Russia Must Be Consecrated to the
Immaculate Heart
By
Father Gregorius D. Hesse, STD, JCL, JCD (Cand.): Vienna Austria
“Russia would have to be
consecrated to the Immaculate Heart,
even if Our Lady had never
mentioned it at Fátima.”
Click ANY Image to enlarge |
The purpose of
this article is to show that a consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary is of a theological necessity or at least a theological convenience, even
if Heaven had never mentioned it. Therefore, in this article and for the sake of
argument we pretend that Our Lady never appeared at Fátima and that there was
never a message.
Consequently
we have to examine the following questions:
1.
Why a consecration?
2.
Why to Our Lady?
3.
Why to Her Immaculate Heart?
4.
Why Russia?
5.
Why not just by the Pope, but by all bishops?
1. The
Purpose and Necessity of Consecration
The third
meaning, in a definition by St. Thomas Aquinas, is the most important for our
consideration. As St. Thomas explains in his Commentary on the Sentences of
Petrus Lombardus: "For whatever eminence of state the sanctification will be
given, because there, a special help of grace is necessary, as in the
consecration of kings, monks, and nuns ..."
Consecration as such has been required by God many times in Holy Scripture, as
in the consecration of Joshua:
And Joshua
told the people: "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing
things among you" (Jos. 3:5). In order to obtain a petitioned extraordinary
grace, the Lord prescribes consecration:
Tell the
people: "Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, when you will eat
meat. The Lord heard you when you wailed: ‘If only we had meat to eat. We were
better off in Egypt!’ Now the Lord will give you meat and you will eat it" (Num.
11: 18).
What is
consecrated is set apart, it is holy, and it is set apart and sanctified for a
specific purpose:
The
concept of setting one apart from all the rest is a fundamental precept of the
Mosaic Law:
Set apart for
the Lord your God every firstborn male of your herds and flocks. Do not put the
firstborn of your oxen to work, and do not shear the firstborn of your sheep.
(Deut. 15:19). Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate
themselves, or the Lord will break out against them (Ex. 19:22).
The
people have been set apart and consecrated, yet the priests are to be further
set apart and consecrated for their specific mission which they do not share
with the common people:
In this way
you are to set the Levites apart from the other Israelites, and the Levites will
be mine (Num. 8:14). Isn’t it enough for you that the God of Israel has
separated you from the rest of the Israelite community and brought you near
Himself to do the work at the Lord’s tabernacle and to stand before the
community and minister to them? (Num. 16:9).
Any
consecration is specific. As it is not sufficient to consecrate the world as a
whole to have Russia, Austria or any other country consecrated, it is not
sufficient to have the people of Israel consecrated, it suffices even not to
have the Levites consecrated, the individual must be consecrated namely, as we
can see in the example of Aaron:
It is
important to understand that a consecration renders something or someone
acceptable to God, as the child becomes acceptable through baptism and the
baptized is set apart at the ordination to the Sacred Priesthood.
A consecration
is not done in any vague or haphazard manner, but it has to be celebrated
according to detailed instructions, as the 29th chapter of the book of Exodus
shows in 34 sentences. Similar instructions can be found in other books of the
Pentateuch. For the last of our questions it will be important to understand
that a consecration has to follow a solemn rite: There is a difference in graces
granted for wearing a medal cursorily blessed by a mere sign of the cross or a
Medal of St. Benedict, consecrated by a Benedictine equipped with faculties,
Ritual and Holy Water!
The purpose of consecration is
also atonement:
The final
purpose of all creation and, therefore, also of consecration is the greater
Glory of God: "... there also I will meet with the Israelites, and the place
will be consecrated by My glory" (Ex. 29:43). God requires His glory not for
Himself, but because of us, as St. Thomas says (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.132,
a. 1, ad.1).
Whatever is consecrated, belongs
to God, unless it is desecrated:
Father Gregory Hesse |
The entire history of the Church and
her liturgical customs are definite proof of the necessity of consecration:
While a chapel
may be blessed, the altar stone and the sacred vessels have to be consecrated. A
church has to be consecrated in addition to the altar. A bishop is consecrated,
a priest, a monk, a nun, and a virgin. Certain medals and holy objects have to
be consecrated and until the reform of 1949 the palms on Palm Sunday and the
Easter Candle were consecrated with consecratorial prefaces.
Whenever
something is desecrated, it has to be made holy again by reconsecration. This is
also true for ourselves as sinners who are - in a way - reconsecrated by the
Sacraments if fallen into the state of mortal sin.
For the scope
of this article the concept of consecration as atonement will be of utmost
importance.
2. The
Necessity of a Consecration to Our Lady
Yes,
definitely. It would certainly be less than appropriate to consecrate a church
or an altar stone as such to anyone but God Himself. A mere rock used as a grave
for human bones, even the holy bones of holy martyrs must be set apart,
sanctified, dedicated and surrendered entirely to God by consecration, in order
to be worthy for the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The same is analogically
true for a church and ultimately the members of the priesthood.
But, these
consecrations, just like the consecration of Baptismal Water are necessary to
render some matter worthy of the Holy One by sanctification. An altar stone is
not consecrated to convey graces, but to allow the celebration of the sacrament
that will convey the most potent sacramental graces. Neither an altar stone nor
Baptismal Water are consecrated for the purpose of atonement in the strict
sense, but for the purification needed to render the matter worthy of the proper
sacrament.
Are all
consecrations only to God? Ultimately, yes, but not always exclusively. God
rewards the saints with a share of His Glory. The Medal of St. Benedict is
consecrated in honor of St. Benedict asking for his intercession. It is
consecrated to God Almighty, but in honor of St. Benedict.
God’s Holy
Will to share His Glory with all the Saints is firmly established in the
Tradition of the Church:
Thus, God
wanted the consecration not exclusively to His Perfection and Divinity (somewhat
lessened by St. Jerome in the Vulgate), much less to the mistakes of Popes in
the Proprium of the Mass (the Canon is without errors or faults!!!), and still
less to the intellectual shortcomings of the magnificent fat saint in his
magnificent fat book, called the Summa Theologiae. It can easily be seen that
God wanted the Fathers of Trent to share in these three books’ inspiration,
wisdom, information and insights, but foremost in the Divine Love shared with
saints like St. Jerome, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
We will see in
the next chapter how important this consideration is. Hope will be satisfied,
Faith will be superceded, Love will remain.
While
consecration is an act of Faith, set in Hope, it must be caused by Love, be it
in obedient or choosing Love. Charity loves "thy neighbor" in obedience,
friendship loves by choice. St. Thomas says: "Of all the things that pertain to
love, friendship is the most perfect" (Summa Contra Gentiles, III, d. 27, q.2,
1).
We have seen
that God wants His Glory for our sake, not for Himself, no matter how infinitely
it is due to Him. His perfect Friendship is the purpose of all consecration.
"Vos autem dixi amicos, but I called you friends," said He to the disciples
(John 15:15) and friends we are when consecrated by dedication, atonement and
especially obedience to His Will (John 15:13).
The Church in
Her venerable Tradition of countless canonizations of saints and Her benevolent
protection of their cults and consecrations in their honor illustrates and
witnesses the firm will of Christ to share His Glory and merits with the ones
consecrated to Him.
The occasional
exaggeration can be benevolently considered as comprehensible in the light of
the Blessed Virgin’s position as Mother of God, Queen of all Martyrs, Queen of
Heaven, Queen of the Angels, and Mediatrix of All Graces.
Let the
quotations of a few saints suffice as a substitute for all the countless and
often deep volumes written about Her glory:
... in the
first place the memory of the glorious ever Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord and
God Jesus Christ (Canon Missae); The humanity of Christ inasmuch as it is united
to God, and the created beatitude inasmuch as it is fruition of God, and the
Blessed Virgin inasmuch as She is Mother of God in a way have infinite dignity
out of the infinite good, which is God (Summa Theologiae, I, q.25, a.6, ad 4)
and from this part cannot be better (Summa Theologiae, III, q.7, a.12, ad 2); To
be the Mother of God is the utmost grace conferable to a mere creature. The same
is where God cannot do more. God can make a bigger world, a greater heaven, more
than a Mother of God He cannot make (St. Bonaventura).
Our Lady’s
function in the economy of salvation is not merely passive, She is not merely
used by God, She devoted, with all of Her heart and not lessened by any sin, all
of Her life and Herself completely as the ancilla Domini to God and His Divine
Son in the mystery of the Redemption. She is, as St. Irenaeus says, the cause of
salvation. St. Epiphanius calls Her the "Mother of the Living" and She is indeed
our mother in the order of grace, because She is the GRATIA PLENA, full of
grace, and the Mediatrix of All Graces:
From the time
that the Virgin Mother conceived the Word of God in Her womb ... She obtained
jurisdiction in all temporal processions of the Holy Spirit; so that no creature
obtained any grace from God, unless according to His pious Mother’s dispensation
(St. Bernardine of Siena).
All
consecrations for the purpose of obtaining graces, must, therefore, be directed
towards Our Lady, inasmuch as She is the Mediatrix of All Graces!
3. The
Necessity of a Consecration to the Immaculate Heart
I ask it with
respect and in no blasphemous intention whatsoever: Why the adoration for the
Sacred Heart, why the blood pump and not His hands that transmitted the Holy
Spirit to the Apostles?
St. Thomas
Aquinas calls the heart "the first principle of movement in the animal" (Summa
Theologiae, I, q.20, a.1, ad1) and he says: "Every good disposition of the body
overflows to the heart, as to the principle and end of bodily motions" (Summa
Theologiae, I-II, q.38. a.5, ad3). This does not answer our question, as long as
the heart is seen in its bodily function of pumping blood.
Twice,
however, St. Thomas talks about the dispositions of the heart towards the
passions of the soul (Summa Contra Gentiles, III, d. 34, q.2, a.1; De Veritate,
q. 25, a.2) and then he indicates the solution to our problem in his article
about concordia, togetherness of hearts, mutual agreement, harmony:
Concordia
namely, properly understood, is towards someone else: that is, inasmuch as the
wills of various hearts come together in one agreement ... The heart of an
individual human being tends towards different things; and this in a twofold
way. In one way according to the various appetitive potencies, ... in another
way according to the ... various desirables (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.29,
a.1).
St. Thomas
does not answer our question, but the correct solution can and must be based on
his connecting the will and the heart:
The heart has
always been the symbol of love as can be seen in the most frequently used
idioms: "I love you with all my heart," "My heart is yours," "You are in my
heart." In this case the will and the heart agree, but what about the often
found contradiction between the heart and the TWO faculties of the soul: "Okay,
I’ll do it, but my heart is not in it." The will says YES, the heart says NO. "I
know this in my heart, but I do not understand it." The heart conceives, but not
the intellect.
Are the TWO
faculties of the soul a sufficient explanation?
St. Pius X’s
soul is in Heaven (his blood pump is to be found somewhat dysfunctional in St.
Peter’s Basilica in Rome). His intellect is completely filled up and penetrating
ever more the ultimate and only Truth: God. His will is completely absorbed by
the everlasting YES to God and the Beatific Vision. Where is his beatitude?
Where is his love?
To simplify
matters for the sake of argument we can bluntly say that the human will says YES
or NO to what the intellect recognizes as true. The intellect of the child
recognizes the parents as authority and the will agrees with the authority, but
this is still not love.
What
distinguishes the newborn babe from an animal? Newborn animals recognize parents
and desire them, BUT THEY DO NOT SMILE OR LAUGH! Man was often called the animal
risibilis, the animal capable of laughter. Smile, laughter, amusement, and humor
are never to be found within the creatures without a rational soul. No tiger and
no tree ever smiles. St. Thomas says there is laughter in the blessed (Quolibet,
11, 6, 1), but the "risible adds some extraneous nature to man, which is outside
the essence of man" (De Veritate, q.1, a.5, ad 20; q.21, a.1, ad1l).
The essence of
the Thomist common sense is that two agencies are at work; reality and the
recognition of reality; and their meeting is a sort of marriage. Indeed it is
very truly a marriage, because it is fruitful. It produces practical results,
precisely because it is the combination of an adventurous mind and a strange
fact. Upon that marriage the whole system of St. Thomas is founded; God made Man
so that he was capable of coming in contact with reality; and those whom God
hath joined, let no man put asunder (Saint Thomas Aquinas, "The Sequel to St.
Thomas," pp. 184-185).
Chesterton
understands the term "common sense" the way St. Thomas does. "Common sense is
the native good judgement, sound ordinary sense, also the set of general
unexamined assumptions, as distinguished from specially acquired concepts"
(American Heritage Dictionary). St. Thomas sees it as the root and principle of
the exterior senses. "Sensus communis fertur in omnia sensibilia secundum unam
communem rationem." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. l, a.3, ad2)
"Ultimum iudicium et ultima discretio pertinet ad sensum communem, quis iudicium
aliorum [sensuum] perficit." (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.78,
a.4, ad2).
We know and
believe that man has been created according to the image of God. This is
especially true for the human soul, the form and essence of man. The image of
God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is in the THREE faculties or potencies of the
human soul: The will, the intellect, and the heart, that is in the decisive, the
cognitive, and the appetitive faculties.
And in this is
the image of the Most Blessed Trinity: In an analogy to be understood carefully,
the will could be seen as the image of the Father, the Creator, the intellect as
the image of the Son, the Logos, the Word, and the heart as the image of the
Holy Spirit, the burning fire of Love.
The heart is
not only the third, but also the highest of the faculties of the soul:
In another
analogy we can compare the three potencies of the soul with the three
theological virtues:
The will
corresponds to Hope, where I will to be in Heaven and hope to succeed through
Christ’s mercy and my submission to His Will. The intellect corresponds to Faith
where I understand with Whom I want to be in heaven, and the heart corresponds
to Charity, where I love what I will and know. Charity is the greatest of the
virtues (Cf. 1 Cor. 13:13).
Christ did not
need Hope, He knew His future, He did not need Faith, He IS the Truth, but His
Charity redeemed us.
This must be
the reason why we adore His Sacred Heart.
And this is
the reason why we must consecrate Russia to the most important potency in the
soul of the Immaculate Conception: Her Immaculate Heart!
There remains
one question indirectly pertaining to the considerations above: Why was this
found out only centuries after the Angelic Doctor’s life and incredible
insights?
G.K. Chesterton |
Joy, which was
the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian ...
The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in
every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos
was natural, almost casual ... He never concealed his tears; He showed them
plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native
city. Yet He concealed something ... He never restrained His anger. He flung
furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to
escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something … there was in that
shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something
that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something
that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was
some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our
earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth (Orthodoxy, Authority
and the Adventurer, p. 160 [last paragraph of the book]).
4. Russia
must be Consecrated
Why Russia? We
have seen that one of the foremost purposes of consecration is atonement or
reparation. As a church is desecrated by crime, blood, and seed and needs a
reconsecration, so the world needs reconsecration, especially after the
unspeakable crimes in the Twentieth Century.
Nevertheless a
simple consecration of the world would be too simple. The necessity of atonement
is obviously directly proportional to the number and gravity of crimes
committed. At the same time any fireman knows that the hose must be pointed at
the source of the fire or its center. Just as the thundering flame of a burning
oil well is extinguished by the correct placing of the right amount of high
explosive, so the sinful hellfire of this world must be extinguished by
converting its center.
There can be
no doubt that after the breaking up of Christendom by Luther in 1517, the
grouping of the Church’s enemy, Freemasonry, in 1717, the reign of the
Antichrist to come was initiated by the events in Russia in 1917. The moment the
Bolsheviks were established, the completely atheistic empire was set to work:
churches were shut down, torn down and desecrated; bishops and priests were
arrested, tortured, killed, and exiled; the nobility and the bourgeoisie were
practically wiped out; and the Russian people decimated (Stalin alone is
responsible for an estimated SIXTY million dead during his reign of evil). With
the help of corrupt and evil American businessmen the Soviet Union started to
preach the satanic religion of Atheism to the whole world. The world’s largest
country became "the evil empire" as Ronald Reagan called it so aptly. Its evil
influence was extended rapidly by dedicated and fanatical dictators, agents, and
the evil allies of communism in the West. American businessmen built factories
for the Russians, World War II and criminal politics in the West delivered the
Eastern countries directly and the Western countries indirectly through
capitalistic corruption. China, Asian countries, Africa and South America were
next. Already in the 1930’s Stalin sent secret agents into the Western
seminaries and into the Vatican, until communism finally flooded the Sacred Aula
of St. Peter’s Basilica during the Second Vatican Council, where the petition to
speak out against communism disappeared together with any further intention to
dedicate an entire document to the Mother of God. The incessant attacks against
Christendom by the communists and their allies were so efficient that by the
time the Iron Curtain was torn down, this barrier against the formerly Christian
West was not needed any more, the latter having become a cesspool of atheism,
abortion, sin, corruption, liberalism, and blasphemy.
Russia has
spread her errors in various degrees, but worldwide.
There can be
no doubt for any informed person that the source of all this evil was Russia,
not — as those trapped by Soviet propaganda want us to believe — America.
Errors of Russia (Documentary)
It can easily
be seen why RUSSIA has to be consecrated more than any other individual country.
The crimes
committed and propagated by Russia are particularly offensive against Our Lady
as they are all crimes against life, motherhood, chastity, purity, and filial
devotion to God. Every single virtue particular to Our Lady is offended by this
system of power that still cannot touch God Almighty, but delights in the abuse
of power against the humble and defenseless Virgin, whose total submission to
God’s will is contemplated in the first of the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary.
Therefore it
is Russia that has to be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart.
6.
The Pope Together with the Bishops has to Consecrate Russia.
But the
Tradition of the Church knows the word convenit, frequently used by the Church
Fathers and St. Thomas: it comes together, it is fitting, proper, convenient.
St. Thomas calls the Incarnation "convenient" (Summa Theologiae, III, q.1, a.1).
Convenience is never to be taken lightly in theology, especially when necessity
is relative. God is perfect and needs nothing, anything due to Him is,
therefore, of a relative necessity, absolute for us, non-existent for Him. This
is also the reason why priests should celebrate Mass every singe day of their
life: It is not necessary in the strict sense, but convenient. Hence objective
convenience can constitute a subjective necessity.
Any
consecration is by nature the competence of bishops. Only a bishop can
consecrate bishops and priests, and only a bishop can consecrate an altar and a
chalice. Any consecration of whatever person or thing by a simple priest is
delegated by the bishop or the Universal Church, while a bishop is the ordinary
minister for most consecrations. It is, therefore, convenient to ask all the
bishops to join in the consecration of Russia.
While the Pope
enjoys the primacy, he is not the Universal Church. At Pentecost for the first
time and at all Ecumenical Councils, Peter is joined by all Apostles in order to
represent the entire Church. If the Pope alone was to consecrate Russia, he
would do it in the name of the Church, but if all bishops join — even if only in
obedience — the entire Church Herself consecrates. Russia has almost succeeded
to wreck the entire world, it is therefore convenient to have the entire Church
consecrate Russia.
Vatican II "ecumenism" is heresy |
In the light
of the rather ambiguous and doubtful concept of collegiality, created by the
authors of Vatican II, the Pope’s own authority has been considerably weakened,
especially in the public’s mind. Lumen Gentium 22 creates an exaggerated concept
of the importance of the college of all bishops in the Church, which prompted
Pope Paul VI to add an explanatory note to the document, a rather unique
occurrence in history. In the light of the public understanding, however, and
until a future Pope has corrected this above-mentioned and dangerous concept, it
would be convenient to have all bishops join the Pope in the consecration to
present a unity, which nowadays usually the "unity" of the Catholic Church
leaves something to be desired.
Finally, and
with great chagrin, it has to be understood that Russia’s errors have penetrated
the Vatican, the Papacy, and the College of all bishops. When Peter sins, Peter
has to go to confession, nobody else can do it for him. It is, therefore,
convenient to have all bishops join in the consecration.
Inasmuch as it
is convenient to command all bishops to join the Pope in the consecration of
Russia, it is, therefore, also of a relative necessity.
Conclusion
Russia, under
the name of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the united republics, the
C.I.S., has caused more damage to the world and the Church than any other nation
during the last 100 years. For the purpose of atonement, she must hence be
consecrated by the Pope and all the Catholic bishops to the one and most exalted
of all mere creatures Whose Immaculate Heart always belonged to God and, while
on earth, has suffered immeasurably for all sins ever committed, including the
ones to come. She transmits all graces through Her Immaculate Heart. Only She
can save the world.
Father Malachi Martin on the Failure to Consecrate Russia
This issue is a constant cross for me. I get so upset when I see and hear anyone disputing the need for the Consecration. I have gone to confession many times for losing my temper over this. All I can do is pray the Rosary and offer Jesus my pain.
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