My daughter,
I require you to tell your spiritual father that, in proof of the love that you
bear for my most Holy Mother, I want an act of Consecration of the entire world
to be made every year, on one of the days of her feasts, chosen by you – the
Assumption, Purification or Annunciation – asking that the Virgin without stain
of sin to shame and confound the impure ones, so that they return to the to the
true path and cease to offend Me.
Just as I
asked Saint Margaret Mary to have the world consecrated to My Divine Heart, so I
ask you that it be consecrated to Her on a solemn feast. (…)
Do not neglect this task
(Jesus well knows that it will be 4 years before this consecration is
accomplished) C (1-8-35)
When Alexandrina heard this
invitation, the desire for the world be consecrated to Our Lady had already been
popular in Europe for almost a century. It seems that it had been asked for by
St. Catherine Labouré (vide NoC). Later there were several requests directed to
the Pope from ecclesiastical authorities. Local consecrations in some dioceses
had been made. But the consecration of the entire world had not yet been made by
the Pope.
Jesus uses little ones: He
chooses a humble, paralysed little shepherd confined among the four walls of her
room, for this purpose! And he says to her:
My daughter, I chose you for more sublime things!
I chose you to communicate to the Pope my desire to have the world consecrated
to my most holy Mother. C (1-11-37)[1]
The seer of Fatima, Sister
Lucia, had revealed to Rome that it was the will of God that Russia be
consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but had never spoken of the world,
as she clarifies in several of her writings to Fr Umberto Pasquale, the second
director of Alexandrina who had a slight contact with Sister Lucia.
Naturally, the intermediary
between Alexandrina and the Pope is her director, Fr Pinho.
After many uncertainties, he
decided to communicate the request to the Holy See.
Rome appointed two people to
Balasar to examine the case: the Rev. Fr Durão, who visited on 31st
May 1937, and reported favourably; and Canon Vilar, on 5th January
1939. He thought highly of her, became her friend and participated in the
ecstasy of the Passion of 13th January 1939. He wrote her 7 letters
relating his difficulty in persuading the Holy Father to make such consecration.
He did not see the result of his efforts, because he died on 7th
March 1941.
This Consecration and the
Ecstasies of the Passion
The phenomenon of the ecstasies
of the Passion, with all those movements in a paralysed person, must excite
astonishment and even disturb the spirit. Padre Durão (in 1937), although
declaring he was convinced of the honesty of the seer, said that “signs” were
lacking. The “exterior sign” was to be given by Jesus in making her relive His
Passion with appropriate actions. That's why in the ecstasy of 13th
January 1939, Canon Vilar heard phrases relative to the consecration. Let us
read some of them collected from the notes of the teacher Çãozinha, who was
present:
— It was a
hard Passion (...) but it is for the consecration. It is necessary: they want
extraordinary signs. The sign is very clear (...)
What more can I do, my Jesus,
because the Pope delays like this? To suffer this Passion until the Holy
Father decides to do what Jesus wants (notes preserved in the Archive of the
General Postulation).
Let us contemplate Alexandrina’s
humility:
Oh Lord, if You had chosen
others who were not such a sinner as I am, wouldn’t he (the Pope) believe more
easily? How can your work thrive when you use such miserable workers? (Positio,
p. 322; also, p. 51)
The days 31st October
and 8th December, 1942!
When Pius XI died, Alexandrina
repeated many times:
“Cardinal Pacelli, Cardinal Pacelli!”
When, later, this Cardinal was
elected Pope, Alexandrina, in ecstasy, heard Jesus say:
This is the
Pope that will consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of my Mother! (C G,
notices p. 115)
During the ecstasy of 22nd
May 1942 Jesus exclaimed:
Glory,
glory, glory to Jesus! Honour, honour and glory to Mary!
The heart of
the Pope, the golden heart has decided to consecrate the world to the Heart of
Mary! What great happiness and joy for the world, to belong more than ever to
the Mother of Jesus!
The whole
world belongs to the divine Heart of Jesus; all is going to belong to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. (NoC)
On the day of 29th
May Alexandrina prayed thus:
Hail Mary,
Mother of Jesus! Honour, glory, triumph to your Immaculate Heart!
Hail Mary,
Mother of Jesus, Mother of the whole Universe!
Who will not
want to belong to the Mother of Jesus, the owner of the Victory? The whole world
is going to be consecrated to her maternal Heart!
Keep, pure Virgin, keep,
Virgin Mother, all your children in your most holy Heart! (prayer written during
the ecstasy by Deolinda and Dr Azevedo; C G, 116)
On 31st October, at
the conclusion of the Fatima jubilee (25th anniversary of the
apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima, in 1917), the whole world could hear, on
the radio, the voice of the Holy Father consecrating the world to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary in the Portuguese language! How did Alexandrina react? On 7th
November she wrote to her director:
When I
learned about the consecration of the world to our beloved heavenly Mother in a
telegram, Jesus allowed me to have some passing moments of consolation.
I was out of
myself; I didn’t know how to thank Jesus and our heavenly Mother. I raised my
hands to Heaven and said: blessed be Jesus, blessed be our heavenly Mother!
It seemed
that I myself went and placed the Holy Father entirely into the Heart of Jesus
and our heavenly Mother! (Note the singular “Heart” that indicates the union of
the two Hearts, of Jesus and Mary). C (7-11-42).
Her diary of that same day, 7th
November, begins like this:
Be happy,
beloved daughter, be happy dear daughter, because the desires of Jesus are
realized! Be happy, because great blessings have come to this guilty earth! S
(7-11-42)
On 8th December,
feast of the Immaculate Conception, the consecration was renewed solemnly in S.
Peter’s Basilica.
On 13th December 1942
Alexandrina had a vision, which can be interpreted as a presentiment of the
triumph of Our Lady when her Fatima statue was taken by plane through several
continents.
Early in the morning of 13th December,
it was not a dream; I think that it was not an illusion, oh, no! I saw our
heavenly Mother of Fatima raised up, I do not know in what way, to great height.
Around her, a universe of people. She faced all tenderly. I remained out of
myself: it seemed that I had been carried to another region. C (2-1-43)[2]
[1]
It must be noted that Alexandrina is not possessive of this mission.
Indeed, Fr Umberto Pasquale says: “When Alexandrina knew, through me,
that Sister Lucia of Fatima was charged with asking for the consecration
of Russia to the Heart of Mary, she said with relief: Good! That means
that when you talk to the world about the consecration, my name will not
appear.”
[2]
About the
“Peregrinatio Mariae” in Italy, Fr Mario Mason, a Jesuit, who had taken
part personally in the organization, left some writings about it. Let’s
look at some excerpts from it:
In 1942 I saw, as in a dream, the statue of Our Lady
going through all the country, as a missionary, and remaining two or
three days, according to the importance of the centres. From May 1947 to
October 1949, in Milan and surrounding dioceses it was received as if it
was truly alive, as both Mother and Queen. All the organizational
difficulties were overcome as if by enchantment.... and the flood of
worshippers grew. The holy Cardinal Schuster himself was moved to say:
«Here is the hand of God!»
This
initiative passed from Milan to the whole of Italy. To prepare souls for
the solemn act of the consecration of Italy to the Blessed Virgin Mary,
which was made in Catania on 13th Setember1959 by Pope John XXIII, I
proposed to the National Marian Committee that the statue of Our Lady of
Fatima should pass though all the dioceses of Italy, by helicopter, for
150 days or more, without interruption: it was like a live Rosary of the
Virgin among Her sons. All the regions competed to outdo each other with
manifestations of love and deep piety. (...) the evocative scenes of
welcome, the continuous pilgrimages and the vigils in all parts
transformed the towns into so many shrines. (...) this caused me to live
those 150 days in an anticipated vision of the Paradise. (...)
As a
remembrance of that itinerary the National Temple of Mary, Mother and
Queen, came into being in Mount Grisa, in Trieste, to unite and protect
all the peoples of Europe and of the world (...)”.
Many had been “touched”. We
remember how the Holy Padre Pio, leaning out of the window of his cell
to look at the statue moving in the sky and, in anguish, asking for a
cure... and was cured!
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