The Messages of the Blessed Mother about a New Era and the Magisterial Teaching of the Church
by Bishop Joseph [Charbelite Fathers]
If Messages from the Blessed Virgin Mary are perceived as invitations to greater piety, the Church can only welcome their effect. When Messages offer insight or information that expand upon or go beyond the current understanding of the Church’s role in salvation history, most clergy are quick to point out two things:
- The faithful are not bound to believe private revelation, and
- With the Teaching of Jesus Christ, the body of Divine Revelation is complete.
For Catholics, these statements are undoubtedly true, but one must also acknowledge that, even on the part of the Church, the understanding of Scripture and Tradition, the foundations of the Magisterial Teaching, may be limited or incomplete.
In his closing discourse to His apostles at the Last Supper, Our Lord reassured His listeners that, under the guidance of the Paraclete or Holy Ghost, the Church would recollect things forgotten or misunderstood. Since that time, many doctrines have been developed – e.g. about the Trinity, Original Sin, the Sacraments, freedom and predestination – that illustrate the ongoing work of the Holy Ghost in the life of the Church. Pre-eminent in this unfolding of knowledge and understanding within the Church are its doctrines about Mary, the Mother of Jesus, i.e. Mary as Mother of God, Her Immaculate Conception, and Her Assumption into Heaven.
In many Messages from a number of different Seers and Voice-boxes, Our Blessed Mother has emphasized that we are in the End Times of this world, ‘this world’ being an echo of Our Lord’s response to Pontius Pilate: ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’. Moreover, after a period of tribulation and suffering, the faithful will enter a new era of peace and universal piety that will last for a long time. Despite a reference in the Apocalypse to a similar period of over a thousand years, this is controversial. As Fr. Hardin has noted, the Church, since the 4th Century, no longer teaches millenarian interpretations of history or of the Apocalypse.
A close reading of the Messages of Our Blessed Mother raises questions about the continued viability of this stance. Consider the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Just four years after the proclamation of this Dogma, Our Blessed Mother appeared at Lourdes to personally and emphatically apply this title to Herself.
Recall that, after the Fall, ‘the Lord God … posted His Cherubim before the Garden of Delight … so that he could reach the Tree of Life no longer.’ The Church understands that this prohibition extends to all men as a result of Original Sin. The test of Genesis emphasizes, however, that the Garden of Paradise was not destroyed, even if it has disappeared from human history after the Fall. In this context, Our Lady’s re-affirmation of Her Immaculate Conception at Lourdes reminds us that the prohibition does not apply to Her. Furthermore, because Baptism removes the stain of Original Sin from each of the faithful, the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception also begs the question of why the prohibition must necessarily apply to all the Catholic faithful.
Over the years and in many Apparitions, Our Lady has developed Her Teaching about the Immaculate Conception. At Fatima, Our Lady announced the eventual triumph of Her Immaculate Heart in Her ongoing conflict with the Dragon and Satan. As of 1967, when the Church lifted its restrictions on private revelations (that they no longer needed an ecclesiastical imprimatur), Our Lady has been able to express Herself more freely. From Fr. Gobbi, we have the following:
With a Cenacle, you are commemorating My last Apparition at Fatima … the entire plan which I am now carrying out, was revealed to you at that time (233,pg 334)
The Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart is synonymous with the establishment of the New Era and the Return of Jesus before the Final Judgement.
Jesus, who has taught you the prayer to invoke the coming of the Reign of God upon Earth, will at last see fulfilled this prayer of His, because He will restore His Reign. And creation will again be a new garden where Christ will be Glorified by all and His Divine Kingship will be welcomed and exalted. It will be a Universal Reign of Grace, of beauty, of harmony, of communion, of holiness, of justice and of peace (Fr. Gobbi, Message 357,pg.559).
With the New Era, the restored reign is not that of David but of the Triune God in the Earthly Paradise. This restoration, in contrast to the discord accompanying the Fall, will be welcomed and exalted.
This outlines the Blessed Mother’s Plan, but how does Her Plan bring about the appropriate transformation of Her children so that it can occur. Firstly, prayer, penance and reparation are necessary on the part of the Catholic faithful. In addition, She needs leaders, prophetic leaders, who are willing to work with Her.
The prophetic leadership of the ‘Little Pebble’ is instructive. As Her Prophet, he has conveyed hundreds of Messages to the public at large and to particular people in the Church. He also sees Mary in person.
The first Prophet in the Bible is Moses, who spoke with God face to face. It is in his words that we hear that:
The Lord Thy God will raise up to thee a Prophet of thy nation and of thy brethren like unto me: him thou shalt hear …
Many look to Jesus as the fulfilment of this prophecy. A Jew, He talked to God and addressed Him as His Father. The ‘Little Pebble’ also speaks with God face to face and with the Blessed Mother.
In understanding the plan for the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart, it is important to realize that the communication between Mary and the ‘Little Pebble’ constitutes a relationship. In fact, the love that frames their communication is itself an initial restoration of Adam with Eve’s relationship in the garden. In making this comparison, we rely on John Paul II’s analysis of the first chapters of Genesis in the Theology of the Body.
The Church has seen, in the image of a ‘closed garden’, a metaphor for virginity. With the Virgin Mary, this expresses Her role with respect to Paradise: it is contained within Her and at the same time She is its lone inhabitant. John Paul II in his discussion of Adam before the creation of Eve also emphasized his ‘solitude’ in the Garden. Historically, let us note a significant difference. In the second or current Paradise narrative, it is Mary, the Second Eve, who is looking for the creation of the Second Adam, or the re-creation of the ‘Little Pebble’ as the new, and faithful Adam.
With the creation of Eve, Adam’s original solitude is overcome and he finds at last ‘flesh of his flesh’. In the context of the original innocence of Adam and Eve, the Pope explains that their mutual delight also expresses itself as a mutual and complete gift of self. Pope John Paul II identifies this mutual gift of self as a spousal relationship. Over many decades now, this relationship is quite evident in the Messages of Our Lady to the ‘Little Pebble’ and in Her responses to his many letters and questions (mostly addressed to Her through other Seers).
Thus, in his prophetic mission, the ‘Little Pebble’ has become the spouse of the Blessed Mother. In this way, God has chosen to open the previously closed Garden of Paradise to the redeemed faithful. The ceremony for this spousal relationship was in fact celebrated in 1987 (and recently reaffirmed January 1st, 2009).
On 21st May 1987, I was married to Our Lady. I wore a ring for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and gave Her a similar ring, which vanished as Our Lady took it. This ceremony took place in the Mother House, with Brother Joseph Francis and five other Seers present. Father Broussard performed the Ceremony with the other Seers as witnesses (Book 3,p.213).
On the anniversary of this wedding, Our Lady gave the following Message to the ‘Little Pebble’ through the Seer, ‘Thornbush’.
Very few souls have given Me this precious gift of their entire self and truly mean every word and continue to renew this promise of true love. I know your generous heart, My Mystical spouse, for you are locked within the Divine Flames of Our Inseparable Hearts. You are My own. I Bless you, William, My chosen Apostle ‘Little Peter II’, and I kiss your heart twelve times to seal My Pure and Immaculate Love within your tender and afflicted heart (Book 2,p.266).
In both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the enduring image of the restored Kingdom is the Wedding Feast. In the Apocalypse, this image is articulated in terms of ‘the New Jerusalem … prepared as a bride adorned for her husband … Come and I will shew the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ In this quotation the reference to the Lamb is to Christ, or to His Mystical body, which would be led by Peter II, the last Pope.
A more direct Scriptural reference to the mission of the ‘Little Pebble’ comes from Our Lord in Saint Matthew:
Then shall the Kingdom of Heaven be like to ten virgins, who taking their lamps went out to meet the bridegroom and the bride (St.Matt.25, 1-13).
Even in the context of the parable, the reference to the arrival of bridegroom (coincident with Our Lord’s Second Coming) as someone different from Jesus Himself, who is not going to marry His Mother, is the most direct understanding of Our Lord’s Words, even if it has not been possible to understand them clearly until very recently. Given the historical difficulty in identifying the bridegroom, metaphorical or allegorical interpretations were inevitable. Without referring to this passage, St. Paul uses the image of the bridegroom as a figure for Christ and His Love of the Church.
In our interpretation, the Bridegroom is the man who finally arrives (however late) so that the wedding feast can occur. As a result, the Blessed Mother can fulfill her role as the Bride from Heaven and bring Paradise to Earth in the form of the New Jerusalem.
In Her bridegroom, the Blessed Mother recognizes, on a personal level, both his weakness (as a man of this world) and affirms his strength, that he will be able to fulfil his prophetic mission. In opening the gates of Paradise, this spousal union establishes the link, the luminous road between the promise of the original Covenant of God with man and the redeemed faithful in this current world of darkness who have placed their faith in the Church, the Mother of the Church and in her prophet. It is through this personal relationship and the demands of obedience that it imposes upon the faithful that, through Hope, redeemed man re-enters and in a sense recreates on Earth, through the Grace of Jesus Christ, the original Paradise.
There are two additional aspects of this relationship and its mutual affirmation of the other. In that relationship, the ‘Little Pebble’s’ affirmation or recognition of the Blessed Mother is personal, but he also re-affirms the role assigned Her by the Magisterium: Mother of the Church. In a complementary fashion, the Blessed Mother, in affirming the ‘Little Pebble’, recognizes him as the last Holy Father, the Pope who will govern the Church as Peter II and restore its current fallen state to its original glory.
The coming of the glorious reign of Christ will coincide with the greatest splendour of the Eucharist. Christ will restore His glorious reign in the universal triumph of His Eucharistic Reign, which will unfold in all its power and will have the capacity to change hearts, souls, individuals, families, society and the very structure of the world … Jesus will lead you to take joy in this habitual presence of His, … which will lead you to the experience of a second, renewed and more beautiful earthly Paradise (Gobbi, 360, p568).
It also affirms Mary, of the line of David, as the Ark of the Covenant, for She carries in Her Heart the promises made to Israel. In affirming the ‘Pebble’ as spouse, She thus affirms his role as the New Abraham, the father of the New Israel. The New Israel is needed to govern and maintain the New Era.
These are the ones who will be created from the Fire of Love cast upon the Earth by the Holy Ghost. This Fire has already been kindled in us but, as we are poor sinners born in the state of Original Sin, the Prophecy … will be fulfilled only when this future generation is born and takes possession of the Earth. These are the faithful who will be truly and perfectly enkindled with the Fire of His Divine Love, and when this happens, the Holy Ghost can indeed ‘renew the face of the Earth.’
This is consistent with Pope Benedict’s counsel that ‘the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world’ because, with free will, every generation ‘has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs; this task is never simply completed.’ Thus, in order to surmount the challenges, within the new generations, ‘a new seed is needed for a new crop’.
Thus, the Prophet of the Triple Covenant restores and unites Three Covenants: the original Covenant of God with Adam and Eve, the Covenant with Abraham, and the new and Eternal Covenant of Jesus Christ in His Church. The Grace associated with Three Covenants is needed to fulfil Saint John’s prophecy of ‘a new Heaven and a new Earth.’