BLESSING OF NOVEMBER 5 ^TH  2005. FIRST SATURDAY OF MONTH.
AT PRADO NUEVO OF EL ESCORIAL (MADRID)

OUR LADY:

Raise all your objects; all will be blessed for the poor dying people.

I bless you, my children, as the Father blesses you, through the Son and with the Holy Spirit.

COMMEMTARY UPON MESSAGES

September 16^th 1982

That day, when Luz Amparo was on her way to Prado Nuevo to say the Rosary, she begun to feel deep pain. Her forehead, hands and feet started to bleed plentifully while she was wailing painfully. Then, Our Lady told her these words we are reflecting upon today.

                “The salvation of the world, my daughter, will come by the intercession of Holy Mary, your Glorious Mother. Do sacrifice and penance. Say the holy Rosary. Beg the Eternal Father .The celestial abodes are ready, my daughter, for every human being who wants to save himself”

The definite role of  Holy Mary in God’s salvation plan was explained beautifully by the Vatican Council II in the constitution Lumen Gentium, “This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent she gave in faith at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, and lasts until the eternal fulfilment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this salvific duty, but by her constant intercession continued to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation” (n. 62). In the message, that interceding power of Mary refers to “the salvation of the world”; that is to say, to Humankind as a whole, which needs to be saved because it lives in a situation of disarray, immorality, lack of peace, etc.

                Two of the basic points of Prado Nuevo’s messages appear again: prayer and penance. Besides, this first paragraph marks the importance of each human being’s free will to get to salvation; saving our souls is not possible without this freedom, which may accept the divine grace, heaven’s forgiveness and mercy; for this reason, Our Lady says, “The celestial abodes are ready, my daughter, for every human being who wants to save himself”

“Tell all my children, my daughter, that those who want to follow Jesus Christ’s way must take their cross. The time is coming, my daughter, when the Son of Man will come to reward everyone according to their works (…) Look at this abode, my daughter; the celestial abodes are ready and they are the reward waiting for those who want to follow the way of sorrow”

                In the Gospel, Jesus Christ makes wonderful promises as well as He talks about sorrow and cross; for example, “ Jesus answered, “ Truly, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or children, or lands for my sake and for the Gospel, who will not receive his reward. I say to you: even in the midst of persecution he will receive a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and lands in the present time and in the world to come eternal life” (Mk 10, 29-30; Mt 19, 2-29). This text relates to this other, “ Whoever does not follow me carrying his own cross cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14, 27)

                Then, it points out the possibility of losing our souls eternally because of a mad and terrible personal choice in which the soul rejects God; its tragic consequence is “The enemy’s caves”, a way of referring to Hell.

                “I’m also going to show you the enemy’s caves… coming to this place will be horrible. My daughter, ask for their conversion. I want all my children to save themselves. My daughter, what you’ve seen is nothing compared to what is waiting for those who don’t want to save themselves. Don’t suffer; everybody here comes because of his own will; I’m giving them opportunities to save themselves”

                The Roman Catechism of the council of Trent, when talking about the souls “deprived of the vision of God” before the Redemption of Christ, refers to the “ abodes”, which are similar to the “caves” of the message. However, words are not enough when we try to explain the realities of the other world; for this reason, some images are used because of their similarity to those of the Earth. Besides, the language used is that of the 16^th century although the doctrine is everlasting.

“These abodes are not all of the same nature, for among them is that most loathsome and dark prison in which the souls of the damned are tormented with the unclean spirits in eternal and inextinguishable fire. This place is called gehenna, the bottomless pit, and is hell strictly so called” (1)
 

                “Pray for my consecrated souls, Christ’s Church is destroying itself. Satan’s getting into the Church. They’ve given up prayer. Lots of consecrated souls- because of their bad life, their impiety- have given up prayer and sacrifice, and the enemy’s taken possession of them”

The Church, founded by Jesus Christ will stand till the end of time and neither human nor diabolic powers will pull it down (“and never will the powers of death overcome it” Mt 16, 18). However, as it has happened before, it will live moments of real agony, in the same way that its Head suffered in Gethsemane and the Calvary, till it will seem to have died at the coming of a great tribulation and the Church will suffer dramatically. Paul VI referred to the situation of the Church using the term “auto demolition” and he uttered that fearful sentence that still resounds nowadays, “through a crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God”. Anyway, as he did more than once, we should be hopeful as our beloved John Paul II always was; he denounced the evils of our time from a Christian point of view encouraging us to be hopeful. His last work, Memory and Identity, published shortly before he went to the Eternal Father’s Home, analyzes the “ ideologies of evil” and includes in its back page a positive and hopeful invitation, taken from the Letter to Romans, “ Do not let evil defeat you, but conquer evil with goodness” ( Rm 12, 219

There are more aspects to deal with in this message; however, we will finish here  our monthly commentary.

_____________________________