Our Ladys Plan for Peace
One of the main themes of the Fatima Message is the establishment of peace throughout the world. At Fatima the Mother of God presented to the world the conditions necessary for peace. They are the widespread practice of the devotion of the First Saturdays of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart by the Pope together with all of the Catholic bishops.
Our Lady told the three shepherd children at Fatima, “If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.”
Sister Lucy on the Chastisement
Sister Lucy, the last surviving Fatima seer, was asked by Professor William Thomas Walsh in 1946, concerning the spread of Russias errors, “Does this mean, in your opinion, that every country, without exception, will be overcome by Communism?”
“Yes,” Sister Lucy answered.1 (See “Sister Lucys Statement to Professor Walsh“.)
“And does that mean the United States of America too?” Professor Walsh asked.
Sister Lucy answered, “Yes.”2 (See “Testimony of Professor Walshs Translator, Father Manuel Rocha“.)
In 1957 she said to Father Augustine Fuentes:
Many times the Most Holy Virgin told my cousins Francisco and Jacinta, as well as myself, that many nations will disappear from the face of the earth. She said that Russia will be the instrument of chastisement chosen by Heaven to punish the whole world if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation.…3 (See “Published Testimony: Father Fuentes (1957)“.)
It is clear that either Russia will be consecrated in sufficient time, as God and the Blessed Virgin have requested, and there will be peace, or we will see the fulfillment of all of the terrible chastisements that Our Lady told us would happen: war, famine, persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father, the annihilation of various nations and the enslavement of those nations that are not annihilated. Only the conversion of Russia can end the chastisements that now afflict us, and prevent those chastisements that await us in the future. Sister Lucy warned that Russia will be used by God to chastise the entire world, “if we do not beforehand obtain the conversion of that poor nation.” We need the conversion of Russia, but God has determined that this conversion will only come about through one means: the solemn Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The end of the chastisements and the peace of the world, therefore, depend on this act.
Peace or Chastisement
At Fatima Our Lady, referring to Herself under the title Our Lady of the Rosary, said, “Only She can help you.” No government or institution has been successful at bringing any kind of lasting peace to our war-torn world. That is because God has determined that peace will come through one source only: the hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And only by our obeying the simple yet profound requests She made at Fatima will She bestow upon mankind true peace.
Sister Lucy asked Our Lord why He would not convert Russia without the Pope making the Consecration. He answered that He wanted the whole Church to recognize it as the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary; then, as a result of the triumph, His Church will subsequently place public homage to the Immaculate Heart beside the public homage to His Sacred Heart.
The peace Our Lady promised is the peace that Isaias prophesied in Sacred Scripture: “The house of the Lord shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go, and say: Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths. For the law shall come forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem … they shall turn their swords into plowshares, and their spears into sickles. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they be exercised any more to war” (Is. 2:2-4; cf. Mic. 4:1-3). This was prophesied over 2,500 years ago, and will be brought to fruition when the Immaculate Heart triumphs and reigns.
We can judge for ourselves whether swords are currently being beaten into plowshares. In the year 2000 alone, the United States of America exported $798 billion worth of armaments to Third World countries. This is money that could have gone to medicines, water desalinization plants, and for food and agriculture. When we have the peace that Our Lady will bring with the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, we will use our resources to help people rather than harm them.
Peace and Conversion
As St. Augustine explains, peace is the tranquility of order. Since God is the Creator of men, it follows that mankind will have peace only when it conforms to the order for society laid down by the Creator. To have true and lasting peace among men, man must live a just and pious life in accordance with the nature God gave him. The peace that Our Lady predicted will not “consist merely in acts of external or formal courtesy, but [will be] a peace which will penetrate the souls of men and which will unite, heal, and reopen their hearts to the mutual affection which is born of brotherly love. The peace of Christ is the only peace answering this description” (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio). “He is our peace,” Saint Paul declared (Eph. 2:14).
The peace that will result from the Consecration of Russia will not merely be the absence of war. It will be the peace that results from the reign of Jesus Christ among individuals, families and society: “Christ [will be] all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). The Social Kingship of Christ will be recognized and lived by all. As Pope Pius XI explained, “Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each ones life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned after the authority of God, the Father The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth, and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy Family.
Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble all who live up to its demands.
Christ reigns where the position in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized, for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain, must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense that she should abstract in the least from their authority, just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain promoters of their happiness here below.
It is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ” (Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio).
God has determined that this peace will come through the Consecration of Russia, and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The peace that the Consecration of Russia will effect, therefore, will not only be political, but will extend to the peace that flows from a worldwide unity of minds, hearts and wills: a Catholic peace. To use Pius XIs phrase, it will be “the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.”
Almighty God, from Whom all authority derives, has ordained that there be a universal spiritual authority, the Church, and a temporal authority. Both receive their authority from Him, and therefore we are obliged to pay homage to each: “Let every soul be subject to higher powers” (Rom. 13:1). To despise legitimate authority is unlawful and rebellious: “He that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation” (Rom. 13:2).
The Catholic Church explains that the system God intends for the Church and State is that in which the two work hand in hand. Pope Boniface VIII solemnly taught that the two swords that St. Peter wielded (Lk. 22:38) were symbolic of his two swords of papal authority, in the spiritual and temporal realms. “The former (spiritual) is to be administered by the Church, the latter (material) for the Church; the former in the hands of the priest, the latter in the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest” (Unam Sanctam, §2, Dz. 468-469).
As Pope Leo XIII explained:
“The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each But, inasmuch as each of these two powers has authority over the same subjects, and as it might come to pass that one and the same thing related differently, but still remaining one and the same thing might belong to the jurisdiction and determination of both, therefore God, Who foresees all things, and Who is the author of these two powers, has marked out the course of each in right correlation to the other. “For the powers that are, are ordained of God,” (Rom 13:1). Were this not so, deplorable contentions and conflicts would often arise, and, not infrequently, men, like travelers at the meeting of two roads, would hesitate in anxiety and doubt, not knowing what course to follow; two powers would be commanding contrary things, and it would be a dereliction of duty to disobey either of the two.
“But it would be most repugnant to them to think thus of the wisdom and goodness of God. Even in physical things, albeit of a lower order, the Almighty has so combined the forces and springs of nature with tempered action and wondrous harmony that no one of them clashes with any other, and all of them most fitly and aptly work together for the great purpose of the universe. There must, accordingly, exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection, which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man. The nature and scope of that connection can be determined only, as We have laid down, by having regard to the nature of each power, and by taking account of the relative excellence and nobleness of their purpose. One of the two has for its proximate and chief object the well-being of this mortal life; the other, the everlasting joys of heaven. Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority. Jesus Christ has Himself given command that what is Caesars is to be rendered to Caesar, and that what belongs to God is to be rendered to God” (Immortale Dei).
When the Consecration of Russia is done, this proper relationship between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities will be realized. There will be no clash between the Churchs teachings and the laws or governance of a country. For example, when we have the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, no government will have “legalized” abortion, divorce, contraception, etc.; the laws of God will guide the laws of the state.
The peace of Our Lady, as indicated by Isaias above, also includes the conversion of the world to Catholicism. This is the clear meaning of the first part of the passage, which states that nations will flock to the house of the Lord. It has been infallibly defined three times that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. Therefore, it follows that God wants all men to be Catholic.
The actual wording of these three solemn, infallible (and, therefore, impossible to change)4 definitions that are binding on all Catholics5 (of whatever rank, including Cardinals and Popes) to believe, under pain of being automatically excommunicated (expelling themselves from the Catholic Church) are as follows:
There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved. (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215; D.S. 802; Dz.-Hünermann 802.)
We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302; D.S. 875; Dz.-Hünermann 875.)
The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church. (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1442; D.S. 1351; Dz.-Hünermann 1351.)
And so it is the Catholic Church that is the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). We can only do the will of God by becoming Catholic. If we refuse to, we no longer do the will of our Creator, and we cannot have tranquility of order.
So it follows that God has ordered men, in the light of the coming of Christ, to enter the Catholic Church. The peace or tranquility of order that will come when Our Lady of Fatima is obeyed will reflect that.
Notes:
- William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima, 4th printing, (1947) p. 226.
- Kaczmarek, Louis, The Wonders She Performs, Trinity Communications, Manassas, Virginia: 1986, p. 160.
- Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima, Volume III: The Third Secret, (Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A., 1990) p. 505.
- “We, with the approval of the sacred council, teach and define that it is a divinely revealed dogma: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, acting in the office of shepherd and teacher of all Christians, he defines, by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, possesses through the divine assistance promised to him in the person of St. Peter, the infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals; and that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are therefore irreformable because of their nature, but not because of the agreement of the Church.” (D.S. 1839)
- “But if anyone presumes to contradict this Our definition (God forbid that he do so): let him be anathema.” (D.S. 1840)