There are clearly two Churches within the Catholic Church and never was it more evidident than in today’s religious news round-up
Whether we are on the eve of the apocalypse or the eve of an international Church wide cleansing and restoration remains to be revealed to us all by the Holy Ghost
Vatican II Nuns Of Multiple Orders Vote To Kill Themselves And Die Off Separately Their Orders
Nuns Close the Doors to New Applicants – sisters in Crisis V – by Marian T Horvat
Mater Ecclesiae’s Annual Assumption Mass in Philadelphia Cathedral – On Novus Motus Liturgicus
Mater Ecclesiae Roman Catholic Church will celebrate its 19th annual Mass for the feast of the Assumption on Thursday, August 15, at 7:00 pm, at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, located at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Fontgombault Sermons for the Assumption: Vow of Louis XIII; and Mass of the Day – “All want to question the Dogmas of the Church, but no one is in doubt about the dogmas of democracy.”
Watch PRESUMED GUILTY: Open Season on Catholic Priests -On The Remnant Newspaper On YouTube
What’s going to happen to the Catholic priesthood? Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the visible Church? With the largest fraternity of traditional Catholic priests in the world recently accused of harboring predators and becoming a safe haven for abusive priests, Michael J. Matt considers the ramifications of weaponizing the clerical abuse crisis. Should we operate under the presumption of guilt, or do we stand in defense of the right of every priest in the world — Novus, Sede, Trad and Neo-Cath — to have benefit of due process and the rule of law? Have we learned anything from the case of Cardinal Pell? Is an accusation the same as a conviction if we happen not to like a particular priest, bishop or society? What happens when all the priests disappear? No Confession, no First Communion, no Last Rites. Plus, why are there no priests left in the Protestant sects? Michael Matt argues it’s because the purpose of the priesthood — the Sacrifice of the Mass — was removed. So, what’s happened to the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church? It’s been Protestantized.
Auriesville, New York Walking Pilgrimage To The Shrine Of The N. American Martyrs / A Pilgrimage for Restoration | Come to restore. The rest will come.
Your presence is kindly request and sorely needed as the revolution marches into the Children’s Section of the Newark Public Library for a Transvestites and Drag Queens reading to children from toddler age to 6 years old – indoctrinating “gender fluidity”
This Saturday morning at 10:30am Please see the flyer for more details ->
Female Italian Senator that is pro-homosexual and pro-abortion “As a lay person, I hold that nobody can judge the actions of a high ranking religious leader as the Pope is,”
When Sister Lucia was told “even when all the world’s Bishops consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Russia will already have scattered her errors throughout the world , provoking wars and persecution of the Church . The Holy Father will have much to suffer” Or as in our case the Holy Father will persecute faithful Catholics and anyone who clings to Tradition (preconciliar Catholicism). An allusion that our Lord made to Louis XIV through Saint Margret Mary Alacoque.
What are Russia’s errors that were prophesized would spread throughout the world ?
A totalitarian sociopolitical economic regime inspired by an atheistic and egalitarian doctrine opposed not only to the idea of Christian civilization but to the natural law as well.
Evolutionist materialism – founded on the principals of the so-called dialectic materialism – one universal reality formed by blind and hidden forces, which through natural evolution is transformed into plants m animals, and men. Whereby human society , they claim, evolves through an inexorable need and perpetual conflict of forces tending to a final synthesis –a denomination free classless society (various element of their philosophies overlap with the tenets of ecclesial freemasonry)
Atheism – (Any belief in God that exists has no rights , nor any God can anyone claim to have rights )
Class Struggle – exacerbating antagonisms between the social classes (as seen in the last Presidential electionon both sidesfunded by global socialism)
Depriving man of his liberty and dignity – The denial of man’s natural rights attributing those rights to the collective
Absolute equality – The advocating of absolute equality , rejecting all hierarchy and authority coming from God , even that of parents , claiming that all authority and subordination are derived from society
Negation of the right of private property – (Many do not see these rights slowly being eliminated in the United States having already been eliminated in much of South America and Eastern Europe)
Rejection of the sacred character of human life and the family (As seen in the Catholic hierarchy’s stake in the socialism adoption into neo-Catholic social teachings and the new dissolubility of marriage )
Robbing parents of the right to education their children . Children are increasing taken from the home , in more and more home-school cases throughout the world, to be cared for by ‘the collective’ which is the State
Negation of the Law and perennial morals – In this system morals and the judicial order stem from the economic system and hence transient changeable earthly values – (the merger of the morals system with the economic system they deem to be one of their greatest achievements of the century
The utopian ideal of a classless society with the eventual abolition of the State – (Only the state , in their system is never abolished but only grows in power)
Credit in part is given to TFP Luiz Sergio Solimeo with the italics mine
_______________________________________
Three Cheers for Inequality – Fr. John Perricone On Crisis Magazine
“if we took the wealth of the world and simply redistributed it equally, we would undermine economic incentives and capital concentration. What would happen is that all would be poorer because the growth dynamism for all would be undermined.”
The Socialism experiments that were born of Communism began long before “the Russian revolution” and emerged from the so called enlightenment era leading to the French revolution that latter led to the Vatican II revolution.
Discourse on Inequality – On Wikipedia
Also commonly known as the “Second Discourse”, is a work by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Rousseau first exposes in this work his conception of a human state of nature, presented as a philosophical fiction and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way, according to him, people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality
Vatican advances recognition of Chinese CPA- The use of the new Divine Mercy philosophy, theology, and images to advocate for a merger between the authentic Chinese Catholic underground Church and the Communist Catholic Church – On TIA
Updated ~Pentecost Ember Friday – What ‘s Next ? Post Legalization Era Of Abortion Always Brings A Socialism Form Of Communism To Each Country Systematically | TCE |
What ‘s Next ? Post Legalization Era Of Abortion Always Brings A Socialism Form Of Communism to A Country
Putting Ireland and the rest of western Europe aside for the moment, what happens when more Latin American countries inch toward the legalization of infanticide , the ones that already legalized same inch toward abortion on demand, legalized sex selection abortion, and the attempts to eliminate all birth defects (eugenics ) by killing them in the womb
What ALWAYS follows is socialized medicine , government controlled hospitals in life and death decision making business and real Catholic doctors that resist persecuted. What comes next from eugenics, is tax payer subsidizing of transgender creations, euthanasia for both young and old, government doctors and insurance managers revel in the growth of the temptations for power over life and death. Killing becomes addictive , which old people get operations and which are denied. Liberals smooth over communism light with socialism justifications, They are just fights against “materialism”
It’s anthropocentrism gone wild. The failure at Vatican II to dig into the philosophies of communism and the theologies of freemasonry , their relationship to one another the culture of death and publicly & formally denounce the infiltration of communism. The so-called progress of mankind has its natural end in his lowest common denominator which is original sin. It’s natural end always has the strong determine the fate of the weak for the supposed greater good. This is what resulted from the proliferation of a new type of Catholicism in an ecumenism with a new type of neo-Protestantism that embraced “the world”. Saint Paul taught us in Sacred Scripture that we can ‘live in the world but not be of the world’
Many do not realize how deep the well goes, in how many unexplored legs the caterpillar has. One such subject, of the many not dug into in nearly enough depth, is the intrinsic relationship of the Catholic Pentecostal movement of Charismatic Catholicism to the socialism of liberation theology and how partnered the two have been in philosophy and hierarchy through its’ lifetime. Only now are traditional academic Catholics beginning to study these subjects amid the many people that are being used and deceived in a much broader movement.
Vatican II is the smoking gun. Professor Plinio Correa de Oliveria , founder of the Society for the Defense of Tradition family and property, put it in this way. He denounced the enigmatic disconcerting dreadful and apocalypticaly tragic silence that the Second Vatican Council kept with regard to Communism (which also explained the entire suppression of the 3rd secret of Fatima on the infiltration of the Catholic hierarchy and the suppression of the Consecration of Russia due to a Vatican deal with Russia with sitting dignitaries of Russia and eastern orthodox Patriarchs in attendance at Vatican II)
The Professor was quoted as saying publicly
“The council intended to be pastoral and not dogmatic In fact it had no dogmatic import. Moreover it’s omission with respect to communism may make it go down in history as the a-pastoral council par excellence. With its up-to-date tactics – about which nevertheless, the least that can be said is that they are debatable on the theoretical practical plane ( with some conciliar documents noting a dissonance with traditional teaching and even a systematic ambiguity that is incompatible with full orthodoxy) the Second Vatican Council attempted to drive away, so to speak, bees, wasps and birds of prey. Its silence on communism let the wolves run free. The work conducted by the Council cannot be written down as really pastoral; neither in history nor in the Book of Life.
In is harsh to say it yet the factual evidence points , in this sense , to Vatican II as one of the greatest calamities, if not the greatest in the history of the Church . As a result of it “ the smoke of satan’ has penetrated into the Church to an unthinkable extent , and it is still spreading day by day , with the terrible expanding gases. To the scandal of countless souls, the Mystical Body of Christ has entered into a sinister process that could be called self-destruction.”
Among the common elements almost never discussed , we repeatedly find many . Upon Pope Paul VI death the grand master of the grand orient freemasonry in Italy proclaimed that Freemasonry was proud for the first time in history to honor a Pope of the Roman Catholic Church in Paul VI.
Several conservative and traditional Catholic dignitaries of the Italian government at the same time were murdered. Suddenly Pope John Paul I turns up dead after only one month in the chair of Peter, with more than several private testimonies of his murder. Several Bishops that pushed for some of the most progressive changes to the Catholic Church at Vatican II and wrote & distributed volumes of propaganda left the Catholic Church following Vatican II after having served their self-destructive mission.The lodges of freemasonry in Rome are built on specific geographic points forming a pentagram , all but one point in the lower corner constructed , one whose properties they still continue to be unsuccessful at commandeering The fact that this sub-terrain world still goes on and is now coming to the surface in this Pontificate is most visible in the masonic Vatican banking scandals and several on-going trials that the US Catholic media refuse to cover. If you don’t read Italian and you are not a traditional rite Catholic it’s invisible to you just the way they want it . Progress, they say, must continue the belief in the evolution of the brotherhood of mankind. What they don’t tell you until you are bought in to this school of thought , eventually man becomes god.
Professor Plinio Correa de Oliveria , in respect to the TFP’s alliance with conservative and traditional Catholics at Vatican II, on the many tragic things they witnessed first-hand would latter follow-up to his writings in his Revolution and Counter Revolutionbook with a latter statement in 1989 “ When in the last part of Revolution and Counter Revolution was that Vatican II was the greatest calamity in Church history, I maintained something that I would maintain today much more vehemently than before.”
Only now are scholars beginning to study this era far enough out to collect all the data and its bad fruit in analyzing all the facts in an objective manner. Among which deeply runs their philosophy of the need to level all the classes from nobility /aristocracy down through the upper classes, the middle classes, the merchant & skilled labor trades and their sodalities
In 1962 the Professor and TFP founder met with Cardinal Tisserant , the virtual MC of Vatican II , where the Cardinal confided in him that he participated in the high level negotiations with the schimatic Russian Orthodox “ “Moscow demanded that no one speak against communism at the Council and Rome agreed “ Subsequently, all the schemas were lost , not processed, and suppressed at the Council. No one ever mentions that THIS was Archbishop Lefebvre’s main argument, secondly the Religious Liberty /Ecumenism heresy and the protestantization of the Liturgy was only third. Many don’t realize how deeply communism morphed into the Church in new shapes in liberation theology and was exported all over the world not just to Latin America And hence the theology of “the poor Church” , itself a heresy, was invented and propagated at this moment
And so what comes next after the legalization of abortion ?, the anthropocentric road map of Vatican II , self destruction resident within the culture of death hiding within the vehicle that drives it deeper into more countries , “Communism Light” , Socialism, Social Medicine, Liberation Theology, and the various aberration movements of the novus ordo , the new rite of the Catholic Church
Study and pray for the truth to emerge for the Truth shall set us all free !
Prayers for
A Catholic restoration minded Pope taking the name of the Pius line to take the Throne of Peter
Consecrate Russia to The Immaculate Heart Of Mary with All the Bishops
Infallibly denounce Communism, Socialism, and Liberation theology as abject evil in all its forms and hereby condemned
Begin the age of Mary and the declaration of the 5th Dogma of the Mediatrix , Coredemtrix, Advocatrix of All Graces
A declaration of the restoration of the nobility and Roman Catholic aristocracy
Propagate the social teachings of the reign of the Kingship of Christ in government, society, schools , economics and banking
Restore the Sacred Heart of Jesus and suppress all pseudo devotions of false Mercy and condemn as anathema ecumenism with heresy and apostasy
Why Is Socialism Still Popular? – On The Society For The Defense Of Tradition Family And Property
Catholics and the Revolutionary State – Crisis Magazine church and state, Democracy, despotism / tyranny, Managerial State, political legitimacy- and communism
Who have the power to change the weightings within the automated software? Will criticizing the government online generate 1 negative point this month but 10 points next month? How can citizens with a handful of negative points, some perhaps incorrect mis-identifications, avoid crossing the dreaded threshold if they don’t know how the system is truly ranking various violations?
Freedom Of Speech On Campuses Begins To Fall Even At Catholic Universities – Totalitarianism Is On The Rise – On the Strange Function of Absolutes – Crisis Magazine
The globalists lobbied young adults to attempt to disrupt Jordan Peterson’s talk on campus. As he spoke the unadulterated truth about what was happening in our education, our culture, and our Faith
He said loudly and clearly – “ Do you hear that sound ?! Make no mistake about it – that is the sound of the barbarians pounding at the gates “
From a letter by Saint Maximus the Confessor, abbot The mercy of God to the penitent
God’s will is to save us, and nothing pleases him more than our coming back to him with true repentance. The heralds of truth and the ministers of divine grace have told us this from the beginning, repeating it in every age. Indeed, God’s desire for our salvation is the primary and preeminent sign of his infinite goodness. It was precisely in order to show that there is nothing closer to God’s heart that the divine Word of God the Father, with untold condescension, lived among us in the flesh, and did, suffered, and said all that was necessary to reconcile us to God the Father, when we were at enmity with him, and to restore us to the life of blessedness from which we had been exiled. He healed our physical infirmities by miracles; he freed us from our sins, many and grievous as they were, by suffering and dying, taking them upon himself as if he were answerable for them, sinless though he was. He also taught us in many different ways that we should wish to imitate him by our own kindness and genuine love for one another.
So it was that Christ proclaimed that he had come to call sinners to repentance, not the righteous, and that it was not the healthy who required a doctor, but the sick. He declared that he had come to look for the sheep that was lost, and that it was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel that he had been sent. Speaking more obscurely in the parable of the silver coin, he tells us that the purpose of his coming was to reclaim the royal image, which had been coated with the filth of sin. You can be sure there is joy in heaven, he said, over one sinner who repents.
To give the same lesson he revived the man who, having fallen into the hands of the brigands, had been left stripped and half-dead from his wounds; he poured wine and oil on the wounds, bandaged them, placed the man on his own mule and brought him to an inn, where he left sufficient money to have him cared for, and promised to repay any further expense on his return.
Again, he told of how that Father, who is goodness itself, was moved with pity for his profligate son who returned and made amends by repentance; how he embraced him, dressed him once more in the fine garments that befitted his own dignity, and did not reproach him for any of his sins.
So too, when he found wandering in the mountains and hills the one sheep that had strayed from God’s flock of a hundred, he brought it back to the fold, but he did not exhaust it by driving it ahead of him. Instead, he placed it on his own shoulders and so, compassionately, he restored it safely to the flock.
So also he cried out: Come to me, all you that toil and are heavy of heart. Accept my yoke, he said, by which he meant his commands, or rather, the whole way of life that he taught us in the Gospel. He then speaks of a burden, but that is only because repentance seems difficult. In fact, however, my yoke is easy, he assures us, and my burden is light.
Then again he instructs us in divine justice and goodness, telling us to be like our heavenly Father, holy, perfect and merciful. Forgive, he says, and you will be forgiven. Behave toward other people as you would wish them to behave toward you.
The Wooly Public is a full-service restaurant and cocktail bar in the landmark Woolworth Building where anyone can enjoy delicious drinks, food and music in the old tradition of restaurants
Saint Frances of Rome was born in 1384 in Rome, the daughter of a wealthy aristocratic couple. At the age of 12, she was arranged to marry Lorenzo Ponziani, Commander of the papal troops of Rome. Their marriage lasted forty years and bore three children. Rome was in chaos and ruins at the time after many battles between popes and anti-popes as well as periods of Neapolitan occupation. Tragically, Frances’ two daughters were killed, her husband seriously wounded, and her son nearly escaped ransom. These strifes led Frances into deep prayer and into a life of service.
She joined her sister, Vannozza, in traveling through the city caring for the sick and the poor. Frances turned part of her family’s estate into a hospital and ultimately, founded the Olivetan Oblates of Mary. This group of pious women was not cloistered or vowed but served the needs of their community through prayer and acts of charity. The group eventually grew to include a monastery, calling its members the Oblates of Saint Frances of Rome. After her husband’s death, Frances moved into the monastery and became its president. She was canonized in 1608 by Pope Paul V and is the patron saint of oblates.*
From the Moral Reflections on Job by Saint Gregory the Great, pope The mystery of our new life in Christ
Holy Job is a type of the Church. At one time he speaks for the body, at another for the head. As he speaks of its members he is suddenly caught up to speak in the name of their head. So it is here, where he says: I have suffered this without sin on my hands, for my prayer to God was pure.
Christ suffered without sin on his hands, for he committed no sin and deceit was not found on his lips. Yet he suffered the pain of the cross for our redemption. His prayer to God was pure, his alone out of all mankind, for in the midst of his suffering he prayed for his persecutors: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Is it possible to offer, or even to imagine, a purer kind of prayer than that which shows mercy to one’s torturers by making intercession for them? It was thanks to this kind of prayer that the frenzied persecutors who shed the blood of our Redeemer drank it afterward in faith and proclaimed him to be the Son of God.
The text goes on fittingly to speak of Christ’s blood: Earth, do not cover over my blood, do not let my cry find a hiding place in you. When man sinned, God had said: Earth you are, and to earth you will return. Earth does not cover over the blood of our Redeemer, for every sinner, as he drinks the blood that is the price of his redemption, offers praise and thanksgiving, and to the best of his power makes that blood known to all around him.
Earth has not hidden away his blood, for holy Church has preached in every corner of the world the mystery of its redemption.
Notice what follows: Do not let my cry find a hiding place in you. The blood that is drunk, the blood of redemption, is itself the cry of our Redeemer. Paul speaks of the sprinkled blood that calls out more eloquently than Abel’s. Of Abel’s blood Scripture had written: The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the earth. The blood of Jesus calls out more eloquently than Abel’s, for the blood of Abel asked for the death of Cain, the fratricide, while the blood of the Lord has asked for, and obtained, life for his persecutors.
If the sacrament of the Lord’s passion is to work its effect in us, we must imitate what we receive and proclaim to mankind what we revere. The cry of the Lord finds a hiding place in us if our lips fail to speak of this, though our hearts believe in it. So that his cry may not lie concealed in us it remains for us all, each in his own measure, to make known to those around us the mystery of our new life in Christ.
The ground-hog use of animism in prophesy was invented in northern Europe as a method orthodox protestants used to retain as many elements of Candlemas Feast and Prophesies on the 40th day of Christmas which is the midpoint between the winter and summer solstices . Small “t” Catholic tradition holds that if it rains or the weather is unfavorable on Candlemas day –Spring ( and hence Eastertide preparations) will come early
When Does the Christmas Season End? -On Novus Motus Liturgicus
In Honor of the Immaculate Conception – “ A From a sermon by Saint Anselm, Bishop”
Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth and rivers, day and night—everything that is subject to the power or use of man—rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for men or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of men who served idols. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendor by men who believe in God.
The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God himself, its Creator, it sees him openly, working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.
Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom, and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.
Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation receives new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator himself has been blessed by creation.
To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.
God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed.
Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself.
CONCLUDING PRAYER
O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son, grant, we pray, that, as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw, so, through her intercession, we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. — Amen.
Another reason that motivated Kolbe to found the MI, as reflected in his original charter quoted earlier, and alluded to in the testimony of Fr. Arzilli, quoted above, is the “error of Masonry.” By 1917 Italian Masonry was boldly rearing its ugly head in opposition to the Church. Writing in 1935 about the founding of the MI back in 1917, St. Maximilian said:
[T]he Freemasons in Rome began to demonstrate openly and belligerently against the Church. They placed the black standard of the “Giordano Brunisti” under the window of the Vatican. [Giordano Bruno was a Dominican turned Calvinist turned pantheist who was burned as a heretic on Feb. 17, 1600. This Masonic demonstration most likely occurred on Feb. 17 to commemorate his death]. On this standard the archangel St. Michael was depicted lying under the feet of the triumphant Lucifer. At the same time, countless pamphlets were distributed to the people in which the Holy Father was attacked shamefully. “Right then I conceived the idea of organizing an active society to counteract Freemasonry and other slaves of Lucifer . . .23
In 1939, writing in the Latin magazine for priests which he began publishing a year earlier, Miles Immaculatae, Kolbe said this about the Masonic demonstrations against the Church and Masonry’s evil designs:
[During the marches around the Vatican on Brunisti’s anniversary], some enraged hands dared to write such slogans as, ‘Satan will rule on Vatican Hill, and the Pope will serve as his lackey,’ and other such insults. Now these unreasoning acts of hatred toward the Church of Christ and his temporal Vicar were not the inept rantings of a few individual psychopaths, but the manner, way and plan of action deduced from the Masonic rule: Destroy all teaching about God, especially the Catholic teaching.
Centers of this secret society have been established in every region. Nevertheless in various ways they more or less openly promote the same thing. In their plan they use many and various kinds of societies, which under their leadership promote neglect of Divine things and the breakdown of morality. This is because the Freemasons follow this principle above all: “Catholicism can be overcome not by logical arguments but by corrupted morals.” And so they overwhelm the souls of men with the kind of literature and arts that will most easily destroy a sense of chaste morals, and foster sordid lifestyles in all phases of human life . . . To bring help to so many unhappy persons, to stabilize innocent hearts so that all can more easily go to the Immaculate Virgin through whom so many graces come down to us, the Militia Immaculatae was established in Rome in 1917.24
We can imagine what this Polish Knight of Our Lady would say today regarding the widespread promotion of immorality in television, movies, music and the arts; and we can ponder to what extent Freemasonry — which is truly an arm of Satan — has contributed and continues to contribute to the current state of affairs.
Gen. 3:15: The humble Woman who crushes Satan’s proud head
St. Maximilian, the gentle Friar who lived the white crown of purity and received the red crown of martyrdom, clearly saw Gen. 3:15 as having both salvific and eschatological dimensions. This was one of his main reasons for founding the MI as a young seminarian in Rome in 1917. In God’s almighty providence, it is no mere coincidence that Kolbe founded the MI in the same year that Our Lady appeared to the three little children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, at Fatima, Portugal and revealed to them God’s plan for world peace. “She will crush your head” should be read alongside Mary’s own words at Fatima: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph”; for the ultimate triumph of Mary’s Immaculate Heart involves the victory of the Immaculata — the All-Pure and Spotless Virgin whom the Evil One could never touch — over Satan and his minions.
In our Catholic Tradition, beginning with SS. Justin Martyr (+ 165), Irenaeus (+ 200), Epiphanius (+ 403) and Jerome (+ 420), Mary has been contrasted with Eve by phrases such as: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience”; and “Death through Eve, life through Mary,”25 Truly, Mary is the “New Eve.”26 However, in light of the revelation in Gen. 3:15, can we not also say that in addition to viewing Eve in opposition to Mary, as her anti-type, that in God’s salvific plan the Prince of Darkness should also be seen in opposition to Mary, even as another anti-type of Our Lady?27 Consider: Satan and Mary are both creatures. Both were endowed at their creation with abundant gifts: Lucifer was the most beautiful and intelligent of all the angels before his fall; Mary from the first moment of her Conception was Immaculate and Full of Grace. Satan was “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44); Mary is the “Mother of All the Living.”28 Satan, the Tempter, deprived the human race of grace; Mary is the Mother in the Order of Grace. Satan is the “Father of Lies” (John 8:44); Mary is the “Destroyer of All Heresies.”29 In the end, Satan’s proud rebellion, “Non serviam” (“I will not serve”),30 will be overcome by Mary’s humble obedience: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).31
The Church teaches that all the angels were created naturally good, and that prior to being admitted into the presence of God they were given a test of obedience.32 They failed that test by “radically and irrevocably” rejecting God and his reign,33 and as a result they are separated from God eternally.34 A tradition among Saints and theologians holds that in this test of obedience, the Incarnation was revealed to the angels, and that Satan along with a number of other angels rebelled, refusing to submit to the notion of having to worship him who would be both God and man, and as a result “fell like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Because his will is forever fixed in his rebellion,35 he still refuses to believe that Jesus Christ is the Eternal Word made flesh and therefore must be worshipped and adored.
The opening scene in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ takes place in the Garden of Gethsemane. Satan tries to tempt Christ by ridiculing the notion that he can redeem all men by his death. Then, under his breath, the Evil One contemptuously murmurs the following words: “Who is your father? . . . Who are you?” These words are significant, for they implicitly reveal the root of Satan’s rebellion: a proud refusal to believe that Jesus is the Incarnate Word. We see analogous statements, revealing the same mentality, in the Gospels, when Satan tries to tempt Jesus: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread . . . If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down [from the parapet of the Temple]” (Mt. 4:3, 6). Then Satan, after taking Jesus up atop a high mountain, shows Him “all the kingdoms in the world in their magnificence,” and says: “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me” (Matt. 4:8-9). The fact that Satan demands that Jesus worship him clearly reveals his refusal to believe that Jesus is both God and man.
Why did Satan refuse to submit to the revelation of the Eternal Word taking flesh? Perhaps it was because he, the most beautiful and intelligent of all the angels,36 thought it inconceivable that God should become man and take a nature even lower than his own. Satan would not serve because Satan refused to believe. We might say that the “Prince of this World” was the first rationalist: in pride, he refused to submit in mind and will to what his great (though finite) angelic intellect could not fully fathom: the deep mystery of the Incarnation; a union of two natures in one Divine Person. While Satan and the fallen angels who joined him believe in God — St. James tells us that “Even the demons believe . . . and tremble” (Jas. 2:19) — they refuse to believe that Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Word.
By contrast, Mary is the woman of faith. Her humble “Fiat” is an expression of her great faith, to which Elizabeth gives witness: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). What was that message which Mary believed? It was this: that she would “conceive in [her] womb and bear a son” who “will be called the Son of the Most High” and “will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:31-32, 35). Mary’s faith in the great mystery of the Incarnation, and in God’s ability to effect this incomprehensible event within her, was in part due to her great humility. As Mary herself says in the Magnificat, the Lord “hath regarded the humility of his handmaid” (Luke 1:47).37 In God’s salvific plan Mary, in her humility and her obedience in faith, is set in direct opposition to Satan’s proud refusal to believe what God had revealed about His Son becoming man, and of his ongoing rebellion before God. In this sense the Evil Serpent is truly the anti-type of the spotless Virgin.
As a consequence of her great faith and her humble obedience to God’s will, Mary became the Mother of God. And because of her perseverance in faith unto Calvary, she became the Mother of all the redeemed in the Order of Grace and now shares in her Son’s victory on the Cross;38 a victory which will culminate in the final defeat of the Prince of Darkness: “She will crush thy head” (Gen. 3:15).
Scripture reveals that “crushing the heads” of all evildoers is part of the definitive victory of Christ over his enemies. Psalm 74 [73] speaks of God, the “king from of old”: “You smashed the heads of the dragons on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan” (Ps. 74 [73]: 12-14). Psalm 110 [109] says that the Christ, both King in the line of David and High Priest in the order of Melchizedek, “crushes kings on the day of wrath”; He who is “robed in splendor, judges nations” and “crushes heads across the wide earth” (Ps. 110 [109]: 5-6).39 St. Paul promises that all who remain faithful and obedient to God will share in this activity; he says that if we are “wise to what is good and simple to what is evil, then the God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:19-20).40 However, Mary, who is the Mother of Christ, and both Mother and “Eschatological Icon” of the Church,41 will be given a privileged place among Christ’s faithful in this glorious triumph of Christ over the Father of Lies and all who follow him. This is the meaning of the “woman” in Gen. 3:15, of which the valiant woman, Jael, is a type, who crushed the head of the evil general Sisera, when he attacked God’s Chosen People. In Deborah’s canticle she praises Jael, saying “Blessed among women be Jael”; and then continues: “With her left hand she reached for the peg, with her right, for the workman’s mallet. She hammered Sisera, crushed his head; she smashed, stove in his temple. At her feet he sank down, fell, lay still; down at her feet he sank and fell” (Judges 5:24, 26-27).42
Bl. Pius IX, in his Apostolic Constitution defining the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Ineffabilis Deus, gives us an authoritative interpretation of Gen. 3:15 when, after quoting this verse, he says: “the most holy Virgin, united with [her divine Son] by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was, with him and through him, eternally at enmity with the evil serpent, and most completely triumphed over him, and thus crushed his head with her immaculate foot.” Pope John Paul II echoes and expands on these words, saying:
the Immaculate Conception does not mean only an exaltation of Mary, as if she had been transported outside of all those who have received the inheritance of the sin of our first parents.
On the contrary, it means her insertion into the very center of the spiritual combat, of this “enmity” that in the course of human history places the “Prince of Darkness” and the “Father of Lies” in opposition to the Woman and her seed.
Through the words of the Book of Genesis, we see Mary Immaculate in all the realism of her election. We see her at the culminating moment of this “enmity”: at the foot of the Cross of Christ on Calvary. There “she will crush your head and you will strike her heel.”43
In his own devotion to Mary and in founding the MI, St. Maximilian clearly saw Mary as actively engaged in the ongoing spiritual combat that is waged “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of the is darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places” (Eph. 6:12).44 The Martyr of Auschwitz also saw that in the end, this lowly Handmaid of the Lord, she who “cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array” (Song 6:9),45 will be victorious and, through the power and grace of Christ, render a most humiliating defeat upon the Evil Serpent: she will crush his proud head, which will usher in the definitive Reign of Christ as our King, and Mary as our Queen, along with the triumph of her Immaculate Heart.
_______________________________________________
The Queen’s Christmas Decorations – Two Minute Video -On Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites