Introducing Seven Tools for Culture Recovery

Our Father God has prepared at least seven tools for us to navigate the storm we find ourselves in.

The habitual mindset of much of our culture is despair, falling into fatalism. What’s the use? Things are irreparably broken. Nothing can or will change. But this is antithetical to the Gospel hope. It is also ignoring what the Spirit has been saying to the church. And contrary to the pessimistic mindset of our times, God is not done working in our times, and He has provided us with tools to help us in our struggle.

So what are these things that have come forth, here and now? Let me begin with the most mysterious and provocative, which I shall fix as a sort of goal because of its perplexity: the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. These enigmatic but joyous words were spoken by the Virgin Mary in visions to three little shepherd children at Fatima:

“If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

Fatima is familiar to Catholics, perhaps too familiar, and it takes a jolt to return us to the thrill of shock and horror we may have felt – I certainly did—when I first encountered the dramatic story as a child. In that apparition Mary predicted the 20^th century would be a century of wars and horrors (it was), how the errors of Russia would spread throughout the world (they have and still are). There was a dancing sun and a vision of Hell and Holy Communion given by an angel, and the prayer we may still say after each decade of the Rosary: Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven especially those in need of thy mercy.

Ponder that last prayer. Simultaneously, the children’s vision at Fatima reaffirmed what countless holy people have taught: that many, too many souls go to hell—but in the signature prayer of Fatima we are asked to pray repeatedly for all souls to be led to heaven.  The other prayer of Fatima: O God, I believe, I adore, and I love Thee, and I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, and do not love Thee: is imbued with the same humble and generous spirit. Mary reportedly said to the children that “Many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray for them,” which implies that just a little bit of effort on our part—to pray for the people we know, we meet, we see around us—might make a crucial difference in their salvation!

A quick internet search helped me discover many new images of Our Lady of Fatima, including this one by artist June Jameson. Buy it here.

We have not sufficiently wrestled with the paradoxes of Fatima, confining them to the section of the devout, not allowing them into the broader life of the Church and society. We are asked to pray relentlessly for mercy, and we are told that this is the age of mercy. To those who think these words are pabulum, I ask: can anyone who looks long and hard at our civilization, where over 3000 babies are killed daily in abortion, deny that we are in dire need of mercy?  We need to recover both a healthy fear of hell and a tenacious belief in the mercy of God: that He loves these men and women He has created more than any of us ever could, that the awful mystery of free will means that if we chose Hell, He will not compel us to enter the kingdom of Heaven by violence or love Him through force of His personality but will let us fall …

While we ponder these mysteries, perhaps our growing resolve should be to live that way towards mercy, to embody it in our lives, to run after God always, and that this is how everyone we meet should encounter us.

And in the midst of the prophecies, all fulfilled, in Fatima is one assertive statement: “But in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. Russia will be converted, and an era of peace will be granted to mankind.” I do not think Russia has been converted or the era of peace has begun. While I cannot claim to know the particulars, I would assume that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart would begin with the end of abortion, that our sodden humanity would awake and stare in horror at the slaughter of the unborn and eschew that bloody industry forthwith. Abortion would become as we see slavery today: a moral pariah.

There are other evils to be eradicated in the world besides abortion, of course, and it will take the return of Christ to restore all justice to the earth, but I believe it is reasonable to imagine that this Triumph will be marked by an era of peace for ALL mankind, including the unborn. Also, Our Lady came in the form of Our Lady of Guadalupe to a people still soiled by the guilt of Aztec slaughter, and healed them. While abortion is not the chief evil of our age (I believe divorce, contraception, and pornography -- which all contribute to abortion -- that do far more damage), it is a marker of the state of our soul, that we tolerate such things. I believe future ages will judge us harshly for this complacency. 

It might follow that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart will be marked by a downfall of those three evils I just listed, since they are all sins of impurity, and the Heart of Mary is pure. Right now the cloud of maculation hangs over our society, such that most people cannot really imagine purity as anything other than childlike ignorance or repressed grim forbearance. But I have met—and I hope you have met—many individuals whose joy radiates from truly pure souls that I cannot really disbelieve in purity altogether.

You can buy a print of this image by Jessica Marie here.

Aside from that, what might the triumph of the Immaculate Heart look like? Here is where I bring in St. John Paul II’s hope for a new springtime of Christianity, a culture of life. Although John Paul II could be grim and apocalyptic in some of his pronouncements, in other places he shines with hope.

He called for the building of a culture of life, and I have hope that this culture which we can build will coincide with the triumph of Mary’s Heart, which only the Lord can bring about. And I thank the Lord for this vision of Fatima, because I need hope as a lodestar. Everything else she prophesied – the Second World War, the tyranny of communism, the immorality of much culture—has happened. I believe in the one definitive statement that she made: this era of peace in the future, peace we do not deserve, but yet we can prepare for peace.

Let me say a word about prophecy. Prophecy must neither be central nor discounted completely. In the Scripture, we see prophets spoke outside the leadership of family, nation, and priesthood – though some prophets were priests.  When the administration listened to the words of the Lord, they were rightly guided. When they ignored them or went relentlessly against the advice, they were destroyed. Notice that it is Our Lady whom God sends with prophecy, not Peter or David or any male authority. The Queen Mother of Heaven has the authority of the heart, not of the sword nor the papal edict. As at the wedding feast of Cana she comes as neither a steward nor a wonder worker but to connect the two.  In the same manner, let us heed the prophecies, especially when we don’t completely understand or are offended by the herald’s clumsy diction or unfashionable clothes or dated font choices. In this way, many people have discerned though the fog the edge of the cliff and avoided sudden destruction.

Yet prophecies are not administrators, nor are they meant to be. Unless one is a prophet (and some are so called) most of us should not center our lives around the promulgation of prophecies but ponder them in the course of our vocation. Our Lady did not stay in the Temple night and day like Anna or Simeon but returned to her hometown to marry an unknown tradesman, sweep floors, change diapers, and be ignored by society. She did the uncommon thing – following her Son around the countryside, standing at the foot of His Cross – as the time and place required it, but otherwise passed unnoticed into the stream of everyday peasant life.  She pondered the prophecies in her heart. So should we ponder the prophecies for our time, our place, not because it will make us famous or give us purpose but because the word was spoken to us and we must heed it and keep it as a fire in each of our hearts.

“Our Lady of Fatima” available from ColorsbyNatalie

How can we work for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart? How can we bring this word into spaces and places where it has not come before?  How can we build the culture of life? Fortunately, the Church herself has prepared us with many new tools, which have each been proffered, but never (that I know of) brought together into one bundle and presented as such.  This is what I am attempting to do now. This journal will be describing these seven tools, which I thank the Lord for, which might be the keys to building a culture of life.