Another little-known fact that shows Mary's wisdom and foreknowledge

It is well-known that Our Lady of Fatima first mentioned that she would ask for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart in 1917, even before the Bolsheviks seized power that year in the weeks following the Miracle of the Sun of October 13.

This is, after all, the "second secret of Fatima" which Our Lady gave to the little visionaries Lucia Santos and Jacinta Marto in her third apparition to them on July 13, 1917:

You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light*, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

What is far less known is that just as the apparitions of 1917 were very appropriately timed, so too was Our Lady's eventual request to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart. It happened on June 13, 1929, when Our Lady appeared to Lucia, now Sister Lucia of the Dorothean nuns, when she had just relocated to the Spanish city of Tuy: http://www.fatima.org/essentials/facts/tuy.asp

In fact, as any historian of Russian history would tell you, the year 1929, not 1917, marked the true start of the Communist revolution for the vast majority of the population of the then-young Soviet Union. For it was in that year that, having fully consolidated his power in the major cities of Moscow and Leningrad, Joseph Stalin began his brutal campaign of agricultural collectivization of the Soviet countryside. Within 10 years, the landscape of the whole swathe of the world's largest nation was transformed, typically with the cruelest repression, to make the USSR the evil empire that would terrorize the world for the next half-century.

Protect me, Mother Mary

Surely you know how desperately I need your assistance. And surely you are capable - for the legions of angels that were created specifically to attend to your purity from the moment of your Immaculate Conception can also aid your poor, sinful little children, can they not?

Help me! I am so constantly and quickly engulfed by the filth of this earth and my own sinful nature - help me!

May the Immaculate Heart triumph!

Constant refuge of poor sinners, sweet consolation of broken and contrite hearts, tenderest mercy for the spiritually helpless. . . Mother Mary, your Immaculate Heart shall indeed triumph in the end, as you declared back in 1917!

Where there is strife, where there is opposition to the will of God, may your Immaculate Heart's intercession pierce through the darkness, to reveal the abyss of mercy into which all who seek the truth are invited to plunge.

St. Catherine of Alexandria, pray for us!

One of my all-time favorites of Catholic Marian art: the virgin and martyr, St. Catherine of Alexandria (c. 282-305 AD) kneels before Madonna with Child to kiss the hand of Baby Jesus.

Not much is known for certain about St. Catherine, the namesake and forerunner of many holy and blessed women from Church history - St. Catherine of Siena, St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Catherine Laboure, to name just a few of the most popularly venerated. What's known for sure is that at the height of the Middle Ages, St. Catherine was the object of a particularly strong devotion, as one of the 14 "Holy Helpers" whose intercession was constantly invoked by the Church and her children. Like so many other hagiographies of the time period, that of St. Catherine is almost certainly the product of myth and legend overlaying the actual historical figure.

Nonetheless, it is now widely accepted that along with her fellow virgin-martyr, St. Margaret of Antioch, and St. Michael the Archangel, she appeared to St. Joan of Arc in the 1420s as one of that young girl's personal guides, to strengthen and prepare her for the humanly impossible task of turning the tides of the Hundred Years' War in France's favor.

Interestingly, veneration of St. Catherine was banned altogether in 1969, owing to lack of historical foundation, but was reinstated in 2002. It is now most commonly believed that while St. Catherine did in fact exist and was both virgin and martyr, the romantic details and elements of her life and heroic death were later additions which, though not exactly good history, served the important purpose of bolstering the faith of the masses who heard her story recounted. Like some of the other early martyrs, St. Catherine can be thought of as a Judith for the Catholic Church: an idealized figure for contemplation by the faithful, more so than an actual historic individual.

The "Catherine Wheel" remains a legendary device associated with her, and the St. Catherine Monastery which was named in her honor, in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, contains the oldest complete volume of the New Testament found anywhere in the world, dating back to the 6th century.

St. Catherine of Alexandria, pray for us!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, be my constant refuge

Sweet Mother of God, you know the depths of the disorder and panic that can seize my heart all of a sudden, without warning, with the full consent and knowledge of my sinful nature, which so stubbornly clings to its own will and turns every small imperfection into a multitude of sins, one piled upon another, until I can see no way out of my mess. . .

Have mercy on me, O Most Precious Immaculate Heart of Mary, and be my immediate and sure help when I fall to my disordered thoughts, so that no sooner do I turn to you do I realize that I am already aligned with you - the sword that pierces you is the sword of my sin that pierces the living Word which your intercession has so painstakingly begun to plant within me.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for me! For the sake of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with whom you are intimately united with, and for the sake of Christ's sorrowful passion, have pity on me!

Mother Mary, surely you can provide

My own eyes have begun to see the injustice against your suffering Son, the Savior and Lord of the human race. . .

He is poor, He is broken, He is hungry and desperately needy - and the world has all but abandoned Him.

Mother Mary, as surely as you live and reign in splendor with your Divine Son, open the doors through Holy Mother Church such that the desperate family I have been called to help will find relief and comfort, physical and spiritual, via your maternal intercession and the provision it leads the Catholic Church to miraculously create.

If only all knew. . .

what joy it is to have an Immaculate Virgin Mother.

What peace it brings to young men who struggle with impure thoughts toward young women. . .

What hope it brings to young women seeking a sure role model of devotion to God. . .

Our Blessed Mother, pray for us! Especially for the young singles and adolescents of our faith communities!

Be my strength, be my joy

Especially as I experience the brokeness of weakness, the lowliness of sorrows. . .

When I am pierced, Mother Mary, be my hope and my refuge of mercy. . .

Make me your child again today.

Mother Mary, give me compassion for the poor!

You care deeply and tenderly for the poor and desperately needy, as only a mother can care so much about her children. . .

Please have mercy on me, that I may become a vessel of mercy to those who need a lifeline. . .

Give me this gift: of preferential option for the poor, as you so earnestly express in your Magnificat. Make the poor rich in the poverty of Christ - and accomplish this through me, as God wills!

True holiness is not cheap

Blessed Mother,

Is it not true that the sanctity you wish your children to attain is as a priceless jewel hidden in the middle of a vast desert? That all the world has to offer is literally worthless compared to the holiness of your Immaculate Heart?

Grant me courage and strength, that I may seek after this sanctity and throw off all that hinders this pursuit.

Give me the gift of. . . incessant prayer

My Blessed Virgin Mother,

Grant that I may have one of your cardinal virtues - incessant prayer. May I become more worthy to draw down your intercession, that my spare time will be spent offering up the incense of petitions that draw myself and others close to your Divine Son.

Give me the spirit of self-denial, physical and spiritual alike, to make my prayers more constant and effective. May I, like so many of your sons and daughters have over the generations, discover the joys of penance, fasting and mortification of the senses, and a deep brokeness of spirit marked by pure contrition.

Have mercy on me, for your Son's sake - for the sake of His sorrowful Passion.

Holy Mary, pray for your children. . .

Especially those who do not yet know the tender love of a Heavenly Mother, who do not yet know that they need intimate contact with your Divine Son in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Draw them close, Blessed Mother of God, to give glory to your Son and bring honor to your Immaculate Heart. . .

Thoughts on confessing sins. . .

As a newly confirmed Catholic, I must say that setting the record straight about my past sins has been the most crucial process I've had to go through in order to arrive at a clear conscience.

Thank God for priests and confessors - for all the bad press, they play such a vital role in the life of believers that for the mere fact that their office is indispensable, there will always be somebody called by God to serve in their posts.

The popular Protestant belief that our past sins aren't held against us once we profess Christ as Lord and Savior is fundamentally correct, but for an interesting twist: it is never God who is unwilling or unable to forgive, but we as human beings have such fragile and flayed consciences as a result of our sin-stained lives that unless we openly confess our transgressions to persons of authority and perform penance for them, we'll be unable to forgive ourselves. And in the end, to not be able to forgive oneself is to not be able to receive God's forgiveness.

Hence the importance of confession and penance: for those who truly receive the sacrament, it is nothing less than the commutation of a harsh criminal sentence to a ridiculously light penalty, if not an outright declaration of "not guilty" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

No enemies except. . . myself

Haven't opened up the Psalms all that much since deciding to become Catholic. . . randomly opened up to Psalm 57, in which King David rails against his enemies:

Let death take them by surprise; let them go down alive to Sheol, for evil is in their homes and hearts.
But I will call upon God, and the LORD will save me. -Psalm 55:16-17

I must say that since becoming devoted to Mary, it's hard to relate to Psalms like this one in the sense that I can't see anyone around me as an enemy anymore - that is, nobody can separate me from the love of God nearly as much as myself.

This is such a precious gift from the Blessed Virgin: the awareness of such a deep sinfulness within us owing to the disordered state caused by inborn Original Sin, which baptism only starts the removal of. Everything becomes quite simple when the struggle is largely, indeed more and more exclusively with our own flesh: the traitor within who God must necessarily put to death over and over again, often by surprise and unexpected afflictions. At some point, we get so accustomed to these little deaths - the painful mortification of our wills - and we see that God is so faithful to rescue us from them that we can actually put ourselves to death of our own free will!

Such is the way of the Cross. . . the only way to the ultimate, beatific vision of the Holy Trinity.

And yes, if we are our own worst enemies, it follows that everyone around us - whether they treat us well or badly - is by comparison a good friend!

The walk of dark faith. . . Marian apologetics

The devotion to Mary is an invitation to the dry, dark faith of our Blessed Mother - the faith that won her the singular grace of becoming the Mother of Jesus Christ.

Venerated so highly by saints and mystics, the Blessed Virgin is in fact the great hidden gem of the Christian faith: over the centuries, she has truly tended to elude the grasp of the wise and scholarly, even as she has won the affection of legions of childlike devotees.

Take, for instance, the view of Mary as Queen of Heaven, her identity being that of the woman in Revelation 12:1-6, clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. Apparently, it wasn't until the late 4th century that a single scholar of St. John's apocalyptic writings identified the woman as the Virgin Mary: then, as now, the vast majority of commentators identify the woman as the Church, or the nation of Israel. Granted, Revelation wasn't included in the sacred canon until the 5th century, and Mary herself wasn't officially declared Mother of God or God-bearer until the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, but it's really striking that ancient scholars were rather slow to attach to Mary the singular centrality of her role in salvation history that much later medieval Christians took for granted.

Similarly with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: though it was a long-established item of faith for rank-and-file believers for generations, even throughout the High Middle Ages it wasn't accepted by such strong devotees to Mary as St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas Aquinas. Throughout those centuries, it was decidedly the minority view of learned Catholic minds: no surprise, then, that it wasn't until 1854 that it officially became dogma.

What does this seem to illustrate? Like the nature of her faith in God, Mary's true significance to the Church is far more a matter of childlike trust than logical sense. All devotees to Mary who wish to spread the devotion to her should recognize this: the odds are probably stacked up against us in the realm of apologetics, because if we're honest with the history of the interpretation of scripture as concerns Mary, we'll find that even Catholics can take much issue with certain high views and doctrines of her. We who wish to defend such high Mariologies must be prepared to cling to the lowest common denominator: so long as scripture can be demonstrated to not contradict what we believe about our Mother, the rest is a matter of pure, dark faith for us.

There's a certain beauty to this: this walk of dark faith is a very dark walk, indeed!

Mother of God, pray for us

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners in this season of Lent: that we will earnestly seek and practice the virtues you so perfectly embody, as the one and only Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, singularly worthy to intercede on behalf of poor sinners who need your mercy. . .

May this be a season of self-sacrifice in place of self-centeredness, penance in place of presumption, humility in place of self-sufficiency, godly sorrow in place of frivolous worldly happiness, desperation for lost and dying sinners in place of complacency.

So little time, so much at stake. . . don't give our souls rest, Holy Mother, in the wrong way - inflame us with love and tender mercy, that we will earnestly desire those who seem furthest away from your Son to be put first in line to reach paradise and attain His promises.

Spotless Immaculate Virgin, I love you!

This is just one of those moments, I must admit that I'm such a guy :-)

God is a guy, after all - three guys, Father, Spirit and Son - so how natural it is that the focus of His passion and affection is a young woman!

If only motherless Christians knew just how much they're missing out on to not deeply love and be loved by our Holy Mother!

What a difference it makes to have a sinless mother

It becomes increasingly clear to me that Catholicism simply can't be understood without the well-established doctrine of Mary being sinless. After all, if there is such a creature who is perfectly free from sin and perfectly devoted to our Lord Jesus Christ, this means that the only standard we are to strive for is this same sinlessness and perfection. Indeed, the aim of every saint over the ages has been exactly this - to die sinless or as perfectly free from sin as possible.


This has stunning implications for every aspect of spiritual life - it means that if we don't view the eradication of our sins and the attainment of sanctity as the only true evidence of our salvation as members of Christ's Church, we're in danger of falling into some kind of heresy. For Mary herself wasn't only preserved from the stain of Original Sin, but throughout her life she always chose to turn her back on sin and temptation, and always chose the way of perfect obedience to God. Of course, no other creature before or since has been born free of Original Sin, but the choice to live completely free from sin - or as close to it as possible - is always ours to make, and on this basis we are very much in the same boat as the Blessed Mother. Or to put it in more practical terms: Mary herself never lived a single moment of her earthly life with the thought, "I'm saved, so it's okay if I don't fully resist the temptation to sin if it arises, and I don't really have to deny myself - spiritually as well as physically - in order to avoid the near occasion of sin."

Consider this simple fact: If Mary had wilfully sinned or had even an inclination to sin, she would've blocked the salvation of the human race and the redemption of the entire universe via her baby Son! Not that this would've stopped the fulfillment of God's plan, but can you imagine how horrible a price Mary herself would've paid?

Which leads to the crucial point: the closer and more intimate our relationship with God, the more our sin will expose us to the very fires of hell.

One doesn't have to be Catholic to have this understanding of sin and salvation: but if this isn't at the very crux of the Christian life on a daily basis, well, one runs the risk of not fully appreciating what sin is - and therefore not fully appreciating what mercy is. It sounds very unloving to many if not most Christians that God demands such absolute perfection from us, because it's so much more soothing to think that Christ's death for us is sufficient and all we have to do is believe in Him, and our sins will automatically be washed away. But of course, the reality begs to differ: the more we try to be right with God and serve Him worthily, the more our total depravity shows up and renders ourselves unfit to see Him face-to-face. Am I just trying to pull everyone down? Absolutely not - I am obliged before God to pray that everyone I know and meet will attain sanctity and perfection ahead of myself. But if this is how we're obliged to pray for one another, we can't be wishy-washy about the awful truth of how despicable and deserving of hellfire our sins are, even so-called "small" sins.

Mother of Mercy, bottomless abyss of mercy

It's liberating and at the same time challenging to no longer think that certain people are just predestined to go to hell, and there's nothing anyone can do for them past a certain point. But our Holy Mother is indeed close to those who need our Lord's mercy the most - for all Catholics devoted to Mary, we can pray with this confidence, that she will honor our earnest desire to see that those who need mercy most are sent up to heaven ahead of everyone else. I never thought that my own biological parents, who for their whole lives have had nothing to do with God or with any religion at all, would now be so high on the list of Mary's intercessory concerns in my devotional times. Who but this humble, immaculate virgin could have placed it in my heart to honor my parents (obey the basic commandment) in this particular way?

The greatest sacrifice that any human being can make through prayer is to find the lowest, most despised and rejected of creatures and give up one's own preferences to see to it that such creatures are placed first in line to reach the glory of God. Mary has always prayed for sinners in this way: may all who love her look forward to finding her working feverishly on behalf of such hopeless souls.

Some thoughts about confession and penance

Today I had my first face-to-face with one of my parish priests, the parochial vicar, who is most likely going to be my confessor upon my confirmation and entry into the Roman Catholic Church.

I know that this particular sacrament of the Catholic Church - confession and penance - stirs negative thoughts in many people's minds. Indeed, lapsed Catholics and many Protestants typically view it as being too much of just a guilt-trip that doesn't accomplish much in terms of actually getting someone to truly change his or her ways. And of course, as the priest told me, the sacrament must be taken as a means to receive God's grace and love. So the question before many Catholics, including reverts like myself, is, Does this really have to be mediated by a priest?

Ultimately, I think it's a matter of obedience to the Church and of perfect transparency before God. There must be many virtuous, God-fearing Christians who don't go to confession or receive the sacrament of penance, but I'd dare say that even such Christians would be better off - definitely not worse off - if they confess their sins regularly and perform penances likewise. And for anyone who wishes to become a good servant and follower of God, sooner or later he or she should greatly desire that all known sin in one's life - even the "secret sins" that only God is aware of - be confessed before the Church and done away with.

For the ultimate standard by which we will be judged by Christ is not how many people we "save" for Him, nor how many miracles we perform in His name, but simply how sinless we are before Him in His burning holiness. On this point, Catholics are greatly advantaged to be guided and protected by the sinless Blessed Mother - in her we see that yes, one can and should strive for a completely sin-free life, far removed from the desire or even the ability to offend God in everyday thoughts and actions. And yes, we should greatly desire Mary's purity and sanctity, even if it costs us everything, including even our own notions of devotion to God.

As for Protestants, that is my heart for my evangelical brethren: that they will see that the true aim of the Christian life in their everyday walk is to become sinless and perfect, not necessarily to make disciples and gain followers, which are only secondary aims. For only if we become sinless and perfect can we truly join the Virgin Mary and all the saints and angels in heaven in the unending worship of Almighty God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for all Catholics

Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mediatrix, the Glory of the Blessed Trinity: pray for all Catholics worldwide, that we may be brought to greater unity in they mystical Body of Christ. May this be our witness to the world - including to non-Catholic Christians - that there is only one true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, only one true Apostolic succession from the days of your Divine Son's earthy life.

Blessed, Immaculate Virgin: may we as Catholics recognize and take to heart that we need not try to re-invent the wheel, but in you, we see the very original model of pure sanctity and devotion to God Almighty, and in all things, we are to emulate your example of service and care for our Lord Jesus Christ, the babe who nursed at your blessed bosom, who died on the Cross of Calvary before your gaze of blind faith, whose company you now enjoy forever and ever in the glory of the Father.

Teach us true humility, Holy Mother of God: grant us your maternal assistance to become worthy of the promises of your Son Jesus. May we agree to God's plan for our lives with the courage and simplicty of your reply to the angel: "Be it done to me according to God's will." Remind us, O sweet Virgin Mary, that our "yes" to God entails a "no" to our own ways, our own selfish desires, and our own conceptions of who God is. It is an agreement on our part to deny ourselves, to renounce our own rights and privileges so that the dying may be given life, the poor may be made rich, the hungry may be filled and satisfied, just as you declared: "He has filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he has sent away empty."

Mother of Mercy, our sweetness and our hope, look with favor upon us, the poor children of Eve who yearn for redemption. In your mercy may you create in our hearts a genuine repentance and desire to care for the concerns of Jesus Christ. Hear our cries for help so that our sins will not be held against us when we stand before Christ in His righteous judgment of our lives, nor against those who need God's mercy through our prayers.

Why the Catholic emphasis on Mary?

Any fervent Catholic will tell you: devotion to the Virgin Mary is the key mark of a true Catholic. The reason is quite simple: below Christ Himself, Mary is the highest spiritual authority that we as Christians can turn to for guidance and support.

Now the Protestant question: Why can't we just go straight to Jesus? It seems to work just fine.

Catholics won't disagree: Christ's power is real and available and anyone with the right faith in Him can perform miracles in His name. But the issue is ultimately one of how close - how intimately - one can draw to God. I remember the senior pastor of my former Protestant church telling me once, "Of course you're far from God compared to them", by "them" referring to the holy apostles and prophets of the Biblical record. And earlier he had even admitted himself that he is far from God compared to the author of Psalm 139: he said this in the context of commenting on how it's hard for us to understand how someone as close to an all-loving, all-merciful God (in this case, King David) could speak so passionately about his hatred for evildoers.

So if the question is one of proximity to our Lord Jesus, then of course, not a single creature in the whole universe can boast of such closeness as His mother. Indeed, she is too close for comfort for many non-Catholics. Chances are that as Catholics, many if not most Protestants we meet will consider it idolatrous and heretical to summon Mary's name - many of these same Protestants, though, probably don't agree with my former pastor's assessment that all of Christ's original followers in the New Testament are indeed closer to Him than we are. "Oh, they're just dead saints" is probably how they see them.

But as Catholics, it is a matter of faith for us that the Virgin Mary was assumed into heaven upon her death and has thus enjoyed a beatific view of the Holy Trinity for the past two millennia. As such, she is in a uniquely good position to hear the supplications of those who seek the mercy of her Divine Son. While anyone can call on Christ directly (and even as Catholics, we should), a refusal to acknowledge Mary's intercession will leave the following gaps in our spiritual life:

1) An incomplete understanding of the depth of God's purity

2) An incomplete understanding of the depth of God's mercy

3) An incomplete understanding of God as a Trinity

To expand on these points is for another time. For now, let us rejoice that our Mother in Heaven is the model of perfect devotion to God Almighty - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The aim of the Christian life is to become sinless, to the extent that our Holy Mother is sinless and thus worthy to enjoy the vision of God's glory. May we be filled with joyful hope that we will be in the company of such a beautiful woman in the age to come.

Some initial thoughts. . . why this blog?

The Blessed Virgin Mary is, we can very strongly argue, the most precious secret of the Bible: whereas her Son Jesus Christ is explicitly declared as Lord and Savior, Mary is very much a hidden figure, and the testimony of Roman Catholic saints for two millennia has been that the deeply mystical aspects of the Christian faith are centered largely on the person of Mary, the Holy Mother of not only Jesus Christ but also of His one true Apostolic, catholic Church - the Church of St. Peter and the other original Apostles.

Why should we learn more about Mary and develop a personal relationship with her via her intercession? Quite simply, it's because she has always been the one creature to whom our Lord Jesus Christ has enjoyed the closest, most perfectly loving relationship. To know Mary is to know Christ in the highest degree possible - whether in this age or even in the age to come.

Indeed, for two millennia, but especially since the era of St. Francis and St. Dominic (early 13th century), the most legendary and beloved saints of Roman Catholic tradition have been so devoted and attached to Mary as the secret to attaining union with her Son that it's hardly a surprise that Protestants can't distinguish veneration of Mary and reliance on her intercession from heretical goddess-worship.

A former Protestant myself - and a rather zealous one, according to my former pastor - I have now gladly joined the long-running, still-growing list of the Blessed Virgin's clients who, above all else, have hungered and thirsted after her sanctity and virginal purity before God.

For those Christians who don't yet know their Holy Mother, including those who consider it downright heresy that we should pray to anyone other than our Lord Jesus Himself, I hope this blog will open your eyes to the beautiful mystery of the crown of God's creation, the ever-Immaculate Virgin who was given the unique privilege of bringing the second person of the Holy Trinity into space and time to save not only the world from its sins, but also to restore peace and order in a universe that had lost it sometime in eternity past, when Satan led one-third of the angelic host into rebellion against God.