BLESSING OF MARCH 5TH, 2005. 1ST SATURDAY OF MONTH
AT PRADO NUEVO. EL ESCORIAL (MADRID)
Our Lady:
Raise all your objects; all objects will be blessed for poor sinners.
I bless you, my children, as the Father blesses you, through the Son and with the Holy Spirit.
COMMENTARY UPON MESSAGES
March 25th, 1982
"My daughter, humans don’t stop offending God (…) the world’s full of sins (.). Do penance for those who don’t do so, ask the Eternal Father to hold his arm, to have mercy on all humans.
Men don’t stop committing sins of impurity and profaning Christ’s Body"
How much sin hurts Our Lord and his Mother’s Immaculate Heart! In this message, where only Our Lady appears, She shows once more what sin means as an offence to God, and again She suggests the remedy: penance for sins, particularly for those who do not repair their own sins. Besides, She points out two kinds of sins: impurity and profanations of the Eucharist.
Firstly, impurity is undoubtedly a terrible sin before God’s eyes; it involves several aspects: impurity of body, of heart, of mind, etc; all these offend God, and we understand She refers here to the sins of the sixth commandment of God’s Law, against which Saint Paul warns us with these words, " Therefore, put to death what is earthly in your life, that is immorality, impurity, inordinate passions, wicked desires and greed which is a way of worshiping idols" (Col 3, 5); Saint Bernard also says, " We must remedy impurity with prayer. Like the eyes of servants are on their lords’ hands, we must look at the Lord, Our God, until He has mercy on us. He is the only purest, and He is the only one who can clean those conceived in sin. Moreover, against our sins, He established the remedy of Confession because this Sacrament washes everything"(1)
Secondly, profaning the Eucharist is a sin of special seriousness because Our Lord remains in every consecrated Host with his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. If we realised that Jesus Christ is alive, real and resurrected in the substances of bread and wine, we would appreciate the Blessed Sacrament much more, we would receive it with more fervour and devotion, we would worship and adore him as He deserves, we would feel a deep sorrow for those profane acts committed against him and we would try to repair them somehow. Here Our Lady clearly refers to the treatment of sacred things with contempt or lack of respect, on the lines of the first definition of " profane"; She is particularly talking about Christ’s Body, the Eucharist, when It is profaned in received in mortal sin.
"The rooms are prepared. They’re your inheritance and you’ll get them with prayer and sacrifice"
These rooms are indeed the different stages of glory in Heaven; However, they are not the same as those Saint Theresa talks about in her work Las Moradas o Castillo Interior which deals with the levels of inner life a soul gets to depending on his/ her answer to the divine action. They are the rooms Saint Thomas of Aquinas refers to when he brings to our minds the Gospel of Saint John, " " In my Father’s house there are many rooms" which- as Saint Agustine points out- means different dignities of merits in the everlasting life. Nevertheless, the dignity of everlasting life, which is given by merits, is happiness itself. Therefore, there are several stages of happiness, and not all of them are given the same happiness"(2)
To get to this inheritance, Jesus shows us Wisdom; He teaches us that the secret of love lies in the knowledge of his Father; love is absolutely essential to fulfil the perfect law: the Law of Charity. Indeed, since the Father loves us infinitely, He has given us his Son, as Saint John said - these words are some of the most beautiful and sublime of all the Sacred Scriptures-, " God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life" (Jn 3, 16). Jesus wants to share his Father’s house; He makes us know there are many rooms, one for each of us. This idea is expressed in the prayer at the end of every mystery in Prado Nuevo: "O Eternal Father, You are Creator of the World and Man, for your unbounded power, don’t let the evil serpent seize shrewdly the souls you have created! For the Divine Heart of Jesus, for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, give us the inheritance you have prepared for us in the eternal abodes"
"Ease a little my Son’s agony with your prayer and penance. How ungrateful humans are! You don’t correspond to the sorrow of your Immaculate Mother’s Heart!
In Gethsemane, Jesus suffered a terrible agony that was the beginning of his Passion. Our Lord will go on suffering for us, sinners if Humankind carries on living among all sorts of vices; if we are able to offend him with our sins and burden his blessed shoulders with them, we are able to ease his sorrows, especially by means of prayer and penance, as Our Lady suggests in the message.
Another aspect dealt with in these lines is ungratefulness, ingratitude; that attitude of ours which forgets and despises all the benefits we have received and which afflicts so much the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. In contrast, gratitude is the feeling that encourages us to show thanks for something good done to us. How many good things we have received from them as a sign of love! How do we make up for so many graces given everyday by Our Lord and His Blessed Mother? Our life should be an endless action of gratitude to God; Let us do so by means of prayer, especially the Holy Mass for "Eucharist" accurately means "action of thanksgiving" and it is the best thing we could do; we can also offer our life, devoting ourselves completely- body and soul- to our vocation in the Church, offering anything to glorify Our Lord, as Saint Paul exhorts us, " Then, whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God" (1 Co 10, 31)
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(1) Homily in the Feast of All Saints Day, 1, 13
(2) Summa Theological, I-II, q. 5, a. 2, 3