Prophecies and the Signs of the Times
Thursday
January 1, 2004 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Solemnity of Mary,
Mother of God
Reading I
(Numbers 6:22-27) Reading II (Galatians
4:4-7)
Gospel (St. Luke 2:16-21)
~~~Homily
from the Mass at Midnight~~~
Now as we celebrate this day of the octave, the octave being the eight days, reminding us again of God’s seven days of creation and then the eighth day being the first day after creation, so now we look forward to something new. For many years we have been awaiting this day. For a long time, I have been preaching to you in various homilies about things that are to come, and if those who are purported in our world to be mystics are to be believed, this year – finally! – is the year we have been waiting for. Let me explain to you why I believe what I have been telling you. Because there is absolutely no reason in the world for you to take my word for it, I will explain to you why I have been preaching the way that I have, what is behind it, and what may be coming. First of all, before I say anything else, let me just simply remind you that when it comes to dates and times, no one knows. These things can be mitigated and so it could be that the timing is off; we just simply do not know. I am hoping and praying, quite honestly, that these people are correct, because as I tell my friends, I have had about enough. I have seen the evil and it is time for God to intervene. And as we begin our new year, offering everything to Our Blessed Lady and beginning the year by dedicating everything to her, it is certainly most fitting that God has turned everything over to her.
There
are many people among the Protestants looking at the signs of the times who
believe that the Second Coming is about to happen. These unfortunate souls also
think they are going to get “raptured” out, which is completely anti-Scriptural,
anti-doctrinal, and anti-Christian, for all that matters. To think that Jesus
Christ would die on the Cross for us but He would let us out without having to
take up the Cross does not make sense. It is completely fallacious and no one
heard about it until 200 years ago when a woman supposedly had an apparition
from Jesus telling her that was what was going to happen. So the Bible
Christians, as they call themselves, suddenly believed in something that was
not in the Bible; and now they all think they are going to get out, even though
Jesus says, “Those who hold out to the end will be saved,” not “Those
who get out before it comes will be saved.”
They are going to be sorely disappointed on two counts: first of all,
that they did not get raptured out; secondly, that it is not the Second Coming
and, perhaps most importantly, the woman whom they have chosen to hate is the
one whom God is sending to be able to prepare the world for what is to come.
This
is the time given to Our Blessed Lady. Saint Louis de Montfort says that the
kingdom of Mary must be established firmly on earth before the kingdom of
Christ will come, and that as Our Lady came before Jesus two thousand years ago
so it will happen again. The first time, for both Our Lady and Our Lord, it was
very much hidden; this time, for neither will it be hidden. Our Lady is going
to come to establish justice on the earth and that is going to be followed by a
lengthy period of peace. Then will come the Second Coming when Our Lord will be
seen in all of His glory escorted by the angels. That will not happen in our
lifetime, but this other one I hope and pray will come very soon.
Having
said all that again, let me explain why. First of all, in Fatima in 1917, Our
Lady appeared to the three shepherd children and gave them a series of
promises. There is only one promise at Fatima that has not yet been fulfilled,
that is, in the end Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart will triumph and that will be
followed by a long period of peace and unprecedented growth for the Church. We
have not yet seen that. Along with that, Our Lady (not in 1917, but much later)
appeared to Sister Lucia, the only seer from Fatima who is still alive, and
promised her that she would be alive to see the Triumph of the Immaculate
Heart. Sister Lucia is now 95 years old, and so the timing on that tells us
that something has to happen fairly soon. Beyond that, back a few years ago,
the day after the tragic incidents that took place out in New York City with
the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, the very next day Mother Angelica
went on national television and announced that in the year 2004 we will be in
the era of peace. She said, “Do not ask me how I know that because I will not
tell you. All I can tell you is that in 2004 you will see the era of peace.”
There is a woman by the name of Christina Gallagher, whom many people purport
to be a true mystic from Ireland, and she is saying the same thing. There is a
woman from Venezuela by the name of Maria Esperanza who has the approval of her
bishops and has made a variety of predictions with extraordinary accuracy over
the years, and for quite a few years now, certainly more than ten, she has been
telling the world that in 2004 everyone on the face of the earth will know that
God exists. More recently, she has said, “In mid-2004, you will begin to see
the light,” and that the turn-around is going to be taking place around halfway
through the year. Again, all of these people could be entirely wrong. The date
can be pushed back; things could be mitigated. We do not know.
There
is a Vietnamese priest who was captured by the Communists some 21 or so years
ago now. He was put into a concentration camp where for 13 years he had to
break rocks everyday. At the end of the day, they would give him a cup of rice and
send him back out the next day to break rocks. He did that everyday for 13
years. He is now free, and a couple of years ago this man was traveling to
France for some surgery (you can imagine the condition his body is in after all
of that) and he heard about a hermit priest in Belgium. He wanted to stop and
speak with that priest about something extraordinary that had happened to him,
and he told the hermit priest this story. He said, “I had a friend, another
priest in Vietnam, who was also captured by the Communists. This particular
priest was beaten to a bloody pulp by the Communists, dragged into the
sanctuary of this parish church, dumped on the sanctuary floor, and there he
died in front of the Blessed Sacrament.” Not a bad way to go. About two years
or so ago, he said, “My friend has recently appeared to me and he told me this:
that in the year 2000 the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart began, but it will
begin with the Triumph of the Cross.” (Which I interpret to mean that the
Church is going to be crucified, which the Fathers of the Church told us many
times is going to happen.) He then went on to tell his friend that Satan had
been given 100 years to destroy the Church. (That is according to the vision of
Pope Leo XIII from 1884.) In that 100 years, Satan overstepped his boundaries
and in punishment for overstepping his boundaries God has meted out two points
of punishment: number one, He took some of Satan’s power away from him and has
given it to Our Lady; number two, the reign of the antichrist will be severely
limited – perhaps to even as little as six weeks. Thanks be to God! Three and a
half years is what Scripture told us it would be, which none of us would be
able to survive. Our Lord knew that and He Himself told us, “If the time were
not shortened even the elect would fall astray.” So we knew the time would be
shortened; the question was how much. This man is saying “perhaps even as
little as six weeks”. Then he went on to say, “In the year 2004, you will see
the era of peace.”
Now
that coupled with what happened back in 1961in a little village called Garabandal
in Spain, with some apparitions that have only just recently received local
approval by the bishop so now we can actually talk about them, and in those
apparitions, Our Lady said a few things that are of import for us. Number one,
she said that there will only be three more popes until the end of the present
age. How one interprets that is entirely up to you because she did not explain
it. Our present Holy Father is the third, the three being Paul VI, John Paul I,
and John Paul II. Now this becomes also very important timing-wise because Our
Lady told us at Garabandal that there will be a warning, and the warning will
be what is variously called “an illumination of conscience”, or simply put,
every person will get to see their soul as God sees it. For some, this will be
a great blessing. After all, if you just think about it, if you had been shown
by God everything that is on your soul so that you have the opportunity to go
to confession and rid yourself of absolutely everything that is there, this is
cause for great rejoicing. For some, however, she said it will be so horrifying
that they will die. So it will not be a pleasant thing for most people to see,
but for anyone who is trying to live a good life, it will be a great blessing.
That is really something to look forward to, although it is going to require a
great grace because she said, “The priests will be in the confessional
around-the-clock hearing confessions, one after the next, 24 hours a day.” Not
humanly possible, but with God all things are possible. And then she said,
“Within a year, that will be followed by a great miracle which will be a
Eucharistic miracle.” The children thought it seemed that it would be much,
much shorter than a year, but what Our Lady said was that within a year this
miracle would happen. It would be able to be seen by television cameras and it
will be demonstrated throughout the world. But what is important for us is that
she said, “The Pope will see the miracle from wherever he happens to be in the
world when it happens,” which means that our Holy Father has to be alive when
it happens.
So
you have the two persons who have been named: Sister Lucia being 95 years old,
and our Holy Father being 83 years old and not in very good health. Whether it
happens in 2004 or sometime thereafter, one can surmise that it cannot take too
much longer before something is going to occur. Now at Garabandal, Our Lady
said, “If people do not change their ways, that will be followed by a great
chastisement.” The chastisement was foretold at the last fully approved
apparition (“fully approved” meaning not only locally and provincially, but
even by the Vatican), and that was at Akita in Japan in 1974 when Our Lady
appeared to a nun and told her that fire will fall from the sky killing the
greater part of humanity and the living will envy the dead thinking that they
had the better part. Everyone in the state of mortal sin will die, and some who
are in the state of grace will die so that no one will be able to make
judgments about the people who have died. It will not be a pleasant time for
anyone on the face of the earth. How exactly that is going to be, we do not
know. The fact that Our Lady appeared in Japan to tell us that I think is
important. Many saints from back in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries had
visions and prophesied about the fact that a comet is going to crash into the
earth. Now this is my pure conjecture, but back in the fourth, fifth, and sixth
centuries they did not have intercontinental ballistic missiles; if you were a
sixth century mystic and saw a fireball coming from the sky with a tail on it
and a huge explosion following from it, what would you think it was? It looks
like a comet, so it must be a comet. We know better. If you read the Book of
the Prophet Zechariah, you will find two things there that are rather
terrifying. One, the prophet says, “One-third of the people will be saved
through the fire.” Our Lady said, “The greater part of humanity will die.” So
one-third will be saved through the fire according to Scripture. And then the
prophet Zechariah gives a particularly terrifying presentation of what is going
to happen to people: their flesh will rot, their eyes will be pulled into their
sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths as they stand there. That
is exactly what happens when a nuclear device is exploded.
And
so it is these sorts of things and quite a few more that I consider as I look
at all of this. Nothing more need be said, it just adds more detail and so on,
but it makes the point clearly enough that we are in for some horrible times.
The Church is going to be crucified, and you have the greatest blessing that
has ever been bestowed upon humanity, that is, to be a member of the Church
when She is crucified. Nothing greater has ever been offered to a Christian
person than to be alive when the Mystical Body of Christ goes to the Cross. I
believe that you have that opportunity. I believe that each one of us will also
have the opportunity to be able to see Our Lady at work. Prophesied in Genesis
3:15, she is going to crush the head of the serpent, and the way that she is
going to do that is through the little people that she has chosen, the humble
ones, the rejected ones, the ones who do not fit in – that’s us. We are the
means by which Satan is going to be crushed because we are the heel of Our
Lady. Once again, a great blessing; not exactly fun, but there will be cause
for great rejoicing.
So
as we look forward to the events – whether they will indeed happen in this year
or whether they will be coming soon, it does not matter – we need to make sure
that we are ready. We need to understand that what we have seen is nothing. As
evil as things are out there, it has only just begun. Things are going to get
much worse very quickly. There will be immense suffering for anyone who calls
himself or herself a Catholic. My suspicion is that it will be illegal to be a
Catholic, and we are all going to have to make a decision of whether we will remain
faithful or not. As things progress, it will appear to be hopeless. Everything
will appear to be lost. The Church will appear to have been destroyed; evil
will appear to have won, just as it was 2,000 years ago on Calvary. And it is
only at the point where it has achieved its worst, at the darkest moment is
when Our Lady is going to intervene. She is going to allow us all to see just
how evil humanity can be. When left to itself, when grace is withheld, when
cooperating with Satan, we are all going to see with our own eyes just what
humanity is capable of in the most negative form.
We
are also, at the same time, going to see – by God’s grace – exactly what
humanity is capable of in the best form because remember Saint Paul’s words:
“Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” Therefore, we will see in our
own day with our own eyes the greatest saints that God has ever raised up in
the history of the Church, with the exception of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and
Saint John the Baptist. The grace is going to be present for those who choose
to cooperate with God, and we will see extraordinary things. But we have to
make the choice of what we are going to do, to choose Jesus Christ and to
choose to go to Calvary with Him to be crucified with Him, or to run away, to
apostasize. That is the choice that is before us. And so as we begin this new
year, as we consider the humanity and the divinity of Christ, the divine
maternity of Our Blessed Lady, we look at what God has done. What seems to be
impossible, God has already worked in humanity; and what seems impossible, He
is going to work once again. However, it will require great faith. Our Lady had
to believe that what seemed impossible was going to work. Saint Joseph had to
believe that what sounded preposterous was indeed true. And each one of us is
going to have to believe as well if we are going to remain faithful to Jesus
Christ, to believe when it appears that all hope is lost, to remain faithful
when it appears the most foolish thing in the world to do. But the reward for
fidelity will be great, and that is a guarantee from Our Blessed Lady.
So
my recommendation as we begin this new year is to either renew or make, if you
have not done so, the consecration of your entire being and your entire life to
Jesus Christ through the Blessed Virgin Mary as given to us by Saint Louis de
Montfort, to take up the prayer life and to live it fervently so that you will
be accustomed to hearing the voice of Christ and being obedient to whatever He
asks you to do. That is what Our Lady has modeled for us already, and if we are
going to be her true children we need to be just like her. We need to be
virtuous, we need to be holy, we need to be obedient. That is what God is
asking of His faithful people, now the question for us is if we are willing to
do it. Only you can make that answer. The choice is entirely yours. You are
being invited by Our Lord and by Our Lady into what I believe will be the
greatest events of human history, and you have to choose whether to accept or to
reject their invitation.
~~~Addendum~~~
I
might make just a couple of quick follow-up comments to what I said in the
homily in case I instilled fear into the heart of anyone. First of all, just
keep in mind that God has turned this over to His mother, which means she is
going to do this as a woman does it. She is a mom. She is not going to do it
like a guy does it, so you do not really need to be afraid – unless you are on
the other side of a mother – it is not a good place to be. But the safest place
in the world to be is right there next to your mom. So just stay with Our Lady,
bring your kids with you, and you have nothing at all to fear. This is not a
time to run out and get six months’ worth of food, stock up your basement, and
fill everything up. This is the time to pray. It is the time to prepare
spiritually. None of that [material preparation] needs to be done. She is a
mom. She will make sure that you are clothed and that you are fed; she will
take care of everything. All that we need to do is to trust, to pray, and to be
at peace.
Correction:
The local bishop has not granted approval to the apparitions of Garabandal;
rather, he has authorized that Mass can be prayed there.