Good morning everyone, and greetings again to our audio listeners, and now we have YouTube listeners.
In our last talk, which was the first in this series on apparitions for the world,
I focused on the lesser known prelude to the vision of the Miraculous Medal.
Mary appeared to a young Saint Catherine Laboure to lay the foundations, as it were,
of all the subsequent modern apparitions.
I want to continue on the premise that her apparitions are unique pieces of a large mosaic,
not rubber stamps of the same message.
Only by laying out all of them can we view the mosaic to see the larger message.
Since each of her apparitions is a book in itself, and we are confining ourselves to one-hour talks in a 19-week seminar,
I had to determine which apparitions should receive special attention for understanding the mosaic.
For a while, I wasn't thinking of presenting the pieces in chronological order.
After all, after a work is finished, no one really cares if the artist had first worked
on this corner or that corner.
Although that's quite true, we're not talking about bits of colored stone, but living pieces.
As we saw in our Genesis talk yesterday on the garden, God loves living things.
For as scripture declares so many times, our God is a living God.
Each of these apparitions to the world is a world in itself,
just as each of the gospel parables can present almost infinite angles for meditation as one turns a diamond in the sun.
The beauty of each one is rich and spectacular.
As I pondered this great mosaic before me, I seemed to perceive that it's like the shroud of Turin.
It's three-dimensional, almost as a living body before me.
The persons to whom each revelation are made are living persons.
And they are living in historical times, and we who live long after them need to appreciate that they were pioneers,
bravely breaking new trails for us, who, thanks to them, now travel along paved highways.
So let's begin with the next set of apparitions after the three gifts that were given to the
daughters of charity, namely the miraculous medal, the green scapular, and the red badge
of the Passion, which we spoke of last week.
The Daughters of Charity were the first official active community of sisters in the Roman Catholic Church,
thanks to the inspiration of St. Vincent de Paul in the 1600s.
And it can be argued that even in 1830, they were the most active of all active congregations.
Let's leave it at that, or we'll get sidetracked comparing charisms and constitutions.
Now, the next series of apparitions for the world were directed to a Carmelite nun who
is at the other end of the spectrum, because it can be argued that Carmelites are the most
cloistered of all contemplative congregations.
All cloistered congregations are bound by papal enclosure, but St. Teresa of Avila established
even stricter
rules for this charism which tries to emulate the desert fathers who retired to the wilderness
or the caves of mountains like Mount Carmel and Palestine to offer themselves in perpetual
worship and atonement for many who don't love him or obey him.
This chosen soul is another
French girl, not from the farm as was Zoe Labare, but a city girl who worked as a
seamstress. She was born on the feast of St. Louis.
Francis, October 4th, 1816, and so her parents named her Francois. I will upload a PDF of
her life to the website if you'd like to read her life and vocation, which is very interesting.
But suffice it to say here that she entered Carmel at the age of 23 and took the name of Sister Marie St. Pierre of the Holy Family.
Now some books translate this as Sister Mary of St. Peter.
but her title was Of the Holy Family. Her name was Mary St. Peter. In Catholic France,
almost up to the present, every other girl used to be named Marie and Joseph is for the boys,
so they often get called by the second name. It's likely that within the walls of the cloister,
this nun was called Sister St. Pierre or Sister Peter.
Devotion to St. Peter was massive in France at this time because it represented a political
struggle in the French church concerning allegiance to the Pope.
the French Revolution was still fresh. The Masonic ideology by which the Catholic royalty was
massacred, Catholic churches smashed, and thousands of Catholics guillotined had been temporarily
overthrown, but it was still alive and well in books, philosophies, schools, and the minds of many people.
Liberty, fraternity, equality was the slogan of the revolution taken right from the constitution of the Freemasons.
Kings could not be above peasants that defied equality.
This democratic idea seemed reasonable to many Catholics.
especially the educated class, including the clergy, and it carried over into their view of the papacy.
The Pope should not be above the faithful. This was more complicated by the political situation of the Vatican.
For many centuries, the papacy governed a large portion of what would now be modern Italy.
It wasn't just the revenue of the Papal States that were needed to help with the expenses of the Vatican.
In those days, it wasn't possible for a delicate to pick up the phone or take a short trip by car or plane to another country.
Travel was by horse or ocean. It was lengthy and expensive and often dangerous.
You couldn't send one man alone. A whole retinue had to travel.
It cost the Pope a lot of money to govern the Church.
The territory of the Papal States also provided physical protection.
Because the Europe of the Middle Ages was made up of a multitude of feudal kingdoms.
they would go to war with one another. The Pope had to have a standing army so
in the minds of the politically enlightened ones the Pope represented
the royalty and all the royalty needed to go. Many men in those days entered the
priesthood in France because it was a step up in society, a chance for a good
education and a nice steady income with honorable living quarters.
Many bishops came from these ranks of worldly priests who were only devout in appearance, like lands in sheep's clothing.
The devout Catholics, though, were not fooled.
They resented this attitude of contempt for the primacy of the one who held the keys of Peter.
They composed hymns in honor of the Pope.
Catholic journalists went to war with the pen against each other. It was a very, very hot topic.
And thanks to the fact that it was discussed in detail, the concept of infallibility, which had never been clearly defined, finally became a dogma in this century.
But right now, it's 1839, and a very young woman is embarking on a life of prayer.
She would die before her thirty-third year, in the agony of cancer of the tongue, offered in atonement for blasphemy.
Her spiritual life would be enriched with special insights into the Holy Family, the motherhood of Mary,
the greatness of St. Joseph, and the abasement of the Son of God who became a helpless infant.
And she would receive explicit messages
From Jesus who asked for reparation for blasphemies against the holy name of the Father and his own holy face
Which represented not only his humanity, but the triune Godhead. I'll quote directly from the passage from pages 80 to 81
On the 26th of August, 1843, the day after the celebration of the Feast of St. Louis,
who was especially honored as the Avenger of the Divine Majesty, outraged by blasphemy,
Jesus unfolded his heart to me. My name is everywhere blasphemed. Even little children
blasphemed. And it made me understand how that dreadful sin pierced and wounded his heart
more than all other crimes.
By blasphemy, the sinner outrages him to his face, attacks him openly, and pronounces upon himself his own judgment and condemnation.
Blasphemy is an empoisoned dagger.
or arrow in other translations, wounding his divine heart continually.
He told me that he would give me a golden dagger
or arrow, with which to wound him delightfully
and heal the poisonous wounds caused by sin.
Our Lord dictated to me the following prayer,
assuring me that every time I said it
I would wound his heart most lovingly.
quote, may the most holy, the most sacred, the most adorable, the most unknown, and the most
inexpressible name of God be adored, praised, blessed, loved, and glorified in heaven, on earth,
and in hell by all creatures formed by his sacred hand and by the loving heart of our Lord Jesus
Christ in the most holy sacrament of the altar. Amen.
Amen.
I was as I was not a little astonished when our Lord said in hell
He had the goodness to make me understand that his justice was there glorified
And that he did not only mean the place where the wicked are punished, but also purgatory
where he is loved and glorified by the suffering souls.
At that moment, I seem to behold, flowing from the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
wounded by this golden arrow, torrents of grace for the conversion of sinners.
It's tempting here to quote the whole book. There are many beautiful passages like this,
but a lot of the book describes the massive trouble she would have in convincing her priors
and the archbishop of Tours that God wants the people to be instructed in reparation.
Not just doing penance for one's own sins, but in offering atonement for other sins to
obtain fresh graces for souls to help them convert.
Now, this is old hat to us, but it wasn't a common doctrine before 1830.
In the Miraculous Medal, people were encouraged to ask Mary's intercession,
Pray for us who have recourse to you.
And now these apparitions urge us to pray hard for others.
In the context of piety of the times, God wanted the archbishop to establish a confraternity
for the reparation for blasphemy and of the profanation of the Sunday.
Mr. would continue to receive more than 50 revelations, mostly concerning Veronica's
veil and the Holy Face.
Here is one.
Our Lord gave me to behold, in a most vivid manner, the pious Veronica, who with her veil
wiped his adorable face, covered with spittle, dust, sweat, and blood.
Her divine Savior gave me to understand that the wicked, by their blasphemy, renew all
the outrages once offered to his divine face.
These blasphemies poured forth against the divinity, like the vile spittle of the Jews,
disfiguring the face of our Lord, who offered himself as a victim for sinners.
Then he told me that I must imitate the zeal of the pious Veronica.
who so courageously passed through the crowd of rough soldiers to offer him some relief,
and whom he gave me for my protectress and model.
By endeavoring to offer reparation for blasphemy, we render Christ the same way.
service as this heroic woman, and he looks upon those who act thus with the same complacency
as if they had performed this act during his passion.
I observed that our Lord had much love for this holy woman.
For this reason he said that he desired to see her particularly honored in our monastery,
and he invited me to ask any grace that he wished in the name of the service rendered
him by Veronica.
Now the Archbishop didn't know how to evaluate private revelations for the world.
Ultimately, the work of reparation that the Lord was requiring was nothing less than public
adoration of the Holy Trinity
not behind the closed doors of private homes or churches,
but in the social life of the nation, in its schools and marketplaces.
There was too much adulation for the God of this world.
If the hierarchy would approve the prayers,
then men and women could join together to pray them in public,
hence the Lord's repeated request for con-fraternities of reparation.
The prelate didn't want to suffer any ridicule among the clergy for introducing newfangled
devotions giving to an obscure nun.
He hesitated, going back and forth, encouraging, then humiliating, then encouraging, then rebuking,
poor Sister Marie St. Pierre.
But of course, she just offered up all her sufferings in reparation for blasphemies.
Meanwhile, this archbishop had a friend, a layman, who was a wealthy lawyer.
He persuaded the archbishop to allow him to pay for the printing and distribution of some
of the prayers and messages of our Lord.
These were like seeds that would
fly across France and blossom in many hearts. This man's name was Leo Dupont, whom Pope
John Paul would declare venerable, and now his cause for beatification is advancing steadily.
Leo Dupont would work more miracles than any saint on record, and he would do it by using
oil from a lamp burning before the image of the Holy Face. Now specifically, what image
is that?