THE WARNING: POWER OF GOD

Consecration opens itself totally to the immeasurable power of God coming through the vessel of the Immaculate Heart. She is one of God's secrets, one that we can never fully comprehend: measureless love and grace reach down to us by means of the littlest one, Mary. The lowliest, the poorest, are always the chosen. The most humble and unpretentious are the ones most likely to be singled out by the Lord to be channels of His might. Consecration to the Immaculate Heart lives in this kind of faith. It believes that God can do His most powerful works through someone as simple and weak as Mary, the Virgin of Nazareth. She is not God, but one of us, sharing our human estate and helplessness. Nonetheless, she is filled with God's strength like the stone water-jars at Cana, overflowing by God's power with rich wine for the wedding. She pours out this wine of grace for others. She gives it to us to drink through her love and prayer.

She shares in the mediation of Christ. This should cause us no embarrassment. We members of His Body mediate the same grace of Christ as we baptize, forgive, intercede, love. But in her there does not exist the impediment to sharing God's grace which belongs to us because of our sinfulness. In her case, because she is Immaculate (sinless), the Spirit of Jesus rushes upon us through her Heart with such exuberant fullness that there is nothing beyond the ambit of her influence.

Consecration acknowledges her universal reign with Christ and welcomes it. The person consecrated to the Immaculate Heart has submitted willingly to God's plan to act through Mary, and revels in the joy of having made that decision. Consecration is an act of humility, by which we bend low as Jesus did when He washed His disciples' feet. In the littleness it admits of itself, it opens the human heart to miracles of transformation. It hastens the reformation of hearts the world over. It quickens The Triumph and the Era of Peace. It averts The Punishment by availing itself of God's mercy, coming through the Mother of Mercy. It shortens the time of The Tribulation, even turning it aside. Consecration assures us of salvation and empowers us to intercede more earnestly and effectively for the salvation of sinners. It is a most necessary ingredient of Our Lady's peace-plan, and will hurry on its fulfillment.

[To be continued . . .]

THE WARNING: CONSECRATION IS SIMPLE

Consecration is a simple matter. We hand over our whole being into the mystery of being mothered by Mary. In this we imitate Jesus, who, as a little infant, was hers, and who never revoked this gift of Himself to her. We say "Yes" to Mary as He did. We believe God works powerfully through her, and that we are surrendering to that power as it comes through her Heart. Consecration can be expressed more concisely by affirming that it is the same as saying "Yes" to Mary, the Immaculate Heart, just as she is, and just as God gives her to us. We accept the gift of her that Jesus made to us when He said from the Cross to the "beloved disciple," "This is your Mother." We "take her into our own," that is, into everything we have and are.

We attribute no more to her, and no less, than God himself does. Since He made her His Mother, we acknowledge this. We allege also that she is our Mother because He gave her to us when He died on the Cross. She reigns with Him; we let her reign over us. She is sinless, and we aspire to be sinless too. She is full of love and we want to be like her. We consecrate ourselves to all these truths about Mary as we consecrate ourselves to her person. We relate to her just as God has revealed her to be, and we hold back from her none of the glory that God Himself has granted her.

[To be continued . . .]

THE WARNING: THE MIRACLE WILL BE FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

The Miracle will be for glory of God. God's glory is in our knowing Him as He is, and in our turning to Him in love. We will experience His glory in The Miracle, for we will know His mercy, His unmeasured love for us, His goodness. He who did not spare His only Son for us will let us understand His tender and most merciful love, through The Miracle. It will remind us of all His promises to forgive, to heal, to raise from the dead and to glorify us with His glory. We will also see how wonderful a Mother we have in Mary, and behold how marvelously the glory of God shines in her Assumption. We will comprehend the glory of God in the Church, signified in the people gathered around the mountain in Garabandal. When we return from the mountain, we shall have seen the glory of the Lord, and be eager to sound His glory to all the others. The glory of Sion, the glory of the New Pentecost prayed for by Pope John XXIII as he opened the Second Vatican Council and again by Pope Paul VI when he drew it to a close, will flow over the whole Church and the entire world. "And thus," as Jesus revealed to Conchita, "all will love our hearts."

[To be continued . . .]