NEARLY all persons have a desire for happiness, for joy, and they express their desire in a thousand different ways. Whether they are seeking love, friendship, power or money, they are all seeking happiness, or what they think will make them happy. If people make so many mistakes (in the moral sphere) it is usually because they do not know where true happiness can be found.

To  fly  and  be  at  rest

This desire for happiness is expressed in popular songs, such as the one quoted above, and also in plays, movies, novels and fairy stories. The emerald city of the American fairy tale, a city in which one’s petitions are answered and one’s desires fulfilled, is the creation of an artist, it is only a fantasy. But it has its counterpart in a city that really exists: "And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God." (Apoc. 21, 2).

Seeking  the  Heavenly  City

"All these (the just of the Old Testament) died according to faith, not having received the promises, but beholding them afar off, and saluting them and confessing that they are pilgrims and strangers on the earth. For they that say these things do signify that they seek a country. But now they desire a better, that is to say, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. For he hath prepared for them a city." (Hebrews 11, 13-16)

From these verses it is clear that our life on earth is a pilgrimage, and that our real home is in heaven, the abode of the blessed souls of paradise, the elect, the saints. Only those who have been taught about the glory of paradise can attain any real happiness. Since now so many people are in darkness, the legion of victim souls is necessary. Words alone are not sufficient to teach people about Paradise. They need grace to understand about it, and they can only receive the grace, if someone offers himself or herself to obtain this grace for them. God is seeking generous souls who will offer themselves to obtain graces for others.

Value of exterior actions and of kissing the floor

Every day the Franciscan religious of a community in Latin America kiss the floor before their prayers and other community exercises. The purpose of this action is to ask the Virgin Mary to bless their actions. Another purpose is to offer God exterior reverence, worship, thanksgiving and adoration. Many things can be expressed by this exterior action of kissing the floor, such as obedience and subjection to God, honor, reverence, love, adoration, contrition, and so forth. These sentiments are interior and within the soul, but sometimes it helps to express them with exterior actions.

Kissing the floor is a small action, but it is very pleasing to God when done with a good intention. We ask our subscribers to do this action when you are able, and if you do it with a good and fervent intention, it will help to make up for so much sin. All sin is disobedience. It is a refusal to do what God wants us to do. So the action of kissing the floor helps to expiate all kinds of sins, because it is an exterior act of obedience. It is like saying: "We honor you and we want to subject ourselves to you, body and soul."

Final  Triumph – Little  Actions

At Fatima Mary told us that her Immaculate Heart would triumph in the end. Most of us cannot perform great actions, but God asks us only to perform small actions with great purity of intention. In that way even little things can help to make us holy and to make up for our own sins and for the sins of the whole world. Any soul of good will can cooperate in the legion of victim souls, and that is what makes life exciting in this period of history. To participate in a battle between good and evil is exciting, and the world is now engaged in such a battle. It seems as if evil is triumphing almost everywhere, but the time of evil is limited. The empire of this world will come to an end, God’s kingdom will last forever, and it begins here upon earth. So we ask all of you to please participate in this battle as much as possible, even if your participation consists in little actions performed in secret. God sees them, and every little action is like a preparation for the final triumph.

How happy they will be who are on the good side, and who will live to witness the triumph.

The just shall see, and shall rejoice: and all iniquity shall stop its mouth." --- (Psalm 106).

May  it  be  for  the  glory  of  God  

"All those who yield themselves to My way of the cross and suffering, will be blessed for all eternity."
Our Lord to the Portavoz, Maria Concepcion -- April 23, 1969
"For I have come to call sinners..." (Matt. 9, 13).

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GEMMA’S mother, Aurelia Landi Galgani, was a devout Catholic; her father, Enrico Galgani, an apothecary, was a member of the family of St. John Leonardi. Seven children joined the Galgani family of which Gemma and her brother Gino, who wanted to become a priest, were the most outstanding.

After her mother’s death at the age of 39, Gemma became the little mistress of the household, teaching her young siblings and performing the household chores. Her eldest brother, at the process of her beatification, declared that Gemma "was careful in household matters, being fond of needlework and genuinely womanlike in all her ways, except in one respect: her indifference to dress and all personal adornment, which had been great, but which during this period of her life turned into actual severity of rule, supernatural reason accounting for it."

In fact, for the greater part of her life Gemma wore a perfectly plain black dress, with no collar or lace of any kind, and a black cloak and a straw hat for going out. It is said that such severity of dress was the more striking in her, "because she had a beautiful face and a graceful figure."

As the result of extending too much credit, her father lost his business and died soon after in November of 1897. Gemma and her siblings were left destitute, but somehow managed to survive.

Soon after, Gemma was struck with a terrible illness that settled in her back. Some have said it was meningitis, others claim it was tuberculosis of the spine. After suffering a long time from the disease and many complications, and after enduring a number of operations without anesthetic, Gemma was miraculously cured, after making a novena to St. Gabriel Possenti and St. Margaret Mary.

Her first vision of Our Lord took place on Holy Thursday, 1899. Many such visitations followed, as did those of the Blessed Mother and Gemma’s guardian angel, who was her constant companion and comforter. She conversed with him in a low, sweet voice, and he revealed to her the deepest mysteries of the Faith. During that same year, on June 8, 1899, which was then the eve of the Sacred Heart feastday, she received the stigmata, the marks of Our Lord’s five wounds. From then on, she began to suffer and bleed from the wounds every week from Thursday night to Friday afternoon. At her confessor’s command she asked Our Lord to remove the visible marks of these wounds. He did so, but the sufferings remained. For a time she suffered the most furious assaults of the devil, because of prayers she recited for the salvation of hardened sinners.

During the month of September, 1900, Gemma began living with a devout family in Lucca named Giannini. Here she would often come in contact with the priests of the Passionist Order, since the Giannini household had rooms at their disposal. In this house she became a useful member of the family, an elder sister to the young children, and a good hand at household chores.

In the dining room of this house was a long table, simple furnishings, and on the wall a full-size crucifix that was highly venerated by the whole family. During the day Gemma would pause for a visit and sometimes, when Gemma was overwhelmed by a burning wish to kiss the wound on Christ’s side, she found herself miraculously raised from the floor. With her arms around the crucifix, she pressed her lips against the sacred wound of Our Lord’s side. During the month of September 1901, while preparing the table for a meal, she turned to contemplate the holy crucifix. Suddenly Gemma was raised up. As the figure of Jesus became animated, He detached His right arm from the cross and embraced her, and with a loving gaze he invited Gemma to embrace Him in turn. During the entire time of this loving communion, Gemma was elevated, without support, several feet above the floor.

Gemma lived in the Giannini home for almost four years. It seems unbelievable to read in an Italian biography of the saint that the wonderful gifts Gemma experienced were little known in the family, and that those who knew of them almost completely ignored them. Only one person seems to have taken an interest, her confidant, a woman of the household whom Gemma called Aunt Cecilia.

Gemma had always wanted to join a religious community, especially the Order of the Passionists. Unable for various reasons to become a member, she once said that since they would not have her in life, they would have her in death. The prophecy was realized. First buried in the public cemetery, her relics now rest in the chapel of the Passionist Sisters in Lucca. Her tomb bears the following inscription:

Gemma Galgani from Lucca, most pure virgin, being in her twenty-fifth year, died of consumption but was more consumed by the fire of divine love than by her wasting disease. On the eleventh of April, 1903, the vigil of Easter, her soul took its flight to the bosom of her celestial Spouse. Oh! Beautiful soul! In the company of the angels.

In time, the Giannini house was turned into a sanctuary. The miraculous crucifix still hangs in the dining room, where thousands of pilgrims bend the knee and meditate on the sufferings of the Divine Redeemer and on the sufferings endured by the little mystic. Gemma Galgani was canonized by Pope Pius XII in May, 1940.

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The Souls in Purgatory—the Angels

Taken from

The Life of the Anne Catharine Emmerich

By Very Reverend Carl E. Schmoger, C.Ss.R. ---

 

ONE day, after a conversation with her on the relations existing between the survivors and the deceased, the Pilgrim wrote down the following, which embodies the most salient points of their discourse: --"All that man thinks, says, or does, has in it a living principle for good or evil. He who sins should hasten to efface his faults by the Sacrament of Penance, otherwise he will not be able to prevent the full or partial consequence of his crime. I have often seen such consequences even in the physical sickness and sufferings of many individuals and in the curse attached to certain places. I am always told that a crime unpardoned, unexpiated, entails an infinity of evils. I have seen such chastisements extending to posterity as a natural and necessary consequence; for instance, the curse attached to ill-gotten goods, and I have felt involuntary horror in places where great crimes were once perpetrated. (To be continued)

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Revelations  of  Saint  Gertrude  (continued)

Chapter 2

How the grace of God illuminated her interiorly. 

Hail, Salvation and Light of my soul! May all that is in heaven, in earth, and in the abyss, return thanks to Thee for the extraordinary grace which has led my soul to know and consider what passes within my heart, of which I had no more care formerly than, if I may so speak, of what passes within my hands or feet. But after the infusion of Thy most sweet light, I saw many things in my heart which offended Thy purity. I even perceived that all within me was in such disorder and confusion that Thou couldst not abide therein.

Nevertheless, my most loving Jesus, neither all these defects, nor all my unworthiness, prevented Thee from honouring me with Thy visible presence nearly every day that I received the life-giving nourishment of Thy Body and Thy Blood, although I only beheld Thee indistinctly, as one who sees at dawn. Thou didst endeavor by this sweet compliance to attract my soul, so that it might be entirely united to Thee, and that I might know Thee better and enjoy thee more fully. As I disposed myself to labour for the obtaining of these favours on the Feast of the Annunciation of Thy Mother, when Thou didst ally Thyself with our nature in her virginal womb --Thou who saidest, "Here I am, before I called thee" --Thou didst anticipate this day by pouring forth on me, unworthy though I am, on the Vigil of the feast, the sweetness of Thy benediction, at Chapter, which was held after Matins, on account of the Sunday following.

Since it is not possible for me to describe in what manner thou didst visit me, O Orient from on high, in the bowels of Thy mercy and sweetness, permit me, O Giver of gifts, to immolate a sacrifice of Thanksgiving to Thee on the altar of my heart, in order to obtain for myself and for all Thine elect the blessedness of experiencing frequently this union of sweetness and this sweetness of union, which before this time was utterly unknown to me. When I reflect on the kind of life which I led formerly, and which I have led since, I protest in truth that it is a pure effect of Thy grace, which Thou hast given me without any merit of mine.

Thou didst give me from henceforward a more clear knowledge of Thyself, which was such that the sweetness of Thy love led me to correct my faults far more, than the fear of the punishments with which Thy just anger threatened me. I do not remember ever to have enjoyed so great happiness at any other time, as during these days of which I speak, in which Thou didst invite me to the delights of Thy royal table. I know not for certain whether it is Thy wise Providence which has deprived me of them, or whether it is my negligence which has drawn on me this chastisement.

Chapter 3 (To be continued) --- Revelations of Saint Gertrude -- on line

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A Treasury of Atonement (continued from previous issue)

9.  Sister  Maria  Concepcion  Zuniga . . . . . . . . . . . . 

IT IS necessary  to  suffer  the  punishment  that  sin deserves;  only thus  is Justice repaid, and only thus is the mediation of graces free to help me save souls, especially in these days of decisive combat. Note well that, what is paid corresponds to the sin, and thus will be the atonement that must be paid by the victim! Make this clear to those souls who, feeling the impulse of my grace, wish to  offer  themselves as victims.  The  redemption  of  souls  will  not  be realized without affliction! But this affliction will be mitigated, because I am the consolation of victim souls; for I apply my merits to them." (Our Lord to Madre Concepcion, July 27, 1973)

"My  love  for   justice  is  what   justifies  the  miserable  ones  like  you   in  an excess of mercy. It is that which lifts you from nothingness to poverty, then enriches you with all its gifts." Then He said: "For... I love you so much, what do you   think you will receive in this life, according to your senses? Crosses!   My   beloved,   crosses   and   more   crosses:   illness,   abandonment, calumny, mockery, persecution, difficulties, sorrow in all its manifestations. That is your lot. That My love lavishes on souls. Then comes glory, triumph, vindication, exaltation and everything an eternal apotheosis. But I do not give this until you have reached the limits of danger, when you have reached the shores of security. Trust, My little victim, all the force of my will is with you." (Our Lord to Madre Concepcion Zuniga, May 25, 1933) But the most fruitful part is the last, that is the destruction, as when the Host is going to be consumed and must be destroyed. It is similar to when Christ the divine Victim, was elevated on high on Mount Calvary,  crucified and made the contempt and mockery of those very ones for whom He was dying, and being accepted by the divine Justice of his heavenly Father. And I can now assure you that this is realized perfectly and with all clarity, if we let God do with us as He wills, because he who offers himself well is not a victim, but rather he who proves himself in the moment of trial, of martyrdom, of sacrifice, of the consummation of the full holocaust. That is why, at present, it is urgent that there be a legion of victim souls offered to divine Justice, in ransom for the whole world, because now, nothing will save humanity, except this.   Legion of Victim Souls, p. 33

10.  Archbishop  Fulton  J.  Sheen -- to be continued

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