DRAW DOWN PEACE UPON YOUR COUNTRY

… (The first apparition of the Angel, who appeared three times in 1916) We had enjoyed the game for a few moments only, when a strong wind began to shake the trees. We looked up, startled, to see what was happening, for the day was unusually calm. Then we saw coming towards us, above the olive trees, the figure I have already spoken about. Jacinta and Francisco had never seen it before, nor had I ever mentioned it to them. As it drew closer, we were able to distinguish its features. It was a young man, about fourteen or fifteen years old, whiter than snow, transparent as crystal when the sun shines through it, and of great beauty. On reaching us, he said:
«Do not be afraid! I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me. »
Kneeling on the ground, he bowed down until his forehead touched the ground, and made us repeat these words three times:
«My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You! I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You.»
Then, rising, he said: «Pray thus. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications.»
His words engraved themselves so deeply on our minds that we could never forget them. From then on, we used to spend long periods of time, prostrate like the Angel, repeating his words, until sometimes we fell, exhausted. I warned my companions, right away, that this must be kept secret and, thank God, they did what I wanted.
… (The second apparition of the same Angel) Some time passed, and summer came, when we had to go home for siesta. One day, we were playing on the stone slabs of the well down at the bottom of the garden belonging to my parents, which we called the Arneiro. (I have already mentioned this well to Your Excellency in my account of Jacinta). Suddenly, we saw beside us the same figure, or rather Angel, as it seemed to me.
«What are you doing? he asked. Pray, pray very much! The most holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy on you. Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High. »
«How are we to make sacrifices? » I asked.
«Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon your country. I am its Angel Guardian, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission, the suffering which the Lord will send you. »
A considerable time had elapsed, when one day we went to pasture our sheep on a property belonging to my parents, which lay on the slope of the hill I have mentioned, a little higher up than Valinhos. It is an olive grove called Pregueira. After our lunch, we decided to go and pray in the hollow among the rocks on the opposite side of the hill. To get there, we went around the slope, and had to climb over some rocks above the Pregueira. The sheep could only scramble over these rocks with great difficulty.
As soon as we arrived there, we knelt down, with our foreheads touching the ground, and began to repeat the prayer of the Angel: «My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You! I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You. » I don’t know how many times we had repeated this prayer, when an extraordinary light shone upon us.
(The third and last apparition of the same Angel)
We sprang up to see what was happening, and beheld the Angel. He was holding a chalice in his left hand, with the Host suspended above it, from which some drops of blood fell into the chalice. Leaving the chalice suspended in the air, the Angel knelt down beside us and made us repeat three times:
«Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference with which He Himself is offended. And, through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners.»
Then, rising, he took the chalice and the Host in his hands. He gave the Sacred Host to me, and shared the Blood from the chalice between Jacinta and Francisco, saying as he did so: «Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men! Make reparation for their crimes and console your God. »
Once again, he prostrated on the ground and repeated with us, three times more, the same prayer «Most Holy Trinity …» and then disappeared.
We remained a long time in this position, repeating the same words over and over again. When at last we stood up, we noticed that it was already dark, and therefore time to return home… [FATIMA IN LUCIA’S OWN WORDS SISTER LUCIA’S MEMOIRS (pages 63, 64 and 65)] Translated by Dominican Nuns of Perpetual Rosary.

Title: Elements of the historic of the Love Story between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and France. (3)

Messages of the Sky from the GOD of Love.
(Messages given by Jesus to her seer Marie-Bernard)


On July 11, 1972
Jesus to Marie-Bernard:
“And for July 14, put out the flag of France at the window, the one that you made me“ (with the Heart, the Cross and the Crown of thorns such as in the vision of April 30, 1972)

On July 14, 1972
Jesus to Marie-Bernard
“You see all these flags, if they had the Heart, the Cross and the Crown of thorns, they would be much more beautiful and I should protect France. But will they want it? Will they repel Satan? For this pray and make penitence! "

On July 30, 1972
Jesus to Marie-Bernard
" … Oh, Paris! … Turn round and wash yourself of your faults. I shall protect you. Otherwise I shall bring down on you a hail of fire to destroy you. Do not provoke Me! … "

On February 2, 1973 (The Big Promise)
Jesus to Marie-Bernard
“I promise to all that will put in the honour in their house the Flag of France with My Heart and My Cross surrounded with My Crown of thorns a quite special protection.
I ask that all wear it on them, whether in badge, armband or brooch.
If you wear respectfully this Flag, I shall bless you and shall protect you. Those that will not honour it or will soil it, I shall chastise them terribly. "

Extracts of the Messages of Jesus to Marie-Bernard (Messages of the Sky from the GOD of Love). Without delay, reproduce, photocopy, diffuse by any means (emails, internet also) and the most you can, these Messages without changing anything voluntarily, if you think, as us, that they reflect the truth.

Title: Elements of the historic of the Love Story between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and France. (3)

Messages of the Sky from the GOD of Love.
(Messages given by Jesus to her seer Marie-Bernard)

On May 3, 1972
Jesus to Marie-Bernard
“My people does not listen Me. Their sins will lead to the destruction … It was easier to the King to take out My banner that to the Republic to add on the Flag, the Cross, the Heart and the Crown …”

Title: Elements of the historic of the Love Story between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and France. (2)

Messages of the Sky from the GOD of Love.
(Messages given by Jesus to her seer Marie-Bernard)

On May 2, 1972
Jesus to Marie-Bernard:
“I do not want to destroy the Flag that you loved and that is the emblem of your Homeland. Many died by love for him. It is this love that I do not want to destroy. Love is constructive. But let they all place on the white My Cross and My Heart surrounded with My Crown of thorns. Let My Will be made for the glory of GOD."

Title: Elements of the historic of the Love Story between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and France. (1)

Messages of the Sky from the GOD of Love.
(Messages given by Jesus to her seer Marie-Bernard)

On April 30, 1972 (vision of the flag).
Jesus to Marie-Bernard:
“Time presses, quick...quick …
Let My Cross and My Heart with My Crown be placed on the National Colours. France runs a big danger. Offer sacrifices to My Painful Heart and pray, pray a lot for the Peace … Make known this Message first of all to General D, then to civil and religious authorities. "

If I forget you, Jerusalem … If I forget you, Paul VI, still living (112 years) …

1 On the edges of the rivers of Babylon, we sat all in tears in the memory of Zion.
2 We had suspended our harps to the willows of this country 3 because those that had deported us demanded us a canticle, and our oppressors required one hymn of joy:
“Sing us so one of the canticles of Zion!”

4 How could we sing a canticle of the Lord on a foreign country?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand be paralyzed!
6 Let my tongue remain fastened to my palate, if I do not keep your memory, if I do not put Jerusalem in the first rank of my joys.

7 Against the sons of Edom, remember, Lord, of the day when fell Jerusalem, when they exclaimed: "Destroy, destroy her until her foundations!”
"8 Girl of devastating Babylon, happy the one that will make you the evil that you made us!
9 Happy the one that will seize your little children to crush them against the rock!"(*1)

(*1) Words of a rare violence needing a commentary.

Feast Day of Our Lady of the Rosary

In 1571 Turkish Muslims amassed a huge naval fleet of galley ships in the Bay of Lepanto off the coast of Cyprus in an attempt to control the Mediterranean Sea, destroy the Christian fleet and invade the whole of Europe. Don Juan of Austria, the exiled illegitimate son of the king of Spain found himself selected as commander-in-chief of the outnumbered Christian fleet in what history would record as the bloodiest deck-to-deck sea battle in naval history.
Pope St. Pius V, a former Dominican monk, strove to unite the naval forces of Venice, Spain and the Holy See to meet the Muslim threat and entrusted the Christian fleet to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The pope sent his blessing to the fleet commander, Don John of Austria, recommending him to leave behind all soldiers of evil life, and promising him the victory if he did so. Realizing the importance of the impending battle, the pope ordered public prayers, and increased his own supplications to heaven and led the people of Rome in vigils and processions from dawn to dusk as they prayed the rosary to Our Lady of Victory. The rosary became the spiritual weapon of the Christians as thousands joined together in prayer on the day of the Battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571. That night while meeting with the cardinals, he suddenly stopped and opened the window and looking at the sky, he cried out, “A truce to business; our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which he has just given the Christian army”. He burst into tears over the victory which dealt the Muslim power a blow from which it never fully recovered. The decisive victory in the Bay of Lepanto destroyed all but a third of the enemy fleet and drove-off those that survived the conflict.
Pope Pius V established October 7 as a feast day of Our Lady of Victory in honor of the Blessed Virgin’s assistance in securing the victory, freeing some twelve thousand Christian galley slaves and securing the safety of Europe. In memory of this triumph he instituted the first Sunday of October the feast of the Rosary and added to the Litany of Loreto the supplication “Help of Christians”. He was hoping to put an end to the power of Islam by forming a general alliance between the Italian cities and those of Poland, France, and all of Christian Europe.

Two years later Pope Gregory XIII changed the name of the feast day to Our Lady of the Rosary because it was through the praying of the Rosary that the battle had been won. October became the month of the Most Holy Rosary in the Church’s calendar. Pope Leo XIII added the invocation “Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us” to the Litany of Loreto.





Below, from various historical sources is the account of the battle.

Don John of Austria met his fleet off Messina and saw that he had 300 ships, great and small, under his command. The Pope himself had outfitted twelve galleys and the depth of his war chest had paid for many more. Don John’s eye must have gazed with pride on the 80 galleys and 22 other ships that had been provided by his half-brother Philip II of Spain. Each of these Spanish galleys held a hundred soldiers on top of the rowers who propelled the ship through the water and no less than 30,000 men in the service of Spain would fight at Lepanto. The next largest contingent was that of Venice. No longer the dominating power of yesteryear, the Venetians could still assemble a fleet of more than a hundred vessels beneath the winged Lion of St. Mark standard. The Venetian ships were poorly manned and the necessity of stationing Spanish soldiers on Venetian ships led to friction and in some cases blows.
It was the Venetians, however, who provided the technological cutting edge that was to win the battle. In the Venetian fleet were six galleasses. Broader in the beam than regular galleys and with a deeper draught they were so difficult to maneuver that they had to be towed into battle by speedier vessels. Despite their lethargy of movement, they were the most powerful ships in the Mediterranean. Their broad beam and deeper draught gave them a stability as a gun platform hitherto unknown. On their prow was constructed a kind of walled platform mounted with swivel guns that presaged the armored turrets of later battleships by almost 300 years. The sides and the stern of the galleass were also heavily armed and a wooden deck protected the rowers. On its bow there was a long point that could effectively crush any smaller vessel that was unfortunate enough to be in the galleass’ way. A total of 80,000 men manned the ships of the Holy League. Of these 50,000 toiled at the oars and the remaining 30,000 were soldiers on the decks.
On September 17th 1571, Don John moved his fleet eastwards and at Corfu they heard that the Muslims had recently landed and terrorized the Christian population. They then moved on and as they lay anchored off the coast of Cephalonia, terrible news reached them. Famagusta, the last Christian stronghold on Cyprus had fallen to the Muslim invaders. All the defenders who had survived the assault were tortured and then executed. The news enraged the men of Don John’s fleet and stiffened the resolve of the commanders to engage the Moslems as quickly as possible. There was one other piece of disturbing news: the Moslem fleet under the command of Ali Pasha had been reinforced by a Calabrian fisherman turned Moslem and corsair. His name was Uluch Ali and he was now the Bey of Algiers, that notorious nest of the Moslem corsairs feared by all Christian ships plying their trade in the Mediterranean. Don John moved his force towards the anchorage of Lepanto where he knew the Turk mercenaries would be waiting and during the night of October 6th, with a favorable wind behind him, Ali Pasha moved his fleet westward toward the mouth of the Gulf of Patras and the approaching ships of the Holy League.
The action that was to follow was the biggest naval engagement anywhere on the globe since the Battle of Actium in 30 B.C. and the tactics had changed little since then. Both commanders hoped to rapidly come to grips with their enemy, board them and let the soldiers fight it out to the end. The only major difference was that in 1571 the ships carried guns and those on the galleasses in particular would have a crucial effect. When the Turkish fleet was sighted, Don John split his force into three sections. On the right of the Christian line he placed the Venetians under Barbarrigo, on the left Andrea Doria leading the Genoese and papal galleys. The centre he took for himself. In reserve was Santa Cruz with a force of 35 Spanish and Venetian ships. Before the action began Don John ordered his men not to fire until they were close enough to be splashed by Moslem blood. He also ordered the iron rams to be removed from his ships as he knew that gunfire and close quarter fighting would be of more use than attempts to ram. Two galleasses were towed into position in in front of each Christian division.
The Turks, initially arrayed in a giant crescent-shaped formation, quickly separated into three sections also. The center, under Ali Pasha, pushed forward and the action opened when the cannon of Don John’s two centre galleasses began to do great execution among Ali Pasha’s advancing ships. Seven or more Turkish galleys went down almost immediately. The Turks were not lacking in courage, however, and they pressed on in the face of intense fire from the galleasses, the galleys’ guns and arquebus and crossbowmen on the Christian decks. Ali Pasha tried to come alongside the Christian ships in the hope of boarding and here the legendary steadfastness under fire of the 16th and 17th century Spanish infantryman came to the fore and attack after attack was beaten off by killing shots from their arquebuses. Then Don John gave the order to board Ali Pasha’s flagship. In a wild melee of attack, retreat and counterattack played out on decks awash with the blood of the slain, the air rent by the screams of the wounded and dying. The Spaniards forced their way onto the Turkish galley three times. Twice they were beaten back but finally they stormed the Turkish poop and a wounded Ali Pasha was beheaded on the spot. His head was spitted on a pike and held aloft for all to see and the Ottoman battle flag, never before lost in battle, was pulled down from the mainmast. The Moslem center broke and retired as best it could, their courage forgotten by the elated Spaniards.
On the flanks things had not gone so well. Mohammed Sirocco, commanding the Turkish right, sailed in close to the rocks and shoals of the northern shore of the gulf to outflank Barbarrigo’s Venetian galleys. On the left of the Turkish line Ulach Ali did the same, swinging as close as he could to the southern shore in an attempt to surround Andrea Doria’s ships. Sirocco knew well the waters of the Gulf Of Patras and he succeeded in his maneuver. Barbarrigo was surrounded by eight enemy galleys and fell dead from a Turkish arrow. His flagship was taken and retaken twice and when aid finally came and Sirocco’s galley was sunk, the Turkish admiral was ignominiously pulled from the water and, like Ali Pasha, immediately beheaded. Mercy was a quality not much in vogue in the wars between the crescent and the cross. On the Christian right, Ulach Ali, perhaps lacking the knowledge of local waters that had given Sirocco his initial success, was unable to turn the Genoese flank. He did, however, spot a gap in the line and skillfully brought some of his galleys through and took part of Don John’s center in the rear. The Capitana flagship of the Knights of St. John, its commander skewered by five arrows, was boarded, seized and towed off as a prize of battle. In the Christian reserve, Santa Cruz saw this happening and made haste to recover the captured ship. Uluch Ali, realizing that discretion is often the better part of valor, pulled back leaving the Capitana in Christian hands. Doria’s division had been roughly handled by Uluch Ali’s remaining ships and it was only after Don John had secured the Christian center and came to Doria’s aid that the last of the Algerine ships were beaten back.
The engagement lasted for more than four hours and when the smoke finally cleared it became apparent that this was a major victory for the Holy League and a bitter defeat for the Turks. Almost 8,000 of the men who had sailed with Don John were dead and another 16,000 wounded. On the brighter side 12,000 Christian galley slaves had been released from their servitude to the Ottomans. The Turks and Uluch Ali’s Algerines had suffered much more grievously: at least 25,000 of them had been killed.
The day belongs to Don John, the Holy League and Christendom. When the news of the victory broke, church bells were rung all over in Europe in a spontaneous outburst of joy and thanksgiving.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria Has set his people free!
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labor under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade….
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
Gilbert K. Chesterton
uvcarmel.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/pope-paul VI.
uvcarmel.org/…/

SAINT JEROME. DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. (IVth CENTURY).

Jerome, son of Eusèbe, rich and Christian man, was born at Stridon, in Pannonie, at about the year 331. Early, he came to Rome where he studied under Donat and was baptized. With the aim of perfecting his instruction, he travelled in Gaul at first, where he frequented the scholars of time and copied several works by his own hand; then in Greece, where he studied philosophy, and from there, in all the cities of the East, where was some erudite theologian.
In Constantinople, he became attached to the person of Saint Gregory de Nazianze, and he admits himself that it is at his school that he learnt the sacred letters. Finally he went to visit the holy places and generally all Palestine, together with some Hebrew very well informed into the knowledge of the Writings and places where had happened the facts which they bring back.
After these peregrinations, he retired at about the year 374, in Chalcide's desert in Syria. It was a vast solitude, burned by the heats of the sun. Jerome lived there four years, sharing his time between the reading of the holy books and the exercises of the prayer and the penitence. It is there, that in the recollection of Rome and the faults of his life, he struck his breast with a stone, and that he punished the revolts of his flesh by rolling about on bushes of thorns, where from he got up stained with blood.
Ordered priest then by Saint Paulin, bishop of Antioch, he returned in Rome with this holy prelate and saint Épiphane. They came any three to subject to the decision of the holy pope Damase, very controversial questions in the Church of East. Saint Jerome did not delay being appreciated by the Sovereign - pontiff, who named him his secretary. All the correspondence of saint Damase with the various churches and on ecclesiastical subjects was so the work of our saint.
However the recollection of his dear solitude returned ceaselessly in his thought, and he left again Rome and the noise of the world, to withdraw in a convent of Bethlehem which saint Paula had made build.
There, in the silence of the retreat, he was engaged quite complete in the sacred science and in the meditation, in spite of infirmities and diseases which assailed him. The study of the holy books made with the prayer his only consolation. The reputation of science and virtue went growing everyday, and soon he became the oracle of the whole world. From all the points of the globe one consulted him on the most difficult questions. The pope Damase and saint Augustine often applied to him. His vast learning attracted him respect and universal admiration.
Nobody possessed better than him, not only the knowledge of the Greek and Latin letters, but that of languages Hebraic and Chaldean. In the testimony of Saint Augustine, there was almost no author whom he had read. He pursued error with the heat of the faith and avenged the catholic truth. He translated the Old Testament into Latin and the New in Greek, in the prayer of the pope Damase.
Besides several other translations and several comments, we owe him several productions of his personal genius. He had reached an extreme old age when he was attacked by a violent fever. His friends hurried to come to pay the last honours to him:

"Do you come, does he say to them with a serene face, do you come to warn me that it is necessary to leave? How pleasant to me is that news! Here is, indeed, the precious moment which is going to return me to my freedom for ever. O how people make a false idea of the death, when they paint it so hideous.
"Since Jesus Christ loved her, I love her all the more because she makes shine to my eyes the nearest hope of the happy eternity … Could you feel one day how sweet it is to die having lived well! " He says, and his soul escaped from his body worn out by the penitence as much as by the age, and went to receive the reward of his virtues. This precious death arrived the year 420 of Jesus Christ. The rests of saint Jerome were buried in Bethlehem; later they were transported in Rome and deposited in saint Mary’s Church ad Præsepe.


PRACTICES. - Saint Jerome had a vast and deep genius, a very wide science, a heart at the level of his spirit, and however he was engaged in the practices of the penitence which the society men consider as the sharing of weak spirits. He went away from the world and the pleasures which he offers to his amateurs, because he felt them dangerous. Let us learn, at his school, what we have to make to pay the penalties of our sins.

PRAYER. - Lord, penetrate my flesh and my soul by your fear and your love, so that walking on the tracks of the glorious saint Jerome, we get loose from creatures to live only for you.

Title: Nobody has ever seen God …

Nobody has ever seen God; a God, an only son, who is in the breast of the Father, it is he who made Him known. (St John I, 18. [Crampon 1960])