I will not in this post ask you to subscribe to any particular conspiracy theory regarding the present distress. Instead, I’m only asking you to consider what you, as a Christian, already know and what you, as a person with common sense and two eyes, can easily observe openly regarding the undisputed facts of the matter.

Fact 1: This world will end.

Fact 2: Before this world ends, the definitive events spoken of in Scripture, the Catechism, and the unanimous consensus of private revelation must transpire.

Fact 3: Among these events — guaranteed, with dogmatic certainty, to transpire and in no way merely conditional — is the rise and reign of the Antichrist.

Fact 4: The Antichrist, though he will have given himself over entirely to Satan and will work apparent wonders, is still a mere man with no supernatural powers. Nevertheless, he will acquire historically unprecedented worldwide dominion and exert total control over “buying and selling” of all people, requiring all to have his diabolical “mark” in order to legally do so.

Corollary 1:

The Antichrist will need to acquire this dominion by making sure, before he makes his public entrance, that what I refer to as “The Infrastructure of the Antichrist” is firmly in place. (And even if the Antichrist himself does not personally orchestrate all of this — admittedly, it would not be credible to assert that all of today’s chaos can be traced back to one man — the devil who is working behind the scenes to pave the way for the Antichrist does orchestrate it, hence the title of this post.) 

Corollary 2:

This Infrastructure of the Antichrist will require (in 2018 I speculated that he is waiting for just a few more developments before making his public entrance; as you will see, I think this Coronavirus crisis is going to allow for them):

A. Massive surveillance.

B. Technological control of all purchases, and a general extreme degree of control of the people

C. The ability to quickly and universally promulgate a certain physical thing — the Mark of the Beast — getting it into the hands (or, rather, injected into/implanted within/imprinted upon the right hand or forehead) of every single person on the face of the planet

D. The persecution of the Church — especially by way of the suppression of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

E. The blind submission of the masses to unsubstantiated “official” claims and the repression of any information that dares contradict these claims.

F. The wiping out, as much as possible, of economic subsidiarity and social solidarity, in order to ensure that the masses are dependent upon centralized government and/or corporate intervention, which in turn can easily be subsumed into his diabolical one world pseudo messianic ploy.

Likelihood 1:

What we have seen, just during the last couple of months, is — almost to the letter — a practice dry run, a veritable dress rehearsal, of all of the above: A through F. It has furthermore proved a great (demonic) success for the Infrastructure of the Antichrist.

A. We have seen the sudden worldwide explosion of both implementation of, and wide acceptance of, surveillance to a degree scarcely imagined in the science fiction of even recent times

• • • My own governor, who — outside of a major conversion — will doubtless be a major herald of the imminent persecution, is demanding a government created “contact tracing army” — in Cuomo’s own words. In my own professional capacity, I have even been solicited to join this “army.”
    • In general, surveillance has reached fever pitch. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that Coronavirus has put an end to our privacy. American universities are now mimicking China’s blatantly dystopian “social credit system” Our phones are keeping an eye on us and reporting on us, and people are increasingly okay with that. The few lawmakers raising the alarm are not heeded.
    • Big Tech — which will be indispensable for the Infrastructure of the Antichrist — is now officially a quasi-government entity.
      • Big Tech, already absurdly big, is getting even bigger and more powerful through this crisis.
      • Amazon, in particular, is nearly at the point of exceeding the power of governments themselves thanks to Coronavirus. Bezos himself might soon be history’s first trillionaire. (a word autocorrect is taking issue with, unaware that such a thing is even possible)
      • Amazon will now be hosting Homeland Security’s bio-metrics database
      • Google and Apple are now official parts of this government army undertaking surveillance of ordinary law abiding citizens

B. “Control” is the name of the game of the present crisis. People, governments have concluded, are not to be trusted; individuals do not matter as far as they are concerned — all that matters is the Utilitarian calculation of what effect they may have on the “Community” (that is, the established elite who benefit off of affairs operating in a certain matter). Is a soul on his deathbed and in need of company? Who cares! Letting him be ministered to may adversely effect “flattening the curve.” Has an individual family concluded that heeding some absurd restriction will be infinitely more damaging to them than risking possible exposure to a disease with a tiny mortality rate? Who cares! Families don’t matter — all that matters is the government’s concern that trusting individual families may have a negative “cumulative effect on the curve.” Does an individual who has been placed on government-mandated quarantine realize that the importance of some task he must accomplish far outweighs the importance of him avoiding possibly contributing incrementally to the spread of Coronavirus? Who cares? All that matters is that the government has decided it would be better to have him stay completely isolated for weeks — with fewer rights than a convicted prisoner in a maximum security prison — even if it will cause his life, and perhaps his family, to fall apart.  These examples could be multiplied, but you get the picture: Because, ostensibly, of how much modern government values “people” (yeah right), actual real individual people must be thrown under the bus.

• • • Civil rights are suddenly disappearing — not bit by bit, but explosively — erasing decades, if not centuries, of legitimate progress overnight.
    • The push to eradicate physical currency in favor of an entirely digital system has seen major advancement through the Coronavirus crisis, and doubtless will soon see further development. A financial system free of physical currency is key for the Infrastructure of the Antichrist.
    • Even the NYPD has stated that enforcing social distancing by policing is causing society to “fall apart before our eyes”

C. Bill Gates himself — who, also, doubtless will be a leader in the imminent New World Order — has insisted that we must vaccinate every single one of the 7 billion people on the planet. Now, I am most definitely not anti-vaccine; but what he is saying is manifest madness. He is claiming that humanity has “never before” faced a more urgent task than this new conquest for which he advocates (has he ever opened a history book?), even while admitting that what he is insisting upon is unprecedented, saying “We’ve never delivered something to every corner of the world before.” If this isn’t a dry run for the Mark of the Beast, then nothing is. Bill Gates isn’t dumb; but he must think his readers are if he thinks they really will take what he is saying at face value and fail to realize that there is some other, much darker, plan only thinly veiled by this task he is insisting upon.

D. As never before in the 2,000 year history of the Church, the public Mass has been eradicated — and, by and large, our shepherds have simply rolled over to this and played rag doll in the hands of civil officials in the name of “safety.” Only a relatively small number of Bishops have protested (thank God for Cardinal Muller and Cardinal Sarah, and for today’s  “appeal for the Church and the world” , which I have signed), pointing out how absurd and contrary to Divine Law it is to tell priests they cannot administer the Sacraments and how easily the Faithful could adhere to legitimate prudential social distancing guidelines while still going to Mass, Confession, etc. (like they are even now in Poland, which nevertheless has maintained a tiny Coronavirus death rate proportional to its population) So, today, public Catholicism has essentially been temporarily outlawed — yes, outlawed; people are even being arrested for attending Mass — with the cooperation of the Bishops, in the name of “safety.” In the name of what will Catholicism be outlawed tomorrow?

E. Censorship of “unapproved” information has reached a fever pitch recently. Suddenly, anything that dares to deviate from the official narrative (which itself is constantly changing and thus has already demonstrated itself untrustworthy) is deemed “fake news,” and deleted, by faceless employees answerable to no one, from what has increasingly become people’s sole source of information: social media. 

• • • Twitter, in accord with its usual practice of left-leaning censorship, has deemed itself worthy of censoring tweets from the President of a major country; promising much more of the same in the future.
    • Facebook is unabashed in censoring in accordance with this same “official narrative”
    • The West is learning from China’s Regime of Censorship and is quickly acting similarly.
    • YouTube has now even openly admitted that it will not tolerate any information that contradicts the official narrative. It has removed videos of doctors giving perfectly legitimate concerns that quarantining healthy people is insane, that our paranoia is actually making us less healthy, that blatantly dishonest criteria are being used to count Coronavirus deaths, etc. Recently, it has repeatedly removed a viral video entitled “Pandemic” (with an “l” after the first “P” — I do not want to even spell that out here, as that will make it more likely that the censorship web-crawling robots will catch on to this blog) that testifies to the corruption in the system dealing with this.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I prefer a blog over social media (I still have no facebook/twitter/etc.). If they censor me — and doubtless they soon will — I can still reach my subscribers by email, and I know how to get around any attempt they may make to prevent me from emailing subscribers.

F. I don’t suppose there are many left still in need of convincing that economies throughout the world have crashed like never before in history; at this point, only the most obstinate head-in-sand folk are denying that. While in earlier crises the nation and the world has faced, people usually responded by helping each other, what are we being told today? We have been told — often, required — not to help each other, but to avoid each other. We have been told to leave helping people to the government. We have been told not to worry about making a living — the government will support us; perhaps even with a “Universal Basic Income.” Unemployment benefits now pay most workers who receive them significantly more than does actual work. People like me, who are plowing ahead with work despite the fact that they are making much less than they would be making on unemployment — in my case, bending over backwards to transition all of my instruction to online and undertaking intensive trainings so I can continue teaching my students remotely instead of saying “sorry, I can’t; get back to me when we’re back on campus” — are essentially thereby punished for not just sitting back and going on the dole. It is not an overreaction to call such a scenario essentially a punishment of those who work: money is purely relative, and when trillions of dollars are printed, the money that workers earn becomes drastically mitigated in substance even if not nominally. (Let’s not waste our time with an economics debate on inflation when common sense and logic suffice.)

Socialism, categorically condemned by the Church’s Magisterium, is now entering the scene strongly and outright Communism will likely soon replace it (which, incidentally, is exactly what the Garabandal visionaries were told would immediately precede The Warning).  [I am not at all against aid to those in need; what I am against is the government stepping in, with Communist undertones, to the point of overriding subsidiarity.]

(Note: I am NOT saying that this whole Pandemic response is some fabricated conspiracy. I am well aware of the seriousness of this virus and I do support significant measures being taken to combat it. Nor am I asserting that every item I’ve linked to is intrinsically malicious. My point is only that many things have been taken far too far, and that within this dynamic is seen clearly the laying of the foundations of the Infrastructure of the Antichrist)

Likelihood 2: A dress rehearsal means that the real thing is close at hand.

Now, you cannot doubt the 4 Facts listed above. You would be hard pressed to doubt the 2 Corollaries listed above. 

And, with each passing day, the “2 Likelihoods” listed above are looking less and less like mere likelihoods and more and more like veritable objective descriptions of the present time.  

Reject those 2 Likelihoods if you will — maybe because you prefer mindless “positive thinking” to even considering anything painful … or, maybe because you just can’t handle the truth…(or, for a few readers, maybe because the imminent rise of the Antichrist doesn’t fit in with your own personal eschatological speculations that you developed by only reading a few authors who systematically ignore the entire unanimous consensus of post-Fatima trustworthy private revelation and impose their own opinions upon the older prophecies, pretending they contain conclusions that they simply do not (see The Crown of Sanctity pages 356-396 )

But, regardless of your eschatological opinions, favorite end-times authors, or personal dispositional preferences, know this for certain, for I solemnly assure you of it: the present sad Era will soon come to an end. It will be replaced by a glorious Era of Peace unlike anything the world has ever seen. But that transition is going to hurt, and pretending otherwise will not spare you the pain. 

And although pretending otherwise is futile and harmful, waking up and recognizing the Signs of the Times is incredibly beneficial; not because it gives you clear knowledge of all future events (not even the greatest of prophets have that — we have all eternity to be certain of things; only now can we merit by Faith and Trust), and certainly not because it encourages you to engage in survivalism or harbor a refuge mentality (see note on that below), but because it gives you the inspiration you need to heed the Battle Orders for the Church Militant that Heaven has long been begging of us before these events hit

The Moral of the Story — All that Matters, in Fact:

• Repent of your sins. There is no more time to delay this. Do not be easy on yourself; examine your conscience carefully. Stop sinning, make an act of perfect contrition, and get to confession as soon as it is again made available.
• Live in and Proclaim the Divine Will. The imminent Chastisements will be proportional in severity, scope, and duration, to the deficiency of knowledge of the Divine Will among the people — yes, boldly proclaiming the Divine Will really will drastically lessen the Chastisements.
• Incessantly beg God for the Coming of the Kingdom, for it is now at hand, and the events that must precede it are about to commence; if, however, we fail to incessantly beg God for the Coming of the Kingdom, then these sorrowful events which come before may linger much longer.
• Trust in the Divine Mercy and Proclaim the Divine Mercy. Evangelize like never before — even if, for a time, you must do so primarily remotely.
• Pray the Rosary every day
• Frequent daily Mass and monthly Confession as soon as it is possible to return to these
• Love all and forgive all
• Pray and Sacrifice (especially by fasting) for the salvation and sanctification of souls, the conversion of sinners, the deliverance of the Holy Souls in Purgatory (their intercession, too, will greatly aid us in the coming days), the mitigation of the Chastisements, and the Hastening of the Era of Peace
• Consecrate yourself, your family, and your home to the Holy Family and live your family life in imitation of their virtues
• Set your face like flint, right now, to make absolutely no compromises in The Faith, even in the face of death, and especially regarding those tenets thereof that are most despised by modern society: The fact that there is only one God in exactly Three Divine Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and that He alone can ever be worshiped — and that any worship of any other person or thing is idolatrous. The fact that the Bible really is the infallible Word of God and the Magisterium of the Church really is its authoritative interpreter. The literal truth of the Divinity, Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. The objective necessity of the Catholic Church — wherein alone resides the Fullness of the Truth — and her Sacraments. The literal Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. The literal reality of the Second Coming, Judgment, Purgatory, Heaven, and Hell. The intrinsically evil nature of any sexual activity of any sort outside of the marriage (which is indissoluble) of one (actual – biological) man and one (actual – biological) woman. The intrinsically evil nature of abortion, euthanasia, suicide….
  • Any denial — or any formal cooperation in any such denial — of any of these truths is itself intrinsically evil and never permissible — not even if it were considered necessary to prevent the destruction of the entire world. Make an absolutely solid and permanent act of the will right now to never do such a thing. 
• And, yes, be prudent: If you reasonably can, keep a few months of food/supplies on hand. 

“I was alive during World War II, and it wasn’t this bad even back then.”

This I overheard one man say to another last week as I was out and about my daily endeavors — back when things were nowhere near as bad as they are today as I write this post … under government mandated lockdown in New York and deprived of what has been the anchor of my daily life for the last 12 years — Mass and Holy Communion.

But I do not write this post to reiterate sentiments akin to the one above: almost every article generated every day in the mainstream media is doing precisely that:

“Apocalyptic.” “The Sky is Falling.” “This is not a recession: it’s an ice age.” “This is without precedent.” “Life will never be the same again.” “The world will never be the same again.”

These are the types of headlines one is constantly seeing even in the very mainstream media outlets that are regarded for their cool-headedness. And I will not dispute the validity of these headlines.

But there is one headline I recently saw, which I do indeed want to dispute:

“This is the thing that this generation will remember.”

No, it is not.

Surely, this is a thing that will be remembered, but not the thing; not by a long shot. Though indeed tragic and unprecedented, the present trial is — in terms of temporal disarray — a mere inconvenience compared to what is coming soon. (I give an important qualification on this point later in this post)

It is with absolutely no flippancy or glibness that I chose the title for this article: my wife will be delivering our fourth child any day now, and I know full well that the first birth pang, while it will be quite painful for her, will be only a preview of what is to come thereafter. 

But it is also with no sense of  “doom and gloom” or “fear mongering” that I chose the title for this article, either: despite all the pain of labor and delivery, it is itself nothing compared to the glory and the beauty of what follows: a new life emerging visibly into the world.

This, of course, is why Our Lord chose precisely this analogy in prophetically describing the days that, it seems, we have now officially embarked upon:

“All these things are merely the beginning of the birth pangs” – Matthew 24:8

Yes, unprecedented Chastisements are about to inundate the world. But so is a glorious Era of Peace beyond anything the world has ever seen — wherein God’s Kingdom will arrive more fully than ever before, and His Will shall be done on earth as it is done in Heaven. 

But I have been proclaiming this message for a long time; so why this post now? 

Because it is now long overdue for the scoffers to cease and desist their scoffing, and get on their knees and beg God’s forgiveness for opposing Heaven’s messages for so long, now that the truth of these messages is stunningly displayed for all the world to see. (And most of the “scoffers,” by the way, are not the worldly; the worldly generally know nothing of these prophecies — a sorry state of affairs I largely dedicate myself to trying to change. The scoffers, rather, are usually “orthodox Catholic” lay people who have appointed themselves the judges of private revelation or who flippantly denounce it merely because it is not a constituent of the Deposit of Faith or because it does not align with their own personal eschatological speculations)

• In recent years, trustworthy private revelation has been saying that, very soon, the Eucharist would be very difficult to find. The scoffers scoffed. Now it is a reality — more so than ever before in the entire history of the Church, as far as I can tell (Yes, there were Mass cancellations during the 1918 pandemic as well, and other pandemics, but it seems that those cancellations were nowhere near as universal as what we are now experiencing; in better days, our shepherds did not compete to see who could cancel public Masses more quickly in the face of danger). 
• In recent years, trustworthy private revelation has been saying that a new disease would inundate the world. The scoffers scoffed. Now it is a reality.
• In 2019, Fr. Michel Rodrigue announced that he was told that, come February 2020, he was not to travel outside the country any longer. The scoffers scoffed. This admonition could not have been more prophetic.
• In 2019, Fr. Michel begged Catholics to make sure they got to Confession before 2020. The scoffers scoffed. Now they can’t get to confession at all.
• In 2019, Fr. Michel said to have several months of food and supplies on hand. The scoffers scoffed. Now they must wish they listened.
• In recent years, trustworthy private revelation has been foretelling an imminent financial collapse (to be followed by economic collapse, then total societal collapse). The scoffers scoffed. Now the market has plunged more drastically than ever before in American history, already eclipsing the Great Depression itself. And the collapse seems to still only be in its initial stages.

[For now, I am going to spare you a long list of the details of and quotes from these fulfilled prophecies; I am contributing towards a website that will be public on the Feast of the Annunciation, www.CountDownToTheKingdom.com, that will have much of this]

Update: More about Fr. Michel can be found here: https://www.countdowntothekingdom.com/why-fr-michel-rodrigue/

This isn’t an “I told you so” blog post. I am the last one worthy of saying that, for God knows how many things I should be doing which I am not doing, and what I plead for is His Mercy on my soul, not the vindication of myself before others.

No, rather, this is an “I beg you to now begin listening before it truly is too late” post. 

For a mere ounce of common sense should cause even the most arrogant of scoffers to now pause and consider:

“Hmm. These prophecies have already proven true, so perhaps it is high time I consider what else is contained within them.”

Well, let me make a long story short. Here is what is contained in their consensus (much of these processes have begun already; but in the coming times, they will increase exponentially):

The warnings before THE Warning:

(in no particular order)

• God will bring man to his knees — or, rather, God will allow the natural consequences of modern man’s sinfulness and apostasy to be experienced throughout the world.
• There will be enormous earthquakes and volcanoes; including in places that rarely see them. There will be tsunamis.
• There will be “new phenomena” to stun mankind; phenomena that we likely do not even have names for at present, and perhaps only speculate about. (Including celestial/cosmic phenomena)
• There will be enormous storms; hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, hail, etc.: the likes of which the world cannot remember.
• There will be enormous fires.
• There will be war: probably a Third World War; possibly a nuclear war
• The financial meltdown will be followed by a total economic collapse, which in turn will be followed by a total societal collapse. Famine will precipitate the collapse. “First world” developed nations will begin to look more like Venezuela has for the last few years. 
• Communism will suddenly re-explode onto the world scene: probably through the machinations of China and Russia. 
• There will be increasing apostasy within the Church — only that which is directly Divinely Protected (e.g. the actual Papal Magisterium itself) will be safeguarded from the corruption of heresy and blasphemy.
• There will be a severe persecution of the faithful; what is already happening in many countries (the infallible and immutable Christian — and natural — Moral Law being declared “hate speech”) will explode in severity and scope. 

With each event that comes, it will become increasingly clear that their confluence is no mere coincidence, but is rather none other than the fulfillment of the prophecies and the initiation of the days spoken of in the Book of Revelation

In the midst of these warnings, THE Warning will come.

Miraculously, everyone throughout the entire world will be shown the state of their souls before God. Most will be horrified. But this, the greatest act of mercy in the history of the world, will give souls a chance to repent. (We do not know when, in the list of chastisements above, the Warning will come; but the prophecies seem to indicate that at least a couple more of these chastisements will occur before The Warning hits)

A brief time of peace will follow it.

For the world will be dazzled by the experience. This is the chance for the faithful to evangelize like never before. But the “experts” — secularists in science, media, government, and even many in the Church hierarchy — will write it off as a purely material phenomenon not to be taken seriously (I speculate that they will chalk it up to a cosmic influx of some sort of gamma radiation that triggered a release of a certain hormone at the same time in all people), and those who have not genuinely repented and converted will soon forget it and go back to their old sinful ways; or, rather, they will become even worse in their rebellion against God.

Then, the Antichrist enters. 

…to gather up his own, institute the Mark of the Beast, and pretend to have claimed for himself the Throne of Peter. This indeed will be the Abomination of Desolation. It will be time to, as Our Lord says in the Gospel, “flee to the mountains” (Matthew 24:16). 

Much of the faithful remnant will be miraculously lead to refuges.

…where they will be Divinely protected from the Antichrist and the even greater scourges that will  occur on earth during his 3 year reign.

Through the Three Days of Darkness at the end of his reign, the Antichrist will be defeated

and all those who sided with him will be destroyed. The world will be radically transformed through this unprecedented upheaval, and left ready to be made as God intended it to be.

Christ will come, in grace (not physically) to institute His Kingdom on earth

…even more fully than ever before, and the Divine Will shall reign. The glory of this Era of history can scarcely be described; although I have tried my best in pages 463-483 of The Crown of Sanctity and pages 3-9 of The Crown of History]

After an unknown amount of time of this Era of Peace, the definitive events of the End of Time will commence

(Gog and Magog, The Final Coming of Jesus in the Flesh, the Eternal Resurrection, the Last Judgment).

[Again, much more detail on the above will soon be available at www.CountdownToTheKingdom.com Also note that some refer to what I have called “the warnings” as “the minor chastisement/minor tribulation” and the time of the Antichrist/3 Days of Darkness as “the major chastisement/major tribulation; and the post-Warning peace as the “minor Era of peace” and the post-Antichrist peace as the “Major Era of Peace.” That is fine; although I prefer the terminology I’ve used above.

Others argue that the Antichrist can only come at the very end of the world, and any Era of Peace must precede him. Others predict several different Chastisements and several different yet-to-come temporal Eras of Peace. Still others argue that there will be absolutely no Era of Peace, and that the end of the world itself is imminent. All these mistaken positions are refuted in pages 356-396 of The Crown of Sanctity] 

Another note to the scoffers:

Now, lest any scoffers insist upon maintaining their scoffing, allow me to refute their attempted last bastion of defense: “well, these alleged prophets issue so many prophecies, like grape shot, they are bound to be right sometimes!”

No, they are not. Every “psychic” out there experienced in the craft of his fraud knows full well that the grape shot approach is one doomed to failure. There are far too many possibilities that the future may hold to even bother attempting this approach  — for it will always be revealed as fraudulent. Allow me to draw an analogy: the future is like an extremely strong password. If you have an extremely strong password and someone still breaks into your account, you can rest assured that this person somehow acquired your password, and did not merely “brute force” (i.e. “grape shot” approach) generate it with a hacking program. Similarly, it is a mathematical fact that the world’s most powerful supercomputer is utterly powerless against a simple 128 bit encryption key. Indeed, these scammers know that, instead, they must simply stick with asserting generalities that can seem to be fulfilled no matter what actually happens. But we are not dealing with generalities that can be molded to fit any scenario with these prophecies; we are dealing with specific messages regarding specific events to come in the future that are being perfectly fulfilled before our very eyes and should confound even the most incredulous skeptics and jaded cynics who haunt the pews of Catholic Churches today. 

Now, of all the private revelations given throughout history, the one that has the most fulfilled prophecies is the revelation of Jesus to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta. I described just a few of the fulfilled prophecies on pages 98-110 of The Crown of Sanctity and pages 28-34 of The Crown of History, but most of what Jesus told her regards what is yet to come; and most of that, in turn, regards the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. But much of it also regards the Chastisements that must precede the Coming of the Kingdom. 

While I advise you to simply check out www.CountdownToTheKingdom.com in a few days for more private revelations on what is to come, I do want to include in this post just a few insights from Luisa’s revelations. So here are a few miscellaneous excerpts (these are just snippets; you can easily find the contexts and the dates by searching for the quotes you are interested in on the PDF of Luisa’s volumes — link on the right-hand sidebar.)

Jesus tells Luisa:

There is much more I could quote from Luisa’s revelations on the Chastisements, but instead I want to now turn to a much more important message:

I know; much of this may be quite frightening to hear. But we must not allow ourselves to become frightened. None of the Chastisements are arbitrary. They will all serve to prepare the ground for the Reign of the Divine Will; the Coming of the Kingdom. Jesus tells Luisa:

My daughter, everything you saw [Chastisements] will serve to purify and prepare the human family. The turmoils will serve to reorder, and the destructions to build more beautiful things. If a collapsing building is not torn down, a new and more beautiful one cannot be formed upon those very ruins. I will stir everything for the fulfillment of my Divine Will. … when We decree, all is done; in Us, it is enough to decree in order to accomplish what We want. This is why what seems difficult to you will all be made easy by Our Power. (April 30^th, 1928)

The Chastisements are far more difficult for Jesus than for anyone else; for in Chastising – or allowing Chastisements – He is Chastising His own Mystical Body. He can only tolerate this because He sees what is to come on earth after the Chastisements. Jesus tells Luisa:

And if there was not in Us the Certainty that Our Will would Reign in the creature, in order to form Our Life in her, Our Love would Burn Creation completely, and would reduce it to nothing; and if it supports and tolerates so much, it is because We see the times to come, Our Purpose Realized. (May 30, 1932)

In a word: the Chastisements are not primarily punitive; they are preparatory and, indeed, salvific.

Why are they salvific? Because most souls will indeed turn to God in times trial. God loves His children so much that He will try everything else before resorting to Chastisements – but, ultimately, even the worst temporal Chastisement is infinitely better than eternal damnation. Within a passage already quoted earlier, Jesus also tells Luisa:

“My daughter, courage, everything will serve for the Triumph of My Will. If I strike, it is because I want to heal.  My Love is so much, that when I cannot conquer by way of Love and of Graces, I seek to conquer by way of terror and fright.  The human weakness is so much that many times he does not care about My Graces, he is deaf to My Voice, he laughs at My Love.  But it is enough to touch his skin, to remove the things necessary to natural life, that it abases his haughtiness.  He feels so humiliated that he makes himself a rag, and I do what I want with him.  Especially if they do not have a perfidious and obstinate will, one chastisement is enough-to see himself at the brink of the grave-that he returns to Me into My arms.” (June 6, 1935)

God is love. Therefore, God’s Chastisements – whether willed directly by Him or only willed permissively – are also acts of love. A soul in God’s grace should have no fear of the Chastisements, for even at their most terrible, he approaches them like a person with dirt on his body approaches a shower. Jesus tells Luisa:

Courage, my daughter—courage is of souls resolute to do good. They are imperturbable under any storm; and while they hear the roaring of the thunders and lightnings to the point of trembling, and remain under the pouring rain that pours over them, they use the water to be washed and come out more beautiful; and heedless of the storm, they are more than ever resolute and courageous in not moving from the good they have started. Discouragement is of irresolute souls, which never arrive at accomplishing a good. Courage sets the way, courage puts to flight any storm, courage is the bread of the strong, courage is the warlike one that knows how to win any battle. (April 16, 1931)

What a beautiful teaching! Without ever succumbing to any form of flippancy regarding the looming Chastisements, we can nevertheless await them with a type of holy excitement; for we can use them, as Jesus here asks us to, in order to cleanse ourselves of what we know is filthy but which we have not yet found the strength to be rid of.

And remember, there is great protection from Chastisements through devotion to Our Lady. As I always quote, and will continue to quote:

[Luisa:] “But who knows who will see when this Kingdom of the Divine Fiat will come? O! how difficult it seems.” … [Jesus:] “My daughter, and yet It will come. You measure the human, the sad times that involve the present generations, and therefore it seems difficult to you. … what is impossible for human nature, is easy for Us…And then, there is the Queen of Heaven who, with Her Empire, continuously prays that the Kingdom of the Divine Will come on earth, and when have We ever denied Her anything? For Us, Her Prayers are impetuous winds such that We cannot resist Her… She will give Unheard-of Graces, Surprises never seen, Miracles that will shake Heaven and earth. We give Her the whole field free so that She will form for Us the Kingdom of Our Will on earth. She will be the Guide, the True Model, It will also be the Kingdom of the Celestial Sovereign. Therefore, you also pray together with Her, and at Its time you will obtain the intent. (July 14, 1935)

You must know that I always love my children, my beloved creatures, I would turn Myself inside out so as not to see them struck; so much so, that in the gloomy times that are coming, I have placed them all in the hands of my Celestial Mother—to Her have I entrusted them, that She may keep them for Me under Her safe mantle. I will give Her all those whom She will want; even death will have no power over those who will be in the custody of my Mother.” Now, while He was saying this, my dear Jesus showed me, with facts, how the Sovereign Queen descended from Heaven with an unspeakable majesty, and a tenderness fully maternal; and She went around in the midst of creatures, throughout all nations, and She marked Her dear children and those who were not to be touched by the scourges. Whomever my Celestial Mother touched, the scourges had no power to touch those creatures. Sweet Jesus gave to His Mother the right to bring to safety whomever She pleased. (June 6, 1935)

Your Heavenly Mother is going to be so close to you in all that is coming upon the world and upon your own life. Trust her. Love her. Consecrate yourself to her. Pray her Rosary every day. And know that you have absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

But there is simply no longer any avoiding it; no possibility of ignoring the fact that…

Coronavirus and everything that is going along with it — the suspension of the public sacrifice of the Mass, the financial and economic collapse — is one of two things. Either it is…

My sense is that this present trial is not the initial event, but is indeed rather “the warning before the warnings before THE warning.” I know of no prophecy indicating this; it is merely my fallible sense of things. It seems likely that society will, after some months of this trial, return more or less to its normal operation — briefly. This will be our last chance. Get to confession. Center your life on the Eucharist (preferably by receiving every single day, if at all possible). Have several months of food and supplies on hand.

Because all of long-prophesied events listed above are at the very doorstep:

• Above all, the veritable prophetic consensus insists upon this; as you will soon see at www.CountdownToTheKingdom.com
• Coronavirus itself, unprecedented and game changing as it is, is a clear fulfillment of many prophecies already.
• As followers of Medjugorje know, the Time of the Secrets begins (i.e. The Chastisements, Miracles, Era of Peace) when the Apparitions end. Well, we just took a major step in that direction last week when Mirjana announced that the Blessed Virgin told her that her monthly apparitions are now over. And here we are, on the cusp of the 40th anniversary of the Apparitions there beginning… a major milestone that many have speculated will mark their cessation (as I mentioned in this post from 2018)
• The entire world rests upon the Holy Mass, and its historically unprecedented nearly universal suppression cannot possibly not have eschatological and immediate repercussions
• We will likely never climb our way out of the financial and economic collapse that has now begun. The House of Cards that is modern society has now been revealed; how utterly precarious the present order is. The Man Behind the Curtain has been seen, and his revelation cannot merely be forgotten once things “calm down.” The world’s reserve currency is likely about to super-inflate into oblivion, and the West’s exploding debts are about to destroy the economic order.
• The time of weakness now being endured by the West will likely embolden its enemies to pounce with Communism reemerging through China and Russia

A Note on the Absence of the Mass

I do wish to clarify something I said above. I am not claiming that this Coronavirus Pandemic actually is a mere “inconvenience;” my point is only that, compared to what is coming soon, that’s what it will look like. But, of course, each death is a tragedy and I pray every day for those affected. 

But, as I said, there is at least one aspect of this Pandemic that certainly is universally tragic beyond words: the cessation of the public sacrifice of the Mass. If that is not eschatological, then nothing is. And so many prophets today have been told it is coming soon.

But I wish to offer a few words to individual souls suffering from the absence of the Mass.

As I wrote in page 255 of the Crown of Sanctity:

I could probably count on my fingers alone the number of times I missed daily Mass, during the entire 12 years that preceded last week. It has, that entire time, been the anchor and the foundation of my life. I say this only so that no one dares to accuse me of any sort of Quietism or Laxity as I admonish all to not lose their peace over circumstances that they cannot control. For, quite the contrary, I do not think you are likely to find a more zealous advocate for daily Mass than myself — but, notwithstanding the glory of the Eucharist and the glory of the Mass, the fact remains that nothing can thwart God’s Will; and God’s Will is your sanctification. Not sometimes. Not most of the time. Not almost all of the time. But all of the time. 

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification” – 1 Thessalonians 4:3

Nothing can stand in the way of your sanctification if only you say, and believe, and act in accordance with, the greatest prayer: “Thy Will be Done.”  

Use this painful time without the Eucharist to grow ever deeper into that which is the source of the Eucharist itself: the Will of God. 

Pray the Our Father at noon (Rome Time, which is 7am Eastern US Time), as the Holy Father requested, on the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25th).

Receive the new and historically unprecedented Plenary Indulgence every day — simply by reciting the Divine Mercy Chaplet for an end to Coronavirus and with the will to get to Confession and Communion as soon as you can (if, like me, you cannot make it to either due to government mandated quarantines).

• Above all, remain a good Catholic. As soon as you can, confess your sins, and remain always in a state of grace. As much as possible, live life centered on the Sacraments. Keep doing everything you are doing as a Catholic striving after sanctity (and stay away from any follower of Luisa who pretends, in stark contrast to what Jesus actually said to Luisa, that Luisa’s revelations allow one to “move on” from these things).
• Pray the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day.
• Wear one or more of the following: a blessed Crucifix, the Brown Scapular, the Miraculous Medal, the St. Benedict Medal.
• Read Scripture and other spiritual reading every day (especially Luisa’s writings), and meditate each day
• Proclaim the Divine Mercy and encourage all to trust in the mercy of Jesus.
• Fast, and otherwise offer sacrifices, for the salvation and sanctification of souls, the deliverance of the holy souls in Purgatory, the mitigation of the Chastisements, and the hastening of the Coming of the Kingdom.
• Consecrate yourself, your family, and your home to the Holy Family
• Ask God every day for the Gift of Living in the Divine Will: “Jesus, I Trust in You. Thy Will be done. I give you my will; please give me Yours in return.” Consecrations to the Divine Will and “Prevenient and Present Acts” in the Divine Will can also easily be found online.
• Pray the Hours of the Passion. Jesus promises the Salvation of a Soul for each word of it read, in His Will, and protection for an entire city from Chastisements if even one soul in it continuously unites to His passion through these Hours.
• Do all your acts in the Divine Will – asking Jesus to do in you whatever you are doing at the moment – to mitigate the Chastisements and prepare the ground for the universal reign of the Divine Will.
• Proclaim the Kingdom – the Divine Will. Promulgate the truths you have here learned!
• Grow in virtue every day
• Do not neglect a prudent degree of sober minded physical preparedness (several months’ worth of food/supplies)

Fear nothing.

God is completely in control.

(And He’s about to make that overwhelmingly clear for all the world to see.)

 

Upon hearing today’s Gospel proclaimed at Mass this morning, an understanding of its meaning that I have never before considered flew into my mind without invitation.

Doubtless, we have all heard more homilies and read more articles than we can count expounding upon this parable as an exhortation to trust in God’s Mercy; and that is a good thing, as Divine Mercy is certainly the main theme of the parable.

But a deeper exhortation lies within the juxtaposition of two simple and overlooked statements made by the elder brother and the father:

Notwithstanding how heroic the father in the parable indeed is, we must not be too afraid to admit that it is rather sad that this elder brother, who apparently always served his father and never once disobeyed him, was never given so much as a young goat to feast on with his friends (we must always assume, unless the parable itself indicates otherwise, that the words spoken by the characters within it are true). I suspect that most who first hear this parable do feel some sympathy for the elder brother precisely because of this feast-absence in his life, but quickly shrug it off, fearing it may be an impious sympathy.

But let us now consider: Why wasn’t the elder brother ever provided with such a feast? Well, since the father assured him that everything he had was already his, we must conclude that if only the elder brother had ever asked for such a feast, it would have immediately been his. So we are forced to conclude that the reason for the absence simple: 

Because the elder brother never asked. 

“How many gifts do We want to give! But because they are not asked for, We retain them within Ourselves, waiting to give them when they are asked for.”

—Jesus to Luisa. March 20th, 1932

Longtime readers of my blog, no doubt, already can guess exactly what I’m going to do next: issue yet another exhortation to ask God for the Gift of Living in the Divine Will. And if that’s what you guessed, you’re right.

ASK!!!

Simply say, with sincerity, and so repeatedly that God can no longer listen to your plea without granting it: 

“Jesus, I trust in You. Thy Will be done. I give you my will, please give me Yours in return.”

But, in fact, I want to leave Luisa’s revelations aside for a moment and simply issue an exhortation to all the Faithful — whether they have heard of Luisa or not, whether they believe in her revelations or not — to pause and ponder why they have not asked God for union with Him in the highest possible degree.

Why, dear soul, would you possibly not ask for that?

Such a soul reminds me of a cowardly young man who, year after year, fails to propose to the young lady he is courting even when that is clearly the called-for course of action.

What is he afraid of?  

That she’ll say no? She would have dumped him long ago if she was going to say no. 

That he’ll have to give up his “freedom” to do things he did in his single days? He already gave up those pathetic “freedoms” by entering into courtship anyway, and those “freedoms” aren’t worth batting an eyelash over losing.

That he might be able to find someone “better” down the line? There’s no such thing as a “better” plan than God’s plan — and if God has made His will clear in the courtship then it is absurd to wait for something “better” down the road. 

Someone needs to come along and strongly admonish this young man to fish or cut bait (or perhaps so admonish using an even more pointed expression regarding the need to not linger in the bathroom… a phrase I will refrain from writing here for the sake of keeping it clean!)

What is more, none of these concerns are valid when we step out of the analogy and consider God Himself. 

God will not say no. He wants union with you even more than you — in your best moments — want union with Him. 

God will never diminish your authentic freedom — union with Him only ever increases it and causes you to be a more flourishing and fully alive individual than you ever would have been without union with Him (or with a lesser degree of union with Him). If you’re already following the Commandments, believing the Dogmas, etc. — in a word, doing what you must do to be in a state of grace –, then you are already in the “courtship” phase with God anyway, and you already have lost the  “freedoms” one must lose (that is, the “freedoms” to sin) in order to be prepared to receive the highest union with Him (and if you’re not in a state of grace, I am not addressing this post to you — I’d instead ask you to go to www.PrepareToSeeHim.org)

God’s very life as your own life will never be eclipsed by some still-better offer out there waiting to be discovered. What exactly, pray tell, could possibly come down the line in the future for you that, in having union with God, you will have to reject? A moment’s reflection will make you realize that it is only things that you have no moral right desiring in the first place, and sealing your life off to ever fulfilling these lowly desires is nothing to lament. 

God has been begging us, for over a century now, to ask Him for His life as our own life. He has revealed to so many authentic mystics that this is indeed His Will for us — in this age where “sin abounds,” so that “grace may abound all the more” (cf. Romans 5:20), for He “saves the best wine for last” (cf. John 2:10). In this age where the foundation for the Crown of Sanctity has finally been fully laid through the teachings of the Fathers of the Church on Divinization, the Doctors of the Church on Mystical Marriage, the Spiritual Masters of Sacred Tradition on the Union of Wills, and the great Marian Saints on Marian Consecration. In this age when, after 2,000 years of praying the Our Father, its central and greatest petition is almost ready to be fulfilled — Thy Will be done on earth as It is in Heaven.

In this age where God has explicitly made the request through prophet after prophet:

• St. Faustina was clearly told by Jesus of His Will that we become “living Hosts” through the “cancellation” of our self-wills and living “solely” by His — receiving this “unprecedented” grace that has not been received by “holier and better souls” before us, wherein we are “fused with God” and “transconsecrated.”
• St. Maxamilian Kolbe taught that Marian Consecration now must be directed towards a “transubstantiation of the self into the Immaculata” (not, of course, literal in the same sense the bread is transubstantiated — but a real change nevertheless), exceeding the merely moral union of Marian Consecration before the 20th century.
• St. Elizabeth of the Trinity taught a “personal possession of the Trinity” wherein the Holy Spirit transforms the soul “into another humanity of Jesus” and into a “living host.”
• Blessed Conchita was told by Jesus of a new “mystical incarnation,” available for the asking, by virtue of which we are united with Jesus in a degree “much more than spiritual marriage” (the highest holiest possible in days gone by), the “grace of graces” that gives the soul, even on earth, the very same manner of holiness as elect in Heaven; the only difference being that the veil here still remains.
• Blessed Dina Bélanger, whom John Paul II praised as desiring to “fully correspond to the Divine Will,” speaks of a participation in the Divine Life the same as the “state of the elect in Heaven,” wherein we are Deified in a similar manner “in which the Humanity [of Jesus] united to the Divinity in the Incarnation.”

(References for all the teachings above can be found in pages 148-168 of The Crown of Sanctity or, more briefly, pages 76-80 of The Crown of History) (Update: Thy Will Be Done, published November 2021, gives a better introduction and overview. See the Third Part of this book for more on the teachings above.)

There simply is no longer any doubt about it. So why aren’t we asking Him? Why do we Catholics incessantly insist upon Protestantizing ourselves; pretending that “a personal relationship with Jesus” is enough — as if our union with Him need not be fundamentally different than our union with close friends — when He wants infinitely more of us than a mere relationship (no matter how “personal”)? Why do we dabble in sanctity while resisting the very crown that sanctity itself has always been intrinsically ordered towards, even when it is freely offered to us?

Why are we being like that cowardly young man who is wasting away his life on mere courtship?

Why don’t we love God enough to believe what He is saying and take Him up on this unbeatable offer?

Don’t be like the elder brother who went about his whole life failing to ask for what his father would have readily given if he had just asked. Don’t go your whole life living so far below your calling (I solemnly assure you that you are called to the highest union with God possible) because of fears, or trifles, or quibbles, or sloth, or attachments, or whatever else. 

ASK

(And you shall receive.)