Just Call Me Cassandra

As I hinted at the end of last year and keep posting about, various coincidences and events mark 2017 as a special year.  Celestial events that started at the end of 2016 reach their conclusion on September 23rd – next Saturday.

I know that people are always predicting the end of the world, and your eyes are probably rolling round in their sockets right now, but what if this time they’re on the right track?  If these celestial events are actually the prophesied events in the Book of Revelation then the next few months or years could be rocky to say the least.  If you’re interested, there’s a wiki here about it.  If you’re not interested then just remember that if all hell breaks loose after Saturday then you might want to re-assess your position.  Mind you, you might not have Internet access at that point…  A church might then be a better place to find the information you will need.

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The Book Thief

Here is a photo of the book I stole:

I was ten years old and due to leave my primary school for secondary school.  This was the only thing I couldn’t bear to leave behind (since my friends were all coming to secondary school too).  Ironic, don’t you think, that it’s a hymn book?  Already feeling a victim of God’s sublime sense of humour, I just noticed, as I was taking this photo, that the Scripture reading is the one the priest chose for my baptism last year.

As you can see in the photo I didn’t choose a pristine copy.  This was not a spur-of-the-moment theft, this was pre-meditated larceny.  As in “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak, the custodian of this book may very well have let me have it if I had asked, seeing my desperate need, but I didn’t ask.  I chose the most raggedy copy I could find, reasoning that the school ought to replace it anyway.  In this way it didn’t feel like theft.  I was doing the school a favour in fact!

And why couldn’t I bear to part with this book?  It wasn’t the scripture.  It was just that I couldn’t imagine leaving behind the songs.  I’ve always had a deep love of music, and I was always trying to learn to play different instruments.  As a ten-year-old though, all I had access to was a recorder (which used to be the standard instrument in Welsh schools, as the tin whistle is here in Ireland) and my own voice.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a particularly good singing voice and I was also terribly shy.  When I played recorder on the school stage I would mime because I was too nervous to play properly.  I even mimed in the school choir when we competed in the Urdd Eisteddfod.  But that didn’t stop me playing in private.  Often when I sang, and later when I played my electronic keyboard, it would move me to tears.  It connected me to some higher reality, something I was missing in my life, something which I now suspect was of the heavenly variety.

Two of my favourite Welsh songs are about singing.  There’s “Calon Lan” which I’ve featured on my blog before, and there’s what I’ve always called “Canaf yn y bore” (see photo below).  My Welsh is incredibly rusty so I’m using Google Translate here.  It seems to think the first verse means “I sing in the morning for your care, through the dark walnut. You have seen me.” but I’m pretty sure that’s wrong.  😀  It’s definitely about singing in the morning anyway.

Here’s the tune:

The Lord’s Day

Come let us praise the Lord with joy: let us joyfully sing to God our saviour. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; and make a joyful noise to him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. For in his hand are all the ends of the earth: and the heights of the mountains are his. For the sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

Come let us adore and fall down: and weep before the Lord that made us. For he is the Lord our God: and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

(From Psalm 94, Douay-Rheims, that forms part of the Responsorial Psalm for today’s Mass)

 

Another Catholic Resource

I’ve added a new link to my Catholic Resources page (see menu above).  The link will take you to a website which lists lots of links to classic Catholic books like “The Imitation of Christ” (pictured).

These are free books available in various formats.  Enjoy!

Painful Pruning

The Forest by William Morris

Pear-tree.

By woodman’s edge I faint and fail;
By craftsman’s edge I tell the tale.

Chestnut-tree.

High in the wood, high o’er the hall,
Aloft I rise when low I fall.

Oak-tree.

Unmoved I stand what wind may blow.
Swift, swift before the wind I go.

I was looking for a picture of a beautiful tapestry to illustrate the following poem.  I found the above image which features another poem (above) that is not entirely irrelevant to my point for this post.  Just like trees that are felled to make beautiful or useful items, and just like vines that are pruned so that they become more fruitful, we too undergo trials that feel catastrophic at times but are in fact beneficial in the grand scheme of things.  Here is the poem I originally intended to share with you.  (I’m not sure of the attribution so if you have a better idea then please let me know.)

The Divine Weaver by Kevin Mayhew

My life is but a weaving
between my Lord and me;
I cannot choose the colours
he worketh steadily.

Oftentimes he weaveth sorrow
and I, in foolish pride,
forget that he seeth the upper,
and I the underside.

Not till the loom is silent
and the shuttles cease to fly,
shall God unroll the canvas
and explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful
in the weaver’s skilful hand
as the threads of gold and silver
in the pattern he has planned.

Thought for the Day

We should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.

Cardinal Newman

A Second Chance… For Us All

Here is another astonishing and sobering story of a person brought back from the brink.  It is very long but I beg you to find the time to read it all.  If you can’t read it all now then please find the time later.  It might be the most important thing you ever read.

Source: The Conversion of Gloria Polo on Padre Peregrino blog by Father David Nix

On 5 May 1995, Gloria Polo, a dentist and mother, was struck by lightning just outside the University of Bogotá, Columbia. She died shortly afterwards in the trauma unit. She went before God and her sentence was hell. God gave her another chance, and this is the account she has given to millions of South Americans with the approbation of the South American Bishops.  You will see while reading this rather-long but worthwhile blog post why she was given another chance by God. Although not a word of this blog post is mine, it is the most important blog post I have ever produced. This is Gloria Polo’s conversion story, with translations from the Italian by Fr. Orlando, posted originally by Fr. Joseph Dwight, and with final touch-ups to the translation by Fr. Nix.

THE TESTIMONY OF GLORIA POLO

Good morning, brothers. It is wonderful for me to be here, to share with you this gift so beautiful that the Lord gave me.

That which I am about to recount to you happened May 5, 1995 at the National University of Bogotá, starting at 4:30 pm.

I am a dentist. I and my 23-year-old cousin, who is also a dentist, were studying for specialization. On that day, which was a Friday, about 4:30 pm, we were walking together with my husband toward the Faculty of Dentistry to find some books that we needed. With my cousin I walked under a small umbrella while my husband wore a rain coat and to shelter himself better he was walking near the wall of the General Library. We two were jumping from one side to the other in order to avoid the puddles while staying close to the trees. When we jumped over a rather large puddle we were hit by a lightning bolt which left us both carbonized.

My cousin died immediately. The lightning bolt entered from behind, burning him inside totally, and came out through his feet, leaving him intact externally. Not withstanding his young age, he was a very religious young man. He had a great devotion for Baby Jesus and he always carried around his neck His image, a quartz medal. The authorities said that it was the quartz that attracted the lightning bolt to my cousin, because it entered into the heart burning everything…

Remaining intact externally, he immediately had a cardiac arrest which did not respond to the attempts of reanimation by the doctors, and he died on the spot.

As for me, the lightning bolt entered from my shoulder, burning terribly the whole body, inside and out; in short my flesh disappeared including my breasts, especially the left one, leaving a hole. It caused to disappear the flesh of my abdomen, of my legs, of the ribs; it carbonized the liver, it gravely burned the kidneys, the lungs, the ovaries… and came out through the right foot.

For contraceptive purposes, I was using an IUD, and because of the material with which it is made (copper) it is a good conductor of electricity; the lightning bolt carbonized and pulverized also the ovaries which became like two raisins.

I remained in cardiac arrest, just about without life, with a body that was jumping due to the electricity that was still present in that place.

This body that you see here, now, this reconstructed body, is the fruit of the mercy of Our Lord.

The Other World
But this is only the physical part… The good part is that, while my body laid there carbonized, in that same moment I found myself inside a beautiful white tunnel of light, a wonderful light, which made me feel a joy, a peace, a happiness that I do not have words to describe the greatness of that moment. It was a true ecstasy. I looked, and in the end of that tunnel I saw a white light, like a sun, a beautiful light… I say white to tell you a color, but we are talking about colors that cannot be compared to those that exist on the earth. It was a splendid light; I felt from it a source of peace, of love, of light…

When I went up in this tunnel toward the light, I said to myself: “Caramba, I’m dead!”

And so I thought about my children and I sighed: “Woe is me, my God, my little children! What will my children say? This mother so occupied, that she never had time for them…” In fact, I left early every morning, and I did not return before eleven at night.

And so I saw the reality of my life, and I felt much sadness. I had left my home determined to conquer the world, but at what price! … Putting in the second place my home and my children! … In that moment of emptiness due to the absence of my children, without feeling any more my body, nor the dimension of time or of space, I looked, and I saw something very beautiful: I saw all of the people of my life… In one single moment, in the same moment, all the people, those living and those dead. I was able to embrace my great grandparents, grandparents, parents (who were dead)… everyone! It was a moment of fullness, wonderful. I understood that I had deceived myself with the story of the reincarnation: they had told me that my grandmother had been reincarnated, but without telling me where. Since the information cost me too much money, I let it go and I did not delve into the research in order to know in whom she might have been reincarnated. You know, I defended the theory of reincarnation… And now, there, I had just embraced my grandmother, my great grandmother…

I embraced her well, as I could do with all the people who I knew, living and dead. And all in one single instant. My daughter, when I embraced her, became frightened: she was 9 years old, and she felt my embrace, because I could also embrace the living (only that, normally, we do not feel this embrace).

I almost did not realize the passage of time during that moment so beautiful. And then, now that I no longer had a body, it was stupendous to see the people in a whole new way. Before, in fact, I only knew how to criticize: if one was fat, skinny, ugly, elegant, not elegant, etc.

When I spoke about others, I had to always criticize something. Now no: now I see people from within, and how beautiful it was… While I embraced them, I saw their thoughts, their sentiments…

So I continued to go forward, full of peace, happy; and the more I went up, the more I felt I was about to see something very beautiful. In fact, toward the bottom, I sighted a beautiful lake… yes! I see a stupendous lake, trees so beautiful, but so beautiful, wonderful… And very beautiful flowers, in all colors, with an exquisite perfume, so different from our flowers… Everything was so beautiful in that stupendous garden, so wonderful… Words do not exist that can describe it, all was love.

There were two trees, to the side of something that seemed to be an entrance. It is all so different from what we know down here: you can not find in the world similar colors, up here it is all so beautiful! … It was in that moment that my cousin entered in that wonderful garden.

… I knew! I felt that I must not, I could not enter there…

The First Return
In that same instant I hear the voice of my husband. He laments and cries with a profound sentiment, and cries: “Gloria!!! Gloria! Please, do not leave me! Look at your children, your children need you! Gloria, go back! Go back! Do not be a coward! Return!”

I heard everything, and I saw him cry with much pain… Alas, in that moment Our Lord granted me to leave… But I did not want to return! That peace, that peace in which I was wrapped, fascinated me! But, slowly slowly, I began to descend again toward my body, which I found without life. I saw it lifeless on a stretcher of the National Nursing University. I saw the doctors who were giving me electric shocks to my body, to pull me out of cardiac arrest. I and my cousin remained more than two hours laid on the ground, because our bodies were giving off electric discharges, and they could not be touched. Only when the electric charge was completely discharged, they could help us. And then they began the attempts to reanimate me.

I looked, and I rested the feet of my soul (also the soul has a human form), my head made a spark and with violence I entered, because the body seemed to suck me inside. It was an immense pain to enter: there came out sparks from all over and I felt myself jammed into something very small (my body). It was as if my body, with this weight and stature, suddenly entered into a baby’s outfit, but of iron. It was a terrible suffering, I felt the intense pain of my burned flesh, the body totally burned caused an indescribable pain, it was blazing terribly and gave off smoke and vapor… I heard the doctors cry out: “She is coming back! She is coming back!”

They were very happy, but my suffering was indescribable! My legs were frightfully black, there was live flesh on the body and on the arms! The problem of the legs was complicated when they considered the possibility of amputating them!

… But for me there was another terrible pain: the vanity of a worldly women, and enterprising woman, intellectual, the student… Slave to the body, to beauty, to the fashion, I dedicated four hours every day to aerobics; enslaved to having a beautiful body, I underwent massages, diets, injections… Basically everything you can imagine. This was my life, a routine of slavery in order to have a beautiful body.

I always used to say: if I have beautiful breasts, they are to show them; why hide them?

I said the same thing about my legs, because I knew I had spectacular legs, nice abdominal muscles… But in an instant, I saw with horror how my whole life had been only a continual and useless care of the body… Because this was the center of my life: love for my body. And now, I no longer had a body! In the place of the breasts I had startling holes, especially the left one, which was practically gone. The legs were a sight to be seen, like fragments, but without flesh, black as coal. Note: the parts of the body that I took care of and esteemed the most, were the ones that were completely burned and literally without flesh.

At the Hospital
They then brought me to the “Social Seguro”, where they operated on me immediately, and began to remove all the burned tissue. While they were anaesthetizing me, I again came out of my body, worried about my legs, when all of a sudden, in that same moment, terrible and horrible…

But first I must tell you something, brothers: I was a cafeteria Catholic, I was for my whole life, because my relationship with God was taken care of in a 25 minute Sunday Mass, and that’s all. I went to the Mass where the priest spoke less, because I got tired! What anguish I felt, with those priests who spoke a lot! This was my relationship with God! For this, all the worldly currents drug me along: I lacked the protection of prayer well done with faith, even in the Mass! One day, when I was doing further studies, I heard a priest affirm that hell does not exist, and not even the demons! It was precisely what I wanted to hear! I immediately thought to myself: if the demons do not exist, and there is no hell, then we all go to Heaven! And thus, what is there to fear?!

What makes me most sad now, and I confess to you with great shame, is that the only tie that still held me in the Church, was the fear of the devil. When I heard that hell does not exist, I immediately said: very good, if we all go to Heaven, it is not important what we are or what we do!

This determined my total moving away from the Lord. I distanced myself from the Church and I began to speak badly, with cusswords, etc. I no longer had any fear of sin, and I began to ruin my relationship with God. I began to say to everyone that the demons do not exist, that they are the inventions of the priests, that they are the manipulations on the part of the Church, and finally… I arrived to the point of saying to my colleagues at the University that God does not exist, that we were products of evolution, etc. etc., succeeding in influencing many people.

Let us return now to the operating room: when I saw myself in that situation, what terrible fright! I finally saw that the demons existed, and how, and they came to seek precisely me! They came to present to me the bill, one could say, since I had accepted their offers of sin! And these offers are not free! One pays!! My sins had their consequences…

In that moment, then, I saw coming out of the wall of the operating room so many persons, apparently common, normal…but with a look full of hate, diabolic, frightening, who made my soul tremble: I immediately perceived that we were dealing with demons. I had in myself a special awareness: I understood in fact that to each one of these I owed something, that sin is not gratuitous, and that the principle lie of the devil is to say that he does not exist: this is his best strategy in order to work as he pleases with us. I realized that yes, he exists, and that he came to surround me, to seek me! Just imagine the fright, the terror!!

My scientific and intellectual mind, now did not help me at all. I went around in the room, I was trying to get back into my body, but this flesh of mine did not receive me, and the scare was terrible! I ended up fleeing as fast as I could, I passed through, I do not know how, the wall of the operating room, hoping to be able to hide myself in the aisles of the hospital, but when I passed the wall… Down! I made a jump into emptiness…! I headed toward several tunnels which went down toward the bottom. At the beginning there was still a little light, like beehives in which there were so many people: young ones, old ones, men, women, who were crying, and with frightening screams they were grinding their teeth… And I, ever more terrified, continued to descend, seeking to get out of there, while the light was going away diminishing… I carried on roaming in those tunnels in a frightening darkness, until I arrived to an obscurity that cannot be compared to anything else… I can only say that, in comparison, the darkest obscurity on earth is not even comparable to the full sunlight at midday. Down there, that same obscurity generates pain, horror, shame, and stinks terribly. It is a living obscurity, yes, it is alive: there the mind is dead or inert. At the end of my descent, running along all these tunnels, I arrived to a level place. I was frantic, with a will of iron to get out of there: the same will that I had to ascend in life, but now it did not help me at all, because there I was and there I remained. At a certain point I saw the ground open up, like a great mouth, enormous! It was alive! Alive! I felt my body empty, empty in a startling way, and under me an incredible frightening abyss, horrible; that which chilled me the most was that, from there down, you did not feel even a little Love of God, not even a little drop of hope. That chasm had something that sucked me into it. I cried out like a mad women, terrorized, feeling the horror of not being able to avoid that descent, because I realized that I was irretrievably sliding inside… I knew that, if I were to enter, I would not at all have remained there, but I would have continued to descend, without ever being able to come back up. It was this, the spiritual death for my soul.

The spiritual death of the soul: I was irretrievably lost forever. But in this horror so great, precisely while I was about to enter, St. Michael the Archangel seized me by the feet… My body entered in that abyss, but the feet remained held on high. It was a terrible moment and truly painful. When I arrived there, the light that still was left in my spirit annoyed those demons; all the horrifying unclean beings that dwell there, immediately attacked me. Those horrible beings were like larva, like bloodsuckers that were trying to block off the light. Imagine the horror in seeing myself covered by such creatures… I was crying out, I was crying out like a mad women! Those things were burning! Brothers, they are living darkness, it is a hate that burns, which devours us, which makes us naked. There are not words to describe that horror!

The Souls of Purgatory
Note that I was an atheist, but there I began to cry out: “Souls of Purgatory! Please, pull me out of here! I beg you, help me!”

While I was crying out, I began to hear crying thousands and thousands of persons, youth… Yes, above all youth, with so much suffering! I perceived that there, in that horrible place, in that quagmire of hate and of suffering, they were gnashing their teeth, with screams and laments that filled me with compassion and that I will never be able to forget… (Already 10 years have passed, but I still cry and suffer, when I remember the suffering of all those persons)… I was saying, I understood that in that place there were those persons who, in one moment of desperation, they committed suicide… Now they are in those torments, with those horrible beings near them, surrounded by demons that torment them. But the cruellest of these torments was the absence of God, because there one does not feel God. I understood that, those who in one moment of desperation took their lives, had to remain there, within those torments, until all the time that they might have spent on the earth had passed: because all those who kill themselves, go out of the Divine Order.

Those poor persons, above all so many youth, many, many… They cry and suffer much… If man might know the suffering that awaits him, never would anyone make the decision to take his life!

Do you know what the greatest torment is, there?
It is to see how one’s own parents, or relatives, who are alive, are crying and suffering with a tremendous sense of guilt: if I would have punished, or if I would not have punished, if I had said to him, or if I had not said to him, if I had done this or that… In the end, these regrets so terrible, – a true hell for those who love them and remain in this life – , they are what makes them suffer the most. It is the greatest torment for them, and it is here that the demons rage, showing these scenes:

“Look how your mother cries, look how she suffers, look how your father suffers, look how they are desperate, how they are distressed, how they blame themselves and discuss, accusing each other reciprocally, look at all the suffering that you caused them. Look how they rebel against God. Look at your family… All this because of your fault!”

That which these poor souls need, is that those who remain down here might begin a walk of conversion, that they might change their life, that they might do works of charity, that they might visit the sick… And that they might offer Masses in atonement for the soul of the dead. These souls benefit enormously from all of this. In fact, the souls who find themselves in Purgatory can no longer do anything for themselves. Nothing! But God yes, through the Mass. Also we must help them in this way.

I thus understood that those poor souls could not help me, and in this suffering, in this anguish, I began again to cry out: “But here there is an error! See I am a saint! I never stole! I never killed! I never did anything evil to anyone! On the contrary, before failing in my business, I imported the best products from Switzerland, I extracted and adjusted teeth, many times I did not require the clients to pay if they were unable. I bought things and I gave them to the poor! What am I doing here?!…”

I was vindicating my rights! I, who was so good, who would have to go straight to Heaven, what was I doing here?!

I went every Sunday to Mass, even though I considered myself an atheist and I did not pay attention to what the priest was saying, I never missed Mass. If I missed Mass five times in my whole life, it was a lot! What is it that I was doing there?!

“But what am I doing, here? Pull me out of here! Take me out of here!” I continued shouting terrified, with those horrible beings hanging on to me!

“I am Catholic! I am Catholic, please, get me out of here!”

I Saw My Parents
When I shouted out that I was Catholic, I saw a little light: and you see that a small light even very small, in that darkness, is the maximum, it is the greatest gift that one can receive. I saw some steps at the top of this chasm, and I see my father (who died 5 years before) almost at the entrance of the abyss. He had a little bit of light; and four more steps up I saw my mother, with much more light and in a position like this, as in prayer. As soon as I saw them, I experience a joy so great that I began to cry out: “Dad! Mom! What joy! Come and take me! Come and take me out of here! Dad, Mom, please, get me out of here! I beg you, carry me out of here! Carry me away!!”

While all this was happening, my body was in a deep coma: I was intubated, connected to the machines, and agonizing. Air was not entering into my lungs, the kidneys were not working… If I was connected to the machinery, it was only because my sister, who is a doctor, had insisted with her colleagues, invoking the motive that they were not God. In fact, they thought that it was not worth while to keep me alive, and they spoke in these terms to my relatives: they said it was not the case to keep going relentlessly, that it was better to let me die tranquilly, because in any case I found myself in agony. My sister insisted so strongly…Do you know the incoherence? I defended euthanasia, the right to die in a dignified way!

The doctors did not let anyone enter where I was, except this my sister doctor, who remained continually next to me.

When my soul, which was in the beyond, saw my parents, my sister, who was near my body in coma, she heard me clearly crying out to them, so happy, that they might come to take me.

Perhaps it might have happened to one of you to have heard a person in the state on unconsciousness to cry out, or pronounce some words: this is what happened with me. I almost caused my sister to die of fright! In fact, I began to cry out with joy when I saw them, asking them to come to take me; and so my sister, who heard all of this, shouted: “Now it is that she is dead, my sister! My mother and my father have come to take her! Go away, do not take her! Go away, Mom, please; go away, Dad, please: do not take her! Do you not see that she has small children! Do not take her away! Do not take her away!”

The doctors had to pull her out of there, thinking that my poor sister was delirious, that she might be in a state of shock; which would have been normal, because it was not a small thing that was happening: the death of my cousin, to go to take the corpse to the mortuary, the sister who dies, does not die, but will not live more than 24 hours, according to the opinion of the doctors… It was by now three days that she went forward in this anguish, and this without any sleep. Do not be surprised that they believed her to be exhausted and prey to hallucinations…

For my situation, imagine what joy when I see my parents! In that place, in that situation so horrible in which I found myself, I see my parents!

When they looked toward me and they saw me there, you cannot imagine the immense pain that their faces revealed. There, we perceive and we see the sentiments of the others; I saw the pain that they felt, that suffering of theirs so great. My father began to cry so, so much, and he cried out: “My daughter! Oh, no! My God, my daughter no! My God, my little daughter no!”

My mother was praying, and when she looked toward me and saw my sorrow in my eyes, but at the same time nothing took away the peace and the sweetness of her face, not even a tear! Instead of crying, she lifted up the eyes, then turned to look toward me. I understood with horror that they could not pull me out of there! This augmented my suffering, seeing them there sharing my pain without being able to do anything for me! I understood also that they were there to give an account to the Lord of the education that they had given to me. They were the tutors, to which was confided the job of looking after the talents that God had given to me. With their life and their testimony, they had to protect me from the attacks of Satan. And they had to nourish the graces, that God had put in me by way of Baptism. All parents are the guardians of the talents that God gave to the children.

When I saw their suffering, above all that of my father, I cried out again, desperate: “Take me out of here! Take me out of here! I do not have fault to be here, because I am Catholic! I am Catholic! Pull me out of here!”

My Judgment
When I cried out again that I was Catholic, brothers, I heard a Voice, so sweet, so sweet… So beautiful, that it filled everything with peace and love, and made my soul jump. Those horrible creatures that were clinging to me, at hearing it, immediately prostrated themselves in adoration, and asked permission to withdraw themselves, because they could not stand the sweetness of that Voice: then something was opened, like a mouth hanging down, and they fled with fear. Just imagine this! When I see those beings, those horrific demons, there prostrated… At the mere hearing the Voice of the Lord, (notwithstanding the pride of Satan, and thus they hear it as something very unpleasant), they throw themselves on their knees!

Then, I saw the Most Blessed Virgin prostrated, when the priest elevated Our Lord in the Host, during the Mass that was celebrated for the soul of my cousin. The Virgin Mary interceded for me! Prostrated at the feet of Our Lord, she gathered all the prayers that the people of my land made for me, and she presented them to Him.

You know, at the moment of the elevation, when the priest lifts up the Host, one feels the presence of Jesus, everyone prostates themselves on their knees, even the demons! … And I, who went to the Mass without the least of respect, without giving any attention, with gum to chew in my mouth, sometimes dozing off, looking around, lost in a thousand banal thoughts…! And then I had the guts to complain, full of pride, that God did not listen to me when I asked something from Him!

Believe me, it was staggering to see how, at the passing of Our Lord, all those creatures, all those frightening beings, threw themselves on the ground, in an impressive adoration.

I saw the Virgin Mary, graciously prostrate at the feet of the Lord, praying for me, in adoration before Him. … And I, a sinner, with my rubbish, treating Him without any respect, and saying that I was good… Yes, miserably good! Denying and blaspheming the Lord!

Imagine what a sinner I was, when even the demons prostrated themselves on the ground, at the passing of the Lord Jesus Christ…!

* * * * * * *

That Voice, so beautiful, says to me: Very well, if you are Catholic, tell me the Commandments of the Law of God!”

… Think of the fright! … That question I just did not expect! I only knew that there were 10! And then… nothing more!

“And now, how do I cope with this?”, I was thinking, afflicted. I remembered then that my mother used to say that the first commandment was love, she spoke of it always… Love of God and love of neighbor. In the end, the discourses of my mother were useful for something, I said to myself. So I chose this answer, hoping that it would suffice and that the rest might not be noticed…! I was thinking to get by in this way, as I always did when I was in life: in fact, I always had the answer ready, the perfect answer, I always succeed in justifying myself and in defending myself in such a way, that no one discovered that which I did not know. Now I thought to manage in the same way. And I began to say: “The first commandment is: to love God above everything else, and… the neighbor as myself.”

“Very well: – he said to me – and you did this? Did you love?

Totally confused, I replied: “I… yes! Yes, I yes. Yes!”

But that wonderful Voice said: “No!!!”

I assure you that when he said to me: “No!”, then it was that I felt the strike of the lightning bolt! In fact, I still did not feel on which side it had struck me… But when I heard that “No!”, I felt all the pain of the lightning bolt!… I felt naked, all my masks fell, and I remained uncovered.

That soft Voice continued to say to me: “No!!! You did not love your Lord above all things, and even less did you love your neighbor as yourself! You made of yourself a God that you modelled on yourself, on your life! Only in moments of extreme necessity, or in suffering, you remembered your Lord. And then yes, you knelt down, you cried, you asked, you offered novenas, you proposed to yourself to go to Mass, to prayer groups, asking for some graces or a miracle… When you were poor, when your family was humble, when you still desired to become a professional, then yes, everyday you used to pray on your knees, whole hours, beseeching your Lord! You would pray, asking me to pull you out of that poverty, that I might permit you to become a professional and to be someone! When you found yourself in need and you needed money, then yes, you promised: I pray the Rosary, but You, Lord, grant me a little money!

This was the relationship that you used to have with your Lord! Never, did you keep one promise made, not even one! And beyond not keeping the promises, you never thanked me!”

And the Lord insisted on this: “You gave your word, you made a promise to your Lord, but you never kept them!”

The Lord showed me one of my many prayers: when I asked Him the grace to have my first car, I would pray, and very humbly I would ask that please, he might grant also only a little car, even an old one, it is not important… just so it works. But as soon as I obtained what I desired, I did not even say a “thanks” to the Lord; and eight days later, not only did I not thank Him, but already I denied Him and I spoke bad about Him. He showed me how, in all the graces that He granted me, not only was I lacking in regards to the promises made, but I did not even give thanks.

I saw the Lord in a truly sad way. You know, my relationship with God was like a ATM: I put in a Rosary, and He was supposed to give me money… and if he did not give it to me, I rebelled. The Lord showed me all of this. Just as soon as he permitted me to have my profession, – and in consequence, to begin to have a certain prestige and also money – , the name of God was already not comfortable to me… I began to feel I was great, without ever having for Him the least expression of love, or gratitude.

To be grateful? Never! Not even a ‘thank you’ for the new day that he gave me, or for my health, or for having a roof where I lived… Or even a prayer of compassion for those poor little ones who do not have a house, nor something to eat. Nothing!!! Ungrateful to the max! More than anything else, I became more incredulous in regards to my Lord, while I believed in Venus and Mercury for fortune, I went blindly after astrology, saying that the stars direct our life. I began to believe in all the doctrines that the world offered me. I believed, for example, in reincarnation: I convinced myself, simply, one would die and would re-begin from the top… and I forgot it cost the price of the Blood of my Lord Jesus.

The Lord continued: “All that you had, it was not given to you because you had asked for it, but it was a blessing that you received from Heaven: you, instead, said you obtained it all by yourself, because you were a worker, a fighter… That everything you had conquered with your hands, and by the force of study. No! Look: how many professionals are there, more qualified than you, who work as much or more than you?”

The Lord gave me an examination of the 10 Commandments, showing me that which I was: In words I styled myself to adore and love God, but on the contrary I adored Satan. In my outpatients’ clinic a lady who read Tarot cards would usually come, and she did some magic in order to set free from bad influences, and I used to say: “I do not believe in these things… But do it anyway, because one never knows…” And she did her devilry. In a corner where no one saw, she put a horseshoe and an aloe plant, in order to keep away bad fortune, and other such things. Do you know what I did, permitting this? I opened the doors to the demons, so that they could enter at their pleasure, and to circulate freely, merrily, in my outpatients’ clinic and in my life. You see that all this is shameful. God made an analysis of my whole life, in the light of the 10 Commandments, he showed me that which I was in my relationships with the neighbor, and with Him. I criticized everything and everyone… And everyone pointed with their finger and said about me: “Holy Gloria”…! He showed me I said loved God and neighbor, but on the contrary I was very envious. Now I saw that, when I deceived someone or lied, it was like committing perjury, because in the moment in which I said: “I am Catholic”, I declared that Jesus Christ was my Lord and at the same time I gave testimony to lies and deception! How much evil I did to so many people! As for the rest I was never grateful to my parents, for all their sacrifice and commitment so that I might have a profession and conquer in life; for all the sacrifices and the efforts that they did… But I did not see them, I ignored them, and as soon as I had my work, they even diminished in my eyes: to the point that I was ashamed of my mother, for her humility and poverty.

Jesus continued, showing me what a spouse I was: I passed the whole day grumbling, from when I awoke. My husband said: “Have a nice day!”. And I: “maybe it will be for you!! Look at the rain!” I always grumbled and contradicted everything.

… As far as sanctifying the holy days? What fright! What sorrow I felt! Jesus made me see how I would dedicate four and even five hours to my body with gymnastics, and not even ten minutes a day for my Lord, not even a thank you, or a nice prayer… no, nothing! On the contrary, sometimes I even recited the Rosary beginning it rapidly, during the interval of the soap opera. I thought to succeed in praying, I might do it during the commercials. I began rapidly, without giving attention to what I said, more worried if the soap opera might had recommenced or not, and to what point I had arrived. In short, prayer without elevating my heart to God.

Jesus continued to show me how I was in no way grateful in regard to Him, and the laziness that I had in going to Mass. When I still lived with my parents, and my mother obliged me to go, I said to her: “But, Mom, if God is everywhere, what need do I have to go to church for the Mass?” Clearly, for me it was very convenient to talk like this… And Jesus showed this to me. I had the Lord twenty-four hours a day for me, all my life God took care of me, and I–so lazy as to bot dedicate to Him a little time on Sunday, to show Him my gratitude, my love for Him… But the worst thing was to know that, to frequent the church, meant to nourish my soul. I, instead, dedicated myself totally to the care of my body, I became a slave to my flesh, and I forgot this particular: that I had a soul! And never did I take care of it.

Regarding the Word of God, I even said, impudently, that: the one who read the Bible a lot became crazy. I arrive to the point to be a blasphemer, and the incoherence of my life brought me to say: “But what Most Holy? And God would be present there? In the ciborium and in the chalice? … The priest should add brandy, to give it good flavor!”

To what point did I arrive in degrading my relationship with God! I left my soul without nourishment, and as if that were not enough, the only thing I did was criticize the priests. If you knew, brothers, how bad I felt about this, before Jesus! The Lord showed me how my soul was reduced due to all these criticisms. Beyond everything else, consider the fact that I declared a priest to be homosexual, and the whole Community came to know this… You cannot imagine the evil that I did to that priest! No, you cannot imagine it! I cannot tell you about it, because it would be too long. I tell you only that, one word only, has the power to kill and destroy souls. Now I saw all the evil that I had done! My shame was so great, that there are no words to describe it! Can I only beg you to not do the same: do not criticize! Pray! I saw that the gravest fault which stained my soul and drew more curses in my life was to speak evil about priests!

Pray For The Priests
My family always criticized the priests. From when we were small, my father, and everyone in the house, used to criticize and say: “These priests are womanizers, and have more money than us… And they are this, and they are that…”, and we would repeat this.

Our Lord said to me almost shouting: “Who did you think you are, to make yourself god and judge my consecrated ones?! They are of flesh, and the sanctity is to them given for the benefit of the communities in which I put them there as a gift. And the communities have the obligation to pray for him, to love him and to support him”. Might you know, brothers, that, when a priest falls, it will be the community to respond regarding his sanctity. The devil hates Catholics, immensely more the priests. He hates our Church, because where there is a priest who consecrates…

I open a parenthesis: you must all know that the priest, even though remaining a man, is a consecrated one of the Lord, recognized by the Eternal Father, so that in a piece of bread there happens a miracle, a transubstantiation: by the hands of the priest, it becomes the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ… And these hands, the devil hates them intensely, terribly. The devil detests us Catholics due to the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is an open door for Heaven, and it is the only door! Without the Eucharist, no one enters into Heaven. When a person is agonizing, God comes beside this person, independent of the religion that he belongs to or his beliefs; the Lord reveals himself and says to him affectionately, with Love and Mercy: “I am your Lord!” And if the person asks for pardon and accepts this Lord, something happens that is difficult to explain: Jesus immediately brings this soul to where the Mass is being celebrated in that moment, and the person receives [a spiritual communion], which is a mystical communion. Because only the one who receives the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, can enter into Heaven. It is something mystical, it is an immense grace that we have in the Catholic Church, a grace that God has given to our Church; and many people speak badly about this Church, and yet by way of Her they receive salvation and go to Purgatory, and there they continue to benefit by the grace of the Eucharist. They are saved. They go to Purgatory, but they are saved! Because of this the devil hates very much the priests: because where there is a priest, there are the hands that consecrate the bread and the wine, making them to become for us the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ. Thus we must pray very much for the priests, because the devil attacks them constantly.

Our Lord showed me all of this.

The Sacraments
Only by way of the priest do we have the sacrament of reconciliation, for example! Only by way of him do we obtain the pardon of our faults. Do you know what the confessional is? It is the “bathing of souls”! Not with water and soap, but with the Blood of Christ! When my soul was filthy, black due to sin, if I would have confessed, it would have been washed with the Blood of Christ. Furthermore, I would have broken the strings that held me tied to the evil one. Would he not therefore have reason, the devil, to detest the priests?! Also those who might have been great sinners, have the power to absolve sins. And the Lord showed me how: in the Wound of His Heart… Yes!

You know, there are things which surpass the intellect of man because they are spiritual realities, and yet we are talking about truths more real than ours… Through this Wound, I was saying, a soul rises up to the Divine level, to the level of the Divine Mercy, to the door of Mercy, it rises up to the Heart of Jesus, eternal Priest; and there [in the confessional], Jesus places His Cross, bleeding in His Eternal Present… And that soul returns clean. Now I see how my soul returned clean in the confession, and in every sin that I confessed, Our Lord breaks the stings that united me to Satan. (And I, unfortunately, stayed away from confession!)

… But all this happens only by way of the priest. Thus, we have the obligation and the duty to pray for them, so that God might protect them, might enlighten them, and might guide them.

For all these motives the devil hates terribly the Catholic Church and the priests.

Matrimony
I would like to speak to you about a great grace that is the sacrament of matrimony. When we enter into the church on the day of our wedding, at the moment in which we say our “yes”, promising to be faithful for ever, in joy and in sorrow, in health and in sickness, etc., do you know to Whom we promise? Nothing more, nothing less than to God the Father! Our God is enthralled with matrimony! He is the only Witness, when we say these words. Each of us, when we will die, will see this moment precisely in the Book of Life. Then we will catch sight of an indescribable golden light, an intense splendor: God the Father writes these words in the Book with letters of gold, so beautiful.

In the moment in which we receive the Body and the Blood of Jesus, we form a pact with God, and with the person whom we have chosen to share together a life. When we pronounce these words, we say them to the Most Holy Trinity.

I saw that on the day of my matrimony, when myself and my husband received the Most Holy Eucharist, we were no longer two, but three! We two, and Jesus! In fact, as soon as we communicate with Jesus, He unites us as one thing only! He places us in His Heart and we become ONE, forming with Jesus a holy trinity! “Let man not separate what God has united”.

Now I ask: who separates this ONE? No one! No one, brothers, can separate it! No one, after the matrimony has been consummated! And if the two spouses arrive virgins to the marriage, you cannot imagine the blessings that are poured on this marriage!

I saw also the matrimony of my parents. When my father slipped the ring on the finger of my mother, and the priest declared them husband and wife, Our Lord consigned to my father a staff of wood, shining with Light, which seemed a little bent. We are dealing here with a grace that God gives to the man: it is a gift of authority of God the Father, so that this man might be able to guide this little flock who are his children, born in matrimony, and also to defend the marriage and the children from so many evils that attack the families.

To my mother, God the Father placed in her heart something that seemed like a sphere of Fire, so beautiful: it signifies the Love of God, the Holy Spirit. I knew that my mother was a very pure woman. God was happy, joyous. You cannot imagine how many unclean spirits seized my father in that moment. These spirits seem like larva, bloodsuckers. You know, when someone has relationships outside of marriage, the evil spirits immediately attach themselves to all the parts of the person; they begin with his sexual organs, they take possession of the flesh, of the hormones; they occupy the brain, they take the pituitary gland and all the neurological parts of the organism of the person, and they begin to produce a quantity of hormones that bring the instincts lower. They transform a child of God into a slave of the flesh, of his own instincts, of his sexual appetite, that which brings the person to be that which, as they say, “they enjoy life”.

When a couple arrives as virgins, it gives glory to God. A sacred pact happens with Him, who sanctifies this sexuality. In fact, the sexuality is not sin! God has given it as a blessing, because sexuality is God and the couple. Where there is the sacrament of matrimony, (also if the spouses did not arrive there virgins), God is present in this sacramental bed! Because in the wedding bed, blessed by the sacrament of matrimony, there is the Holy Spirit; even in the meals of this couple there is the presence of the Lord God, who blesses the food. God remains enraptured before matrimony; He is happy to accompany the spouses in their new life, in this beginning of a new life together. The couple and the Lord form a Trinity. Unfortunately many spouses do not know this, they do not have this notion… And they do not even think about God: they marry only because of tradition, and not for faith… They think only to go out of the church to go to have a party, to eat, to drink, to take off on the honeymoon… Keep in mind that in this there is no evil: the evil lies in leaving the Lord outside of all of this. As I did, who left the Lord on the street; it did not even enter my head to invite Him in my new life, in our new house. He, in fact, has pleasure that we invite Him to enter and to be with us forever, in the joys and in the moments less good; He desires that we feel His presence… Certainly, in the sacrament of matrimony the Lord is present also without being invited… But how much more beautiful it would be if of this presence we might be conscious…

In the matrimony of my parents, the most beautiful thing was that God gave back to my father the gifts and the Grace that he had lost: this because he married my mother, who was a woman very pure in sentiments, and a virgin. I looked at my father, his disordered and filthy sexuality. But because he was very “macho”, and his friends had begun to put into him this poison, telling him not to let the wife charm and dominate him, so that he had to continue his life as before, and so two weeks after matrimony he ended up in a whorehouse, in order to show his friends that he was continuing to be the same, that he did not let himself be dominated by the wife…

Do you know how his staff of authority and protection, that God gave him, ended up? The devil took it away from him! And all those evil spirits, those unclean beings, returned to take him to themselves. From pastor of his flock, my father transformed himself into a wolf of his own family and of his home!

When one is unfaithful to his wedding, he is unfaithful to God. He is lacking in his word, to the oath that he made, to God and to the person that he married, in the day of his matrimony. He does not do what he promised. If someone has the intention of not being faithful to his own marriage, it is better not to get married. The Lord tells us: if you are unfaithful, you will condemn yourself! If you will not be faithful, do not get married! Son, daughter, ask me the grace to be faithful to your wife, to your husband, and to God.

How many evils come into a marriage, due to infidelity?! A husband, for example, goes to a whorehouse, or is unfaithful with the secretary. Notwithstanding the precautions, he contracts a virus; and even washing himself afterwards, that virus does not die… So, when later he has relations with the wife, the virus enters the vagina of the woman and it remains there in the cervix, and arrives in the uterus. In time it forms an ulcer, of which often the women does not notice. And when, years later, the wife goes to the doctor suffering very much, it is diagnosed cancer. Yes! Cancer! And then, who says that adultery does not kill? Moreover, how many abortions are done due to adultery? For example, how many women, who had been unfaithful and became pregnant, have recourse to abortion so that the husband might not discover it? They kill an innocent one that is not able to speak, nor defend himself! And these are only some examples. Adultery kills in so many and diverse forms! Then, we still have the courage to protest against God, when things do not go well, when we have problems, when sicknesses arrive: while it is we who procured these things with our sins, drawing evil on our life. Behind sin, there is always the evil one! We open the doors to him, when we sin so gravely! And then still we lament that God does not love us. Where is God, who permits this or that?! What nerve we have! May you know that God is the rock that protects marriage. Woe to the one who tries to destroy a marriage! When someone tries, he collides with this Rock who is Jesus. God defends matrimony—do not ever doubt it!

I desire also to inform you to be very careful with regard to those mother-in-laws who interfere in the marriage of the children, to disturb them, causing problems in their relationships. Also, with the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law: Be the couple in the right or in the wrong…they are already married, and there is nothing more to do. The only thing is to pray for them. Would that they might pray for that marriage, and put it aside! Many women have lost their souls for having interfered in the marriage of their children! This is a grave sin! If you see that something is not going right, that one of them or both are sinning, intercede to God for them; ask help from God. You can also call the couple and speak to the two, inviting them to save the marriage, to think about the children, and reminding them that marriage is for love, to give and to forgive reciprocally. One must fight in favor of the marriage, this yes: but never interfere in another way, and even less to take a position in favor of one or the other.

Honor your Father and your Mother
Jesus continued to show me everything… I already recounted to you how I was ungrateful to my parents, how I was ashamed of them; I spoke bad about them and I disavowed them because they were poor and could not give me all that my rich friends had. I was an ungrateful daughter, to the point of saying that that woman was not my mother, because she seemed inferior to me. It was frightening to see a summary of a woman without God. She destroys all that she draws near to. And beyond all this, and this is the worst thing, I felt and I believed to be a very good person!

I thought that regarding the 4th commandment I would have passed through well, because my parents had cost me a lot: I spent a lot of money for them, due to their sicknesses, (all the analysis, in fact, were done by payment), because both of them had grave sicknesses before dying. It was my husband who covered the expenses, and I would say: “Look out for these two shameless ones; they do not leave a penny in retirement and we have to spend a fortune for them. The parents of my friends, instead, leave benefits and…” And the Lord showed me how I analyzed everything from the point of view of money, because I manipulated even my parents when I had money and power, I even profited from them.

With money, I made myself god, and I trampled on even my parents. Do you know what grieved me the most? To see them there… My father was crying, seeing that he had been a good father, that he had taught his daughter to be a good worker, a fighter, an entrepreneur, to be respected, because only those who work go forward… But I forgot a particular something: that I had a soul, and that he was my evangelizer, with his witness. My life began to sink, with the example that he gave me. He saw now [from Purgatory] with profound sorrow, the responsibility he had before God, since he was a womanizer, and he used to say happily, boasting to my mother and to everyone, to be very “macho”, because he had many women and he could conquer all of them. Moreover he used to drink and smoke. He was also a good person, but had these vices, which according to him were not vices, on the contrary he believed them to be virtues. He was very proud. I, who was just a baby and saw how my mother would cry when he spoke about the other women, began to fill myself with anger, with resentments of rage. The resentment begins with the spiritual death: I felt a frightening anger in seeing how my father humiliated my mother before people, and how he caused her so many tears… And she did not say anything. There I began my rebellion.

When I was an adolescent, I used to say to my mother: “I will never take after you. You throw the dignity of women underfoot. For this we women are not worth anything: the whole fault is due to women like you, without dignity, without pride, who allow themselves to be trodden underfoot and to be humiliated by men!” And to my father, I used to say: “Dad, listen well: I will never permit a man to do to me what you do to Mom! Never! If one day a man might be unfaithful to me, I will vindicate myself! I’ll do the same thing, so that he might learn!” My father beat me shouting: “How dare you, little girl?!” I do not know why my father was so chauvinist. I said to him: “OK, you can even beat me… But if one day I will marry, and my husband betrays me, I will vindicate myself, I will repay him with the same coin, so that men might understand and experience how a woman suffers, when a man tramples her and humiliates her is such a way!” I filled myself with all this hate and resentment. You know, I felt so much rage, that this made of my life a rebellion: I began to live with the desire to defend woman. I began to support abortion, euthanasia, divorce, and I counseled all the women who I knew, to vindicate themselves if their husband betrayed them! I was never unfaithful physically, but I did much harm to so many people with these counsels.

When I was finally economically well off, I began to say to my mother: “Mom, get separated from Dad, because it is impossible to put up with such a man! Have a little dignity, give worth to yourself, Mom!” Even though he was like that, I liked my father: do you know that I loved him, despite everything? Because my mother was truly a good woman, who never, never, taught us to hate, neither my father, or anyone else! … And I, you can imagine a little bit! I wanted to get my parents to get divorced! But my mother used to say: “No, my daughter, I cannot; I suffer, it is true, but I sacrifice myself for you, my children. You are seven and I am only one. I sacrifice myself because yours is a good father: I would be incapable of separating myself from him and leaving you without a father. And then, if I separated myself, who would pray so that your father might be saved? It is I that can beseech the Lord for him, so that he might find salvation: in fact, the pain and the suffering that he procures for me, I unite them to the pains that Jesus suffered on the Cross. Everyday I go to church, and before the tabernacle I say: “Lord, this suffering is nothing; I unite it to that of Your Cross, so that my husband and my children might be saved.” I entrust your father to Jesus, together with the Rosary. The devil pushes him toward the bottom, making him sin, but I push him up with the Rosary; I bring him before the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle and I say to Jesus: “Lord, he is here: I confide that you will not let me die without seeing him converted. Lord, I do not pray only for my husband, but also for all the women who are in the same situation, especially for those who, instead of kneeling down to beseech you for their husband and for their children, put themselves into the hands of the enchanters and of the fortune-tellers, or else they betray them, consigning their own soul and the family into the claws of the evil one. Lord, I pray for these women, for these families.”

You know, eight years before dying, my father converted! He repented, he asked pardon from God, and the Lord pardoned him. He was in Purgatory, in the lowest part, in great suffering, so that he made reparation for his sins. To make reparation for sin is something that we do not take very seriously, we do not think about it. Certainly, often it is not possible, but precisely for this the Lord grants us the grace to make reparation for our errors through the Eucharist. Every time we participate at a Mass, the Lord gives us the grace to make reparation for the evil that we have committed. God shows us, in the life after, the consequences of our sins, of the evil that we have done to neighbor. Even a bad look, an ugly word… If we could see how terrible it is! And how we cry, there, all these errors!

In the case of my father, my mother asked him to counsel my brothers to abandon their life of sin that they were leading. In fact, they were following the footsteps of their father, in infidelity, in drinking… They were his copy. If he might have done as the wife said to him, *this* would have been reparation. But he always responded to let the kids have fun, that they were only engaged, and that latter they would have time to change! He gave a bad example to my brothers, and he did not repair for his sins. He was crying, there in Purgatory, and he said: “I’m saved, thanks to 38 years of prayer of this holy woman, that God gave me as a spouse!” My mother passed 38 years of her life praying for him!

Satan and his Strategy
Those who saw the film of the Passion of Christ, will remember that while they scourged Jesus, one sees a devil with a little child, (also a devil), who looks at Jesus and smiles. Well, may you know that today he is no longer a baby, but a malefic genius, enormous and perverse, who keeps in slavery many peoples, with the pleasures of the flesh, with magic, with erroneous theologies, as for example those which affirm that the devil does not exist. Imagine the astuteness of the devil, who denies himself! He makes us believe that he does not exist, in order to be able to act undisturbed! Yes, he guides the instructions of men in order to make them believe that he does not exist, and so to bring us to destruction. He finds a way to confuse even those who believe in God; when there are true apparitions, for example, he makes to believe that they are false. He confuses the people in thousands and a manner, taking advantage of the weak side of each one. Many Catholics, believers and practising, go to Mass and to a fortune-teller at the same time. Because the evil one makes people believe that there is nothing evil there, and that we go to Heaven all the same, because we certainly do not use magic to do evil to someone! The devil guides, uses and directs all of this with a very well prepared strategy. You know therefore that, when we have recourse to magic, it does not matter for whatever, good or evil, either way the beast imprints his seal. When we go to some enchanter, or diviner, or fortune-teller, or astrologer, or to one who invokes the spirits, in all of these places the devil places his seal, his stamp.

I found myself in one of these places when I went with a friend, who brought me to an enchanter to consult her, to predict my future: there I was marked by the beast. The evil one put on me his seal. The worst thing was that, beginning from that day, in which by way of that lady I received the stamp of evil, I began to have disturbances: nocturnal agitation, nightmares, anxieties, fears, and even a profound desire to commit suicide! I did not understand the why I had any of these desires! I cried, I felt unhappy, and never again did I feel in peace. I prayed, but I felt the Lord far from me: never again did I sense that nearness with Him, that instead I had when I was little. Of course! I had opened the doors to the beast, and the evil one had entered with force into my life.

Lies and the First Confession Badly Made
When I was still little, I learned unfortunately that, in order to avoid the punishments of my mother, rather severe, lies were perfect: so I began to go with “the father lies”; I formed an alliance with him, and I became such a great liar that, to the measure in which my sins grew, increased also was the size of my lies… I knew, for example, that my mother had a great respect for the Lord. For her, the name of the Lord was sacred, it was most holy, so I thought I had the perfect weapon! I used to say to her: “Mom, for beautiful Christ, I swear that I did not do this!” In this way I finally succeeded in avoiding the punishments. With my lies, I put the Most Holy Name of Christ in my rubbish, in my wickedness, in my garbage, filling myself with so much filth and so many sins… I learned that the wind carried them away, and when my mother strongly insisted, I said: “Mom, listen! Would that a lightning bolt might strike me if what I say is a lie!” These words I used many times… And you see! A lot of time passed, but truly a lightning bolt ended up striking me! And if now I am here, it is only because of the Mercy of God.

One day, my girlfriend Estela said to me: “But look a bit, you are already 13 years old and you still have not lost your virginity?! I looked at her frightened! How would this be…? What do you mean by this phrase?!

My mother always spoke to me on the importance of virginity; she said that we are dealing with the ring of Matrimony with the Lord. But my girlfriend, with an air of superiority, said to me: “My mother, as soon as I began to menstruate, took me to the gynaecologist, and now I take the pill!” I did not even know what it might be, at that time! And so she explained to me what are contraceptive pills to not have a pregnancy, and she added that she already slept with one cousin, with one friend, with this one and that one… An enormous list! She affirmed that it was a very beautiful thing! My friends said to me: “You really do not know anything?” Since I replied no, they promised to bring me to a place where they all had learned. I was worried: I knew where they would have led me! I began to peep into a new world for me; new and completely unknown.

They brought me to a cinema, rather ugly, which was at the center of the city, to see a pornographic film. Just imagine the fright! A girl of 13 years, which at that time did not even have a television at home! You can imagine how it was to see such a film! I almost died of fright! It seemed to me to be in hell! I would have wanted to flee at full speed, from there… But I did not, for shame before my girlfriends… But I wanted so bad to get out of there, I was very frightened!

On the same day I went to Mass with my mother. I was so frightened, that I wanted to go to confession. She remained before the tabernacle to pray. In the confessional, I said my usual sins: that I had not done my duties at home, at school, that I was disobedient… These were more or less my habitual sins. I always went to the same priest, thus he knew more or less already my faults; but that day, I also said that I went to the cinema hidden from my mother. The priest, surprised, almost shouted: “Hidden from who?! Where did you go?!” Dejected, I looked toward my mother and I saw that she was tranquil, at her place… Fortunately she did not notice anything! Imagine if she had heard…! I got up from the confession, angered with the priest, and naturally I did not say what type of a film I had seen! If only to have said to had gone to the cinema in a hidden way, the priest was so scandalized, imagine if I would had said what I saw, what would he had done to me…! … He would have beat me?!

It was then the beginning of the astuteness of Satan! In fact, from that time, I began to make bad confessions. From then on, I selected what I would say in confession: “This I confess, but not this; this sin I tell the priest, but this other one no!” … My sacrilegious confessions began! I went to receive the Lord knowing that I did not confess everything! I received Him unworthily! The Lord showed me how terrible was the degradation of my soul, as was grave this process of spiritual death… To the point that, at the end of life, I did not believe any more in the devil, or in anything. He showed me how, in infancy, I walked hand and Hand with God, I had a deep relationship with Him, and the sin did such a thing that I let go, one step at a time, of His hand. Now the Lord said to me that those who eat and drink His Body and His Blood [without discerning worthiness] eat and drink their condemnation: I ate and I drank my condemnation! I saw, in the Book of Life, how the demon was desperate because at 12 years old I still believed in God, I still went to Eucharistic adoration with my mother… It was terribly despairing, in seeing this.

When I began my life of sin, the Lord made me feel that I was losing peace of heart. There began a battle with my conscience, and what did my girlfriends say to me? They told me: “What?! Go to confession?! You are stupid, you are out of fashion! And with who, then? With these priests, greater sinners than us?!” None of them went to confession. I was the only one who still went. I began a war between that which my girlfriends told me and that which my mother and my conscience told me… Slowly, slowly, the balance began to tilt, and my girlfriends won. So I decided to no longer go to confession: I would no longer confess to those old men, who were scandalized just because I went to the cinema!

See the astuteness of Satan! I distanced myself from confession at 13 years old. He is an expert, you know? He puts mistaken ideas in our head! At 13 years old, Gloria Polo was already a living corpse, in spirit. But for me it was important, it was a motive of pride, to belong to that little group of girlfriends, of refined and expert girls… When we are 13 years old we think we know everything, and everything that has to do with God is out of fashion, or idiotic. What the “in thing” is, instead, is to exploit…

I have not yet told you that, when the Voice of Jesus was heard, and the demons left from there because they could not stand that Voice, one of them remained. He had authorization from the Lord to remain. This demon, enormous, shouted with horrible screams: “She is mine! She is mine! She is mine!” Only he remained, because it was that one which led, manipulated, and with his strategy guided, my weaknesses so that I might sin! It was he who pulled me away from confession! For this, the Lord permitted him to remain next to me, and this is why that horrible demon shouted that I belonged to him, and he accused me. He had permission to stay, because I died in mortal sin! From 13 years old when I no longer went to confession, up to then, many times I made bad confessions. I therefore belonged to that demon, and he could remain during my judgement! Just imagine my shame, in seeing with horror my sins so numerous, and even more with that horrible thing to accuse me and to say that I was his! It was horrible!

The devil drew me away from confession, and so in this way he took from me the cure and the cleaning of the soul; it was not gratuitous the sin that I was committing. On the spotlessness of my soul, the evil one put his mark, a mark of darkness… And this white soul began to fill itself with darkness. Never did I receive Holy Communion well: only for the First Communion did I make a good confession. From then on, never again: and I received my Lord Jesus Christ unworthily. When we go to confession, we must always, always, ask the Holy Spirit that he might illumine and send His holy Light on the darkness of our mind: because one thing the evil one does, is to obscure our mind, so that we think that nothing is a sin, that all is well, that there is no need to go to the priest to confess ourselves, – and even more, they are greater sinners than we are – that confession is out of fashion. Clearly, it was more convenient for me not to go to confession.

The Abortion of my friend
At 13 years old, my girlfriend Estela became pregnant. When she told me, I asked her: “But were you not taking the pill?” “Yes – she replied – but it did not work!” “And now…? What will you do?” She told me that she did not know. She did not know if it happened in that party, or in that walk, or with the boyfriend!

In the month of June she went on holidays with her mother. She was already five months pregnant. When she returned, she was surprised: she did not have any panic, and seemed to be a corpse! She was very pale, and of that extroverted girl that played with everything, nothing was left. By now she was no longer the same.

You know, neither of us liked to go to Mass. But, since our school was run by Religious Sisters, we had to go with them. There was an old priest, who prolonged the celebration, and to us these Masses seemed like eternity, they never would end. For the whole time of the Mass, we played, laughed, without giving the least attention to the celebration… But one day arrived a new priest, very young and nice looking. Our comments were that a young man so attractive was wasted by becoming a priest… We agreed to see which one of us would have succeeded in conquering him! Think about it a little bit!

The Sisters were the first to go to Communion, and immediately after that we came up, all of us without going to confession! We went as agreed, to see who would have conquered the priest! We had to unbutton our blouse in front of him, at the moment in which he would give us Communion. Whoever succeeded in making him tremble his hand would be the one who had the better breasts. That was the sign to understand that she had attracted the attention of the priest.

… The diabolical things that the evil one made us do! … And we were to believe that it was just pranks!

And so, when my girlfriend Estela returned from vacation, she was no longer the joking one, always playful and cheerful. Now her face was off, sad, very sad. She did not want to tell me anything; but one day when I was at her house, she said to me, lowering the skirt: “When my mother found out that I was pregnant, she got so mad, so much, that she took me immediately by the hand, she put me in the car, and she took me to the gynaecologist. Having arrived there, she said to the doctor: … She is pregnant! Do me this favor, ask whatever price you want, but I need that you operate on her immediately and resolve for me this problem!” My girlfriend opened the closet of her room, and I saw a glass bottle, with a red cap, full of liquid… There inside was a baby completely formed! I will never forget it! Above the bottle cap, the box of contraceptive pills! Just imagine…

See how sin blinds a sick person, and a spiritually infirm mother, to the point of bringing the daughter to abort, and even to put the fetus in a bottle so that never again one forgets to take the pill… And to leave it in the closet, so that, as soon as she opens the door, she might immediately see that macabre container, and over the cap, the box with the pills! Simply macabre and absurd! It is this what the demon does, when we open the doors with sin, and we do not wash ourselves in confession! When I asked my girlfriend if she suffered from all this, and if she was sad, she replied ironically: “And why should I be sad? On the contrary, it is better now that they have freed me from this problem!”

But it was a lie, because she never returned the same! A little while after, she entered into depression! A terrible depression! … Then she began to use LSD, and naturally, I being her best friend, she offered some to me, but I became frightened. On one hand, I would have liked to try it, because she told me that the drug makes you feel very good, that you seem to fly, to be on the clouds, and so many other wonderful things that enticed me to try… But I could not! I remained frightened and I told her no, because certainly the odor of the drug would have remained on me; so my mother, who had a good sense of smell, would have discovered this… and would have killed me!

I did not try it! The Lord showed me, now, that it was not for fear of my mother that I did not try it, but for the Grace of God, because I had a mother who prayed, and her prayer with the Rosary sustained me, and inhibited me from descending so low.

But my girlfriends were not happy, they began to talk with me, they screamed, and were disgusted for my refusal… But I could not, I could not! This was one of the many graces that I received merited by a mother full of God, who prayed for me, who lived united to the Lord.

The Loss of Virginity – What Abortion Is.
13 years went by, 14, 15, and I arrived to 16. Unfortunately, at this age I came to know my first boyfriend and I went with him! The pressure from my girlfriends began. I was considered the black sheep, for the fact of being still virgin. Now that I had a boyfriend, there began the psychological pressure! I had promised them that, when I would have a boyfriend, and then yes, I would have had relations; but before, no! … Now, I no longer had excuses! I said to my girlfriend Estela: “But… And if I get pregnant like you?” She replied that no, do not go and talk about this, because by now there were other methods, like for example condoms. In her time there existed only the pill, but now I would not have problems. She told me that she would give me 5 pills to take all on the same day, and to use the condom… And nothing would happen to me.

I felt bad at the thought of having to maintain this promise, but I did not want to make a scene with them.

When it happened… I realized that my mother was right, when she said that a girl who looses her virginity burns out. I felt exactly this, that something died in me… As if I had lost something, that I could no longer recuperate. This was the sensation that remained with me, together with an enormous sadness. I do not know why they say that sex is beautiful! I do not know why the youth say they experience pleasure! I do not think it is so good! In my country, Colombia, one sees on the TV so much publicity that speaks of safe sex, with the condom, and it encourages the use of it. There is so much exploitation of sexuality… I feel so much sadness in seeing this! If they only knew! If they only knew…

In my case, I assure you that I felt very sad, and I had a tremendous fear to return home, and that my mother might realize what had happened! Never again would I be able to look at her in the eyes, with the fear that she might see, in mine, that which I did! I felt anger and rebellion, about myself and toward my girlfriends, for having been weak, for having done something that I did not want to do, and that I did it only to please them…

You must know that, notwithstanding the counsels of my girlfriend, and despite all the precautions, during my first relationship I became pregnant!

Try to imagine the fright of a girl of 16 years being pregnant! (She cries). I began to note many changes in my body… Even in the midst of the fear, all the same I began to feel tenderness for this creature that I carried in my womb!

I spoke with my boyfriend – later he became my husband – and I told him about this. He was surprised. I hoped that he might say that we would be married! I was 16 years old and he was 17 years old. But he said to me that we could not upset our life, and that I had to abort! Very worried, sad, very sad, I went to my girlfriend Estela, and she said to me: “Do not worry! It is nothing! Remember that I have already gone through it several times! I was a little sad the first time, the second time it was already easier, and the third time by then you do not feel anything!” “But can you imagine when I arrive home, and my mother sees me with such a wound? She will kill me!” “Do not worry, now they do not make wounds so big. The incision that you saw on me was enormous because also the baby was already very large, but in your case it is still very small, do not worry! Nothing will happen to you, your mother will not even notice!”

Oh, brothers, what sadness! What a great pain! How the devil makes us see things! … As if it were nothing, as if it were something without importance! … As if an abortion provoked the most natural thing in the world! On the contrary, stupid people feel bad! That sex is to be consumed, without remorse, without fault!

But do you know why the evil one does this? Why he leads people to this? Because, among other reasons, he needs human sacrifices! In fact, for every abortion provoked, Satan acquires ever more power.

No one can imagine the consternation, the fear and the sense of guilt when I arrived in that hospital, (a good distance from my house), in order to abort! The doctor gave me an anaesthetic. But when I woke up, I was no longer the same! They killed that creature, and I died with her! (She cries).

You know, the Lord showed me in the Book of Life that which we do not see with the eyes of the body, and what happened when the doctor did the abortion. I saw the doctor who, with a type of pincers, grabs the baby and breaks him into pieces. This baby shouts, with so, so much force! Even though there has not passed even a minute from the moment of fertilization, it is already an adult soul. We can use the pill of the day after, or whatever kind of means, but we are always dealing with killing a baby with an adult soul, completely formed, because it does not grow like a body, but is created by God in the same instant in which the ovum and the sperm meet, in that precise moment! I saw in fact, in the Book of Life, how our soul, as soon as the two cells touched, form a spark of beautiful light, and this light seemed to be a sun that comes from the Sun of God the Father. In an instant, the soul created by God is adult, mature, in the image and likeness of Him! That baby is immense in the Holy Spirit, who comes out of the Heart of God!

The womb of a mother, immediately after the fecundation, illuminates suddenly from the splendor of this soul, and of it’s communion with God. When you tear out this baby, this life… I saw how the Lord jumps, when this soul is ripped from His hands. When they kill him, the baby cries out so much; all of Heaven trembles! In my case, when I killed my baby, I heard him cry out a lot, but so strong! I saw Jesus on the Cross who cried out and suffered for this soul, and for all the souls that are aborted! The Lord cries from the Cross, with so much pain, so much sorrow…!!! If you might have seen, no one would have the courage… to provoke an abortion (She cries)

Now I ask you, how many abortions are done in the world? How many in one day? In one month? … Do you understand the dimensions of our sin? The pain, the suffering that we procure for our God? … And how much He is merciful, how much he loves us, notwithstanding the monstrosity of our sins? Do you understand the suffering that we procure to ourselves, and how evil takes possession of our life?

Abortion Is the Gravest Sin; It Is the Most Terrible of All
Every time that the blood of a baby is scattered, it is a holocaust to Satan, who acquires in this way still more power. And this soul cries out. I repeat, we are dealing with a mature adult soul, even though it does not yet have eyes, nor flesh, nor a formed body… It is already completely adult. And this his cry so great, while they kill him, devastates all of Heaven. On the contrary, it is a cry of jubilation and of triumph in hell. The only comparison that comes to my mind is the finals of a world soccer championship: imagine all that euphoria, but in an enormous stadium, so immense so as to loose sight of the boundaries, full of devils who cry out like crazy beings their triumph.

They, the devils, threw on me the blood of those babies that I aborted or that I contributed in killing, and my soul became black, completely black.

After the abortions, I thought by now that I no longer had sins… The saddest thing was, instead, to see that Jesus showed me how, also in my family planning, I was killing… Do you know why? I was using the IUD (intrauterine device) as a contraceptive. From 16 years old, up to the day that the lightning bolt struck me! I took it out only when I wanted to get pregnant, (once married), to then put it immediately back afterwards.

I want to say to all the women who use these intrauterine devices: yes, they provoke abortions! I know that it happens to many women, – because it happened also to me – , to see often clots of blood rather large during the menstrual period, and to feel pain much stronger than normal. We go to the doctor, who does not give much importance to the fact: he prescribes a painkiller, an injection if the pains are too strong, telling us to not worry, that it is normal, because we are dealing with a foreign body, but there is no problem. Do you know what it is, instead? It is a micro abortion!!! Yes! Micro-abortion! The intrauterine devices provoke micro-abortions, because as soon as the ovum and the sperm unite, as I already told you, right from that moment is formed a soul, that does not need to grow, being already adult: these devices do not let the fertilized ovum to implant itself into the uterus, which thus dies. That soul is ex-pulsed! For this we are dealing with a micro-abortion. A micro-abortion is an adult soul, completely formed, which was not permitted to live. It was very painful to see how many babies were fertilized, but then ex-pulsed. These little suns, originating from the Sun of God the Father, these divine sparks, could not grab on to the uterus due to the IUD. How they cried out, while they were torn out from the hands of God the Father because they could not implant themselves!!! It was a dreadful scene…! And the worst is that I could not say that I did not know!

When I would go to Mass, I would not pay attention to what the priest said. I did not even listen, and if they might had asked me which verses of the Gospel had been read, I would not have known what to respond. You must know in fact that the devils are present even at the Mass, in order to distract us, to make us fall asleep, to impede us to listen. Well, in one of these Masses during which I was totally distracted, my Guardian Angel gave me a jolt and she uncorked my ears, so that I might listen to what the priest was saying in that moment: I heard him precisely speaking about intrauterine devices! He said that they provoked abortion, and that all the women who used them to control the births, actually were aborting; that the Church defends life, and that anyone who does not defend life cannot receive Communion! Hence, all the women who are using this method, cannot take Communion!

How I heard those words, I became infuriated with the priest! But what kind of things do these priests have in their heads? With what right?! For this the Church does not go forward! It is for this and for that, that the churches are empty! Of course, because it is not with science! But who do they think they are, these priests? Do they think that they will give food to eat to all of these children that we might have?… I left the church infuriated!

The bad thing was that, while I was being judged before God, I could not say that I did not know! In fact, notwithstanding the words of the priest, I did not give heed, and I continued to use the IUD!

How many babies I had killed? … Here is the motive for which I was living so depressed! Because my womb, instead of being a font of life, it was transformed into a cemetery, in a “slaughterhouse” of babies! Think about it: a mother, who God conceded the immense gift of giving life, to take care of her own baby, to protect it from everything and everyone, precisely that mother, with all these gifts, kills her little child…!

The devil, with his malefic strategy, has brought humanity to the point of killing their own children. Now I understand the reason why I lived in continual bitterness, depression, always ill-tempered, ill-mannered, with ugly ways of doing things, with a bad face, frustrated with everything and with everyone. Of course! I had transformed myself, without knowing it, into a machine to kill babies, and for this reason I was sinking ever more into the abyss. Abortion is the worst of all the sins (those provoked, not when it is spontaneous), because to kill the children still in the womb of the mother, to kill a little innocent and defenseless creature, is to give power to Satan. The devil commands from the depths of the abyss, because we are scattering innocent blood! A baby is like an innocent lamb and without stain… And Who is the Lamb without stain? It is Jesus! In that moment, the baby is the image and likeness of Jesus! The fact that it might be the mother herself to kill her own child, determines a profound bond with the darkness, permitting that more devils from hell might come out to destroy and strangle humanity. It is as if one might open the seals… Seals that God has put to impede evil to come out, but that, for every abortion, it opens… And so horrible larvae come out, so that there are more and more devils…

They come out to chase and persecute humanity, and then make us slaves of the flesh, of sin, of all the bad things that we see, and we will see always more. It is as if we might give the key of hell to the devils, to let them escape. And so escape more devils, of prostitution, of sexual aberrations, of Satanism, of atheism, of suicide, of indifference… Of all the evils that we see around us. And the world is getting worse every day… Think how many babies are killed every day: it is all a triumph of the evil one! That you might know that for the price of this innocent blood, the number of devils outside of hell grows; they circulate freely in our midst! Let us take shelter! … We sin without even realizing it! And our life transforms itself into an inferno, with problems of every type, with sicknesses, with so many evils that afflict us; all of this is the pure and simple action of the devil in our life. But it is we, we alone, that open the gates of evil, with our sin, and we permit him to freely circulate in our life. It is not only with abortion that we sin! … But it is among the worst sins. And then we have the nerve to blame God for so much misery, so much disgrace, so much sicknesses and so much suffering!

… But God, in His infinite Goodness, still gives us the sacrament of Reconciliation, and we have the opportunity to repent and to wash our sin in confession, breaking in this way the strings that tie us to Satan, and his influence in our life. In this way we can wash our soul. … But in my case, I did not do it!

Bad Counsel
How many times we kill, also spiritually?! How many of us worry about that our own children have cloths to wear, to adequately eat, that they can study…? And if they get sick, we run immediately to the doctor… But how many of us, often, kill our children? So many are sad, or full of anger, bitter, because they do not have near them the father or the mother, they do not have the love of the parents. Just imagine a women who presents herself in church, for example, and says: “I thank you, my God, for these children so good that you gave me; they are so good, but so good, that from the time that the father left me, they hate him, and they love only me!” Do you know what this mother did? She killed her children spiritually. Because to hate is to kill! How many times we poison our children?! You do not imagine how it makes God sorrowful our upsetting, poisoning the children against the father or the mother! God does not permit it!

Jesus showed me that I was a frightful assassin, because not only did I sin when I aborted, but I also financed many abortions. Here is the power that money gave me! I made myself an accomplice. I used to say, in fact: the woman has the right to remain pregnant or not! … I looked at the Book of my life… And how it pained me to see that which I did years later, when I was by then adult! When we have poison inside of us, we cannot give to others anything good, and all those who come to us become ruined. Some girls, three of my cousins and the fiancée of my cousin, came often to my house. Being the one who had money, I invited them, and I spoke to them about fashion, about “glamour”, to how to exhibit their body to be attractive, and I ladled out counsels. See how I prostituted them! I prostituted the little ones! This was another horrible sin, after abortion. I prostituted them, because I gave them these counsels: “Do not be foolish, girls, do not give heed to your mothers, who speak to you about chastity and about virginity: it is old fashioned stuff. They speak about the Bible, which is 2000 years old… And then, these priests, who do not want to update themselves, they speak to you about what the Pope says, but the Pope is also out of fashion”. Consider the poison that I transmitted to these girls. I told them that they could arrange their own body, only they must pay attention not to get pregnant… And I taught with which method.

The girlfriend of my cousin, who was 14 years old, arrived one day to my outpatient clinic, crying a lot. He said to me: “Gloria, I am a young girl, I am a young girl, and I am pregnant!” I almost shouted at her: you stupid thing, did I not teach you how to do these things?!” And she replied: “Yes, yes, but it did not work!”

Do you know what God wanted from me, in that moment? To have supported that girl so that she might not have fallen into the abyss, that she might not have aborted. Abortion is a current that draws one in, that causes suffering, because you will always feel emptiness, pain, to be the assassin of your child. The worst, for this girl, was that, instead of speaking to her about Jesus and helping her, comforting her and supporting her, I gave to her the money to abort! Certainly, in a secure place, to not be harmed physically… But it remained spiritually, and for her whole life.

Like this, I financed so many other abortions. But I still had the courage to say that I did not kill, that I was good, that I was Catholic, that it was not right, that I could not remain in that horrible place…!

Moreover, the people who I did not like, I hated and detested them, and I spoke badly about them. I was a false person, hypocrite, and also an assassin: because it is not only with weapons that one kills a person. To hate, calumniate, to envy, to deride, to do evil, also this is killing.

Atone For Our Sins
As I already said, abortion is the gravest sin before the eyes of God. So many people ask me how to atone for abortion. In fact, we cannot restore the life to the baby; but in the Catholic Church we have a blessing so great! The sacrament of Reconciliation. In confession, God forgives us, and that which the priest looses on earth, is loosed also in Heaven. Glory to God, for this! Blessed be the Lord for His Goodness! … The Lord forgives us, but remember that which Jesus said to the adulterous woman: that she go in peace, but that she not return to sin! “Go in peace and sin no more”.

Another act of reparation is “Baptism of intention”…See the wisdom of the Catholic Church! These babies enter into the Glory of God! Now they are little Angels, who pray and intercede or our salvation. See the beauty of the “economy” of God! See how God transforms all for our good! Nothing is lost! And when one evangelizes on abortion, and a baby is saved, also this is atonement! When a woman aborts, beyond asking pardon of God in confession, and to not abort ever again, she can also contribute to avoid other abortions, of other women: doing this, she atones for her sin, enormously! This is reparation!

My Lack of Love of God
My relationship with God was very sad. For me, God was the One who I sought out only if I had a problem. Many times, when that happened, I ran to Him to ask help. Almost always it was an economic problem! It was a totally economic relationship, that between me and God! It was a type of ATM! I put in prayer and supplication, so that God might send me money! I wanted God to love me and give me everything…but on my terms! Would that no one might come to tell me I was sinning, for I would not appreciate such a one! The devil put to sleep my conscience! Often, when I found myself in economic difficulty, I would pass before an image of Baby Jesus, while I was going out of church, and I would touch his little hand saying to Him: “Listen to me! Give me money, *that* I have need of!”

Like some do with Buddha: they scratch the stomach, telling him to give them money! That is how I did with Baby Jesus! Imagine my nerve! What great lack of respect! And the Lord showed me how much my disaffection and my lack of respect pained Him! How much sorrow and shame I felt, now! Money did arrive, yes, but disappeared immediately! It was as if, the more depressed I arrived, the more depressed I remained without anything! In the end I found myself in an economic situation always worse.

Things being like this, a lady recounted to me to have gone through a similar situation, but she went to a protestant pastor that someone had recommended, and everything got better! As soon as I heard this, I asked her immediately where he might be, because I wanted to go there immediately! … Look at my infidelity!

I thus went to that pastor, and he prayed for me laying his hands on me, and he made me communicate in their manner. Think about it, I would receive the Body and the Blood of the Lord, in my Catholic religion. I go there [to the Protestant community], and they make me do their communion as if it were the first time!

Their celebrations were very animated: they would jump, applaud… I said to myself: what a bore those Catholic priests are: so dull and disgusting, those Masses so annoying… There is no comparison with these, which make us feel so good, so joyous!

There, they do not believe in images, and they say that are is idolatry. Thus, I no longer knelt down before a Crucifix, because it was idolatry. When I began to go to these evangelical communities, I had a neighbor, an old lady–very poor, who lived in front of my house; I helped her by giving the money she needed to pay for the light bill, water bill, and at times I did some shopping for her, so that she could eat. As you can imagine, this old lady was very attached to me!

But when we do not have God inside of us, even the good works we do become rotten, like our sins.

As I said, when I began to go to them, I liked the evangelical places a lot; in fact, more than being joyous in their celebrations, they said to bind the ruining spirits, and similar things.

Now, that old lady was Catholic, but I used the friendship that she felt for me, and I succeeded in convincing her, beginning in this way to destroy her faith. In a few words: due to my counsels and ideas that I put in her head, she died without having received the sacraments. She did not want to receive them, because she no longer felt they were important. See how we influence those who are near us! When inside of us there is evil, we end up leading others, those who draw near to us, into our same errors. It is enough to see what I did to that old lady!

But when that protestant pastor asked me for the tithe, I became infuriated; in fact, in that period I was already bankrupt and they, to complete my ruin, even asked me for 10% of my earnings! … It was like this that my “crush” on Protestantism passed through me completely!

The Sixth Commandment: Adultery.
On this commandment I thought, still full of pride: here they will not catch me in fault, because I never had a lover, I was always faithful!

As a matter of fact, after matrimony, I never even gave a kiss to others, only to my husband. But the Lord showed me that I exhibited too much of my body, when I went around with my breasts exposed, with the skin-tight stockings, with the cloths that I used… I thought that men looked at me, simply to admire me… But the Lord showed me how they sinned with me: because we are not dealing with admiration, as I believed, but with provocation, and they were provoked due to me. I committed adultery, for having exhibited my body. I did not understand the male sensibility. I believed that they thought like me, that looking at me they would say: “What a nice body!” Instead they sinned, due to my fault. Never was I unfaithful for having thrown myself into the arms of a man, but it was as if I was a prostitute in spirit. More than anything, I thought of vindicating myself, if my husband would have been unfaithful to me, and so I counseled other women to do so, when they discovered that the husband had betrayed them. “Do not be a fool! Vindicate yourself, do not forgive. Show your worth! It is for this that we women are so put down by men, so trampled on!” You know, with these counsels, I and my girlfriends succeeded in separating one of our girlfriends. She had surprised the husband in the office while he was kissing the secretary. We, with our counsels, did not let her reconcile, even though he asked her for pardon, truly repentant. She even wanted to forgive, because she loved him: but we did not permit forgiveness to him. In the end they got divorced, and two years later she got married civilly, with an Argentinian. Do you understand? When I counseled in this way, I became an adulterer on the inside. Jesus showed me, and I saw well, how sins of the flesh are abominable, because the person condemns himself, even if the world affirms that all is well.

In all my life I had only one man, my husband; but the sins are also in the thoughts, in the words, in the actions: it was very sad to see how the sin and the adultery of my father did so much harm to us. In my case, it transformed me into a resentful person; I sunk into rancor against men, while my brothers became faithful copies of my father. Do they think it’s contentment to style themselves so masculine? They are womanizers, they drink, and they do not realize the evil that they do to their own children. For this, my father was crying with great suffering, in Purgatory, seeing the consequences of his sin and of his example that he gave them.

We condemn ourselves, with promiscuity, because it is to live as if we were animals: mice, dogs… here and there…

The Seventh Commandment: Do Not Steal
Also to calumniate is to steal. Just imagine that I said I had never stolen. I considered myself honest: but I stole from God! Yes, I stole from God. I was created and I was born in order to help create a better world, to contribute to extending the Kingdom of Heaven on the earth. But, more than not having fulfilled this mission, I gave bad advice and I damaged a lot of people. I did not know how to use the talents that God gave to me. Thus I stole… clearly I stole! From how many people did I steal their good name, giving rise to calumnies and spreading them? You cannot imagine how terrible are the sins of our tongue! … And in what way one repairs…!

How can you repair the honor of someone, after having spread gossip, or calumny?! How can you restore the good name to that person?! Yes this is difficult! This is why in Purgatory, those who have done evil to someone with words, have much to suffer. Almost everyone uses the tongue to criticize, to destroy, to offend, to devastate the good name of people. These tongues, down there, are the cause of great suffering! They burn!!! How they burn! You cannot imagine! The Lord showed me how we deceive ourselves, in the judgements that we make about others. While we, for example, look with contempt at a prostitute, the Lord looks at her with infinite Love, with infinite Mercy. He sees inside her, he knows her whole life, and knows what led her to prostitution. Might you know that many of them live this way because of our sins, also because of our contempt and because of our lack of love for our neighbor. Has anyone ever lent his hand to help a prostitute? Or toward someone caught stealing? We go through life judging and seeing the defects of others, their errors, and condemning. But when we see someone do something mistaken, at least let us shut our mouths, let us bend our knees and pray for that person. At times we are not able to do anything more: but God can. Let us not judge her, let us not criticize her, otherwise we sin more than her. We absolutely cannot give rise to false witness, or collaborate so that it is spread, nor judge, nor lie, because doing like this we rob the peace from the neighbor. And be careful, because a lie is always a lie. There are not big ones or small ones, green or yellow, or red color: to lie is always grave, and the father of the lie is Satan.

In my case, so many lies for what? My life was put in the open, to the Light of God. And you? … But may you know that on the other side, no one steps up to argue or to demand… There, there is only your conscience and God!

In my judgement, for example, my parents were there to see my lies, but my mother did not accuse me. Only, she looked at me with infinite tenderness. My worst lie, then, was to lie to myself when I said that I did not kill, I did not steal, that I was a good person, that I never did evil to anyone, and that God does not exist; and that I would go to Heaven all the same! What a tremendous shame, I experienced now!

The Lord continued to show me that, while I was in my house, food was wasted. In other houses of the world there was hunger, and he said to me: “Observe: I was hungry, and look what you did with what I gave you: you wasted it. I was hungry, and look what you did, slave of fashion, or of what people said about you, about appearances: you bought brand-name goods, jewellery, you came to the point to spend 150,000 pesos for every injection, to be thin, slave of your body… To the point of making of it a god. Look how many do not have anything with which to clothe themselves, or to eat; they do not know how they can pay the bills”.

… Jesus showed me the hunger of my brothers, and how I too was responsible for the hunger and for the conditions in which my country and the world found herself in… Because we are all responsible! He showed me how I had something to do with all this, because when I spoke badly about someone, this person had lost his work and the sustenance for his family, and I robbed from him the honor and good name. And afterwards, how would I be able to restore it to him?! He showed me that it was easier to give back stolen money, because one could give it, and thus repair the sin. But when you rob the good name of a person, after the calumny is already propagated, who can render the honor to this person? One does so much evil to him, in work, or in the relationships with the other people! Marriages are destroyed! So much evil! So much evil!

And still, I stole from my children the grace to have a mother at home, a tender mother, sweet, that might have loved them and accompanied them! Instead…! The mother away, the children alone, with the “Mom” television and “Dad” computer, and the video games… And I believed to be the perfect Mom. I left home at 5:00 o’clock in the morning and did not come back before 11:00 pm.

In order to satisfy my conscience, then, I would buy for them brand-name things and everything that they wanted.

I was terrified when I saw my mother asking herself where she went wrong… What was she supposed to do or not do, regarding my education! She was a holy woman, who gave us and planted in us the principles according to the Lord; and my father was a good man, with us. So I said to myself: what will become of me, who does not do any of this for my children? Chilled, I asked myself: what will be, when God will judge me in regards to my children? What fright! What an immense sorrow! I robbed peace from my children: now I see it in the Book of Life. I experienced a great shame! … In the Book of Life we see everything, all of our life like a film. What a pain it was to see my children who were saying: “Let us hope that Mom arrives late! Let us hope that there might be a lot of traffic and she arrives later! Because she is so boring, unpleasant, and when she arrives she always grumbles and shouts the whole day!” What sadness, brothers! A toddler of three years, and the others a little bit bigger, to say these things! To hope that their mother might not arrive! I stole from these kids a mother. I robbed from them the peace that I should have given at home. I did not live in such a way that they might know God by way of me, or love their neighbor. But, on the other hand, I could not give what I did not have: I did not love my neighbor! And if I do not love my neighbor, I do not even love the Lord. Because God is Love…

Also to lie is to steal. In this I was an expert, you know? Because Satan became my father. In fact, you can have for father: God, or Satan. If God is Love, and I was hate, who was my father? If God speaks to me of pardon and of love for those who do evil to me, while I said that “those who do that to me must pay”, then I was vindictive, a liar, and if Satan is the father of lies, then who was my father? Lies are lies, and Satan is the father of this. The sins of the tongue are terrible! I saw all the evil that I had done with my tongue, when I criticized, when I derided, when I gave nicknames to someone. How she felt, that person! How the nickname with which I derided hurt the person, creating for her tremendous inferiority complexes, capable of destroying her! For example, I called “fat” a person who was fat, making her suffer, and because of this word, she ended up destroying herself.

I’ll recount more of this to you. At 13 years old, I was part of that little group of girlfriends, to which it was an honor to belong to… a little group of refined and expert girls. The Lord showed me how this company of “very good girls”, spiritually killed a school companion. There was in class a fat girl, obese. My girlfriends began to torment her, to make fun of her, hurling at her offensive names, like fat seal, elephant, and others. We made fun of her. I did the same, just in order not to seem out of step with them. Now, in the Book of Life, I saw how this poor creature always had more complexes because of her obesity. She looked at herself in the mirror, and every time she saw herself as more ugly. So she began to hate us, and to hate herself; and the more she looked at herself, the more she hated herself. And hate is death, it is death for the soul. In the jaws of this desperation, the girl one day drank a bottle of iodine, to see if she might loose weight! But do you know what happened? Do you know how she ended up, due to the iodine? Almost blind! She had a strong intoxication, and remained almost blind! For this she did not return to school! We did not care to know about it! We did not see her any more, and we were not interested in knowing why!

For this I tell you, brothers, that collective sins are very grave, the gravest. Because they are *our* sins, personal! The sin of that girl, was our sin. The sin of the community is also your sin, because you did nothing to avoid it! And this is true not only for individual sin, but also for those of humanity, for which you did nothing, so that it could be avoided.

The power of the word…! We destroyed that girl, putting on her nicknames; the devil entered and ruined her, and now she can, in her turn, destroy others, with her hate, in this way the currents of evil go forth forming themselves. Where there is hate, there is the evil one. This is how we assassinated a school companion. We killed her soul!

Twenty years later… I had a very nice looking cousin; I taught her, I counseled her how to dress, how to give value to her body, to use make-up, etc. One day she gravely burned herself, more than 70% of her body. Only the face was not burned. But it was very grave, she could have died.

I became infuriated, I became enraged with God; I went into the chapel of the hospital and said: “God, if you exist, prove it to me! Show me that you exist, save her!” Just imagine my pride! Well, my cousin survived. But she remained completely burned, with grave scares. Her hands remained deformed… A sadness. In that period I was already well off economically, and I took walks with her, at times in the swimming pool. But when I put her in the water, all the people left and protested and said: How gross! But why do you leave home with this creature? She comes to ruin our vacation!”

They said this, the people who saw her! People are bad, perverse, egoists, when they speak like this, seeing the disgrace of others. Consequently, my cousin began to not want to leave home. She came to the point of having fear of people! And in the end hated them! (She cries). The Lord shows, to each of us, this is what it’s like when we make a brother look ridiculous, without a drop of compassion. What right do you have to cause someone to suffer, to give nicknames, and to call with offensive names, without knowing what the person is going through? What right do you have to be so cruel? God will show you how many people you assassinated with the word only! You will see the terrible power that the word has, to kill souls.

And yet, if I would go before the Most Blessed Sacrament, to ask for the grace of atonement for my sins, God would heal the soul of my cousin. Because ours is a God in love, and to the measure in which we close the doors of evil, he opens to us the doors of blessing. When the Lord gave me the examination of the Ten Commandments, he showed me that I said that I loved and adored God, by words…but in reality I adored Satan. I criticize everything and everyone; and everyone pointed with their finger, “holy Gloria”!… He showed me the times when I said that I loved God and neighbor, but I was false and envious… He showed me how I was never grateful to my parents, nor did I ever thank them for their commitment in giving me a profession in being able to succeed in life, all the efforts and the sacrifices that they did… All this I did not see. As soon as I began my profession, they even became inferior in my eyes… So much so as to be ashamed of my mother, for her humility and poverty. Look how this is base-minded.

God gave me an analysis of my whole life, in the light of the Ten Commandments: he showed me how I was in regards to the neighbor, and in regards to Him.

Love of Neighbor
Never, never, did I have love, nor compassion, for the neighbor, for my brothers outside. I never thought, in the most absolute way, about the sick, about their solitude, about children without a mother, about the orphans… With so many babies who suffer, so much suffering, I could have said: Lord, let me accompany them in their pains… And instead: no. Nothing! My heart of rock never remembered the sufferings of others. The worst thing was that I never did anything for love of neighbor! … For example, I paid the expenses at the supermarket for a lot of people, who did not have the money and were in need, but I did not do it for love: I had money, and it did not cost me anything. I did it because I wanted everyone to see my gesture, so that they might say I was good, that I was a saint. And how I knew how to profit from the needs of people! I did not give anything gratuitously! In fact I would say: “I do this for you, but you in exchange do me the favor to go, in my place, to the school of my children, to the meetings, because I do not have time… Deliver for me the envelopes of the car bills… Do this for me, do that for me…” In this way, I manipulated everyone: I did charitable works in order to have an exchange of favors, and never because the person was in need. Moreover, I adored having lots of people behind me, who would say I was good and generous, even a saint. Yes, there were those who even said this, and they were people who knew me well! In the examination that Jesus gave me on the Ten Commandments, I saw how all my evils came forth from greed. I was blinded by this desire to have money, a lot of money, because I thought I would be happy the more I had money. It is too bad that, precisely the period in which I had a lot of money, that was the worst for my soul, to the point that I wanted to commit suicide. In spite of my richness, I felt alone, empty, bitter, frustrated. This avidity, this desire for money, was the way that led me, by the hand of the evil one, to distance myself and to detach myself from the hand of the Lord. He said to me: “You had a god, and this god was money, and due to it you condemned yourself. Due to it, you sank into the abyss, and you went away from your Lord”.

When he said to me “god was money”… We had arrived, yes, to having a lot of money, but more recently we were in the red, full of debts, and we no longer had a penny. And so I cried out: “But what money?! That which I left on earth, are nothing more than debts!…”

In my examine on the Ten Commandments, I did not pass one of them! Terrible!!! What fright!!! I was living in an authentic chaos! … But how? … Me?! I, who had never killed?! Who never did harm to anyone?! This is what I thought… And instead yes, I had killed so many people!

The Book of Life
After the examine of the Ten Commandments, the Lord showed me the “Book of Life”. I would like to be able to have the words in order to describe it. What a marvel! We see our whole life, our actions and their consequences, good or bad that they might be, to ourselves or to others. Our sentiments and thoughts, and those of others. Everything like a film. It begins from the moment of fertilization: we see our life begin from that moment, and from there we are taken by the hand by God, who shows us our entire existence. In the same instant of our fertilization, there is like a spark of Divine Light, a beautiful explosion, and a soul is formed, white… But not like the white that we know! I say this color because it is the one most similar, but it is so stupendous that it is impossible to describe it in words the beauty, the splendor… The soul is so beautiful, full of light, enchanting, radiant and full of Love of God… A startling Love of God. I do not know if you ever noticed how newborns, often, laugh by themselves, and emit those sounds and babblings. Do you know? They are talking with God! Yes, because they are immersed in the Holy Spirit. Also we are immersed, but the difference is that they, in their innocence, know how to profit of God and of His Presence.

You cannot imagine what a wonderful thing it was to see the moment in which God created me, in the womb of my mother. My soul carried in the Hand of God the Father! I discover God the Father as so beautiful, wonderful, tender, attentive and affectionate, who cares for me 24 hours a day; who loved me, protected me, and always came to seek me when I distanced myself, with infinite patience. I had seen only punishment, while He was only Love, only Love, because He looks not at the flesh but at the soul, and he saw how I was going farther away from salvation.

You know, my mother had been married for seven years and still did not have children. In that moment she was very troubled, due to the unfaithful life of my father: she was very worried and distressed, when she realized she was pregnant. She cried with great affliction. That had such an effect, that it signed me interiorly, so much so that in life I never felt loved by my mother! And yet, she was always so affectionate, so good with me; she always gave me love and affection, but I would say and insist that she did not love me, and I always lived with this complex. For this, only the Sacraments are the Grace of God that takes care of us. When they baptized me, you must see the party that there was in Heaven! It is a little creature that receives on the head a seal, the Seal of the children of God! It is a fire! The fire of belonging to Jesus Christ.

But I saw in the Book of Life how, already as a baby, I began to fill myself with the consequences of the sin of my father in matrimony, of the sins that I began to know, for example his lies, the vice of drinking, unfaithfulness, and the suffering of my mother. All of this signed me, and caused in me bad sentiments, emotive and behavioral limits.

The Talents
The Lord said to me: “What did you do with the talents that I gave you? … Not those on the outside which smelled wonderfully, with costly perfumes, with clothing never used!” … Talents?! I came into the world with a mission: that of defending the reign of Love. But I forgot I had a soul, not to mention to have talents, and even more to be in the Merciful Hands of God. I did not even know that all the good that I had neglected to do, had caused so much sorrow to Our Lord. I saw the talents truly wonderful that God had placed in my life. All of us, brothers, are worth very much to God. He loves all of us, and each one in particular. We all have a mission in this world. I saw the devil very worried because of these talents that God has placed in us, because they were at the service of the Lord.

Do you know what the Lord asked me the most to render an account for? For my lack of love and charity for neighbor, and he said to me: “Your spiritual death began when you let yourself to not be moved by suffering; and yet you too experience it. You were alive, but dead”. If you could see what spiritual death is! A soul that hates is frightfully horrible, ugly, embittered, disgusting, it gives annoyance and hurts everyone. It is painful to see our soul, when it is full of sins… I saw mine: signed… But inside, a tremendous stink, and sunk in the abyss. This is why there was so much depression and bitterness. The Lord said to me: “Your spiritual death began when you did not let yourself to be taken up with compassion for your brothers. It was a notification, when you saw the tribulations of your brothers everywhere, or when you heard by way of the mass media killings, kidnappings… But you remained like a rock! Only you would say, with the mouth: oh, poor people. But you did not grieve, in the heart you did not feel anything, you had the heart of stone, and it was sin that hardened it”.

Now I recount to you how the Lord showed me the talents.

You must know that I never watched the news on the TV, because it did not go well with me to see so many deaths, so many unpleasant things… I was interested only in the last parts: diet, horoscope, mental power, energies, and messages on these types of things… All the stuff that the devil uses to divert us, to confuse us… Now the Lord showed me, in the Book of Life, how one day, in His Divine strategy, he delayed the programs, and I turned on the TV when the news had not yet finished: I saw a humble peasant woman, who was crying over the body of her husband.

I must tell you, brothers, that the devil habituates us to the sorrows of others, to see the suffering of others thinking that that problem does not regard us: [Thus, we think:] those who are in difficulty might take care of themselves, because it is not my problem. Well, the Lord showed me how it hurts Him when journalists are only preoccupied with the news making an impression, without being moved; they think only about selling the news, without worrying themselves, in that case, of that woman! When I turned on the TV and I saw that peasant woman crying, I experienced a deep pain for her suffering; I was really grieved, that poor woman. It was the Lord that permitted this! I gave attention to what was being said, and I realized that the place where these events took place was at Venadillo, Tulima: my birthplace…! But immediately afterwards began the daily programs, where they spoke about a phenomenal diet, and I completely forgot about the peasant woman, because I was more interested in a diet. … I never thought about her again!

The one who did not forget the peasant woman, was Our Lord! He made me feel the pain and the suffering of that woman, because he desired that I might help her. That was the moment to use the talents that He had given me. He said to me: “The pain that you felt for her, was I, who cried out to you to help her. It was I who delayed the news, so that you might be able to see: but you were not capable to bend the knee and pray for her, not even for one minute! You let yourself be clouded by the diet, and you did not remember her any more!”

The Lord showed the situation of that woman. It was a family of humble peasants. The first thing was they had asked the husband to abandon the house in which they lived. To this, he replied no, that he would not leave there. And so some men came, to chase him away. That peasant man saw them coming toward him, to send him away, and he realized that they were armed and had the intention to kill him. I saw the whole life of that man: I saw and felt the fright and the anguish that he felt; I saw how he ran to hide his kids and the wife under some things, which seemed like enormous earth ware. I saw him running away from there, but these men followed him. Do you know what his last prayer was? “Lord take care of my wife and my small children: I commend them to you!” And they killed him! He fell dead to the ground. When they shot, the Lord made me feel the pain of that woman and of his small children, who could not cry out. (She cries).

In this way the Lord shows us the pain that He feels, and the suffering of the others. But we, often, interest ourselves only in our things, and we do not worry even a little bit about our brothers and their needs! (She continues to cry). Do you know what the Lord wanted? He wanted me to kneel down and intercede Him for that family, for that Mamma and her children! God would have inspired me how I could have helped them! And do you know how! It was enough to take a few steps and go to a priest, who lived in front of my house, and tell him what I saw on TV. This priest was a friend of the pastor of that village, (Venadillo, Tulima), and he had a guest house at Bogotá; he would had helped that woman.

You know, the first thing that we render account to God, even before the sins [of commission], are the omissions! They are so grave! You do not imagine how much! One day you will see, as I saw it! These sins make God cry! Yes, God cries, seeing his children suffer for our indifference and lack of compassion for neighbor; for the fact that so many suffer, and we do not do anything for them! The Lord will show us, he will show everyone, the consequences of the sin of our indifference before the suffering of others. So much pain, in the world, is owed to our indifference, unconcern, and hard heart.

To summarize a little: that peasant woman, seeing herself persecuted, (in fact, they sought also to kill her), escaped with her children, and sought out help from the priest of that village. The pastor, desolate, said to her: “My daughter, you must flee, because if they find you they will kill you!”

In a great hurry, he did what seemed to him the best for her: very worried, he sent her to Bogotá; he gave her a little money, and a few letters of recommendation!

She left in a hurry; she presented herself, with these letters, in the various places that the pastor had indicated to her, but no one took her in! Do you know where she ended up? Do you know who helped, in the end, that woman? Those who forced her into prostitution!!!

The Lord gave me still an opportunity to help her, when years later I saw her again! It was a day that I had to go to the center of the city. I detested going there, because it is a place where you see more misery, and since I felt myself superior, I did not like seeing poverty, indigence, and things like that. But on that day I really had to go there, and while we were passing there, my son asked me: “Oh! … Mamma, why in the world does that lady dress in that way, and wears the skirt so short?” I answered him: “Do not look, my son! These are contemptible women, who sell their body for pleasure, for money: they are prostitutes, they are unclean.” Just imagine! To speak like this, and poisoning my son even more! I classified without pity a sister, fallen in this situation due to the indifference of a people. The Lord said to me: “The indifferent are the tepid, and I vomit them out! An indifferent person will not enter into Heaven ever! The indifferent person is one who passes in the world and nothing is important to him, nothing moves him, unless it is his house and his interests! Your spiritual death began when you stopped interesting yourself in that which happened to your brothers, when you thought only about yourself and about your well-being!”

The Spiritual Treasures
I was called into existence in order to help construct a better world, and to use the talents, that the Lord had given to me, in order to contribute to extend the Kingdom of Heaven on the earth. But I did not do it! … On the contrary! How many bad counsels I gave, and how many people I drug down and ruined, with my bad advice and bad example! I never used the talents that God had given to me, I never used them! The Lord also asked me: “What spiritual treasures do you bring to me?”

Spiritual treasures?! My hands were empty! So he said to me: “What use to you were two apartments that you had, the houses that you possessed, the outpatient clinics, which you considered as a professional, with great satisfaction? Perhaps you could have brought here one brick only? What use was it to you so much worship of your body, all the money spent for it, all the obsessions to stay in form? To what did it serve to put it under so much diet that it led you to suffer anorexia, bulimia, torturing your body? You made of your body, of yourself, a god? And what good did it do you, now, here? You were very generous, it is true, but you did it so that they would thank you, to be praised, so that they would say that you were good. You manipulated everyone, with money, so that in exchange they would do you favors. Tell me: what have you brought here? When I saw you with the economic ruin, it was not a punishment as you thought, but a blessing. Yes, that bankruptcy was to strip you of that god, that god that you served! It was to make you return to Me! But you rebelled, you refused to come down from your social level, and you cursed, slave of this your god money! You thought to have obtained all this alone, with your strength, with the studies, because you were a worker, a fighter… Instead no! Look how many professionals there are, with the academic studies better than yours; how many in work commit themselves as much and more than you: observe their conditions… To you was given much, and for this motive much is asked of you; for much you must respond”.

Think about it, for every grain of rice that I wasted, I had to render an account to God! For all the times that I threw out food in the garbage!

In my Book of Life, I saw when I was small and my family was poor. My mother often cooked beans; and I hated them, I detested them. I would say: “And again these cursed beans? One day I will be so rich, that I will never eat them again”. I saw that one time I threw out the beans that Mamma had served to me, without her noticing it, and when she sat down to eat she noticed that my plate was empty. She thought that I had eaten in a hurry because I was very hungry, and she served me another time, giving to me the portion reserved for her: so she ended up not eating. You know, the Lord showed me that among the people closest to me, the one who often suffered hunger at that time, was my mother. Having seven children, many times she did not eat so that we might eat, because we were very poor. Well, that day she remained hungry in order to give me, without knowing it, that which I had thrown in the garbage. But it also happened, often, that she did not eat because someone knocked on the door to ask for food, and she gave what she was eating. She suffered hunger, but she never made any kind of a show, she never had an embittered face, much less sad, nor any other sign. On the contrary, she always had a smile and one did not notice anything about her. I have already recounted to you what a jewel of a daughter I was?! I’d call my father “Fred Flintstone” and to my mother I said she was old fashioned! That she was an old antiquated lady, and other similar things. Even to the point of denying that she was my mother, because I was ashamed. Just imagine!…

And yet, you cannot imagine the graces, the blessings that were scattered over me and on the whole world, due to my mother! Think of the grace to have a mother that goes to church and, before the tabernacle, offers her sufferings and her pain to Jesus, and even more confides! Confides in Him!

The Lord said to me: “Never did anyone love you, or will love you, as your mother! Never! No one will love you so tenderly as her!” Then the Lord showed me all the parties she gave me (after my change in social condition)… In those banquets, in those buffets, half of the food ended up in the garbage, without any thought about it.

The Lord continued: “Look at your brothers, suffering from hunger! I was hungry!”, he said to me almost shouting. You know how it sorrows the Lord: hunger, need, and the suffering of His children! How it saddens Him our egoism and our lack of charity toward neighbor!

And he continued to make me see how in my house there were so many refined and costly things. As a matter of fact, at that time, I had stuff in my house very costly, very elegant clothes, very costly. The Lord said to me: “I was naked, and you had a closet full of expensive clothes, that you did not use…” I saw also that, when we lived in a high social level, if my girlfriends bought custom-brand clothes, I had to acquire those even better; if one of them bought a nice car, I had to get a better one… I wanted always something better compared to them, because I was jealous. The Lord said to me: “You were always haughty; you made comparisons with those who were better off than you! Rich people! And you never looked at those who were less economically well off than you. When you were poor, you walked along the way of sanctity, because you even gave that which you were lacking”. And he showed me how much it pleased him my gesture, one time that my mother, notwithstanding our poverty, succeeded in buying for me brand-name tennis shoes. I was very happy, but I met a child on the street that was barefooted, and I felt such a pain for him, that I took off the shoes and gave them to him. I returned home without shoes, and my father almost killed me! And not without reason: with the poverty in which we were in, so much sacrifice in order to buy them, and I gave them along the way, as soon as they had been bought! But the Lord was content about this! How he was happy about the way by which I was walking! Notwithstanding the fact that we were a complicated and poor family, God scattered on us many graces and blessings due to the merits of my mother, because of her goodness and of her prayers.

The Lord continued showing me that, if I had not been closed to Grace and to the Holy Spirit, I could have helped a lot of people, with the talents that he had given to me. He showed me all of humanity, and how we respond to God, due to how we have lived, holding the heart closed to Him and to the Holy Spirit, and to their divine inspirations. He said to me: “I had inspired you to pray for these people: if you had done this, the evil would not have entered into them, causing so much damage”. For example: a little girl was sexually assaulted by her father: if I had not closed myself to the Holy Spirit, I would have listened to His Divine inspirations, and I would have prayed for them…and the evil one would not have entered into that father, protected by [my] prayer, and that violence would not have happened, nor would have cause so much suffering. Or also, that certain young boy would not have committed suicide. The Lord continued saying to me: “If you had prayed, that girl would not have aborted, that person would not be dead, feeling herself abandoned by Me, in a hospital bed. If you would have prayed, I would have counseled you, so that you might have begun to help your brothers. I would have guided you! I would have led you to these people. So much sorrow in the world, and you could have helped!”

He showed me how many people suffer in the world, and how much I could have helped. Never did I permit the Holy Spirit to move me, nor ever did I let myself be moved by the suffering of others. The Lord said to me: “Look at the suffering of my people, look how I needed to wound your family with cancer, so that you might be moved for those suffering the same sickness! You were moved for the kidnapped, only after your husband himself was kidnapped”. And almost shouting: “But you, of stone!!! Incapable to feel love!”

To conclude, I will try to explain how we see ourselves in the Book of Life.

I was very hypocritical, false. I was one of those who before the very person I speak well, but behind their back I speak badly; that outside they speak well, but inside you do not hear what they say. For example, I said to someone: “You are pretty, what a nice dress, it goes very well with you”. But inside I was thinking: how gross, you are ugly, and you believe yourself to be the queen! In the Book of Life you see all of this, with the differences also in the thoughts. All of my lies came to light, to “living red”, so evident that everyone could see. How many times I left in a hidden way from my mother, because she did not let me go anywhere, how many lies I invented: “Mamma, I have group work to do in the library”. She believed me, and I went to see a pornographic film, or to the bar to get a beer with my girlfriends. And there is my mother there, now, seeing everything in the Book of Life… Now nothing was hidden. What shame I felt! What shame! At the time that my parents were poor, I brought to school, for brunch, a little milk and a banana. I ate the banana and I threw the peeling wherever I happened to be; it never came to my mind that someone could hurt themselves due to that banana peeling. The Lord made me to see, as a matter of fact, the consequences: someone fell, someone got hurt… I could have killed someone, with my recklessness and lack of mercy.

I saw, with great pain and shame, how only one time did I make a good confession, as an adult. It was when a lady gave me 4,500 pesos in change too much, in a supermarket in Bogotá. My father had taught us to be honest, and never to touch even a penny of someone else’s; I realized in the car the error, while I was going to my outpatient clinic, and I said to myself: “But look at this, that stupid person, that animal (it was like that I would talk), she gave me 4,500 pesos too much! Now I must go back! … But looking in the rear view mirror, I saw the congested traffic, and said: “No! I am not going back, I do not want to be late and lose time! Too bad for her who had been such an idiot!” But I had remorse for that money. Regarding this, my father had educated us well. Sunday I went to confession, and said: “I accuse myself of having stolen 4,500 pesos, not having given them back; I kept them for myself!” I did not pay attention to what the priest said to me, but the evil one could not accuse me of being a thief!

… But the Lord said to me: “It was a lack of charity to not give back the money, because for you 4,500 pesos was nothing, but for that woman it was food for three days”. The saddest thing was to see how that woman suffered hunger for a couple of days, due to my fault, together with her two babies; like this the Lord showed me. When I do something, there are consequences of my acts, and those who suffer because of them: because our acts always have their consequences. That which we do, but also that which we do not do, brings consequences for us and for the other! Everyone will see these consequences in the Book of Life. When the moment will arrive to appear before God for the judgement, you will see it, as I myself saw it. When my Book of Life was closed, imagine my sadness, my shame, the immense sorrow…

The Book of my life was closed in the most beautiful way. Notwithstanding my behavior, despite my sins, my trash, my indifference, and my horrible sentiments, the Lord sought me out even to the last instant: he always sent me instruments, people, he spoke to me, he shouted at me, he took things from me, he let me fall into disgrace in order to seek me, and that I might seek Him. He followed after me always, even to the last instant. Do you know Who is our God and Father? He is a powerful God, in love, who begs next to each of us, so that we might convert. Instead, when things went badly, I would say: “God punished me, he condemned me!” Clearly it is not like that! Never does He condemn us: in fact, of my free arbitrary power, I chose freely who might be my father, and it was not God. I chose Satan as my father!

When I was struck by the lightning bolt, before taking me to the “Social Seguro”, they took me to a public hospital, where there were many sick people, so many wounded, so much suffering, and there was not an available stretcher for me. And when those who brought me asked the doctors where they might be able to put me, they just said only: “Down there, down there!” And my rescuers: “But down there, where?” “Down there, on the floor!” But they did not want to leave me on the ground, because I was badly burned, and if I had contracted an infection, I would certainly have died… While I was in a corner, during those hours, the doctors looked at me with a face… It is that they could not leave someone that had a heart attack, for example, or was in a very grave condition, but with more possibility of surviving with respect to me, that I was instead totally burned like a “toast”, and in all probability I would die.

But I was conscious, and very irritated, murmuring because the doctors did not come to me. But there was a moment in which I was calm, without complaining, because I saw Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was bent over and was very near to me, he touched my head with His hands and he consoled me. Are you able to imagine this?! Can you imagine the tenderness?! I thought: is it a hallucination? How is it possible to see Our Lord here?! I closed my eyes, then I reopened them, and I continued to see him there! He said to me, with great tenderness: “You see, my little one, you are about to die! Feel the need of My Mercy”. Just imagine…! And so he said: “Mercy! Mercy!”, but in the mean time I thought: why mercy? What bad have I ever done?

I was not conscious of my errors, but it was clear to me that I was about to die, this yes! About this I was sad… “Alas, I am about to die!!! … Alas, my diamond rings!!!” I immediately remembered my rings. I look, and I see the flesh of my fingers totally burned, as if they had exploded. But I said to myself: “I must take them off, cost what it may cost! Otherwise they will have to break them, and they will loose their value”. I did not think about anything else; I saw my fingers puffed up, and I thought only to take off my rings so that they might not break them! You cannot imagine what an unpleasant smell burnt flesh has. And the more I moved those rings, the more it stank. I felt that I would be crazy from the pain, but I insisted and I said to myself: “No! No and no! I must succeed in this! I must succeed, because to me, nothing can beat me, and this flesh will not swell, no sir! I am taking off these rings from here, cost what it may, I will not die with them”. When in the end I succeeded in taking them off, I remembered suddenly: “Oh, no!!! I am about to die, and these nurses will steal my rings!” In the meantime arrives my brother-in-law. I, very happy say: “Save my rings!!!” I handed them over to him, who is a doctor, and it could not be otherwise: because otherwise he would not have touched them, but he would have thrown them away, and far away! In fact they were burned, and with fragments of flesh attached. He said he would deliver them to Fernando, my husband, adding: “Tell my sisters to take my children because, the poor ones, they will be without Mamma. In fact, I will not make it!” The worst thing was that I did not profit from those moments that Jesus offered to me, to ask Him Mercy and pardon. But how could I ask pardon, if I thought I did not have sins?! I believed myself to be a saint! When we feel we are “saints”, it is then that we condemn ourselves.

When I had taken off the rings and had entrusted them to my brother-in-law, so that he might hand them over to my husband, I said to myself relieved: “Finally, now I can die!”, and the last thought was: “Alas, with what money will they bury me, given that my banking account was in the red?…”

God the Father loves everyone and each one, independently of the fact that we are good or bad; and with such an intensity that, even to the last moment, he comes even to us with so much tenderness, he embraces us with all of His Love… He wants to save us, but if we do not welcome Him, if we do not ask Him pardon and mercy, recognizing our faults, he leaves us free to follow that which we have chosen. If ours had been a life without God, most likely in that moment we will refuse Him, and He will respect us. He does not oblige us to accept Him.

And so one closes my Book of Life.

The Return
But when my Book of Life was closed, you cannot imagine how I felt: I was truly terrorized. I see myself with the head down, and I feel as if falling toward a pit. Then that thing is opened that seems like a hole, I fall inside, and terrorized I begin to cry out to all the saints to save me. You would not believe the quantity of saints that I began to name: St. Ambrose, St. Isidore, St. Augustine, etc. I did not even know how to recognize so many, as bad a Christian as I was! But when I finished the list of saints, I remained in silence… I felt an immense emptiness, a pain and an enormous shame, and I realized that no one could help me! And I said to myself: “… And all the people, on the earth, to think that I was a saint… To hope that I might die, in order to ask from me a grace. Where am I going, now?” I lifted up my eyes, and I met those of my mother. I felt so much sadness, a profound sorrow, because she would have wanted so much to carry me into the hands of God. With great confusion and suffering, I cried out to her: “Mamma, what a shame! I have condemned myself! Where I am going, I will never see you again!”

But in that moment, Jesus grants her a very beautiful grace: my mother was motionless, and God permits her to move the fingers, pointing them upwards, and inviting me to look up there: I look, and behold to come out of myself from the crusts of my eyes, frightfully painful. It was spiritual blindness which went away, and in that instant I saw there: a wonderful moment.

One day, one of my patients, said to me: “Doctor, I feel very, very much pain, much sadness, for you. Because you are too much of a materialist. But one day, you might find yourself in some affliction, or in a dangerous situation, whatever it might be, ask Jesus Christ that he might cure you with His Blood, and ask Him for pardon: because never, never, will He abandon you, having paid the price of his own Blood for you”.

And so, with great shame and immense sorrow, I began to cry out: “Lord! Jesus Christ, have compassion on me! Forgive me, Lord, forgive me! Give me a second chance!”

It was the most beautiful moment, most wonderful! I do not have words to describe it. Because Jesus bent down and pulled me out of that pit! He lifted me and brought me to a level place, and he said to me, with much love: “Yes, you will return, and you will have your second chance… Not because of the prayer of your family, because it is normal that they cry and shout out for you, but because of the intercession of all the people unrelated to your flesh and to your blood, that have cried, prayed, and lifted up their own heart with so much love for you”. Do you know what I saw? I saw the great power of the prayer of intercession, brothers! Do you know how to be able to be always in the presence of the Lord? Pray everyday for your children, but pray also for the children of the people of the whole world! Pray for the others! In this way you will be in the presence of God, everyday.

I saw how thousands and thousands of little flames of light went up, so beautiful, to the presence of the Lord; they were little white flames, stupendous, full of love. They were the prayers of so many, so many people, that were praying for me, that had been moved after having seen on TV and in the newspapers what had happened to me, and that they were crying and offering Masses. The greatest gift that you can offer to someone is the Holy Mass. Nothing exists more efficacious, that can help someone, than a Holy Mass. It is also what God appreciates the most: to see His children intercede for their neighbors, and to help their own brother. The Holy Mass is not the work of man, but of God.

Among those little lights, though, there was an enormous one, very beautiful: a light much greater than all the others. You know, brothers, why I am now here? Why I returned? Because in my land exists a saint. I looked with curiosity, in order to know who that person might be that loved me so much, and the Lord said to me: “That man that you see there, is a person that loves you, much, and he does not even know you”. He showed me that it had to do with a poor peasant man, who lived in the mountains, in the Sierra Nevada of Saint Martha. This man was very poor; he did not have anything to eat. All of his harvest was burned, even the chickens that he had, had been stolen by the men of the “guerilla warfare”. These last ones wanted even to take into their service his older son. This peasant man went all the way down to the village to go to Mass. The Lord made me pay attention to the words with which he prayed: “Lord, I love you! Thank you for health, thank you for my children! Thank you for all that you give me! Be praised! Glory to You!”

His prayer was only praise and rendering thanks to God! The Lord made me see how in the wallet he had a 5,000 pesos bill, and a 10,000 pesos bill, and this was all that he possessed! Do you know what he did…? He gave the 10,000 bill at the offertory! I would put only a 5,000 pesos bill, and that–when someone gave me a false bill, at work!

He, instead, did not give the 5,000 bill, but the 10,000 bill, even though this money was all that he had! And he was not discontented, nor did he grumble due to his poverty, but he thanked and praised God! What an example, brothers! Afterwards, he went out of the church, he went to buy a piece of blue soap (washing soap); he wrapped it in a piece of newspaper (“O Espectador”), of the day before. There was the news of my accident, and the photograph where I appeared totally burned.

When this man sees the news, as he reads it slowly, being moved he cries so much, as if I were someone very dear to him, and prostrate with the face to the ground, he beseeches God with all of his heart, saying: “Father, my Lord, have compassion on this my little sister, save her, save her Lord! Lord, if You save her, if you save my little sister, I promise you to go to the “Sanctuary of Buga” to release the vow, but save her. Please, Lord, save her!” Think about it, that man so poor, who was not cursing, nor lamenting for suffering hunger with his family, but on the contrary was praising and thanking God… And with a capacity to love the neighbor so great that, even having nothing to eat, he was disposed to cross the Country in order to fulfil a promise, in favor of someone he did not even know!

The Lord said to me: “This is true love of neighbor! It is like this that you must love the neighbor…” And it was there that he gave me this mission: “You will go back, to give your testimony, that you will repeat not a 1000 times, but a 1000 x 1000. Woe to the one, listening to you, who will not change, because he will be judged with greater severity. And this applies also to you, in your second return, for the religious who are my priests, and for whoever else that does not listen to you: because there is no greater deaf person than the one who does not want to hear, nor a worse blind person than the one who does not want to see”.

This, my dear brothers, is not a threat, on the contrary! The Lord does not need to threaten us. This is a second chance that I have, and it is also for you. This shows that God is in love with us, and puts before our eyes this mirror which is I, Gloria Polo. Because God does not desire for us to condemn ourselves, but rather that we live with Him, in Paradise. But for this, we must let ourselves be transformed by Him. When our hour will arrive, to leave this world, also to each one of you will be opened the “Book of Life”. When you die, all of you will pass through this moment, just as I passed through it. There, we will see exactly as now…our thoughts and our sentiments, our acts and their consequences, our omissions and consequences of them… All in the presence of God. But the most beautiful thing is that each one will see the Lord face to Face, that he asks us to convert ourselves: up to the last moment he asks us this, so that in truth we begin to be new creatures with Him, because without Him we could not do it!

Physical Recovery
When the Lord made me return, my kidneys did not function. Nor did the doctors do dialysis for me, because it was not worth the effort, from the moment that I was about to die… But suddenly, they began to function; the same for the lungs, and also the heart began to beat strongly. You can imagine the astonishment of the doctors! By then, I did not need the machines!

I began my physical recovery, but I did not feel anything alive below, and after a month the doctors said to me: “Gloria, God is doing a miracle with you, because your skin has grown back over all the wounds… But as for your legs we cannot do anything. We must amputate them!” When they said this to me, I, who was a sportswoman, remembered: 4 hours of daily aerobics, for what? … I thought only of fleeing from there, but I did not succeed, because the legs did not hold me up, and I fell. I was hospitalized on the 5th floor, and they took me to the 7th floor to stay there until the surgery; I found there a lady who had her legs already amputated, but they had to amputate them again, higher up. Seeing her, I thought that not even all the money in the world was sufficient to buy those wonderful things which are the legs. When they told me that they would amputate them, I felt a great sadness! Never had I thanked God for my legs, on the contrary: with the tendency that I had to get fat, I suffered hunger as a fool and I spent fortunes to be elegant… And now, I see my black legs, burned, without flesh, but for the first time I thank God to have them yet. “Lord, I thank you for my legs, and I ask you for the grace to leave them for me, so that I might be able to walk. I beg you, Lord, leave to me the legs!” And I immediately began to feel them: they were very black, without circulation, and from Friday to Monday, when they arrived, the doctors were surprised, because they were red and the circulation was back in place! Astonished, they touched me and they did not want to believe. I said to them: “Doctors, my legs hurt terribly, but I believe that there is no one in the world, so happy to feel pain in the legs, as I am in this moment!” The doctor on the 7th floor replied to me that never, in 38 years of service, had he seen anything similar.

The other two miracles that the Lord did for me was the breasts and the ovaries. The doctor had said that I could no longer have babies. I was happy, because I thought that God had given me a natural method to not get pregnant. But, one and a half years later, I see that my breasts began to grow, to expand and to be reformed. I was amazed, and when I went to the doctor, he said to me that I was expecting a baby! And with these breasts I nursed my daughter!!!…

To God nothing is impossible!

Conclusion
May the Lord bless everyone, immensely. Glory to God and glory to Our Lord Jesus Christ. May God bless you!

I present to you my daughter. This child is a miracle! She is the daughter that God gave me, with the burned ovaries! That which for the doctors was totally impossible! But for God, nothing is impossible!!! Here she is, her name is Maria José!…

THE END

– – – – – – –

Gloria Polo now lives in Colombia, and continues to exercise her profession. She was left with enormous scars, but she leads a normal life, and now she is a woman of great faith! She travels much; she transmits her testimony to thousands of people, and fulfils the mission that God had confided to her. (She has the authorization of the Church to do so). This is a translation from the Italian translation of this testimony, re-edited by Fr. David Nix. The Italian translation is a translation of a CD (in Spanish), in which is engraved the testimony that she gave in a church in Caracas, Venezuela, 5 May 2005.

– – – – – – –

For further information and in various languages visit:
www.gloriapolo.net (many languages)
www.gloriapolo.com (Spanish)

Father Willie Doyle

Today is the anniversary of the death of Father Willie Doyle. He was serving as a chaplain in the First World War.

I wonder is there a happier man in France than I am. Just now Jesus is giving me great joy in tribulation, though conditions of living are about as uncomfortable as even St. Teresa could wish — perpetual rain, oceans of mud, damp, cold and a plague of rats. Yet I feel that all this is a preparation for the future and that God is labouring in my soul for ends I do not clearly see as yet. Sometimes I kneel down with outstretched arms and pray God, if it is a part of His divine plan, to rain down fresh privations and sufferings. But I stopped when the mud wall of my little hut fell in upon me — that was too much of a good joke!

For more, read here, or here, or visit Pat Kenny’s blog dedicated to Father Doyle (where I sourced the above quote).

Penance

J.M.J.

The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.

…

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 flaming 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 splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’…

Image from Pixabay

This year, 2017, is the 100th anniversary year of the apparitions at Fátima, Portugal.  As I mentioned in an earlier post it is also the anniversary year of other events of importance to the Catholic Church and thus to the world.  On the 21st August there will be an eclipse over North America on the same day as the feast of Our Lady of Knock.  The apparition at Knock was unusual because it was silent.  Our Lady usually has specific messages that she wishes to convey to the witnesses.  The silence of the Knock apparition and its subject matter point to the beginning of Revelation (a.k.a. The Apocalypse Of Saint John) Chapter 8:

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven, as it were for half an hour.  And I saw seven angels standing in the presence of God; and there were given to them seven trumpets.

The altar in the Knock apparition and in this part of Revelation can be related to the open-air Altar of Burnt Offerings of Moses’ tabernacle and the two Temples of Jerusalem. This altar was used for the sacrifices of Yom Kippur – the Jewish Day of Atonement.  The difference here is that in the Knock apparition and in Revelation the sacrificed lamb was slain but yet lives (a reference to the resurrected Christ) – “a Lamb standing as it were slain”.  This year, Yom Kippur falls on the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel (and also Sts. Gabriel and Raphael in the Novus Ordo calendar).  There is a forty day period preceding this feast called St. Michael’s Lent and, as with Lent itself, it is a period of preparation marked by fasting, increased prayer, and so on.  St. Michael’s Lent traditionally starts on the Feast of the Assumption (tomorrow) but this gives more than forty days.  When does the fortieth day before the Feast of St. Michael actually fall?  On the day of the American eclipse and the anniversary of the Knock apparition.  By the way, the opening of the sixth seal in Revelation is accompanied by an eclipse:

And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair: and the whole moon became as blood: And the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as the fig tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind: And the heaven departed as a book folded up: and every mountain, and the islands were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and tribunes, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of mountains:

And they say to the mountains and the rocks: Fall upon us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?

What does all this add up to?  It looks like we, especially those in the U.S., are being called to make a special effort to atone for our sins.  Maybe we are being given a last chance before the flaming sword is brought down on us.

After these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that they should not blow upon the earth, nor upon the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the sign of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying: Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we sign the servants of our God in their foreheads.

This may only be a foreshadowing of the events prophesied in Revelation but does that matter?  We are always called to repentance for our sins.  Shouldn’t we wake up and make a special effort when the signs are looking ominous like this?

(All bible quotes are from Revelation, Douay-Rheims version.)

A Couple of Lancashire Churches

As I said in my previous post, I didn’t take enough photos on my recent trip to the UK.  One reason is that it felt like a bit of a pilgrimage.  I was looking forward to attending my first Masses in the UK, the land of my forefathers.  Now, Wales is a real backwater as far as the Catholic Church goes so I was unsurprised to find my local church in a rather shabby, but not unloved, state.  Lancashire, however, is known to be a strongly Catholic county of England and it was surprisingly hard to find the church I was looking for in Preston because everywhere we turned there seemed to be a steeple.  My mother and I thought we had found the right one but it was eerily quiet.  When we were wandering around it we asked a couple of guys where St. Walburge’s was and they seemed quite amused at our inability to find what is reputedly the third tallest steeple in the UK.  When we followed their directions and saw the steeple in the distance my mum claimed that it looked smaller than the one we had just been wandering around.  I was reminded of this sketch from Father Ted.  Sorry mum. 🙂  I also visited a church in Blackburn dedicated to St. Alban.  The interiors of both these churches were lovely, and the Masses (one Novus Ordo, one traditional Latin) were beautiful.  Here are some of the few photos I took:

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There were many more photos I could have taken.  I didn’t get a good shot of the rose window at St. Walburge’s for example.  However, I think these kinds of places are best seen in person so that one can absorb the atmosphere and let a little of the sanctity seep into one’s soul.

Here are a few titbits of information that I picked up on my first visit to St. Walburge’s.  The hammer beams of the roof creak like the timbers of a ship in high winds.  The steeple rests on bales of cotton so that it can move with the wind without cracking.  The church was originally going to be dedicated to a different saint but somebody associated with the project was healed by the oil streaming from St. Walburge’s tomb.  The choir loft was originally situated so far from the organ loft that it made it very difficult for the choir to sing in time with the organ.  The windows behind the main altar were originally set into a flat wall.  This wall was subsequently turned into the curved apse you can see in the photos.  The windows were put back in the wrong order so that the inscription relating to the donors no longer makes any sense.

I hope I’ve tempted you to take a closer look at the beautiful churches of Lancashire (I’m looking at you Simon! 😉 ).

See here for tours and Mass times at St. Walburge’s.