radical trust that must come from the heart and be filled with fiat.

How the Immaculate Heart Triumphs

How is it that the Immaculate Heart will triumph?  Building on Cardinal Ratzinger’s commentary we can say that the reign of the Immaculate Heart is not so much about the reign of Mary as Queen per se, but a devotion to her spirit.  It is by the wholesale adoption of this spirit of the Immaculate Heart.  The Kingdom comes when “Thy will is done on earth as it is in heaven.”  It is only this spirit of fiat, that is, the spirit of wanting nothing more than God’s will that will bring about the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

We might see how this is done individually, but how can an entire culture adopt this stance?  This is why Our Lady so vehemently desires the First Saturday devotion.  It is the Communion of Reparation that will bring about this reign.  When all the children begin to act like Mommy and willingly go to the foot of the Cross and stay with Jesus.  This is no symbolic gesture but instead a literal one.  We go to the foot of the Cross each time we go to Mass and on First Saturdays we go with Our Lady in reparation for the offenses against her Immaculate Heart—not because she is overly sensitive, but because without reparation by those children that love her, her spirit of fiat will never spread.  There are two things always at the heart of Christian culture—Mary and the Mass.  Where devotion to Our Lady thrives, so too does the Mass.  Where the Mass is seen as the “source and summit” love for the Immaculate Heart grows.

Ironically there has been so much controversy over whether or not John Paul II consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart or not, that we have neglected the other part of Our Lady’s request of the First Saturday Communion of Reparation.  While we have very little control over whether the Pope performed or has yet to perform the Consecration of Russia, we do have control over the spread of this practice.  The best way to bring about the reign of the Immaculate Heart and hasten the reign of the Sacred Heart is also the best way to heal our culture.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, reign in our hearts and show us the way to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Our Lady of Fatima and the First Saturday Devotion

End Times, Mary, Redemption, , ,

In the popular devotion of the Church, Saturday has long been a day set aside to honor the Blessed Mother.  It was the 8th Century Benedictine monk and Carolingian liturgical reformer, St. Alcuin, who first composed Votive Masses to honor Our Lady on Saturday.  These masses were so popular among the faithful, that they eventually became accepted into the Missal as the Common of the Virgin Mary.

It was no accident however that Alcuin chose Saturday, for there are deep theological reasons for doing so.  The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy  explains that Saturday is set chosen as a memorial of the Blessed Virgin as “a remembrance of the maternal example and discipleship of the Blessed Virgin Mary who, strengthened by faith and hope, on that great Saturday on which Our Lord lay in the tomb, was the only one of the disciples to hold vigil in expectation of the Lord’s resurrection; it is a prelude and introduction to the celebration of Sunday, the weekly memorial of the Resurrection of Christ; it is a sign that the ‘Virgin Mary is continuously present and operative in the life of the Church.’”

This devotion to Our Lady has been sorely tried in recent centuries, beginning with the Protestant Revolution.  Rather than being met with indifference, she was treated with contempt.  It was within this setting that a practice of receiving Communion in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary arose.  This devotion spread, catching the attention of Pope St. Pius X who attached an indulgence to the practice in 1904.  This practice was expanded when on June 13,1912 he offered additional indulgences for “All the Faithful who, on the first Saturday or first Sunday of twelve consecutive months, devote some time to vocal or mental prayer in honor of the Immaculate Virgin in Her conception gain, on each of these days, a plenary indulgence. Conditions: Confession, Communion, and prayers for the intentions of the Sovereign Pontiff.”

Fatima

Five years to the day, Our Lady appeared to the Fatima visionaries, showing them the Immaculate Heart surrounded with thorns.  Sr. Lucia would later say that she understood that the vision was “was the Immaculate Heart of Mary, outraged by the sins of humanity, which demanded Reparation.” It was also during this appearance that Our Lady told the children that Jesus wished to “establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.” Our Lady promised Lucia that she would return to explain the practice of the first five Saturdays.

Fast forward eight years and Lucia is now a postulant in a convent in Pontevedra, Spain.  Our Lady appeared to her and said “Look, my daughter. My Heart is surrounded with thorns that ungrateful men pierce unceasingly with their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console me and announce that for all those, who for five consecutive first Saturdays, confess, receive Holy Communion, pray the Holy Rosary and accompany me for15 minutes by meditating the mysteries of the Holy Rosary with the intention to do reparation, I promise to assist them at the hour of death with the graces needed for salvation.”

About a year later, she was taking out the trash when she encounters a little child.  She told the child to pray a Hail Mary which He refused to do.  So, she tells him to go to the Church and ask the Heavenly Mother for the Child Jesus.  When the child returns, she asks him if he did what she said to which He replied “And have you spread through the world what the heavenly Mother requested of you?”  She replied, knowing it was Our Lord, that she had met many difficulties in spreading the devotion.  He told her to rely on His grace and to “have compassion for your Mother’s Heart. It is surrounded with thorns that ungrateful men pierce at each moment, and there is no one who does acts of reparation to remove them.”

Our Blessed Lord appeared once again to now Sister Lucia on May 29, 1930. He explained that the devotion involved five consecutive first Saturday because it was five kinds of offenses and blasphemies against the Immaculate Heart of Mary that required reparation, namely: blasphemies against her Immaculate Conception, against her perpetual virginity, against the divine and spiritual maternity of Mary, blasphemies involving the rejection and dishonoring of her images, and the neglect of implanting in the hearts of children a knowledge and love of this Immaculate Mother.  Mary had asked Jesus for this to forgive those who “had the misfortune of offending her.”

Why does it Matter?

Why do all these details matter?  Because we are now closing in on the 100th anniversary of Our Lady’s appearance to the visionaries in Fatima.  The world has changed in ways the Fatima visionaries could hardly have conceived.  But many of the advances that have been made have left us less human.  Our Lady appeared in order to warn us of this and offered us a remedy to protect us from ourselves—“Penance, penance, penance.”  Many within the Church has chosen to focus on the consecration of Russia as the primary message, but it seems to me that any debate on whether that has actually been accomplished (Sr. Lucia herself said it had) misses the point when we fail to implement the simple call to do Penance.

Our Lady’s instructions are a reminder to all the Faithful of the communal dimension of sin and our obligation to make reparation. Christ came for no other reason than to make reparation.  A Christian is meant to continue His work throughout time and space.  Sure, He could have done the work Himself had He so willed, but He did not will.  Sure, His participation and ours differ immeasurably but He asked for our participation in it when He called upon us to take up our Cross.  We cannot be Christians while at the same time striving to live a comfortable life.  Christians must act redemptively by consciously making acts of reparation, not just for our sins but for the sins of others.  Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, provided we are willing to act like other Christs.  Our Lady’s very specific instructions to Sr. Lucia offers us a concrete means to make this happen.  She is ever the spiritual mother teaching us.  Can we not give to her Son, the First Five Saturdays in honor of His holy Mother?