Pray and Never Lose Heart (eBook)

In our society today it often seems as though faster equals better: instant money at ATM machines; fast food made even faster thanks to drive-thrus and microwaves; worldwide com-munication by cell phones, e-mail, and the Internet; and so on and so on. Inundated with such a mentality, we can approach our relationship with God, and specifically our intercession, with the same expectation of rapid results:

“I’ve asked God for a whole week and no answer. I guess he doesn’t hear me or care about me or my needs.…I’ve prayed and prayed for a year [insert your own time frame here], and things just get worse. Guess I don’t have a gift for intercession, or God doesn’t love me, or God must be deaf, or I’m too sinful.” You probably have your own particular reaction in such situations, but I think you see the point. We have been so “evangelized” by our culture that we forget the truth of who God is and how he acts:

And most notably, Jesus tells us, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do” (Jn 14:13). How do we enter into the fulfill-ment of this promise?

This book is the fruit of learning how to pray according to God’s mind and how to allow my prayer to reflect his infinite mercy. There are no formulas. Intercession depends, in large part, upon our commitment to daily growth in our relation-ship with God, a love relationship that encompasses him and his people. It entails acknowledgement of our sin and death to that sin, as well as a commitment to discipleship and obe-dience to his word. We may stumble on this path, but as we repent, God reveals to us his heart of mercy and love. Then we are able to more faithfully and confidently pray in his name.

Over the past year I have found strength in the message God asked Our Lady to give us through three young children in Portugal in 1917. A part of the children’s vision has encour-aged me particularly in intercession. I am taking the liberty of quoting extensively from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s and Cardinal Angelo Sodano’s theological commentary on the visions of Fatima. The explanation should inspire everyone who is engaged in the ministry of intercession. (For the entire text, please see Origins, Vol. 30, No. 8, July 6, 2000.)

“Well, the secret is made up of three distinct parts, two of which I am now going to reveal.

“The first part is the vision of hell.

“Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all black-ened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagra-tion, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.

“We then looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly:

“‘You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is a great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. 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 of the church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; var-ious nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.’

“The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on July 13, 1917. [Vatican-approved text, translated from the handwritten Portuguese text.]

“After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an angel with a flam-ing sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire, but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated toward him from her right hand. Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, penance, penance!’ And we saw, in an immense light that is God, something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it, a bishop dressed in white—we had the impression that it was the Holy Father. [We saw} other bishops, priests, men and women religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins. Half-trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sor-row, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way. Having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big cross, he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died, one after another, the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the cross there were two angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprin-kled the souls that were making their way to God.

“The first and second parts of the ‘secret’ of Fatima have already been so amply discussed in the relative literature that there is no need to deal with them again here. I would just like to recall briefly the most significant point. For one terrible moment, the children were given a vision of hell. They saw the fall of ‘the souls of poor sinners.’ And now they are told why they have been exposed to this moment: ‘in order to save souls’—to show the way to salvation. The words of the First Letter of Peter come to mind: ‘As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls’ (1:9). To reach this goal, the way indicated—surprisingly for people from the Anglo-Saxon and German cultural world—is devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A brief comment may suffice to explain this.

“In biblical language, the ‘heart’ indicates the center of human life, the point where reason, will, temperament, and sensitivity converge, where the person finds his unity and his interior orientation. According to Matthew 5:8, the ‘immacu-late heart’ is a heart which, with God’s grace, has come to per-fect interior unity and therefore ‘sees God.’ To be ‘devoted’ to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means therefore to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat—‘Your will be done’—the defining center of one’s whole life. It might be objected that we should not place a human being between ourselves and Christ. But then we remember that Paul did not hesitate to say to his communities: ‘Imitate me’ (1 Cor 4:16; Phil 3:17; 1 Thes 1:6; 2 Thes 3:7, 9). In the Apostle they could see concretely what it meant to follow Christ. But from whom might we better learn in every age than from the Mother of the Lord?

“Thus we come finally to the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima which for the first time is being published in its entire-ty. As is clear from the documentation presented here, the interpretation offered by Cardinal Sodano in his statement of 13 May was first put...