アヴェ・マリア・インマクラータ！
愛する兄弟姉妹の皆様、
レネー神父様の霊的講話 「ファチマ100周年」【英語原文】をご紹介いたします。
天主様の祝福が豊かにありますように！
トマス小野田圭志神父（聖ピオ十世会司祭）
100th anniversary of Fatima
Sermon – Osaka 15 October 2017 –
My dear Brethren,
Two days ago, we had the centenary of the great miracle of Fatima, the conclusion of the six visions of our Lady that so much influenced the Church in the 20th century and even now. She helped many millions of faithful to keep the faith. But others have rejected her message, and neglected it for the great damage of other millions of souls. One of the great evils she denounced is Communism, and she came to bring remedy to it.
The root of communism is materialism, the complete refusal of the spiritual dimension of man: for communism, man is merely an assembly of chemicals. This fundamentally destroys the freedom of man, the dignity of man created in the resemblance of God; it fundamentally destroys all morality, and becomes the open door to the most brutal tyranny of all times. Indeed, man becomes a mere machine, which can be used and disposed at will by unscrupulous leaders such as Stalin or Mao, who counted for nothing the deportation of millions into gulags of horror.
From her very first apparition, our Lady of Fatima refuted that materialism. Indeed, her greeting was simple: “I am from Heaven!” This affirmed simply and beautifully the existence of the spiritual kingdom of God. Man has a soul and is called to a most elevated, spiritual happiness in Heaven!
Pope Pius XI denounced communism in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris of 19th March 1937. He starts by pointing that communism promises a “paradise on earth”, promises of perfect happiness on earth. The fallacy of such promise is that materialism completely destroys such paradise: what “happiness” can a mere machine have? If man is a mere blob of chemicals, what happiness can it have? Moreover, it completely ignores original sin, and provides no remedy to it. God did create us in an earthly paradise, but we lost it by sin. Our Lady is Immaculate, free from all sin especially from original sin. She brings the remedy for original sin: our Lord Jesus Christ! There is no other remedy: “There is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). She calls to the imitation of her Immaculate Heart by humble docility to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: this is the remedy for sin.
Communism pretends that the mere fighting of material forces brings progress, and therefore, in order to accelerate that progress, they foster the fight, and preach “class struggle”. Nothing is more opposed to fraternal charity than class struggle! Our Lord Jesus Christ preached: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mt. 22:39). Communism preaches: “Fight your neighbour!” Such struggle destroys and does not build; such fight multiplies hatreds: it renders evil for evil and that has never solved injustices.
On the contrary, our Lady brings the remedy, which is “not to render evil for evil” (1 Pet. 3:9), but rather “overcome evil by good” (Rom. 12:21), especially by the good of Sacrifice. “Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?” A good Mother does not want to see her children fighting; she brings peace, true peace, which is the tranquillity of true ORDER: the order of virtue, of true justice. Justice among men requires first of all that men be subject to God, subject to our Lord Jesus Christ: if we do not even honour God, how are we to respect our neighbour? Our Lady brings peace with God first, by a true conversion, and then peace among men. At Fatima she announced the end of the first world war the next year. She protected Portugal from World War II.
Communism pretends to suppress classes, but practically it establishes a new ruling class, that of the members of the Communist Party, who end up by completely oppressing the rest of the population, as happened both in Russia and China. Why is it so? Because it is a totalitarianism: all for the party! The party is supposed to bring out the good of the working class; in fact the party draws out all the riches for the party members, exploiting the work of everyone else.
Our Lady, on the contrary, brings true unity and equality among men: she is the mother of all equally, and cares for each one of us. She asks those who have received more to give to those who have received less. This is a general principle of Divine Providence: God does not give equally to all, but He wisely distributes His goods so that Charity may reign among all. When He gives more to some, He wants them to give in their turn to those who received less: He wants parents to give to their children; He wants to healthy to care for the sick; He wants the strong to protect the weak; He wants to rich to provide for the poor; He wants the learned to teach the ignorant; and more importantly He wants the more devout to pray for the sinners. This is explicitly what our Lady insisted upon at Fatima: “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners… offer sacrifices in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart and pray for the conversion of sinners.” Such charity does not exploit anyone, but rather unites all men in the Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Another frightful aspect of communism is LIES: since they do not believe in God, they do not have the fear of the Lord and do not flee from the perversion of lies. They do not even have any notion of the evil of lies. For communism, there is no truth, or rather that is true today which profits to the party, even if it is far from reality. They reject the principle of non-contradiction, so they have no hesitation to say one thing one day and the opposite the next day. As a consequence, they developed a propaganda full of lies, distorting history, distorting facts, accusing falsely anyone who would stand in the path of communism and especially the Catholic Church. One recognises there the work of the “Father of lies”, the Devil: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof” (Jn. 8:44).
At the opposite, we find our Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn. 14:6). He is “full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). He said: “For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice” (Jn. 18:37). He gives us to know the truth about God, about the Three Divine Persons, and the truth about ourselves, as sinners yet called to repentance and to eternal life. And he commands us through St Paul: “putting away lying, speak ye the truth every man with his neighbour; for we are members one of another” (Eph. 4:25). St Paul summarises Christian life thus: “doing the truth in charity” (Eph. 4:15). St John concludes: “it is the Spirit which testifieth, that Christ is the truth” (1 Jn. 5:6).
Our Lady gave us her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Truth! Eve listened to the Devil, the father of lies, and she led all mankind into death because of the lies of the Devil. Our Lady listened to the good angel, and believed the truth from Him, and gave us Christ Who is the Truth, to save us from the lies of the Devil. The lies of communism are repugnant for our Lady and for those who are devoted to her. We must be aware of them and not take for granted its propaganda, which is still often prevalent in many areas.
It is a fact of history that many clerics compromised with communism. This is due to a double cause: first communist leaders in Russia had decided to send some members to enter into seminaries in order to destroy the Church from within. That plot came to light in the late 40s, but by that time there were several of them already at work within the Church. Secondly a weakness in many who loved the world and wanted to please the world: they lent an easy ear to the seduction of the first ones. And one finds later “worker priests” who abandoned their spiritual duties and tried to work in factories: practically they became communist agents! One finds also in Catholic newspapers in the 1950s, such as “Témoignage Chrétien” in France many articles favouring communism and accepting the (apparently) “friendly hand” which the communists were offering: how could they believe in the “friendly hand” of the Devil? However, Pope Pius XI had very strongly condemned such attitude, saying in this encyclical: “See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically evil, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever” (#58).
However, Pope Pius XI himself did not cooperate with our Lady and did not promote Fatima. Pope Pius XII did consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart, certainly in an effort to respond to our Lady’s request at Fatima, but it was not exactly what she had asked: she wanted Russia explicitly mentioned, and all the bishops of the world to do it with the Pope. Later in 1960, the deadline that our Lady had given for the manifestation of her third secret, the requests of our Lady were buried in a drawer and not heeded. The results were the drama of Vatican II and a true “diabolical disorientation” as Lucia said.
In the early 90s, though direct persecution has diminished in Russia, the errors of communism, especially its materialism, have spread far and wide in the West: European culture which used to be really Christian is being destroyed by this materialism, and socialism which is a form of communism. As our Lady prophesied, the errors of communism are spreading in the whole world. Now more than ever, we need the protection of our Lady of Fatima, to obtain the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and bring the remedy to our sick world, and to the Church.
Practically what should we do? First, let us ask our Lady of Fatima for an increase of Faith: faith in the reality of the after-life: Heaven and Hell. She said she was from Heaven, hence in a certain way giving us a glimpse into Heaven; and she showed Hell in a very vivid way to the children. “She opened Her hands once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were an ocean of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. Terrified and as if to plead for succour, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly: You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.”
A strong faith in these two simple truths will help us a lot to straighten our lives: Heaven is worth every effort! “That which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). “I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). And sin is the most foolish thing to do since it leads to Hell: “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?” (Mt. 16:26).
Secondly, let us do what she asks and pray the Rosary daily, without fail. If possible, pray it as a family; if the children are small, at least have a part of it together and let the parents finish their Rosary on their own. Have a special devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, striving to imitate her purity, without any compromise with sin at all! Practice that devotion especially on the first Saturdays, with special prayers to her and Holy Communion if possible.
Thirdly, be missionary! In your family, in your workplace, in your neighbourhood, among your friends and acquaintances, profess the Faith without fear and without compromise with the errors of the world, especially with the errors of communism. “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 5:16). Especially be missionary by your prayers and sacrifices: “Sacrifice yourself for sinners and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” Our Lady’s great concern for the conversion of sinners is manifest at Fatima. She cares! She wants their salvation: do we want it as we should? Pray for vocations of priests, monks and nuns who will dedicate their whole life for the conversion of sinners!
Let us pray to Jacintha and Francisco that they may ask our Lady of Fatima for us, that She may obtain for us these graces of faith, devotion, zeal, apostolic charity and that spirit of sacrifice! All these graces we can obtain in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. May she open our hearts to the action of our Lord, so that He may fill us with Himself, with His Charity, that we may be instruments in His hands for the salvation of souls! Amen.
愛する兄弟姉妹の皆様、
レネー神父様の霊的講話 「ファチマ100周年」【英語原文】をご紹介いたします。
天主様の祝福が豊かにありますように！
トマス小野田圭志神父（聖ピオ十世会司祭）
100th anniversary of Fatima
Sermon – Osaka 15 October 2017 –
My dear Brethren,
Two days ago, we had the centenary of the great miracle of Fatima, the conclusion of the six visions of our Lady that so much influenced the Church in the 20th century and even now. She helped many millions of faithful to keep the faith. But others have rejected her message, and neglected it for the great damage of other millions of souls. One of the great evils she denounced is Communism, and she came to bring remedy to it.
The root of communism is materialism, the complete refusal of the spiritual dimension of man: for communism, man is merely an assembly of chemicals. This fundamentally destroys the freedom of man, the dignity of man created in the resemblance of God; it fundamentally destroys all morality, and becomes the open door to the most brutal tyranny of all times. Indeed, man becomes a mere machine, which can be used and disposed at will by unscrupulous leaders such as Stalin or Mao, who counted for nothing the deportation of millions into gulags of horror.
From her very first apparition, our Lady of Fatima refuted that materialism. Indeed, her greeting was simple: “I am from Heaven!” This affirmed simply and beautifully the existence of the spiritual kingdom of God. Man has a soul and is called to a most elevated, spiritual happiness in Heaven!
Pope Pius XI denounced communism in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris of 19th March 1937. He starts by pointing that communism promises a “paradise on earth”, promises of perfect happiness on earth. The fallacy of such promise is that materialism completely destroys such paradise: what “happiness” can a mere machine have? If man is a mere blob of chemicals, what happiness can it have? Moreover, it completely ignores original sin, and provides no remedy to it. God did create us in an earthly paradise, but we lost it by sin. Our Lady is Immaculate, free from all sin especially from original sin. She brings the remedy for original sin: our Lord Jesus Christ! There is no other remedy: “There is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). She calls to the imitation of her Immaculate Heart by humble docility to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: this is the remedy for sin.
Communism pretends that the mere fighting of material forces brings progress, and therefore, in order to accelerate that progress, they foster the fight, and preach “class struggle”. Nothing is more opposed to fraternal charity than class struggle! Our Lord Jesus Christ preached: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mt. 22:39). Communism preaches: “Fight your neighbour!” Such struggle destroys and does not build; such fight multiplies hatreds: it renders evil for evil and that has never solved injustices.
On the contrary, our Lady brings the remedy, which is “not to render evil for evil” (1 Pet. 3:9), but rather “overcome evil by good” (Rom. 12:21), especially by the good of Sacrifice. “Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?” A good Mother does not want to see her children fighting; she brings peace, true peace, which is the tranquillity of true ORDER: the order of virtue, of true justice. Justice among men requires first of all that men be subject to God, subject to our Lord Jesus Christ: if we do not even honour God, how are we to respect our neighbour? Our Lady brings peace with God first, by a true conversion, and then peace among men. At Fatima she announced the end of the first world war the next year. She protected Portugal from World War II.
Communism pretends to suppress classes, but practically it establishes a new ruling class, that of the members of the Communist Party, who end up by completely oppressing the rest of the population, as happened both in Russia and China. Why is it so? Because it is a totalitarianism: all for the party! The party is supposed to bring out the good of the working class; in fact the party draws out all the riches for the party members, exploiting the work of everyone else.
Our Lady, on the contrary, brings true unity and equality among men: she is the mother of all equally, and cares for each one of us. She asks those who have received more to give to those who have received less. This is a general principle of Divine Providence: God does not give equally to all, but He wisely distributes His goods so that Charity may reign among all. When He gives more to some, He wants them to give in their turn to those who received less: He wants parents to give to their children; He wants to healthy to care for the sick; He wants the strong to protect the weak; He wants to rich to provide for the poor; He wants the learned to teach the ignorant; and more importantly He wants the more devout to pray for the sinners. This is explicitly what our Lady insisted upon at Fatima: “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners… offer sacrifices in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart and pray for the conversion of sinners.” Such charity does not exploit anyone, but rather unites all men in the Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Another frightful aspect of communism is LIES: since they do not believe in God, they do not have the fear of the Lord and do not flee from the perversion of lies. They do not even have any notion of the evil of lies. For communism, there is no truth, or rather that is true today which profits to the party, even if it is far from reality. They reject the principle of non-contradiction, so they have no hesitation to say one thing one day and the opposite the next day. As a consequence, they developed a propaganda full of lies, distorting history, distorting facts, accusing falsely anyone who would stand in the path of communism and especially the Catholic Church. One recognises there the work of the “Father of lies”, the Devil: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof” (Jn. 8:44).
At the opposite, we find our Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn. 14:6). He is “full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). He said: “For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice” (Jn. 18:37). He gives us to know the truth about God, about the Three Divine Persons, and the truth about ourselves, as sinners yet called to repentance and to eternal life. And he commands us through St Paul: “putting away lying, speak ye the truth every man with his neighbour; for we are members one of another” (Eph. 4:25). St Paul summarises Christian life thus: “doing the truth in charity” (Eph. 4:15). St John concludes: “it is the Spirit which testifieth, that Christ is the truth” (1 Jn. 5:6).
Our Lady gave us her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Truth! Eve listened to the Devil, the father of lies, and she led all mankind into death because of the lies of the Devil. Our Lady listened to the good angel, and believed the truth from Him, and gave us Christ Who is the Truth, to save us from the lies of the Devil. The lies of communism are repugnant for our Lady and for those who are devoted to her. We must be aware of them and not take for granted its propaganda, which is still often prevalent in many areas.
It is a fact of history that many clerics compromised with communism. This is due to a double cause: first communist leaders in Russia had decided to send some members to enter into seminaries in order to destroy the Church from within. That plot came to light in the late 40s, but by that time there were several of them already at work within the Church. Secondly a weakness in many who loved the world and wanted to please the world: they lent an easy ear to the seduction of the first ones. And one finds later “worker priests” who abandoned their spiritual duties and tried to work in factories: practically they became communist agents! One finds also in Catholic newspapers in the 1950s, such as “Témoignage Chrétien” in France many articles favouring communism and accepting the (apparently) “friendly hand” which the communists were offering: how could they believe in the “friendly hand” of the Devil? However, Pope Pius XI had very strongly condemned such attitude, saying in this encyclical: “See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically evil, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever” (#58).
However, Pope Pius XI himself did not cooperate with our Lady and did not promote Fatima. Pope Pius XII did consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart, certainly in an effort to respond to our Lady’s request at Fatima, but it was not exactly what she had asked: she wanted Russia explicitly mentioned, and all the bishops of the world to do it with the Pope. Later in 1960, the deadline that our Lady had given for the manifestation of her third secret, the requests of our Lady were buried in a drawer and not heeded. The results were the drama of Vatican II and a true “diabolical disorientation” as Lucia said.
In the early 90s, though direct persecution has diminished in Russia, the errors of communism, especially its materialism, have spread far and wide in the West: European culture which used to be really Christian is being destroyed by this materialism, and socialism which is a form of communism. As our Lady prophesied, the errors of communism are spreading in the whole world. Now more than ever, we need the protection of our Lady of Fatima, to obtain the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and bring the remedy to our sick world, and to the Church.
Practically what should we do? First, let us ask our Lady of Fatima for an increase of Faith: faith in the reality of the after-life: Heaven and Hell. She said she was from Heaven, hence in a certain way giving us a glimpse into Heaven; and she showed Hell in a very vivid way to the children. “She opened Her hands once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were an ocean of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. Terrified and as if to plead for succour, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly: You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.”
A strong faith in these two simple truths will help us a lot to straighten our lives: Heaven is worth every effort! “That which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). “I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). And sin is the most foolish thing to do since it leads to Hell: “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?” (Mt. 16:26).
Secondly, let us do what she asks and pray the Rosary daily, without fail. If possible, pray it as a family; if the children are small, at least have a part of it together and let the parents finish their Rosary on their own. Have a special devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, striving to imitate her purity, without any compromise with sin at all! Practice that devotion especially on the first Saturdays, with special prayers to her and Holy Communion if possible.
Thirdly, be missionary! In your family, in your workplace, in your neighbourhood, among your friends and acquaintances, profess the Faith without fear and without compromise with the errors of the world, especially with the errors of communism. “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 5:16). Especially be missionary by your prayers and sacrifices: “Sacrifice yourself for sinners and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” Our Lady’s great concern for the conversion of sinners is manifest at Fatima. She cares! She wants their salvation: do we want it as we should? Pray for vocations of priests, monks and nuns who will dedicate their whole life for the conversion of sinners!
Let us pray to Jacintha and Francisco that they may ask our Lady of Fatima for us, that She may obtain for us these graces of faith, devotion, zeal, apostolic charity and that spirit of sacrifice! All these graces we can obtain in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass. May she open our hearts to the action of our Lord, so that He may fill us with Himself, with His Charity, that we may be instruments in His hands for the salvation of souls! Amen.