Announcement: There has been a delay in the posting of the recording of Episode 3 of my EWTN End Times miniseries with Fr. Chris Alar. So, in the meantime, I’ve posted a YouTube video containing some highlights from that episode here. Obviously I do not own the copyrights to this episode, so I’m only posting a fraction of its overall content (less than 1/3rd). You can also download the video file itself here. Hopefully the whole episode will be posted on the Divine Mercy channel or EWTN website soon!
Do you not feel ready for what is coming? Perhaps for World War III, the Warning, the Great Persecution, the Reign of the Antichrist, the 3 Days of Darkness and other Great Chastisements? Do you ever feel tempted to panic upon considering what will soon come upon the earth—what even Pope Francis himself just yesterday, in his homily for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, described as “omens of even greater destruction and desolation” than the war, famine, plague, etc., than we have been recently experiencing?
Or did you just open up the news to learn that, at 4:19pm EST today, for the first time, same-sex “marriage” has been codified in America’s federal statutes; signed into law by our nation’s “Catholic” president—sent to his desk even with the support of dozens of Republican congressmen? And do you then pause to ponder that it is impossible for any nation to so blasphemously and formally rebel against the most basic truths of God’s Law without Divine Justice falling down upon it?
Well, you, dear Faithful soul, can be at peace.
Humanly speaking, it’s impossible for us to be ready for any of this. Instead, we must – radically, blindly, and absolutely – trust Jesus.
I did not feel ready to deliver a baby last month, either. But that’s exactly what happened, and all is well.
So hunker down for a brief story from a night last month like no other in my life, before I get to this post’s main exhortation!
Over the last several months of our preparation for the arrival of our fifth child, we of course (as all parents do!) had it “all figured out.” Once contractions hit 5 minutes apart, we would call the midwife, who would be at our home within 15 minutes of the call. (We always do home births — yes, they are quite safe in normal/healthy pregnancies; yes, they are entirely legal here; and yes, all the necessary medical/legal things are taken care of by the professional certified nurse midwives who come.)
According to our plan, and basing things off our previous experiences with the labors and deliveries of our other 4 children, we’d then have at least 6 hours until the delivery; plenty of time for this professional and her assistants to get set up, etc., but not so much time that they’d be stuck here all day waiting for the baby to arrive. Perfect!
Alas, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
Precisely when my wife and I both thought– based upon timing and intensity of contractions– that it was time to call (which we did right then), Regina suddenly announced:
“The baby is coming! I need to push!!”
I am a philosopher and a mechanical engineer. I am about as unqualified to serve as an “on-the-spot midwife” as anyone. (Although Socrates, himself the Father of Philosophy, allegorically called himself a “midwife”—though for truths in the mind.) The sum total of my knowledge on delivering a child was derived from quickly reading a one page printout the midwife gave me on “what to do if the baby arrives suddenly without the midwife there.”
The same midwife delivered our 3rd and 4th children, and both times she offered to have me be the one to actually deliver the baby (with her, of course, right there if anything went wrong; guiding me on what to do, etc.). Both times I chickened out and said: “No thanks, you go for it! I’ll just stay up here and hold my wife’s hand while you deal with the hard stuff!”
Well, this time I didn’t have a choice. I was the only person there (the only adult there – our children were fast asleep upstairs and wouldn’t have been awoken by a bomb going off; but they were thrilled to come downstairs the next morning to meet a new baby brother!)
Although that moment may well have been — objectively speaking in accordance with the external description of what was transpiring — the most intense of my life, I felt no anxiety, worry, or fear at all. Sure, my heart was pounding in my chest and my nerves were doubtless buzzing with more current than was being carried by the high voltage power lines down the street. But God’s grace —which always both meets and exceeds the needs of the moment – was far outweighing all that.
It was beyond obvious that, in that moment, God’s Will was that I deliver our son. This is absolutely certain, because at that moment there was no other reasonable option. And God always gives more than enough grace – far more than enough grace – for us to do His Will. When, therefore, circumstances reveal some course of action to be His Will for us, we can always immediately proceed in that duty with invincible courage, perfect peace, and absolute trust:
“My daughter, I feel like giving to the creature the necessary Strength or, rather, an Overabundant Strength, only in the moment when she sets herself to do what I want-not before. Otherwise she would feel the Strength but still not do what I want, and I do not know how to give useless things. How many, before doing an action, feel so helpless; but then as soon as they put themselves to work they feel Invested by a New Strength, a New Light. I am the one who charged them, since I never lack the necessary Strength to do Good. Rather, this need ties Me and forces Me, if necessary, to act together with them.”
Jesus to Luisa. May 15, 1938.
The delivery was the smoothest yet of our five childbirths.
John Paul came out safely and looking great. (And he was the biggest of all our children, weighing 8 lbs, 3 oz., and measuring 21 in. long.) While I remembered and took care of the basics that need to be managed when delivering a baby, there really wasn’t all that much I had to do. The midwife was zipping over as all this was happening; she arrived shortly after the birth and took over from there; confirming that all was, indeed, well.
Obviously it was my wife—not myself!—who had the infinitely more demanding task here. She too, however, has shared that despite being in that quintessentially frightening scenario of needing to give birth with no professional help, she felt great peace, trust, and inner tranquility (despite the great physical pain).
I feel confident that the graces in the situation described above will prove analogous to how the devout remnant Faithful will fare during the imminent long-prophesied Great Events.
Those who trust in Jesus, and are at least truly striving to do and live in His Will, are ready for what is coming–whether or not they feel ready.
This is absolutely true, because—just as sanctity itself is not a product of our own effort, so too a readiness for apocalyptic events is entirely a matter of surrendering ourselves–our wills–to the only One Who oversees it all. But He has made it even easier than that for us, for He has handed over this power to His Mother, whom no one could ever fear approaching:
“My daughter courage, everything will serve to the triumph of my Will, if I strike it is because I want to restore health… I always love my children, my beloved creatures, I would eviscerate Myself in order not to see them stricken, so much so that in the deadly times to come, I have put them all in the hands of my Celestial Mother, to Her I have entrusted them, so that she holds them for Me under her secure mantle, I will give to Her all those that She will want, death itself won’t have power over those that will be in the custody of my Mother.” Now while he said this, my dear Jesus made me see with facts that the Sovereign Queen descended from Heaven with an indescribable Majesty, and a tenderness all Maternal, and turned in the midst of creatures, in all the nations and marked her dear children and those that should not be touched by the scourges, whomever my Celestial Mother touched, the scourges didn’t have power to touch the creatures. Sweet Jesus gave the right to his Mother to put in safety whom She pleased. How moving it was to see the Celestial Empress turn in all the parts of the world that she took between her Maternal hands, she assembled them to her breast, hid them under her mantle, so that not one evil might be able to harm those people that her Maternal goodness held in her custody, guarded and defended. Oh! If everyone might be able to see with how much love and tenderness the Celestial Queen did this office, they would cry from consolation and would love She who so very loves us.
Jesus to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta. June 6, 1935
Stay close to her—consecrate yourself to her, pray the Rosary every day, and let her lead you to the Will of her Son (which she and she alone always did perfectly, and to which she always leads all who come to her)—and you are invincible.
It is not without reason that Scripture compares the end of the present Era—and the dawning of the glorious one to follow it—to childbirth; both the pain that precedes it but also the joy that follows it. For just as a woman with child is excited to finally hold her baby (especially as pregnancy grows particularly cumbersome and difficult in the later months; which are analogous to the current times!), and therefore is eager for childbirth, notwithstanding the pain involved, so too should we be eager for the times ahead if we are trying to do what God is asking of us now.
When people are saying, “Peace and security,” then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief.
–1 Thessalonians 5
When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.
–John 16: 21
Jesus also compares what is coming to a birth in His revelations to Luisa; for just as the arrival of a baby is awaited with certainty when the mother is pregnant, so too is the arrival of the Glorious Era of peace a certainty:
“…as to a family when they see that their mother is about to give birth to other little children. The whole family celebrates, because the family becomes larger, and every time it increases by another little brother or little sister, they make feast and delight in the one newly arrived in their midst. Such is the [whole] Creation…My daughter, when my Divine Will wants to pronounce Itself, It extends everywhere and makes Its echo and Its creative strength felt in all the things in which It reigns…the prayers done in my Divine Volition to obtain the advent of Its Kingdom upon earth hold a great empire over God. God Himself cannot rid Himself of it, nor can He not grant it…and from prayer it changes into command… Therefore, it is not to be put in doubt that, sooner or later, one will see, descend from Heaven, that which, with decision, has been granted to him. Therefore, continue the prayers in Our Fiat – prayers that move Heaven and earth, and even God Himself, if you love to see my Kingdom upon earth; and I will pray together with you in order to obtain the intent. More so, since the ultimate purpose of Creation is precisely this – that Our Divine Will was to reign on earth as It does in Heaven.”
Jesus to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta. January 26, 1930
Unfortunately there are some who, even though following the messages of the various living seers, nevertheless fret that they do not know more details about what is coming. They have an endless torrent of questions, to which they demand answers, thereby implicitly accusing Heaven of incompetence for not giving those answers to the seers. (Although there are always plenty of false “seers” who will give you all the details you want about the “future” – that is, their daydreams about it and/or what the devil says to them about it!)
Such people miss the point of prophecy—which is not to serve as a textbook telling the future’s details; but rather as an exhortation to empower our undertaking of God’s Will in the present. And while some such undertakings do indeed relate to various details of what is coming (hence these messages sometimes give some details pertaining to what will come), most remain unchanged regardless of how the more specific details of the coming months and years will transpire—where exactly battles will rage, precisely which foods will become scarce, just when currencies will collapse, how exactly the Warning will look/feel, which individual will be the Antichrist, etc., etc., etc.
It is, moreover, in our best interest to not know too many details of what is coming. If we did, we would be far too distracted by this knowledge.
Imagine if I had known beforehand that I would have to deliver my child on my own. I would have spent countless hours learning & training myself to be prepared for every conceivable way the delivery could have transpired. I would have spent far more money than I can afford, accumulating various medical equipment that might come in handy. But in all those efforts, I would have doubtless neglected the present duties of my state in life.
God, in His wisdom, led me away from spending too much time thinking about (and preparing for) the possibility of me solo-delivering the child— for He knew that this would be what would happen, and He knew that He’d take care of everything.
It is the same with the present times. God is not answering all the questions you have about the future because He knows that He’s got it—and your role in it—under control.
He has every hair on your head numbered. Therefore, while prudent preparedness remains advisable, all that really matters is that you remain trusting in Him, seeking refuge in His Mercy & His Will. Then–and only then–will you be ready for what is coming; even if you feel anything but.
But it is essential that you do this now. You thereby join the “Remnant Faithful,” and you take Refuge in God, as today’s first reading at Mass alludes to. God knew that America would formally rebel against Him on this day—December 13th, 2022—and this (below) is from the first reading at Mass for today, wherein the Word of God laments the “rebellious, tyrannical” city which “accepts no correction” (today, that is certainly Washington, D.C., and all that is symbolized by that reference), warning that its “proud braggarts” will be removed, but a “Remnant” faithful protected in the Refuge that is the Lord, in preparation for the times during which the Faithful will finally “pasture and couch their flocks with none to disturb them,” that is, they will be blessed with the Era of Peace.
Those times are at hand.
“Stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke 21:28
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