An excerpt from "Fatima: The Signs and Secrets" (available through Amazon in both paperback and Kindle).-Bracketed numbers indicate the paperback's footnote.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In these latter days of the Modern Age, Our Lady has appeared on earth more than in any other time in history.[565] As the spiritual war between good and evil intensifies, the Mediatrix of All Graces pleas with us to pray and do penance, even as She continues to intercede for us before the throne of God. In the ongoing epic battle for souls, each true Marian apparition in modern history is another chapter intended to remind all peoples – from practicing Catholics to those separated from God in diverse ways - of the lost meaning of conversion.
Just over one hundred years ago, the Catholic Encyclopedia provided four definitions to conversion, as follows: “a moral change, a turning or returning to God and to the true religion, in which sense it has passed into our modern languages. (For example, the "conversions" of St. Paul, of Constantine the Great, and of St. Augustine.) In the Middle Ages, the word conversion was often used in the sense of forsaking the world to enter the religious state. Thus St. Bernard speaks of his conversion. The return of the sinner to a life of virtue is also called a conversion. More commonly do we speak of the conversion of an infidel to the true religion, and most commonly of the conversion of a schismatic or heretic to the Catholic Church.” [566]
Already lost was the fifth and most crucial definition of conversion: the three ages of the interior life. Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, author of The Soul of the Apostolate, defined the interior life as “the state of activity of a soul who strives against its natural inclinations in order to regulate them and endeavors to acquire the habit of judging and directing its movements in all things according to the light of the Gospel and the example of Our Lord.” [567]
---Continued in "Fatima: The Signs and Secrets" (available through Amazon in both paperback and Kindle).
No comments:
Post a Comment