by Susan
Fox
All lay
in ruins. Every bright hope that God held for mankind seemed to be lost.
He had
brought matter out of nothing, separated the water from the land, brought forth
green life and put living creatures on the earth. God continued to create,
making a Paradise --- a garden full of lush fruit trees, sweet animals, rushing
water and one beautiful companion. All this was done for one man,
whom He had
made from the clay of the earth, touched with His breath, and marked with His
living image. His name was Adam.
There was
only one rule in that garden: Do not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge
of good and evil.
Every
day, Adam and God walked together in the garden in the cool of afternoon. They
were the best of friends, sharing everything. But on one inky black
afternoon, overrun with snakes and self-doubt, Adam and Eve, his companion,
knowingly ate the wrong fruit. They forgot the gratitude they owed to God.
Now God
went to the garden as usual, looking for them. “Where are you?” He called. But
they were hiding. How that hurt. Now Paradise would unravel. The snake would
crawl on his belly, the woman would labor in pain, and the man’s work would
turn cruel.
But wait.
What was that? God said something to the snake that didn’t make sense. “And I
will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring
and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.” (Gen. 3:15)
And so
God offered man a prophetic ray of hope. He promised a Woman and He promised a
Son. Together, they would untie the knot that Adam and Eve had made with their
sin.
On
Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013, the anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady at
Fatima, Portugal, the ever-wonderful and controversial Pope Francis entrusted
everyone in the world to this Woman, so that she in turn could entrust us to
Her Seed, Our Lord Jesus Christ, with the result that the snake’s head (all
resistance to God) would be crushed once and for all.
“Bring
everyone under your protection and entrust everyone to your beloved Son, Our
Lord Jesus,” the Pope implored the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Almost
2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ offered the first Marian Consecration as He hung
upon the cross dying: "When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple
whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother "Woman, behold your
son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold your mother!" And
from that hour the disciple took her to his own home." (John 19:26-27)
Each Christian is asked to do the same thing – take Mary into your home.
“It
is a fact: Mary always brings us to Jesus,” the pope said on the vigil night
before the consecration.
That was
Our Lady’s purpose on Oct. 13, 1917, when she appeared to three Portuguese
children and God made the sun dance for as many as 70,000 witnesses. In the
sun, the children saw an image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Before the
apparition, it rained terribly and everyone was wet until the sun whirled in
the sky and seemed to rush to the earth. Then everyone’s clothes were dried,
the mud hardened and the puddles emptied, leaving the ground as if it had never
rained. The people knelt and prayed.
Such a
fervent response to a miracle recalled Elijah’s triumph over the prophets of
the god Ba’al on Mount Carmel. The people of Israel had been dithering between
the Lord God and the god Ba’al. The Prophet Elijah asked the people, “How long
will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him;
but if Ba’al, then follow him.”
So he set
up a test with the 450 prophets of Ba’al: two altars, two dead bulls, one for
Ba’al and one for God. They would ask their gods to consume the sacrifice
without lighting a fire themselves. So the priests of Ba’al prayed, cutting
themselves and began using many words morning to night. When nothing happened,
Elijah teased them, asking, “Has your god gone aside? (to the bathroom) Is he
sleeping?”
But the
god Ba’al did not consume his sacrifice. So Elijah built a moat around his
altar and filled it with water, then soaked the sacrifice as well. He prayed,
“O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you
are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these
things at your word.” Then he prayed that the people’s hearts would turn back
to the one true God.
“Then the
fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the
stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.” (1Kings18:38)
Elijah’s
prayer was answered. The priests of Ba’al were slaughtered, and the drought the
people had been suffering was ended. It rained. We heard a crunching sound and
found a dead snake on the ground.
The water
evaporated suddenly at Mount Carmel just like it did on Oct. 13, 1917 in
Fatima, Portugal. The two miracles are related. The world was given a choice at
Mount Carmel, and the world was given a choice at Fatima in 1917.
Unfortunately, we postponed our response in 1917. And the price was quite high.
The
consecration of Russia requested by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917 was delayed
almost 70 years. In 1984 with the participation of the willing bishops of the
world, Pope John Paul II consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Fatima visionary Sr. Lucia confirmed this consecration – unlike previous
ones -- finally satisfied heaven’s 1917 request to consecrate Russia.
But Our
Lady had warned that unless this consecration was done promptly, Russia would
spread her errors around the world. Her errors – including abortion,
euthanasia, contraception and its related gay marriage, loss of property
rights, loss of religious freedom, mass murders -- have indeed spread all over
the world. In the name of racial purity, Nazi Germany – with gays in all key
positions in the military and homeland forces --killed 6 million Jews in World
War II, but the total death toll was over 20 million from 1933 to 1945.
Religious persecution played a prominent role in the deaths as well. Millions
of Catholics died.
China
adopted communism in 1949 and purged her population of property owners and
business people, and tried to wipe out Catholicism. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia
killed an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million from 1975-1979 on the same principle –
get rid of the rich, get rid of teachers. Anyone with glasses was likely to be
killed, so the killing fields were full of eyeglasses!
The same
thinking now infests the United States. Our current U.S. president is trying to
whip up class envy and hatred for the rich while increasing the
government-dependent population. He has imposed legislation on the people that
will result in forced euthanasia. It’s called ironically, Obama “care.” So in
the U.S. we are suffering a loss of religious freedom, and a loss of the right
to private property as the cost of health care is dramatically rising thanks to
the federal government. We adopted abortion in 1973, and since then have killed
56 million Americans, a holocaust far worse than what happened in Nazi Germany,
but no one seems to understand that.
In more
recent years, from the vantage point of a UN pro-life lobbyist, I watched those
errors – abortion and contraception -- start to slide into to Ireland, Africa
and Catholic South America. And Ireland has lost its religious freedom
completely as Catholic hospitals now MUST provide abortion and contraception.
However,
only five years after the pope consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary, the Iron Curtain did fall in 1989 – without any bloodshed. NO ONE
ANTICIPATED THIS WOULD HAPPEN. The Cold War, which seemed so intractable for
decades, ended. Communist governments collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union was dissolved. And who’s to say that we didn’t avert a
nuclear disaster in the making?
We should
be dancing in the streets because Pope Francis said those few and momentous
words on Oct. 13! Addressing the Woman of Genesis, he said, “Bring everyone
under your protection and entrust everyone to your beloved Son, Our Lord
Jesus!”
Instead,
traditional Catholics are wondering whether he did a “real” consecration. “It
didn’t sound like a consecration to me,” one Catholic posted on the National
Catholic Register. Another said, “I agree that Pope Francis’ prayer … was
clearly not a real consecration. A nice gesture in commemoration of the
anniversary, perhaps, but that appears to be all that was intended by it.”
“I’m
sorry, but every prayer of “consecration” that I have seen and prayed for
decades involves the total submission of oneself—including all our thoughts,
deeds and possessions—to the divine Entity (God, Jesus or Mary) to be used by
them as they wish. In reading the “Consecration” prayer used by Pope
Francis, it seems this is glaringly missing. It is more of a prayer offering
love and devotion as well as asking for guidance—not a true turning over of
one’s heart, mind, body and soul,” another said, who was most familiar with the
consecration prayer composed by St. Louis Marie de Montfort in the 17th
century.
Too bad
Jesus wasn’t familiar with St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s consecration. He could
have recited it on the cross. Instead, He just said seven words, four to his
mother, “WOMAN, behold your son.” And three words to his disciple John, who
stood in place of all mankind at the foot of the cross, “Behold your Mother.”
Compared to Jesus, Pope Francis is a total blabbermouth.
“Bring
everyone under your protection and entrust everyone to your beloved Son, Our
Lord Jesus.” These words mean he gives every living human being to Jesus
through Mary. I am glad to be handed over to Our Lord in such a manner. He
didn’t need to say the rest of the prayer. Those words alone were adequate to
consecrate the world.
Now it is
2013 and the world lies again in ruins. God asks the people, “How long will you
go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if
Ba’al, then follow him.”
Too many
people have gone after the false god Ba’al – abortion, contraception, gay
marriage, euthanasia, collectivism, and religious intolerance.
Stop
dithering. Make a choice.
