It is done! (Rev. 21: 6)

March 25, 2017                                                                                                                                 The Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord

Despite the promise of terrible tribulation to come if her requests were not heeded Our Lady did offer a great consolation to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco.  She promised peace.  When has man known peace since the Fall?  Our Lord came to give us peace, and peace was the first word He spoke to his Apostles on the night of his Resurrection: Peace be with you.  Our Lady spoke to the children about peace on July 13, 1917 and here is what she said:

If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace…  In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.  The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

1) What this is not

People oftentimes get confused here.  They don’t comprehend what Our Lady means when she says “a period of peace.”  This is understandable since mankind in this world does not know peace and profoundly seeks it.  People are led by this promise of a “period of peace” into a false millenarianism.  There will be no millennium.  We were never promised peace in this world.  There will be no restoration of the Christendom of the Middle Ages: that era is passed and will not return.  1517 and 1789 and 1917 cannot be erased.

There are many books written by Catholics during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose authors fell into this.  They saw the destruction that had been wreaked by the French Revolution.  They desparately wanted a return of the good things that had been lost.  They fell into the trap of the Apostles on the road to Our Lord’s Passion when they forgot all that He had told them about his upcoming miserable Death and his wonderous Resurrection.  Instead they wanted the Kingdom of God to come in this world.  A better world to be sure, but not the new heavens and new earth that Our Lord has promised us.  I mention this because these nineteenth century books and the theory of history they propound circulate widely in so called ‘traditionalist’ circles today.  Don’t fall for the trap.

The hope of man for peace cannot be realized within human history.  We cannot make the world a better place.  We cannot create our own peace.  This is nothing but false messianism, no matter how good it sounds or how much sugar it is laced with.  The Catholic Church strongly condemns this way of thinking and always has.  The Catechism paragraph 676 quotes Pope Pius XI on this subject in his 1937 encyclical Divini Redemptoris (read here):

The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatalogical judgement.  The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of secular messianism.

Some read this passage and delude themselves into thinking that Pius XI was only talking about political secular messianism, but he makes it quite clear that he is talking about all forms of millenarianism, religious included.  Anything that promises fulfillment of the Kingdom of God within human history is a deceit of the enemy, no matter how good it sounds.

2) What is she talking about then?

We don’t know for sure.  Maybe it was included in the “…etc.” part of this Apparition that was never spoken about in the Vatican’s 2000 release about the Third Secret of Fatima, or maybe it was not.  We don’t know for sure.

What I give here is only my opinion: if the Church wishes to contravene this opinion at some point I will delete it if I am able.  What I think is that this is the end.  In truth I think that there is little doubt about it.

Our Lady speaks of the “triumph” of her Immaculate Heart.  It is hard to imagine the triumph of this greatest marvel of God’s creation, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, enduring in a world still polluted by sin.  And if her great Heart triumphs then that triumph must endure forever.  So it strikes me that this alone implies that this world, however strong and stable and enduring it seems (and it only seems that way), is rapidly passing away.  Exactly when and how is known only to God, but it would seem that the end, with all the terrible calamities that must immediately precede it, probably isn’t as far off as some of us would like to think.  And after the end will come peace; for those who will take up their cross and follow her Divine Son.

Like I said that is my opinion: take it for what it is worth.  Pray the Rosary every day.