What God promises comes to be, what is foretold by the revelations of the Saints will arrive at the indicated time, provided that God is not mocked and that we do not play cunning games with Him, insisting on holding on to our own politics and our own subtle diplomacy, irrespective of His design and contrary to His will and Good Pleasure. It is precisely this that is unacceptable in our Alliance with Jesus, this that causes the greatest sorrow in His spouses and despair in His disciples and servants : that the men of the Church, in imitation of modern statesmen, should reserve for themselves the pleasures of temporal affairs, whilst turning a deaf ear to the promises as well as to the threats of our good Saviour and Shepherd, the Son of God and of the Immaculate Conception, Jesus Christ. That this is the reason for the «wars, famines and persecutions» of yesterday, today and tomorrow, is made abundantly clear by the prophecies of the last centuries and of the end of this millennium! But it needs to be demonstrated again and again, if we do not wish to see ourselves denied – for the tenth time! – the offers of the Sacred Heart and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which will allow us at last to experience the sweetness of Their Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.
I am eager to take up again the golden thread of Catholic orthodromy, which ends in the unconditional promises of Our Lord at Porto, in 1899, and in those of the Immaculate Virgin Mary at Fatima, in 1917. So, breaking with all human prudence, I shall demonstrate that between Christ and His Vicar on earth there is a "wrestling contest", a trial of strength, yes! over a "challenge" that is already old. A hundred years ago, the Pope reserved to himself, as absolute sovereign, the domain of his politics and the enthralling heady game of his own personal diplomacy. And since then, he has refused to leave their ownership and conduct to Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother, thus thwarting the designs of grace and mercy which Jesus and Mary have conceived in Their undivided compassionate and loving Heart, on the order of Their Heavenly Father, to the praise of His Glory and for the conversion of poor sinners. In the end, one of the two must prevail for, in the meantime, so many souls are being lost as a result of this monstrous infidelity, and truly foolish is He who thinks the end is in sight as he nears the end of this century and the end of his own life, when his Hour, as we know, is approaching. Might it be he, or rather his successor, whom little Jacinta saw in a prophetic vision, being insulted and persecuted, «kneeling before a table, with his head in his hands, weeping»? Here then is this passionate and impassioned story simply told. It is a history in which our lives and our eternal salvation are clearly bound up.
The Church is most certainly holy in the mystery of her mystical marriage with Christ, but not in her human totality. Like all of human lineage, she has her tares, her dark corners, her"shameful side"… What do I mean by that? And why in connection with Mother Mary of the Divine Heart? Here we touch on the intimate secret of that incomparable life, which links her to that glorious line of the spouses and servants of Jesus, chosen by Him to be His messengers. They had to suffer shame and agony in the fulfilment of their sacred mission, before being recognised by the wisdom of the Church no longer as a shameful part of her most holy Body, but one of the holiest, the most fruitful and glorious parts. Such were Saint Joan of Arc at the stake, accused by the people of the Church of having failed and having renounced her Voices, her Mission… Saint Margaret-Mary, mocked on account of her eccentricities and her alleged messages… Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus who identified herself with Joan of Arc and then sank into ridicule with Diana Vaughan… Lucy, the seer of Fatima, a story-telling visionary unmasked by Fr Dhanis, to the Church’s shame… Thus the Countess Maria from Westphalia, become prioress of the Good Shepherd Convent at Porto at the end of the last century, is still, despite her beatification in 1975, regarded with suspicion. She is looked upon as more shameful than glorious, with her "secrets", her absurd letters to the Pope, her fantastic predictions and… their total failure. But on the day when the Church reviews her own modern history, I am deeply convinced that it will be the "shameful part" of her life that will shine in glory and that the extraordinary revelation she bore, taken together with others either older or more recent, will not fail to rebound with immense profit for souls. Whence the interest of our present research, not just for the sake of hagiography, nor even for the edification of the faithful and the glory of the Church, but for the amazing discovery of a whole cascade of secrets guarded by each of these saints and lighting up the divine orthodromy with lamps sparkling with beauty, clarity and purity. As this is far from simple and leaves us a little lost and bewildered, it is indispensable to produce an authoritative critical study of it. The life of the Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart is a tragedy in several acts separated by long interludes. But, as in all tragedies – beginning with the Gospel itself! – it ascends movingly towards the final act, a rapid and decisive act of death and resurrection.
UNDER THE SIGN OF THE MAID The Countess Maria Droste zu Vischering was born in 1863 into a family, a country and a Church in the full renaissance of the Counter-Reformation and Counter-Revolution, inspired by the enthusiastic rediscovery of the old Catholic and feudal Germany. They were also inspired by the epic of Joan of Arc, celebrated in the full truth of her being and mission by great German Catholics, ahead of the French! In fact, there appeared in Munich in the year 1834 a scholarly and sobre "Life of the Maid of Orleans" by Guido Görres. His father, Joseph Görres, an ardent Catholic polemicist, whom Napoleon called «the fifth power», wrote its preface, a veritable manifesto of Catholic Germany at grips with the grimacing monsters of French revolutionary liberalism and Prussian Protestant totalitarianism. Beyond the France of the Enlightenment and of the Revolution, which he abominated, as we ourselves do, he praised the Christian France of Joan of Arc: «It would be difficult, he explained à propos of the heroine saint, to find a more interesting character in the whole of history.» And he depicted her as belonging to two worlds, that of earth and that of Heaven, called to act in the one as the envoy of the other. Five years later, his son Guido travelled through France, visiting all our main libraries in search of archive documents, with the firm intention of publishing them on his return to Germany. Alas, the very anti-clerical Société d’histoire de France cut the grass from under his feet and entrusted the task to Jules Quicherat, a young Chartist, both lawless and godless. Even so, thanks to the young German scholar’s first work, which spread widely among all the Catholic circles of Bavaria and Westphalia, the Saint of the French homeland was very soon known, admired and venerated, particularly in the family of our future saint. At the same time, the impression that their rights were being mocked by Prussian highhandedness was awakened for German Catholics by the sight of the Archbishop of Cologne’s heroic resistance. The Archbishop, Mgr Droste zu Vischering, was arrested in his episcopal palace in 1838 and imprisoned in the fortress of Minden. «Both within and outside of Germany, all religious souls were struck by this: in his Minden gaol and later in his Darfeld solitude, this ageing prelate had the whole of Europe talking about him. By his non possumus, he revealed the nature and the character of his Church, and by his passivity he revealed its strength.» (Goyau, L’Allemagne religieuse, p. 186) His sacrifice earned the Church in Germany an extraordinary renewal in the middle of the 19th century, of which the finest flower was incontestably the Countess Maria, his great grandniece. From her father she will inherit the expression of a limitless veneration for him whom Görres had called the Athanasius of Westphalia.
Maria’s childhood coincided with a further rise of Prussian imperialism, which conquered Catholic Austria at Sadowa in 1866 and France at Sedan in 1870. The proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the palace of Versailles, by William Ist Hohenzollern and his chancellor Bismarck, added to this political and military hegemony a claim to cultural primacy: the Kulturkampf or battle for a rationalist, state-controlled, anti-Catholic "civilisation". Formed in the school of two great popes, Gregory XVI and Pius IX, the German Catholics, and those of Westphalia in the first place, united for the defence of their age-old rights in the political domain by forming a party, the Centrum. The jurist Mallinckrodt gave it its motto: "Justitia fundamentum regnorum" and the incomparable Windthorst directed it. They rapidly gained impressive successes by mobilising the popular masses into associations, supported by the great feudal families, like the Vischering, and also by the admirable example of the clergy, who formed a ring of defence around those of their bishops persecuted by Bismarck, such as the Archbishop of Mainz, Mgr von Ketteler, Maria’s great uncle, and the Bishop of Posen, Mgr Ledochowsky, a personal friend of the family. The doctrine of these uncompromising Catholics and the political action which stemmed from it are of a supreme truth, strength and beauty, unparalleled elsewhere. Judge for yourselves by reading this note about Mgr von Ketteler. His integral Catholicism, which yielded nothing to the principles of 89, seems to me to be the only viable instrument for any renaissance or national restoration in a civilised Christian country: «His life’s ideal was that the Catholic spirit should be fully restored and that Christianity should penetrate the various sectors of human activity, which was characteristic of mediaeval civilisation and which modern secularism had demolished. At the same time, he was far more conscious than many of his contemporaries of all that irremediably separated his era from the Middle Ages, the best formula of which he believed to be found in post-tridentine Catholicism. And so, to help him in his work, he made wide calls on the services of the Society of Jesus, whose principles corresponded to his ideal of austere piety and of total self-donation to the Church, as well as to his energetic temperament and to his somewhat despotic idea of the hierarchy. «The Bishop of Mainz made every effort to consolidate the faithful’s piety. He organised religious conferences for the masses and retreats for men and young adults, particularly for teachers. He increased the number of popular missions preached, and he repeatedly encouraged the confraternities of the Heart of Mary, pilgrimages in honour of the Blessed Virgin, the recitation of the Rosary – then little practised – and devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Sacrament. He kept in frequent contact with his people through pastoral letters and pamphlets, and also through personal visits on his rounds to administer Confirmation. «In the course of the missions preached by the Jesuits, there were scenes reminiscent of those of former ages: villages were emptied once or twice a day and their inhabitants poured into the neighbouring parish, where the missionaries were preaching. They would speak in the open air to evangelise the crowd, since the church could not contain them. Other missionaries were besieged in the confessional by groups of penitents, not one of whom wearied of waiting. Till late in the morning there were endless rows of communicants – many of whom had fasted from the previous evening – stretching all the way back to the Village Square or the far end of the cemetery. «At the same time, anxious to react in every domain against the separation between religion and daily life, he sought in every way to increase the Church’s influence over the school. He encouraged around him every kind of work that would tend to penetrate the various temporal activities with the Christian spirit, and he took particular care to awaken Catholics to their social responsibilities. After having shown the way in the victorious struggle against the pretensions of the State, Ketteler thus became for many German priests and even bishops a guide and a model of the priestly spirit and of pastoral zeal.» (Aubert, Histoire de l’Église, volume XXI, p. 142) It was he who, with Rome’s support, stimulated the resistance of the German bishops at the time of the first anti-Catholic laws, and who fixed the programme for the Centrum party. Together with their fight for the Church’s freedom they had to have a constant concern for the moral and material wellbeing of the less favoured classes and to defend the specific character of each region or Land. Holding these three fine aims firmly together, the Centrum victoriously opposed its faith and its law to Bismarck’s Kulturkampf. «I believe, wrote the historian Janssen in 1875, that the Holy Church in Germany has not done so well for centuries as at the present time.» In the space of eight years the number of Catholic deputies rose from 52 to 103. Among those deputies was Count Droste zu Vischering, Maria’s father, proud of continuing in the Reichstag the struggle of his forebears for God and Country. At the time, our young saint was living at the family castle of Darfeld, even then like a religious, cloistered and charitable, and all the while remaining very much aware of political concerns, as circumstances dictated. Her father vouched for this: «The Kulturkampf had, I think, a powerful influence on Maria, not only as regards religion, but also on the formation of her character. One needs to have experienced the gravity of this struggle, as we did, not only in its great events but also in its everyday twists and turns to have an idea of the effect of all this on our lives. Those events even affected our children and, for several years, filled their existence and their thoughts.» Though the young girl inwardly participated in the great hours of the Centrum between 1873 and 1888, she also witnessed its slow degeneration, from 1878 onwards, due to a mysterious ailment that was fatal to the Catholic renaissance in the Rhineland, and to the whole Church… Leo-thirteenism.
Let us imagine our Countess Maria, who was reaching her full human and supernatural bloom in the 1880s, throwing herself into political Catholic Action in the Reichstag, beside her father and Windthorst, like a Joan of Arc leaving Domrémy, with the ardour of a Judith or an Esther or – to risk a more modern comparison – like a passionaria! She was equal to that, and there was great need of it. Her father always kept her up to date with developments in political affairs while she was a boarder with the Dames of the Sacred Heart, exiles in the Austrian Tyrol. Concerning Bismarck he wrote: «No peace is possible during his lifetime. I am firmly convinced that he alone is the obstacle.» And when the iron chancellor attempted to pass a new law of "discretionary powers", the parliamentary count-deputy unmasked the manoeuvre: «He wishes, for example, to appoint bishops and then dismiss them when they prove to be incapable of governing their diocese in accordance with his views… The clergy of Munster have no confidence in the Prussian government’s readiness to end the Kulturkampf. Bismarck shows himself to be very sympathetic and full of promises in his spoken relations, but very restrained in his written relations, unwilling to concede a thing. In diplomatic language this is known as using "stalling tactics".» Maria, therefore, knew where she stood as regards the resolution of the Centrum: no partial concessions and no compromise, all or nothing! In January 1882, she enthusiastically attended a memorable session of the Reichstag, in the course of which Windthorst succeeded in imposing an amendment to the iniquitous laws. It was the first breach in the Kulturkampf wall. But from that moment, the valiant Catholic minority, who were gaining ground in parliament, no longer felt that they were being supported by Rome, as before. The directives in fact had changed. Following the death in 1878 of Pius IX – the Pope of the Syllabus, of the Immaculate Conception and, already, of the Sacred Heart – and the election of Leo XIII, the former edifice of Catholic Order, standing like a citadel in opposition to the modern hydra, collapsed beneath its brilliant appearances. Everything now began with politics: Christ’s politics were replaced by the "Pope’s politics". Leo XIII and his camarilla passed, as true liberals, – with the necessary mental and verbal restrictions of course – from anathema to dialogue, from condemnation to participation, from a turning in on oneself to openness, as they will say a hundred years later. Even before his election to the Sovereign Pontificate, such was the fabulous method recommended and put into practice by Mgr Pecci during his time as Nuncio in Belgium, and having become Leo XIII, he continued to use this method in all his relations with the modern States. In France, for example, he used it against the legitimist Catholics, to the satisfaction of the liberals and radical freemasons; he used it in Germany, where Bismarck understood that he would not have to "go to Canossa"; similarly in Spain and Portugal, in Canada, in fact everywhere! There was no further question of entering into politics for the defence of the Church, under the standard of the Cross and "in the name of the Sacred Heart"! for, as Leo XIII declared, «it is a pernicious error held by those who fail to distinguish sufficiently between sacred affairs and civil affairs, and who use the name of religion to support political parties». The former "happy dialogue" practised by the Church with Catholic States for centuries, and the bitter but just battle against modern persecuting States, was to give place to a policy of entente, from which the Pope expected better results.
The drama of conscience that resulted from this was particularly painful to German Catholics in the years 1885-1888. Bismarck immediately saw the advantage he could draw from this situation. Despairing of overcoming the resistance of the Centrum in the Parliament, he decided to turn to the Pope, proposing that he should arbitrate between Germany and Spain over the possession of the Carolinas. Leo XIII was flattered and immediately called together a Commission of cardinals, whose verdict was to recognise Spanish sovereignty over the islands, whilst allowing Germany to install trading posts there. It was clearly a fool’s bargain, and Bismarck soon snapped up every advantage from it, to the detriment of the Gospel and of the Catholic missions! For his good offices, Rome sent Bismarck the medal of the Order of Christ. In return, the Chancellor asked the Pope to intervene with the Centrum to oblige them to vote for his military law project and to allow him to settle as soon as possible the affairs of the dioceses of Cologne and Posen, which had been pending for several years. Leo XIII dismissed the two bishops holding office (the second of whom, Mgr Ledochowsky, had been appointed cardinal in prison by Pius IX), and appointed in their place the Chancellor’s candidates. Bismarck never looked back: «This Pope is one of the shrewdest and most enlightened statesmen of our times. He has recognised how important it is for the general situation that there should exist at the centre of Europe, in Germany, a well ordered, conservative State.» The matter of the military law being extended by seven years raised a veritable storm within the Centrum, the last stronghold of federalism, which had always been opposed to increasing the Imperial Army’s budget. Bismarck had made the Imperial Army the very basis of his work. The Pope, through the voice of his nuncio, made it a duty for German Catholic deputies to vote in favour of the seven-year government. The Centrum, which had hitherto been so united in its valiant fight, was now divided, some submitting to the orders of the sovereign Pontiff and others reckoning that it was simply a question of internal politics, in which the Holy See had no right to intervene. With the opposition divided, the law was passed… Pursuing its machiavellian game, the Berlin government proposed a law of religious pacification, meant to put an end to the Kulturkampf. The bishops and the deputies of the Centrum were preparing to refuse it yet again, for it did not re-establish the Church in the fullness of her rights, when a formal order came from Rome that they were to silence their claims and to vote for the law. Windthorst learned of this on the morning of Easter Day: «I would have understood better had it reached me on Good Friday», he confided to a friend. He felt betrayed, and by whom? Jesus-Mary? by Rome! Nevertheless, he submitted, and with him most of the Centrum. The following year, in 1888, the old Emperor died, and Bismarck fell from favour under his successor, the young Wilhelm II. It mattered little to the Iron Chancellor! For his essential work, the unity of Germany around Prussia, was for ever consolidated and now had at its disposal a fearsome instrument of hegemony, the Reichswehr… with the Pope’s blessing!
Now, in those crucial years, if we are to believe the silence of the biographers, the Countess Maria seems to have lost all interest in the political battle the Centrum was clear-sightedly waging for the salvation of the Church and Germany. Her whole life, all her thoughts and her heart are for Jesus alone. He came to take her, the daughter of Count Droste zu Vischering, to be the "spouse of His Heart" in the chapel of the family castle at Darfeld, where He made her this wonderful promise: «I shall make of your heart My abode, My home where I can find a place of rest in a world that has forgotten Me.» However, a long illness obliged her to postpone for five years her desire for the religious life. But already, what perfection of holiness, what tenderness of mystical life: «It was during the Communion of the first Fridays of the month that my Divine Spouse showed me the greatest tenderness. The Lord made Himself my Master on the days of Communion and especially when the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. He deigned to instruct me and to console me. I can find no words to express what the Heart of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament was for me … Oh! If only the parish church of Darfeld could tell what was passing between Him and me!…» One spring day in 1888, Maria was visiting a hospital together with her mother, when she saw a poor girl who had given scandal, and she began to think: «If Our Lord were here, which of these sick people would he treat with the greatest tenderness? This sinner of course. I overcame my repugnance and the fear of my mother, and held out my hand to this poor unfortunate. Not long after, I was to understand that it was for the conversion of these poor unfortunates that I was to sacrifice myself.» This premonitory encounter, a veritable parable of Mercy, prefigured the vocation that Jesus had chosen for her. The following 21 November, Countess Maria Droste zu Vischering disappeared into an obscure and not particularly pleasant convent, the Good Shepherd at Munster. There she busied herself with fallen girls and other poor people needing to be rescued from their wretchedness. She had offered up her beautiful Westphalia and her family to Jesus, so that they might never be forgotten, and she left them never to return… At the same time, Viscount Charles de Foucauld, breaking all his ties, also renounced the service of his country in order to plunge into abjection and join Jesus in the last place, out of love for Him alone! Sister Maria of the Divine Heart, who received this name on the day she took the habit, on 10 January 1889, as a sign of her eternal election, will not leave her dear convent of Munster for five years. It was a hidden life of abjection, of untiring and maternal charity towards her dear "children", a life of sufferings known only to God, but ardently desired, so that she might be ever more closely united to her crucified Spouse… Her intimacy as a veritable spouse is for her the "King’s secret", common to so many men and women saints whom we venerate. Each one of them is marked with the seal of a personal love, whereby the divine Being and the Nothingness of the creature belong to each other, melting into one single soul, one single breath and heart, in anticipation of eternal communion in the undivided divine Charity. For some of them, however, there exists beyond that a threshold, an elevation that is wholly enviable and blessed, which should not to be confused with our common and universal vocation to holiness. It is a question of personal and particular missions to be fulfilled entirely for the honour and glory of God, but also for the specific increase of their love, and still more for the advancement of the Church’s orthodromy, in her Body, for the salvation of the world. Sister Maria of the Divine Heart would not be long in receiving hers.
FROM MUNSTER TO PORTO Having spent two years as "Mistress of penitents" at the Good Shepherd Convent of Munster, Sister Mary of the Divine heart received an order from the Mother-house in January 1894 to go to Portugal, where she was to assist the superior at Lisbon, a Westphalian like herself. She was thirty years old and began her "public life" with a cruel sacrifice: «You cannot imagine what one feels at separating, probably for good, from all that one loved and venerated, at abandoning one’s most sacred relations and finding oneself all alone… I can now say in all truth: "Lord, I have left all and I have followed Thee."» She stopped in Paris to make a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Notre-Dame des Victoires, and to entrust her "children" to the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary, refuge of sinners. She next stopped at Montmartre where, during her adoration of Jesus-Host in a large monstrance in the form of a radiating heart, her mind was penetrated by a keen intuition which transported her with enthusiasm: «Yes, she said to herself, that is indeed how it ought to be: the Sacred Heart of Jesus must reign over the whole world !» At Manresa, in the grotto of Saint Ignatius , she was "promoted to knight", to use her own expression. Our Lord had presented to her the Cross with all its weight: «to sacrifice myself for a Good Shepherd House that is in great danger», such was the clearly signified will of her Spouse, which she immediately accepted with holy ardour. The holocaust must be complete: «I understand better every day that the freer and more detached one’s heart, the more God attracts it to Himself, the greater and more continuous the sacrifice, and the stronger and more powerful the grace. It is the secret strength that flows from the Cross.» The prophecy was fulfilled when, after four months at Lisbon, she learned on the night of Pentecost, 13 May 1894, that she had been put in charge of the House at Porto.
The town of Porto, the cradle of Portuguese Christendom, was known for the pomp of its religious ceremonies, expressing the devotion of the Portuguese people of all time, especially devotion to the Holy Eucharist, to which the "capital of the North" was dedicated. «On Corpus Christi – a national feast throughout the whole kingdom – the long procession included in its ranks all the clergy of the town, all the authorities and the regiments. The ceremony ended with salvos of gunfire and artillery, just as on the feast of a sovereign. The Catholic movement, which had been propagated in Portugal in recent years, had made a big impact on Porto, where one of the most worthy of the Portuguese clergy in the 19th century, Cardinal Americo Ferreiro dos Santos Silva, gave it his support.» (Chasle, p. 155) This intense Catholic life was especially shaped by the Association of the Apostolate of Prayer, started twenty years earlier by the Jesuits, whose bulletin, the Mensageiro do Coração de Jesus, was openly anti-liberal. Despite Leo XIII’s directives to rally to the liberal monarchy through his encyclical Per grata Nobis of 1886, the Portuguese Catholics remained legitimist for the most part, especially in the north of the country. At Porto, however, three years before the arrival of our saint, the Republic had been proclaimed during an uprising sparked off by the freemasons. For more than a century, freemasonry had been on the side of conservative power, but now they had opted for the Republic and had organised themselves after the fashion of the Italian carbonari in order to prepare for the Revolution. The 1891 uprising had been put down with such ease that the government had taken no notice of the warning, and the monarchists had continued to appear unconcerned and lamentably divided. But then freemasonry undertook a long term campaign of infiltration, spreading its underhand and violently anticlerical propaganda throughout the country, especially in the major cities. The suburbs of Porto, a maritime and industrial city, were not spared, and the apostolate of the Good Shepherd sisters became a prime target of the revolutionaries. It was in these conditions of external danger that the young superior had to save her convent. As soon as she arrived, she consecrated the community to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and placed His statue above the altar, saying that He is the Master of the house and that He must reign there. He alone can restore it to its initial fervour, for «this poor house has for so long been neglected outwardly and inwardly that you can imagine what it will cost to restore order, cleanliness and above all a truly religious spirit. Only God can help me here and He alone is capable of sustaining me in the face of such obligations.» This is not the place to tell of the admirable and truly exemplary way in which Mother Mary of the Divine Heart, the living image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, saved the Refuge of Porto. For a year and a half she fought a constant battle, her courage reaching heroic levels, but it was a fight waged in peace and the joyous assurance that it was He, the divine Spouse, who was doing all, pouring His spirit and His temporal and spiritual blessings over their "children". «My hands are full with all the work, my head is full of cares and my heart full of love for Our Lord», said the superior with a smile. There was a hatch in the door of her cell looking out onto the chapel, so that she was never alone. She was able to talk familiarly about anything with her Beloved, «telling Him about the smallest things, asking for His help or just a look», she wrote. It is not surprising that the venerable Mother had such a wonderful influence with everyone, from the Cardinal who regarded her as a saint, to the humblest working families from the suburbs who sought her help in all kinds of difficulty. The number of boarders doubled in a few months. To subsidise so many necessities, she appealed to her family, to her father in particular, whose generosity freed the convent for good from its creditors at the end of the year 1895. That year, which ended with a victory, was also marked for Mother Mary of the Divine Heart by an extraordinary grace. The occasion was the community retreat, preached by a learned and pious Austrian Benedictine, the Reverend Father Schober, Abbot of Seckau. She found in him the sure and firm director she had hoped and prayed for for years. Thanks to him, she began a new life. He freed her from the fear she felt of abandoning herself entirely to the attractions of her divine Spouse, attractions which she was experiencing more and more strongly. Father Schober had understood that his penitent was called to follow a very particular vocation along unusual paths. A very pure friendship was soon forged between these two predestined souls, like that between Saint Margaret-Mary and Saint Claude de la Colombière. The pious religious will testify: «During the ensuing interviews, I recognised the brilliant qualities of this soul, a soul highly gifted from both a natural and spiritual point of view. I was astounded at the providential position occupied by this young Superior and I could foresee the great apostolic mission with which God had invested her for this second capital of Portugal, for the country itself, for her Congregation and for the whole Church… In a very short time we understood each other perfectly on everything.»
In January 1896, at Alba de Tormes, during a Mass celebrated by Dom Schober, Our Lord renewed His alliance with the privileged spouse of His Heart: «After Holy Communion He called me by my name with an infinite love: "Maria", which He had not done for a long while. He then said to me, in that voice so well known which resounds in the depth of my heart, that He wanted to contract a more intimate union with me that day… He then gave me Saint Teresa, Saint Gertrude and Saint Catherine of Sienna for my particular models, my patrons and my companions.» These three saints were to help her in the fulfilment of the mission which Jesus allowed her to glimpse not long afterwards: «Once, speaking on this same subject of Communions, He said that His desire had been to establish devotion to His Divine Heart, and now that the exterior devotion had been introduced through His apparition to the Blessed Margaret-Mary and had spread far and wide, He wished also to see the interior devotion becoming more strongly established. That is, He wished souls to get into the habit of uniting themselves more and more interiorly with Him and of offering Him their hearts as His abode. And to vouch for this desire, He would continue, despite all apparent obstacles, to give Himself to me daily in Holy Communion.» In order to accomplish this mission as an apostle of the Divine Heart, she knew that she would have much to suffer. In May 1896 she had to take to her bed. The doctors diagnosed myelitis, a particularly painful illness, the phases of which will mysteriously follow the development of her mission: «Our Lord made me understand that when the mystical Body of the Church required help for some general or particular need, He often sent bodily sufferings, illness etc., to some of His spouses, in order to obtain thereby the necessary graces.» These needs were not long in showing themselves:
Around the middle of October 1896, Our Lord revealed to His confidante, in a sort of interior image, that «treacherous assaults were being hatched in the shadows against the Church. She saw a pack of furious wolves and at the same time heard these words: SHE IS BUILT ON ROCK AND THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST HER. It seemed to her that this referred to freemasons disguised as Catholic militants.» She informed Fr Theotino, the vice-rector of the seminary of Porto, her ordinary confessor, to whom she had opened her soul in obedience following the departure of Dom Schober. She wrote: «I have already spoken to you of the explanation Our Lord gave me of this and also of the surprise that this caused me when I read the story of Diana Vaughan. From that day I have had no further doubt that this is what my vision referred to. I suffered a great deal, as the thing made a great impression on me, and I felt such anguish at not being able to do the will of God, that I asked for your permission to write to the Holy Father.» With that, she was thrown into the thick of the drama. Her love and her veneration for Holy Church impelled her to mount the battlements, in order to warn the Pope of the plot that was being hatched. Through the special will of Our Lord, she was given a supernatural knowledge about the enormous mystification of the "Diana Vaughan" affair. Diana Vaughan was a so-called convert from the luciferian sect, whose Memoirs were passionately read in many Catholic circles, from Pope Leo XIII who had approved the Eucharistic Novena composed by the alleged "convert", to Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus in her Carmel of Lisieux (cf. English CRC no 301, p. 21-24). Dom Schober immediately acquiesced in her request: «With reference to the matter you have spoken to me on, you may write to Rome as soon as you feel inspired to do so and your health permits». But Fr Theotino, being in the dark on this matter, contented himself with answering the Superior of the Good Shepherd in these words: «The Holy does not need to be enlightened by you; he has his own counsellors.» She complained to Our Lord about His leading her along extraordinary paths: «I told Him after Holy Communion how afflicted I was by His leading me through paths which appeared ever more dangerous to me. I begged Him not to continue, or at least not to oblige me to speak to others about what was going on inside me. Our Lord answered me: "Do you wish therefore to withdraw from serving the church?" I replied: "No, but I fear these paths and I am afraid of being under an illusion." Then Our Lord told me that He would never allow me to fall under any illusion, provided that I let myself be directed by the legitimate authority (I was given to understand that this referred to the Benedictine Father and yourself).» It is amazing! For, if Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus had been the victim of the diabolical antics staged by Taxil – she had believed it to the extent of sending Diana Vaughan a photograph of herself as Joan of Arc! – Sister Mary of the Divine Heart, on the contrary, had received a mission to unmask the imposture before the highest authority of the Church. The first shared in the Church’s humiliation in her own flesh, suffering this betrayal so that the light of faith might shine for "poor unbelievers", whereas the second served the Church with the same ardour and intelligence as a Saint Catherine of Sienna. To write to the Pope did not alarm her unduly. The previous year, she had taken advantage of a visit made by her family to the Vatican to present to the Pope the homage of her filial submission, and in return she had received the Pope's special blessing «for herself, her community and her works». In that year of 1896, according to a secret design of Providence, the Sovereign Pontiff’s attention would once again have to be drawn to the poor superior of the Good Shepherd of Porto. But the opportunity was lost, in a rather strange and disturbing manner… The Pope clearly had his own counsellors!
The year 1897 saw a «troublesome course» opening up for the humble religious of Porto, as the good Abbé Chasle cautiously states; troubling certainly, but through no doing of her own. On the contrary, she never ceased marvelling at the "secrets" of love that cascaded forth from her Spouse and King, which it was her mission to pass on to those concerned. The trouble came from another secret, one that was dark and shameful, namely the resistance of the servants to the will of their Master and their treason, whether through cowardice, indifference or some violent antagonistic passion… Mother Mary will now have to carry these two tragically opposed secrets in her compassionate spouse’s heart. It was during June, the month of the Sacred Heart, that, after a terrible phase of her illness which took her to death’s door, she received wonderful graces of union with Christ that would sustain her to the very end in the fulfilment of her mission: «On Friday 18 June, at Holy Communion, He said to me: "I count you amongst the most loved of My spouses, not on account of your own merits, but by a predilection and wholly special love on My part… Know, my child, that from the charity of My Heart, I wish torrents of grace to come down and pour through your heart into the hearts of others. «25 June, Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our Lord said to me today that He was again choosing me as the beloved spouse of His Heart, and that He was placing the treasure of His Heart at my disposal. I was to pray much for Holy Church, for the whole world, but especially for those souls whom He wished to reach through my mediation.» On the previous 4 June, she had received a message for a person other than herself. It is secret wrapped in such mystery that we know practically nothing of its content, other than that it doubtless concerns the first request that the world be consecrated to the Sacred Heart: «I have no other order from Our Lord than that of communicating these things. Now, whether they are accomplished or not, is not a matter for me. Today I told myself that it would be pride on my part to speak about what I explained to you yesterday and to involve myself in these affairs which pertain to Holy Church.» But once again, the vice-rector, Don Theotino, judged it inopportune to pass on this message. «I was afraid of being taken for a visionary», he would explain later. But perhaps this priest, formed in Rome at the beginning of Leo XIII’s pontificate, was also afraid of being compromised through association with the Portuguese Catholic legitimists, ardent apostles of the reign of the Sacred Heart?
In a previous article (English CRC no 317, March 1999) we went through everything relating to this second request communicated to Mother Mary of the Divine Heart on Maundy Thursday 7 April 1898: «Our Lord returned to what He had said last year. I was to leave the decision to my spiritual Father; he would recognise the truth through extraordinary sufferings [endured by her, not by him!]. Consecration of the whole world to the Heart of Jesus…. Write to Rome as soon as possible.» The urgency manifested by the saint came, as we saw, from the fact that the United States were preparing to declare war on Spain in order to wrest her last remaining colonies from her: the Island of Cuba and the archipelago of the Philippines. Yankee imperialism was on the march, for a hundred years of world hegemony… This war would not come within the plan of Redemption of the Heart of Jesus, still less within the extension of His Kingdom. The superior at Porto, His intimate confidante, was well aware of this. She anxiously followed the preparations and the twists and turns of the conflict, «deeply worried about the harm such a series of disasters could hold for Catholic Spain». How could this fatal outcome be prevented? By consecrating the whole world to the Divine Heart of Jesus. What could be more simple, at least in appearance! «Behold, I stand at the door and knock…» (Ap 3.20) It is not a lesson in international politics that Our Lord wishes to give to the world. He wishes to remind the world that He is the King and that the salvation of the world can only come through Him: «Without me, you can do nothing.» It is not as Judge, but as a beggar king bearing His Cross, that He presents Himself at the door of His Church. Let us remember that it was in the month of May 1898, a month after this message therefore, that He revealed at Turin, through the negative image of the Holy Shroud, the overwhelming testimony of His Death and Resurrection. Victory! The King appears, O Heart, yield Thy secret!
1. «Consecration of the whole world to the Heart of Jesus. Bishops and priests will become more fervent, the just will become more perfect, sinners will be converted, heretics and schismatics will return to the Church. And children who have not yet been born, but who are already destined to be part of the Church, that is to say pagans, will receive this grace more speedily.» The love of Jesus is universal and total. It is a fire that must enkindle the whole world, a torrent of love, of tender devotion and of fervent worship, quickening the hearts of the faithful and converting masses of pagans and bringing them into the fold of the Church. Let us not be "minimalists": the day when the consecration is truly made, souls and societies will be transformed through this devotion, the condition of religion on earth will be renewed, and the face of the world will be changed. These things are promised, they are due. 2. «His divine Heart hungers and thirsts; He desires to embrace the whole world in His love and in His mercy.» We enter here into the secret thoughts of the Heart of Jesus, the "interior devotion" which Sister Mary of the Divine Heart was commissioned to spread. What will save the world on its way to perdition, is to hear the beating Heart of Jesus and to satisfy His demands. When the Church rediscovers the Heart of her Spouse, all the rest will follow: for all that pleases Him is good, all that is contrary to Him cannot but be bad, and the right to discern between the good that has been promised and the evil that is to be rejected belongs to Him alone. The saint of Porto shows us the way: «I must satisfy this hunger, quench this thirst, aided by my spiritual Father.» And that is what she in fact did, but not without suffering: «For the saint it was a subject of poignant anguish to know the ardent desire of His divine Heart and yet at the same time to see herself prevented from accomplishing it by the very person whom He wished her always to obey. Though totally resigned, she wept over this, she who wept so rarely! To this moral distress were added the predicted sufferings…» However, the order from Our Lord still remained: «Write to Rome as soon as possible.» This last resolution is of capital importance, as important as that of Joan of Arc before her judges: «I rely on God and on our Holy Father the Pope.» The Church, being of divine institution, the moment the affair is put in her hands, God Himself is engaged in the person of His ministers. Even so, it is known that Leo XIII did not answer the letter that was addressed to him during this month of June 1898, preoccupied as he was with a political solution to the current conflict. And the year ended without the matter being followed up… Our Lord complained about this to His confidante: «The watchmen of Israel are sleeping, and to make up for what is lacking in their vigilance and their zeal, I ask you to pray, to sacrifice yourself and to suffer. Your sufferings will increase, and you must be prepared for even greater.» 3. «He appointed me spouse of His Divine Heart, and now it is as Spouse that He makes this request of me. How could I refuse Him?» His intimate secret is therefore connected with her terrible mission: it as a compassionate and faithful spouse that she has to intervene, on the order of Christ her Spouse, before His Vicar on earth. It was this that troubled her soul so greatly: «Then I asked Our Lord to withdraw something He had told me the other day, which seemed to me unnecessary to pass on, because I was ashamed to do so. But He did not withdraw it. He insisted and asked me whether my fear of humiliation would lead me to refuse Him what other spouses of His had given Him at the cost of the greatest humiliations and sufferings.» Admirable dialogue! At the moment when Christ presents Himself to her, suffering His Passion anew, His Heart horribly wounded at seeing so many disciples and spouses turning away from His nakedness, He turns to her and asks her to associate herself with His pains and sufferings. She cannot abandon Him in such a tragic moment!
In order to be no more than the victim of her Lord’s Good Pleasure and the instrument of His divine Mercies, Mother Mary of the Divine Heart renewed her vow of obedience to her spiritual father in the month of November 1898. To this end, she composed this admirable prayer of consecration that has become so dear to us: O my most loveable Jesus… On 2 December, the first Friday of the month, she received a further communication from her Divine spouse. It seems that Our Lord had found an opening through which He could touch the heart of His Vicar and make him at last accomplish His Will, judging from the letter she will write to him a few days later: «He told me that He had prolonged the days of Your Holiness in order to grant you this grace and that, after having accomplished this desire of His Heart, Your Holiness should prepare himself… [here, our research has allowed us to reconstitute the authentic text] prepare himself to render account to God. "In My Heart he will find consolation for the negligences of his Pontificate and reparation for his faults, as well as a sure refuge at the hour of death and judgement."» One can guess at her interior anguish at having to write these last words. But it is a fact that the promise of a prolonged life seems to have won Leo XIII’s consent, corresponding perhaps to a secret vow he may have made in this sense. How things hold together! One admires the kindness of the Heart of Jesus! And our saint reminds us here of Saint Catherine of Sienna revealing to Pope Gregory IX the private vow he had made to return to Rome, or else of saint Joan of Arc recalling to the Dauphin Charles the prayer he had formulated in the time of his distress…
In her letter to the Pope of 8 December 1898, the humble religious of Porto informed him that Our Lord «will make a new light shine out over the whole world» and, she added, «the words from the third Mass for Christmas penetrate my heart: Quia hodie descendit Lux magna super terram.» An unexpected realisation of the motto of Leo XIII’s pontificate, according to the prophecy of Malachy: "Lumen in cœlo". The saint added her own enthusiasm, a burning zeal for the conquest of souls and of nations: «I seemed to see (inwardly) this light, the Heart of Jesus, this adorable sun, which shed its rays over the earth, at first in a limited area, then more widely, and finally illuminating the whole world.» Here then is this message of capital importance, transmitted to the Sovereign Pontiff by the poor superior of an obscure refuge for repentant girls in Portugal: «I recognised the ardent desire He has to see His adorable Heart more and more glorified and known, and to spread His gifts and blessings all over the world. And He chose Your Holiness, prolonging your days, so that you might console His outraged Heart and drawn down on your own soul the choice graces that come from this divine Heart, this source of all graces, this place of peace and happiness.»
The Pope ordered an investigation to be made at Porto, which lasted two whole months. Father Theotonio answered questions with a good grace and spoke in great praise of his penitent. At the same time he showed a certain reservation towards her, which does not leave us surprised: «It is probable that this soul mixes true communications with things of her natural imagination (sic!).» Rome’s attitude was even more strange: on 25 March, the Pope examined the letter from the Superior of Porto in the presence of Cardinal Mazzella, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. The decision was taken to consecrate the world in the following month of June. «However, it was agreed that the justification for the proposed act should be sought elsewhere: "Cardinal", said Leo XIII, "take this letter and put it down over there (!); it must not be taken into account at this time." It was therefore decided that the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart would be presented not as the consequence of a private revelation, but as an application of the principles of theology and Catholic Tradition. The Cardinal left the Vatican charged with examining the question in se, that is to say taking into account nothing but Tradition and disregarding the personal reasons inspiring Leo XIII to take an interest in the matter.» To look «elsewhere» for the justification and to deal with the question «in se» is to mock (!) and gravely insult the Sacred Heart who, for three years, had been striving to make Himself heard by His ministers through the intermediary of His faithful and heroic spouse! All that she represents – the integral Catholicism inherited from her family tradition, above all the intimate knowledge she has of her divine Spouse – is it all therefore to be deliberately set aside and concealed? And after procrastinating for so long, the Pope takes up the matter in his own name, attributing all the merit for it to himself! Worse still, did he only respect the spirit of it? On 25 May 1898, that is two weeks before the opening of the solemn triduum, which was to be a prelude to the consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart, Pope Leo XIII announced it in his encyclical "Annum Sacrum". Today, 25 May 1999, nobody, to my knowledge, even thought of celebrating its centenary. This text has remained a dead letter. But "it is Mozart they are assassinating"! After justifying the act of consecration itself with an exact but cold theology, the Pope went on to draw up a damning picture of the situation: despite twenty years of openness and of the "hand outstretched" to modern, liberal or atheist governments, a wall has been erected between the Church and civil society. «In the organisation and administration of States, the authority of sacred and divine law counts for nothing. The intention is to allow no relationship between public life and religion to be established. It almost amounts to making faith in Christ disappear and, if it were possible, to chasing God out of the world… The most solid foundations of public wellbeing inevitably collapse when religion is set aside. God, through a just chastisement, leaves the rebels to their own inclinations and, thereafter, abandoning themselves to their passions, they exhaust themselves in the excesses of their licence.» The only recourse is in the Sacred Heart of Jesus: «Here now, in our days, another sign is put before our eyes, one that is favourable and wholly divine. It is the most Sacred Heart of Jesus surmounted by a shining cross in the midst of flames. It is in Him that all our hopes should be placed. It is of Him that we must ask and from Him alone that we must expect the salvation of mankind.»
Does this mean that the Pope wholly abjured liberalism in order to recognise the sovereignty of Jesus Christ over all things? Alas, no! There is a domain which he continues to keep for himself, that of "his" politics. In vain does he ask the Sacred Heart to deliver the world from secularism and the demonic activity of freemasonry denounced in a previous encyclical, if he persists in demanding that Catholics sincerely submit to and loyally participate in masonic governments. On consulting the book of the Acts of Leo XIII, one is amazed to discover that, on that same day of 25 May 1899, the Pope sent a letter to Mgr Servonnet, Archbishop of Bourges, imperiously reminding him that nothing has changed in his orders to rally to the Republic: «In this matter, it should be easy to understand that absolutely nothing has changed and that everything should continue in full force. For it would be unworthy of the wisdom of the apostolic See (!) to abandon decisions which it has taken after such mature reflection and which it has inculcated with such constant zeal. Consequently, anyone professing a different opinion would have to be considered as arbitrarily inflicting a grave injury on Us.» The injury here would presumably be that of the Sacred Heart against Pope Leo XIII! – But, Most Holy Father, what about the reign of the Sacred Heart,
and the love of Jesus? The question is too important for us not to return to it in a further study. To be continued therefore… Brother Georges de Jésus |
The saint specified, in
a set of notes destined to remain secret, the graces that Our Lord wished to grant as a
result of this consecration and the way in which He desired it to be done. The
understanding of this divine Will is at the heart of the tragedy which occupies us,
that which the saint lived through a hundred years ago and which we are still living
through today. And this is what interests us in the first place, we the little
brothers and the little sisters of the Sacred Heart.
THINGS ARE RUNNING SMOOTHLY, THANK GOD