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Will 2004 see the era of peace promised by Our Lady? Father
Robert Altier is a Roman Catholic priest in the archdiocese of Saint
Paul-Minneapolis, MN, USA. Ordained in 1989, he currently serves as
assistant pastor at the Church of Saint Agnes in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
A member of the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, Fr. Altier has a
great devotion to the Holy Eucharist and Our Blessed Mother Mary, and is
loyal to Pope John Paul II. His parishioners found his homilies so
interesting that they decided to publish them on a website, www.desertvoice.org,
from which the following homily is taken (this text was transcribed from
the audio recording with minimal editing): by
Father Robert Altier
Thursday
January 1, 2004 As we embark once again on a new year, the Church begins on this octave
day of Christmas by celebrating the feast of Our Lady's divine
maternity: Mary, the Mother of God. This feast is exceedingly important
when we understand the context in which all of these things came to be.
Christmas, for instance, was not celebrated in the Church until around
the year 300. The reason it began to be celebrated was because there was
a priest by the name of Arius who was teaching that Jesus Christ was not
God, that He was a human person just like each and every one of us. And
so in order to counter that heretical belief, the Church began
instituting certain feasts to be able to highlight the reality of the
Person of Jesus Christ being both God and man. Finally, in the year 431, as the fathers of the Council of Ephesus had
gathered in the very city where Our Lady had lived under the protection
of Saint John, the beloved disciple, in order to declare clearly the
reality of the divinity of Jesus Christ from all eternity and that the
Person in the womb of Our Blessed Lady was indeed the Second Person of
the Holy Trinity, Who had taken a human nature to Himself, they declared
infallibly that Our Lady is the Theotokos, a Greek word that means
“the God-bearer” or “the Mother of God”. And so on the eighth
day, which is the day on which the Child would be circumcised, the day
that the Child would receive His name, the day that we would recognize
also as the octave day, the day of the new creation, the beginning of
the new way that God has chosen, it is most fitting then that we
celebrate and remember that Mary is indeed the Mother of God, that Jesus
Christ is God from all eternity and He became man in the womb of the
Virgin Mary. Now
as we celebrate this day of the octave, the octave being the eight days,
reminding us again of God's seven days of creation, and then the eighth
day being the first day after creation, so now we look forward to
something new. For many years we have been awaiting this day. For a long
time, I have been preaching to you in various homilies about things that
are to come, and if those who are purported in our world to be mystics
are to be believed, this year – finally! – is the year we have been
waiting for. Let me explain to you why I believe what I have been
telling you. Because there is absolutely no reason in the world for you
to take my word for it, I will explain to you why I have been preaching
the way that I have, what is behind it, and what may be coming. First of
all, before I say anything else, let me just simply remind you that when
it comes to dates and times, no one knows. These things can be
mitigated, and so it could be that the timing is off; we just simply do
not know. I am hoping and praying, quite honestly, that these people are
correct, because as I tell my friends, I have had about enough. I have
seen the evil, and it is time for God to intervene. And as we begin our
new year, offering everything to Our Blessed Lady and beginning the year
by dedicating everything to Her, it is certainly most fitting that God
has turned everything over to Her. There are many people among the Protestants looking at the signs of the
times who believe that the Second Coming is about to happen. These
unfortunate souls also think they are going to get “raptured” out,
which is completely anti-Scriptural, anti-doctrinal, and anti-Christian,
for all that matters. To think that Jesus Christ would die on the Cross
for us but He would let us out without having to take up the Cross does
not make sense. It is completely fallacious, and no one heard about it
until 200 years ago when a woman supposedly had an apparition from Jesus
telling her that was what was going to happen. So the Bible Christians,
as they call themselves, suddenly believed in something that was not in
the Bible; and now they all think they are going to get out, even though
Jesus says, “Those who hold out to the end will be saved,” not
“Those who get out before it comes will be saved.”
They are going to be sorely disappointed on two counts: first of
all, that they did not get raptured out; secondly, that it is not the
Second Coming and, perhaps most importantly, the woman whom they have
chosen to hate is the one whom God is sending to be able to prepare the
world for what is to come. The
Immaculate Heart of Mary This
is the time given to Our Blessed Lady. Saint Louis de Montfort says that
the kingdom of Mary must be established firmly on earth before the
kingdom of Christ will come, and that as Our Lady came before Jesus two
thousand years ago, so it will happen again. The first time, for both
Our Lady and Our Lord, it was very much hidden; this time, for neither
will it be hidden. Our Lady is going to come to establish justice on the
earth, and that is going to be followed by a lengthy period of peace.
Then will come the Second Coming when Our Lord will be seen in all of
His glory escorted by the angels. That will not happen in our lifetime,
but this other one I hope and pray will come very soon. Having said all that again, let me explain why. First of all, in Fatima
in 1917, Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children and gave them
a series of promises. There is only one promise at Fatima that has not
yet been fulfilled, that is, in the end Our Lady's Immaculate Heart will
triumph, and that will be followed by a long period of peace and
unprecedented growth for the Church. We have not yet seen that. Along
with that, Our Lady (not in 1917, but much later) appeared to Sister
Lucia, the only seer from Fatima who is still alive, and promised her
that she would be alive to see the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
Sister Lucia is now 95 years old, and so the timing on that tells us
that something has to happen fairly soon. Beyond that, back a few years ago, the day after the tragic incidents
that took place out in New York City with the terrorist attacks on the
Twin Towers, the very next day Mother Angelica went on national
television and announced that in the year 2004 we will be in the era of
peace. She said, “Do not ask me how I know that because I will not
tell you. All I can tell you is that in 2004 you will see the era of
peace.” There is a woman by the name of Christina Gallagher, whom many people
purport to be a true mystic from Ireland, and she is saying the same
thing. There is a woman from Venezuela by the name of Maria Esperanza
who has the approval of her Bishops and has made a variety of
predictions with extraordinary accuracy over the years, and for quite a
few years now, certainly more than ten, she has been telling the world
that in 2004 everyone on the face of the earth will know that God
exists. More recently, she has said, “In mid-2004, you will begin to
see the light,” and that the turn-around is going to be taking place
around halfway through the year. Again, all of these people could be
entirely wrong. The date can be pushed back; things could be mitigated.
We do not know. There is a Vietnamese priest who was captured by the Communists some 21
or so years ago now. He was put into a concentration camp where for 13
years he had to break rocks every day. At the end of the day, they would
give him a cup of rice, and send him back out the next day to break
rocks. He did that every day for 13 years. He is now free, and a couple
of years ago this man was traveling to France for some surgery (you can
imagine the condition his body is in after all of that), and he heard
about a hermit priest in Belgium. He wanted to stop and speak with that
priest about something extraordinary that had happened to him, and he
told the hermit priest this story. He said, “I had a friend, another
priest in Vietnam, who was also captured by the Communists. This
particular priest was beaten to a bloody pulp by the Communists, dragged
into the sanctuary of this parish church, dumped on the sanctuary floor,
and there he died in front of the Blessed Sacrament.” Not a bad way to
go. About two years or so ago, he said, “My friend has recently
appeared to me, and he told me this: that in the year 2000 the Triumph
of the Immaculate Heart began, but it will begin with the Triumph of the
Cross.” (Which I interpret to mean that the Church is going to be
crucified, which the Fathers of the Church told us many times is going
to happen.) He then went on to tell his friend that Satan had been given 100 years to
destroy the Church. (That is according to the vision of Pope Leo XIII
from 1884.) In that 100 years, Satan overstepped his boundaries, and in
punishment for overstepping his boundaries, God has meted out two points
of punishment: number one, He took some of Satan's power away from him
and has given it to Our Lady; number two, the reign of the Antichrist
will be severely limited – perhaps to even as little as six weeks.
Thanks be to God! Three-and-a-half years is what Scripture told us it
would be, which none of us would be able to survive. Our Lord knew that,
and He Himself told us, “If the time were not shortened, even the
elect would fall astray.” So we knew the time would be shortened; the
question was how much. This man is saying “perhaps even as little as
six weeks”. Then he went on to say, “In the year 2004, you will see
the era of peace.” The warning Now that coupled with what happened back in 1961 in a little village
called Garabandal in Spain, with some Apparitions that have only just
recently received local approval by the Bishop, so now we can actually
talk about them, and in those Apparitions, Our Lady said a few things
that are of import for us. Number one, She said that there will only be
three more popes until the end of the present age. How one interprets
that is entirely up to you because She did not explain it. Our present
Holy Father is the third, the three being Paul VI, John Paul I, and John
Paul II. Now this becomes also very important timing-wise because Our
Lady told us at Garabandal that there will be a warning, and the warning
will be what is variously called “an illumination of conscience”, or
simply put, every person will get to see their soul as God sees it. For some, this will be a great blessing. After all, if you just think
about it, if you had been shown by God everything that is on your soul
so that you have the opportunity to go to confession and rid yourself of
absolutely everything that is there, this is cause for great rejoicing.
For some, however, She said it will be so horrifying that they will die.
So it will not be a pleasant thing for most people to see, but for
anyone who is trying to live a good life, it will be a great blessing.
That is really something to look forward to, although it is going to
require a great grace because She said, “The priests will be in the
confessional around the clock hearing confessions, one after the other,
24 hours a day.” Not humanly possible, but with God all things are
possible. And then She said, “Within a year, that will be followed by
a great miracle which will be a Eucharistic miracle.” The children
thought it seemed that it would be much, much shorter than a year, but
what Our Lady said was that within a year this miracle would happen. It
would be able to be seen by television cameras, and it will be
demonstrated throughout the world. But what is important for us is that
She said, “The Pope will see the miracle from wherever he happens to
be in the world when it happens,” which means that our Holy Father has
to be alive when it happens. If people do not change their ways... So you have the two persons who have been named: Sister Lucia being 95
years old, and our Holy Father being 83 years old and not in very good
health. Whether it happens in 2004 or sometime thereafter, one can
surmise that it cannot take too much longer before something is going to
occur. Now at Garabandal, Our Lady said, “If people do not change
their ways, that will be followed by a great chastisement.” The chastisement was foretold at the last fully approved Apparition
(“fully approved” meaning not only locally and provincially, but
even by the Vatican), and that was at Akita in Japan in 1974 when Our
Lady appeared to a nun and told her that fire will fall from the sky
killing the greater part of humanity, and the living will envy the dead
thinking that they had the better part. Everyone in the state of mortal
sin will die, and some who are in the state of grace will die so that no
one will be able to make judgments about the people who have died. It
will not be a pleasant time for anyone on the face of the earth. How
exactly that is going to be, we do not know. The fact that Our Lady appeared in Japan to tell us that I think is
important. Many saints from back in the fourth, fifth, and sixth
centuries had visions, and prophesied about the fact that a comet is
going to crash into the earth. Now this is my pure conjecture, but back
in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries they did not have
intercontinental ballistic missiles; if you were a sixth century mystic
and saw a fireball coming from the sky with a tail on it and a huge
explosion following from it, what would you think it was? It looks like
a comet, so it must be a comet. We know better. If you read the Book of the Prophet Zechariah, you will find two things
there that are rather terrifying. One, the prophet says, “One-third of
the people will be saved through the fire.” Our Lady said, “The
greater part of humanity will die.” So one-third will be saved through
the fire according to Scripture. And then the prophet Zechariah gives a
particularly terrifying presentation of what is going to happen to
people: their flesh will rot, their eyes will be pulled into their
sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths as they stand there.
That is exactly what happens when a nuclear device is exploded. The
Church will be crucified And
so it is these sorts of things and quite a few more that I consider as I
look at all of this. Nothing more need be said, it just adds more detail
and so on, but it makes the point clearly enough that we are in for some
horrible times. The Church is going to be crucified, and you have the
greatest blessing that has ever been bestowed upon humanity, that is, to
be a member of the Church when she is crucified. Nothing greater has
ever been offered to a Christian person than to be alive when the
Mystical Body of Christ goes to the Cross. I believe that you have that
opportunity. I believe that each one of us will also have the opportunity to be able
to see Our Lady at work. Prophesied in Genesis 3:15, She is going to
crush the head of the serpent, and the way that She is going to do that
is through the little people that She has chosen, the humble ones, the
rejected ones, the ones who do not fit in – that's us. We are the
means by which Satan is going to be crushed because we are the heel of
Our Lady. Once again, a great blessing; not exactly fun, but there will
be cause for great rejoicing. So
as we look forward to the events – whether they will indeed happen in
this year or whether they will be coming soon, it does not matter – we
need to make sure that we are ready. We need to understand that what we
have seen is nothing. As evil as things are out there, it has only just
begun. Things are going to get much worse very quickly. There will be
immense suffering for anyone who calls himself or herself a Catholic. My
suspicion is that it will be illegal to be a Catholic, and we are all
going to have to make a decision of whether we will remain faithful or
not. As things progress, it will appear to be hopeless. Everything will
appear to be lost. The Church will appear to have been destroyed; evil
will appear to have won, just as it was 2,000 years ago on Calvary. And
it is only at the point where it has achieved its worst — at the
darkest moment is when Our Lady is going to intervene. She is going to
allow us all to see just how evil humanity can be. When left to itself,
when grace is withheld, when cooperating with Satan, we are all going to
see with our own eyes just what humanity is capable of in the most
negative form. We are also, at the same time, going to see – by God's grace –
exactly what humanity is capable of in the best form because remember
Saint Paul's words: “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.”
Therefore, we will see in our own day with our own eyes the greatest
saints that God has ever raised up in the history of the Church, with
the exception of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and Saint John the Baptist. The
grace is going to be present for those who choose to cooperate with God,
and we will see extraordinary things. But we have to make the choice of what we are going to do, to choose
Jesus Christ and to choose to go to Calvary with Him to be crucified
with Him, or to run away, to apostasize. That is the choice that is
before us. And so as we begin this new year, as we consider the humanity
and the divinity of Christ, the divine maternity of Our Blessed Lady, we
look at what God has done. What seems to be impossible, God has already
worked in humanity; and what seems impossible, He is going to work once
again. However, it will require great faith. Our Lady had to believe
that what seemed impossible was going to work. Saint Joseph had to
believe that what sounded preposterous was indeed true. And each one of
us is going to have to believe as well if we are going to remain
faithful to Jesus Christ, to believe when it appears that all hope is
lost, to remain faithful when it appears the most foolish thing in the
world to do. But the reward for fidelity will be great, and that is a
guarantee from Our Blessed Lady. Consecratation to Jesus through Mary So
my recommendation, as we begin this new year, is to either renew or
make, if you have not done so, the consecration of your entire being and
your entire life to Jesus Christ through the Blessed Virgin Mary as
given to us by Saint Louis de Montfort, to take up the prayer life and
to live it fervently so that you will be accustomed to hearing the voice
of Christ and being obedient to whatever He asks you to do. That is what
Our Lady has modeled for us already, and if we are going to be Her true
children, we need to be just like Her. We need to be virtuous, we need
to be holy, we need to be obedient. That is what God is asking of His
faithful people. Now the question for us is if we are willing to do it.
Only you can make that answer. The choice is entirely yours. You are
being invited by Our Lord and by Our Lady into what I believe will be
the greatest events of human history, and you have to choose whether to
accept or to reject their invitation. Addendum I might make just a couple of quick follow-up comments to what I said in
the homily in case I instilled fear into the heart of anyone. First of
all, just keep in mind that God has turned this over to His mother,
which means She is going to do this as a woman does it. She is a mom.
She is not going to do it like a guy does it, so you do not really need
to be afraid – unless you are on the other side of a mother – it is
not a good place to be. But the safest place in the world to be is right
there next to your mom. So just stay with Our Lady, bring your kids with
you, and you have nothing at all to fear. This is not a time to run out
and get six months' worth of food, stock up your basement, and fill
everything up. This is the time to pray. It is the time to prepare
spiritually. None of that [material preparation] needs to be done. She
is a mom. She will make sure that you are clothed and that you are fed;
She will take care of everything. All that we need to do is to trust, to
pray, and to be at peace. Fr. Robert Altier This article was published in the March-April, 2004 issue of “Michael”. |
