BLESSING OF SEPTEMBER 5TH  2009. FIRST SATURDAY OF MONTH.

AT PRADO NUEVO OF EL ESCORIAL (MADRID)

 

 

OUR LADY

 

"Rise all your objects… all have been blessed for all those who come to this place and their disabled relatives.

 

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


 

COMMENTARY ON MESSAGES


24th July 1983 (Continuation of the message commented the previous month)

"Confess your sins, my children; the Eternal Father is sad and angry because many of you have not come to this sacrament, my children! Do not get into the depth of the world`s pleasures, the world will lead you to your own condemnation. Yes, my child, your suffering and other victim souls’is good for the salvation of Humankind"(Our Lady).

If you read these comments every month, you will see that each message is not fully analized because quite a few topics have already been discussed previously and we avoid repetition this way.

The first paragraph we are introducing today invites once again to go to the sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation, also called “Confession”. This sacrament is so beautiful and it is not valued properly! How many people do not confess or do it carelessly? How many souls receive Communion in mortal sin without firstly going to the confessional? Only God knows. St. Bernard, Doctor of the Church, explains: "Only He is pure and only He can clean who was conceived in sin. Furthermore, He instituted the remedy of confession for our sins, as this Sacrament cleans everything”(1). And Pope Paul VI taught very clearly: "The precept 'let a man examine himself' (I Cor. 11: 28 ) should be called to mind for those who wish to receive Communion. The custom of the Church declares this to be necessary so that no one who is conscious of having committed mortal sin, even if he believes himself to be contrite, should approach the holy Eucharist without first making a sacramental confession."(2)

Some are surprised and do not accept that God may show his anger or divine wrath. They certainly do not know the Word of God, where there are lots of anthropomorphic expressions of this type. That is to say, in order to show his will, the Lord adapts himself to man using human expressions. In this sense, we can offer, among others, the following biblical passages:

 
"Moses tried to pacify Yahweh his God.'Yahweh,' he said, 'why should your anger blaze at your people, whom you have brought out of Egypt by your great power and mighty hand?"(Ex 32, 11).

 
" So wait for me -- declares Yahweh -- for the day when I rise as accuser, for I am determined to gather the nations, to assemble the kingdoms, and on you to vent my fury, the whole heat of my anger (for the whole Earth will be devoured by the fire of my jealousy). " (Zep 3, 8).

 
"Anyone who believes in the Son has eternal life, but anyone who refuses to believe in the Son will never see life: God's retribution hangs over him.'" (Jn 3, 36).


• "Your stubborn refusal to repent is only storing up retribution for yourself on that Day of retribution when God's just verdicts
will be made known." (Rm 2, 5).

Let us quote now St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose revelations about the Lord helped foster the spirituality of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. With respect to the issue we are commenting on now, during the third main revelation she received in 1674 she said, "My beloved Lord, Jesus Christ, appeared before me, all resplendent with glory, with five wounds shining like five suns, and giving off beams of light from his sacred humanity but especially from his lovely chest that looked like a lit furnace”. Then He demanded from her several things to calm the holy wrath of God: "... asking for mercy for sinners both in order to calm the wrath of God and to soften the bitterness I felt when I was abandoned by my apostles “(3).

     "Do not get into the depth of the world`s pleasures, the world will lead you to your own condemnation "Then Our Lady warns in the message. And it is true that this life’s pleasures are short- lived. In spite of the fact that not all pleasures are sins (for example, a sunset, the perfume of a rose, an interesting reading and so on), every sin involves a pleasure, though it is mixed with a bitterness caused by it. The book of the Ecclesiasticus says, " The rich for ever toils, piling up money, and then, leaving off, he is gorged with luxuries” (Ecc 31, 3). This is what the parable of the sower represents: "As for the part that fell into thorns, this is people who have heard, but as they go on their way they are choked by the worries and riches and pleasures of life and never produce any crops." (Lk 8, 14 ).

     In one of the few speeches of his pontificate, John Paul I taught this: what matters is God, the rest is perishable and does not provide full happiness, the Pope said," God is too great, he deserves too much from us for us to be able to throw to him, as to a poor Lazarus, a few crumbs of our time and our heart. He is infinite good and will be our eternal happiness: money, pleasure, the fortunes of this world, compared with him, are just fragments of good and fleeting moments of happiness. It would not be wise to give so much of ourselves to these things and little of ourselves to Jesus. "(4).  

 


[1] Hom. on the feast of All Saints, 1, 13.

[2] Eucharisticum Mysterium, n.35

[3] Saenz de Tejada, S. J., J. Maria, Life and Major Works of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (Madrid, 1977) pp. 24-25.

[4] General Audience, September 27th 1978.