The Pertinence of Penance

The Pertinence of Penance

Either the UN is wrong or Our Lady is wrong. The UN ... proposes to remedy the undiagnosed and mortal disease of society with sundry economic and political nostrums. They increasingly favor researches and committees and plans, on the theory that the situation is vastly more complicated than at first was thought, and also on the unconscious presupposition that once the facts are known the remedy will be obvious. Our Lady, on the contrary, grossly 'oversimplifies' things. Her message is brief, always the same (whether at La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, or Heede), and it is more and more insistent: Do Penance.


[...] The hypothesis is that we are in our mess, of instability, war and threats of war, famine and all the rest of it, because we have sinned. We certainly must have sinned on a vast scale to have warranted such a great and tragic disorder. And so it appears.

In the first place, there is a universality about sin which is unprecedented in Christian history. It once was that the poor remained virtuous while the courts disported themselves. Infidelity, immodesty in dress, avarice, love of luxury and all the rest are now nearly as indigenous to the tenements as to Park Avenue. We have really attained a sort of equality, if only an equal guilt.

[...] Penance is sorrow and satisfaction for sins. It means first of all an acknowledgement to God that we have sinned against Him. That means confession on a personal basis. On a national basis, it would mean something like a day set apart for sackcloth and ashes, or flags at half-mast during congressional beating of breasts, as representing the citizens at large. It would mean a shift back to the morality economy (where good is done for its own sake) from expediency (where good and bad are done indifferently according to where or not it will pay).

[...] What has penance to do with Our Lady, and why is she God's emissary in this crisis? Well it appears to be because of Her role as Mediatrix of All Graces. That explains the apparitions. "I can scarcely restrain the arm of My Son," she said at La Salette weeping. She is interceding for mercy for us and to get us a little more time to repent, whereas we have long since deserved complete disaster for our sins against God. If we had listened at Fatima, and done penance, we would have staved off the recent war and the terrible suffering continuing from it. We were warned of this at Fatima and reminded of it at Heede.

As Mediatrix of Graces, Mary has the power to increase the merit of voluntary sufferings and to distribute the graces that are earned by them. This is the burden of De Montfort's teaching, that we should give to Mary all our satisfactions to distribute as She will. This is what is asked of the children at Fatima, that they make sacrifices for sinners, so that She would have more graces to distribute. The advantage of having Mary distribute the graces is not only that they are increased through her mediation but also because She knows, as we cannot, how best to used them to avert universal disaster, and She made it clear that Her use of them will be, in a way she alone knows, conducive to the conversion of Russia, which will in turn stop the propagation of errors which cause the loss of very many souls.

[...] Mary specifically mentioned Russia at Fatima. Why is Russia so crucially important? The fate of the world doesn't hang on what happens in Holland and Greece, so why Russia? Obviously this mystery is bound up with the fact that Russia is the seat and source of Communism. In fact, Our Lady's appearance in Fatima coincided with the Marxist coup d'etat in Russia and She knew it for the menace it was, before the world even took the matter very seriously.

There is something unique about Communism in comparison with other ills which beset mankind. Is it possibly this, that it represents the devil's fully organized attack on what was once Christendom? The advent of Communism was preceded by several hundred years in which manifold errors increasingly coalesced into systems. In the last century there arose Freemasonry, a secret society which gave form to the errors of the rationalists, and was a medium of an organized and seemingly diabolical attack on the Church. Indeed this is the setting of the apparitions both at Fatima and at Lourdes. Communism seems to have superseded Freemasonry as an instrument of occult powers. Now it is in the open, has absolute political power, which is at the same times complete economic control. It is highly organized and persistently universal. Its propaganda tentacles are everywhere, and everywhere also antithetical to the Faith.

If this thesis is correct, and Communism does represent a major foothold of the devil in world affairs, then Our Lady's intercession is vitally necessary, for it is She who will crush the Serpent (that is to say, the devil), to whom She was never subject because She was immaculately conceived.

If our struggle is against preternatural powers, then the UN is going to be pretty impotent, and we are going to need Mary's help badly. It is also obvious, if this is the case, why Russia will have to be converted. You can defeat a nation but the devil you can only exorcise. Once he has got this far he will take advantage of our every weakness (and certainly he can outsmart us for he has angelic intellect) to spread his influence everyhwere for his own ends. The naivete of statesmen will but play into the hands of the enemy.

From the secular point of view, Russia doesn't seem at all consistent, and even the wisest among us cannot predict her next move. Now she tells the truth, now she doesn't. One minute she is conciliatory, the next obstinate. Why? What is Russia driving at? The whole thing makes sense only in the light of one end, and that is the destruction of souls. Only Lucifer, Our Lady, and the Church understand the real issue of our times.

"This kind can be cast out only by prayer and fasting." Again, our role becomes clear. Penance is of the essence.

Our Lady of Fatima said that in the end Russia will be converted. If we do not do penance the errors of Communism will spread to every country in the world, but in the end Russia will be converted. How will this be if we don't do penance, has not been revealed. Obviously it will only come about after terrible suffering.

But there is no reason why we shouldn't do penance. If Our Lady chooses to use the graces that way, the sufferings of one cancer victim lovingly accepted might mean the conversion and salvation of Stalin. And heaven knows what might happen if Catholic office girls dressed poorly for Our Lady's sake and for the sake of the salvation of souls ("Christians ought not to follow the fashions," said Jacinta shortly before her death).