As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to afflict us with sickness, death, fear, deprivation, and diminishment of freedom, there are increasing, mostly cautious, speculations that this tribulation is a chastisement necessitated by the world’s rejection of God and rampant immorality, and so allowed, permissively willed, by a just God.
Mary the Mother of God in eight of her ten most recent Church approved apparitions, beginning most pointedly with these words at Fatima in 1917, has warned:
When you see a night illumined by an unknown light [observed by thousands on January 25, 1938], know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.
This forewarning of a retributive chastisement spoken by the Queen of Heaven and Earth a century ago has gravely immediate import for us today. Given the blatantly persistent spiritual and moral degradation of the world – and Mary’s intensified warnings since Fatima of an impending punishment of belligerent godlessness and sin – how could we not seriously consider that the coronavirus is a facet of a global scourge humanity suffers for its obstinate iniquity?
Mary the Mother of Mercy, however, spoke at Fatima more than a warning. She offered a specific solution for the prevention and mitigation of such a just chastisement, and she made a promise for our deliverance:
It is to save [sinners] that God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. . . Say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world. . . . In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.
There have been forty-six Marian apparitions across two millennia – among hundreds alleged – formally approved by Holy Mother Church as “supernatural” in origin and free of doctrinal error or other disqualifying elements. Included here for comment are only such dully authenticated phenomena.
Ten of the forty-six approved Marian apparitions, almost a quarter, including and beginning with that of Fatima, have occurred in the twentieth century. And seven of the nine post-Fatima apparitions of Mary – excepting two Belgian visitations immediately following Fatima – speak the same urgent message of warning.
In each of the seven successive apparitions, Mary speaks imperatively, repeatedly, of a gathering, cataclysmic, global tribulation already being visited upon humanity if we do not repent; and she recommends as well devotion to her Immaculate and Motherly Heart and to the Rosary as means of alleviating such tribulation and toward final victory over sin and its evil consequences. These salient prophecies proclaimed consistently by God’s Mother clearly reprise, as represented in her various words quoted below, both the dire and hopeful keynotes sounded at Fatima.
Our Lady of All Nations, 1945 to 1959, Amsterdam, Netherlands:
The false spirit is ruling the world. Modern paganism, humanism, atheism, modern socialism and communism. . . . The world is degenerating. . . . Disaster upon disaster!
This prayer [the Rosary]must be spread.
He now sends His Mother. . . . She will place her feet upon Satan’s head.
Our Lady of Akita, 1973, Akita, Japan:
Many men in this world afflict the Lord. . . . The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church. . . . The Heavenly Father is preparing to inflict a great chastisement on all mankind. . . . Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity.
Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary.
I alone am able still to save you from the calamites which approach.
Reconciler of People and Nations, 1976 to 1990, Betania, Venezuela:
Behold they [humanity]are navigating against the divine current of peace, love and brotherly unity! . . . These [are] times of great calamity for men [in] a world that is losing its mystical way.
Daughter, . . . Pray the Rosary!
I come to bestow peace upon the world and calmness to the people and nations!
Our Lady of Cuapa, 1980, Cuapa, Nicaragua:
Tell believers and non-believers that the world is threatened by grave dangers. I ask the Lord to appease His justice.
I want the Rosary to be prayed every day. . . . Pray, pray, my son, the Rosary for all the world.
I am the Mother of all of you, sinners. . . . A mother never forgets her children.
Mother of the Word, 1981 to 1989, Kibeho, Rwanda:
The world is rebellious against God, it commits too many sins, it has neither love nor peace. If you do not repent and do not convert your hearts, you will fall into the abyss. . . . If you do not take refuge in God, where will you hide when the fire has spread everywhere? . . . Today, many people do not know any more how to ask forgiveness. They nail again the Son of God on the Cross. . . . Do repent! Do repent! Do repent!
We must recite the Rosary . . . to obtain the grace of repentance.
Let me, as your mother, embrace all my children with love.
Our Lady of the Rosary, 1983 to 1990, San Nicolas, Argentina:
At the present time, all mankind is pending by a thread. If that thread is broken, many will be those that do not have salvation. . . . We are running out of time, there will be no place for late comers. . . . Men are in the process of falling. Their self-destruction progresses. . . . The coming of the Savior is imminent. . . . The prince of evil spills today his poison with all the forces, because he sees that he is concluding his sad reign.
The Holy Rosary is the weapon which the enemy fears. . . . It is the door to enter into my heart.
I am the Ark of peace, the Ark of salvation, the Ark where my children must enter if they wish to live in the Kingdom of God.
Queen of the Rosary, 1994, Itapiranga, Brazil:
Today there are so many outrages, the sacrilege and indifference by all men. It is because of this that so many calamities like war, hunger and disease occur and so many other sad things man has suffered because of man’s rebellion against God. . . . Men let themselves be led by the most insidious wiles of the Devil. . . . But God’s justice is close at hand in a way never seen before and will come about suddenly upon the whole world.
Continue to pray the holy Rosary every day.
I will be at the side of each son and daughter of mine, helping and comforting them with a Mother’s Heart.
If we look to God for His prophetic word about whether this coronavirus plight is the chastisement it seems to be, let us look to His Mother Mary, our Mediatrix, whom He has sent to us repeatedly of late to instruct and guide us – and, yes, to warn us. What she tells at Fatima and for a hundred years thence is that a chastisement is indeed upon us, that we must repent, pray, most particularly the Rosary, and find refuge in and final triumph through her Immaculate Heart.
Surely, it is reasonable to regard this present plague that has escalated dreadfully and has threatened to compound apocalyptically as one of the “many calamities like war, hunger and disease” Our Blessed Mother foretold we would suffer for defiance of God and for the remorseless depravities of our time.
Should we not accede to God’s Mother’s admonitions?
Photo by Anuja Mary Tilj on Unsplash
