La Sallette, Saint Faustina and Our Times

It is truly astounding how the culture of today is almost completely set-up to draw people away from God. To avoid this, you have to be counter-cultural in so many ways that, really, you have to live a life of heroic virtue, or you will slowly (or not so slowly) sink into a life of serious sin. It’s also interesting how the devil really wants men out of the way by trapping them in sin and making them, well, uncourageous, and not at all holy. It reminds me of St. John Vianney, because he was of the opinion that the devil plays the tyrant especially to those who have succumbed to sins of impurity, and wow do we see that today! Ask anyone addicted to any kind of sexual sin and they will tell you that yes, the devil is indeed a tyrant, and is not willing to let them go. And the devil uses the same tactics now as he did with Adam and Eve—bypass the man, attack the woman. Given the current climate of sin you would think the lines for confession would be very long, and they should be, but they are not. Loss of the sense of sin I suppose, for one thing. I’ve been suggesting to people, when I give talks, to go to confession not once per month, but once a week! That’s what many of the Saints did, and this Sacrament helps you advance in holiness and break sinful habits in a way that only the Sacrament of Confession can, and sometimes very quickly at that.

Anyway, this brings me to the apparition of the Blessed Mother at La Sallette (an approved apparition), which is very interesting because it tells of our times. These are some of the Blessed Mother’s words to little Melanie (the other seer was her brother, Maximin):

“In 1864 Lucifer with a great number of demons will be unleashed from hell; they will abolish the faith little by little and even in persons consecrated to God…”

“Bad books will abound on the earth, and the spirits of darkness will spread everywhere a universal slackening in all that concerns the service of God…”

“The holy faith of God being forgotten, each individual will want to be guided by himself and to be superior to his peers…all order and justice will be trampled underfoot; one will see only homicides, hatred, jealousy, lying and discord…”

“Civil rulers will have all one and the same design which will be to abolish and to make disappear all religious principle, in order to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism and all kinds of vice.”

To Maximin, this: “And the monster will arrive at the end of the nineteenth century, or at the latest the commencement of the twentieth.”

I’m not trying to interpret the message of La Sallette, but it seems that the messages of La Sallette have been, and are, being played out today. The point of this post? Where ever you are in the world, pro-life victories will not come merely by politics, legislation and education alone—without holy Catholics those things will achieve but little. It is truly a war in this life against the fallen angels, and if we want pro-life victories, in a word, a “culture of life”, we all need to take the goal of being Saints very, very seriously. And only the Catholic Church can make Saints, because only she has the fullness of truth and the Sacraments, without which one cannot be a Saint (I’m talking about people who live lives that could be considered for canonization, even if they are never in fact canonized).

Finally, speaking of education, the word “abortion” seems to have become so common place that people hear it and don’t really understand what is being said—so few in the world really know what abortion is, which is why I am convinced that, while many will object, images of abortion are extremely important. They are incredibly hard to look at, because abortion is incredibly violent, painful and—need I say it?—evil. But getting them out there brings the point home to people—abortion is murder in one of the more painful and torturous forms, and the mother is tortured as well for the rest of her life. And abortion does kill some women, either because they despair of God’s mercy and commit suicide or because the abortion itself results in the physical death of the mother as well as the baby. For those who may be in despair—Jesus is Mercy, and will forgive you no matter what the sin, He will heal you and give you strength. And do look at the Bethesda Healing website (also linked on the left of this page).

Finally, there is actually a Saint who suffered in reparation for abortion, yet for some reason I have seen this bit of information published almost no-where. Why, I have no idea, but it is the only instance that I know of (there may be more, I just don’t know of any others) where a canonized Saint has suffered for the crime of abortion. In this case anyway, the Saint is Saint Faustina, a Saint of our times (born August 25, 1905; Died Oct. 5, 1938; canonized April 30, 2000) and she describes this experience in her Diary:

At eight o'clock I was seized with such violent pains that I had to go to bed at once. I was convulsed with pain for three hours..... No medicine had any effect on me, and whatever I swallowed I threw up. At times, the pain caused me to lose consciousness. Jesus had me realise that in this way I took part in His Agony in the Garden, and that He himself allowed these sufferings in order to offer reparation to God for the souls murdered in the wombs of [their] mothers(1276)

Saint Faustina, pray for us!