FR GOBBI’S FIRST MEDITATION: OUR LADY’S RESPONSE TO THE CRISIS IN THE PRIESTHOOD
Welcome all to this cenacle in which Our Lady has a special design for this International cenacle. We are living moments of great crisis in the Church above all in the Priesthood. The Holy Father has just concluded the year of the priest, what can be the reason that Our Lady brought forward in her movement in the Church. And what is our role of the MMP during this time of crisis?
The first consequence of this crisis is to bring out great distrust and discouragement and the gift of this year is to bring joy to rediscover the enthusiasm in the Priesthood so desired by Jesus in which we must infuse in our difficult and painful times.
This message though given 35 years ago is so relevant at these times.
Message from Blue Book on 18/10/75 Feast of St Luke the Evangelist: Be Joyous
“My Adversary will one day think that he is celebrating a complete victory: over the world, over the Church, over souls.
It will be only then that I will intervene, terrible and victorious, that his defeat may be all the greater when he is certain in his conviction that he has conquered once and for all.
What is in preparation is so extraordinary that it’s like has never happened since the creation of the world: that is why everything has already been predicted in the Bible.
The terrible struggle between Me, ‘the Woman Clothed in the Sun,’ and the Red Dragon, Satan, who has now succeeded in seducing many even with the error of Marxist atheism, has already been foretold to you. The struggle between the Angels together with my children and the followers of the dragon led by the rebellious angels has already been foretold to you. Above all, my complete victory has already been clearly foretold.
You, my sons, have been called to live through these events. It is now the time for you to know this, that you may be consciously prepared for the battle. This is now the time for me to begin disclosing part of my plan.
First of all, it is necessary that my Enemy have the impression of having conquered everything, of having everything now in his hands. This is why he will be permitted to penetrate even into the interior of my Church, and he will succeed in plunging the sanctuary of God into darkness. He will reap the greatest number of victims from among the ministers of the sanctuary.
This will in fact be a time of great falls on the part of my beloved sons, my priests.
Satan will seduce some of them by pride, others by love of the flesh, others by doubts, others by unbelief, and still others by discouragement and loneliness.
How many will have doubts about my Son and about me and will believe that this is the end of my Church!
Priests consecrated to my Immaculate Heart, my beloved sons whom I am gathering together for this great battle, the first weapon that you must make use of is trust in me. It is your complete abandonment to me.
Conquer the temptation of fear, of discouragement, of sadness. Distrust paralyzes your activity and greatly benefits my Adversary.
Be serene; be joyful!”
This is why we are experiencing the weight and pain because we are part of the spiritual battle. This is a particular reference to Scripture referring to the great battle that has been waged between the Woman clothed in the Sun and Red Dragon, St Michael and his angels fought against the Dragon with his angels who were then cast out of Paradise. We know now that he has seduced mankind and we are continually engaged in this battle between the angels and the demons. On the external aspect it appears that Satan is triumphant at every level. We are at the cusp almost as it is coming to its finality or its conclusion. Amongst this battle how can we be joyful in these times?
Because we have the recognition of being involved in this battle and being in the cohort of the Woman Clothed with the Sun and it is important that my enemy believes and is seen that he has conquered everything and has everything under his control. With this he has entered to obscure the Church, to recall the words of Pope Paul VI “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church capturing some of those within the Church” this is the moment of the great fall for my predilect sons. Some he will seduce with pride others with the passion of the flesh. “Even if you have been wounded, even if you have fallen many times, even if you have doubted, even if you have betrayed your calling at certain times, do NOT become discouraged, because I love you!”
Satan has taken humanity away from God, making it a victim of Practical atheism. In the place of God, man has placed himself with all his technology imposing his immoral laws against the laws of God so that the laws of God both individually and socially become trampled and this is the state which humanity finds itself at present. Far from God and not knowing the love of God being so far from God life is always more threatened instead of communion there is great disunion, instead of love we have hate, from hate we have violence, and this humanity is chastising itself with its own behavior. The distance from God becomes its greatest chastisement. Consequently we are seeing that Satan appears to be dominating all of humanity at this moment.
Even in the Church he has been given a period of time in which to attack and obscure her, taking many of the ministers of the sanctuary, so there are times where many priests have fallen and are falling. This great crisis within the Priesthood was already foreseen by Our Lady. I’ll read you a message an excerpt of La Salette, to Melanie: 1846 on the Holy Mountain of La Salette:
“The Priests, the ministers of my Son, with their wicked life and their impieties in celebrating the Holy Mysteries with their love of money and pleasures, Priests have become clothed with impurity.” This is part of the message of La Salette.
Our Lady reiterates this message of La Salette in the Blue Book; 20.11.1976 Our Lady says:
“Where today is there a place where sin does not exist? Even those houses consecrated to the worship of God are profaned by the sins that are committed in them. It is the persons who are consecrated, the very priests and religious, who have lost even the sense of sin. Some of them, in their thoughts, their words and their way of life, sacrilegiously allow themselves to be led by Satan.
Never before as today has the Devil succeeded so well in seducing you.”
Message Blue Book on 3.6.78: The Whole Church in My Refuge
“Comfort my Immaculate Heart.
Never as in these present times has my Heart been so utterly pierced by a crown of thorns; these are the sins, the ingratitude, the sacrileges, the desertions and the betrayals, especially on the part of my beloved sons and of consecrated souls.
Often I cannot enter some of their houses because they close the door on me and do not want me.”
Message from Blue Book on 18.5.77: MY BATTLE
“Even in my Church, Satan seems to have now succeeded in winning everything over.
He feels secure because he has succeeded in tricking you and misleading you:
- By error which has spread everywhere and is even proclaimed by many of my poor priest-sons;
- By infidelity which is dressed up as culture and modernization, in an endeavor to make evangelization more up-to-date and acceptable. Thus the gospel which some preach today is no longer the Gospel of my Son Jesus;
- By sin, which is more and more committed and justified. Often it is precisely priestly and religious lives which have become veritable cesspools of impurity.”
So we have three points of reference, La Salette, MMP and the Holy Father. Pope Benedict XVI, soon before becoming Pope, said during the stations of the cross that we often see Jesus recrucified. How often do we celebrate his Sacraments not realising His Presence, how many times His words are distorted, and how many empty words we echo, how much filth there is in the Church even by those who are supposed to belong totally to Him. Further in this process the Holy Father refers to the Church: “Lord your Church, the bark, seems to be drowning: a boat that is tossed in every direction, we within your Church are spoiling your ship, we, after proclaiming your Word and your great works, are the very ones that fail you. With our fall Satan is dragging us down, and your Church attacked and beaten. Here we have diagnosed the crisis of the Church and specifically at its heart, the Priesthood. We are carrying the weight and the pain of these times, but in part this crisis should be a great comfort to us because as Satan is boasting his victory on souls in the Church, and it is at this point that I shall intervene so that his humiliation will be total. Here we see the direct intervention of Our Lady. This is the work entrusted to her by the Blessed Trinity, the Woman clothed in the sun. Satan has seduced humanity with his Pride and with this Pride he has formed his own army with the most powerful at all levels, political, social, economically and even with the religious using the hidden and diabolical force of Freemasonry, which has permeated also the interior of the Church. And it has greatly contributed in bringing this crisis within the Priesthood.
So what has the Blessed Trinity offered this battle as it draws closer to its conclusion because this dominion is part of my plan? “My Adversary sits at the throne of victory I will tear away and challenge him to be totally conquered”. In view of this great battle and its contest the Blessed Trinity has given this work to a humble creature. (Satan is very intelligent, far superior to human intelligence) The Trinity accepts the challenge to humiliate him by giving us the humble creature, a creature who was born in the Trinity and he could not cast a shadow over Her. Beloved daughter of the Father, Mother of Jesus and Spouse of the Holy Trinity, a creature who outside God is its purest reflection of his Divinity. A creature that reflects Him always in Her person and in Her life, who is the smallest and yet the biggest, this is Our Lady who today is the Woman Clothed with the Sun, with her “yes” and “every yes” has a profound effect on humanity, with every yes it has a transforming affect and every yes continues to transform. The first yes, the Annunciation with the Incarnation of the Word. The second yes beneath the Cross which produces an affect of Redemption. Now the Holy Trinity requests of Our Lady her third “yes”. The yes of Restoration, the yes to the battle that she is engaged in against the Red Dragon, against the powerful infernal forces that have been unleashed in the world and with her yes she must definitely conquer the power of Satan and all his evil forces. This is the third yes of Mary. This final “yes” is a response to the real battle, and there is now an army which is invisible and will come to its conclusion in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.