These Last Days News - May 26, 2020
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A Great Catholic Novel that Will Inspire Us to Heroic Fidelity During this Corona Crisis...

DOORS WILL CLOSE
"My children, My heart bleeds; I cry bitter tears to see the manner in which mankind has reduced My Son's House of worship and adoration to a meeting place of all manner of demons and abominations, defilement of My Son's eternal Body and Blood.
    "My children, unless you restore My Son's House to its former glory, with holiness and piety, discipline and dedication, the doors will close, for a House in darkness wears a band of death about it.
    "My children, the gates of hell shall not prevail against My Son's House. My Son is always with you. If you are seeking Him, He shall not abandon you, My little children. Ask and you will be given the way: believe and you will find the light." - Our Lady, July 25, 1977

DESTRUCTION OF SOULS AND THE CHURCH
"Do not leave holy Church. Do not fall away from the Church for the sins of man. Only My Rosary holds back the darkness.
    "Your way of life in your country has been planned by satan for the destruction of all souls, with the destruction of the holy Church of My Son and the divinity of My Son. The gates of hell will not prevail against My Son's Church!" - Our Lady, September 14, 1970

The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York. Read more

LifeSiteNews.com reported on May 25, 2020:

by Dr. Maike Hickson

The recent May 7 Appeal written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò and signed, among others, by Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Cardinal Joseph Zen, and Bishop Athanasius Schneider, insisted upon the rights of the Church and that the state has no right to intrude into her decisions concerning her public worship and the Sacraments. 

Just recently, and in a similar vein, Catholic commentator and book author Phil Lawler wrote an article arguing that there comes a point where a bishop needs to insist upon the rights of the Church and the importance of her spiritual work, against the state regulations with regard to health matters. He stated: 

When civil officials issue orders about what is good for public health, Catholic bishops should listen, because civil officials have the proper authority to enforce public-health rules. Indeed a prudent bishop would ordinarily heed those rules even if he personally believes they are misguided, because the bishop is not an expert in the field of public health. But if and when the rules infringe on the prerogatives of the Church — if they compromise the evangelical mission — then the bishop must demur, and protest, and if necessary defy the civil authority. And so must we.

At some point, these words imply, we might all be faced with the decision to defy civil authorities in order to defend the Catholic Faith and its practice.

In light of these debates about the closing of churches and the suppression of the Sacraments due to the corona crisis – and statements such as this one by Phil Lawler –  I have been lately thinking about an Austrian novel that was written at the beginning of the 20th century by Enrica von Handel-Manzetti. Handel-Mazzetti was a famous Austrian writer in the first half of the 20th century, having written several very powerful and impressive historical novels. She always was especially attentive to the religious struggles between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th century.

Stephana Schwertner is the title of an as-yet-untranslated historical trilogy which is so fitting for our time. It was written under the influence of the anti-Modernist work of Pope Pius X, in 1912/1913.

The novel is a most Catholic depiction of a town in Austria under the siege of a new Protestant mayor who uses the plague as a pretext in order to close churches and suppress the public activities of the Catholic Church.

This Austrian town is Steyr to the northeast of Salzburg in Upper Austria on the Enns River not far from the Danube River at Linz; and the action takes place in the beginning part of the 17th century, the time of the Counter-Reformation after the Protestant Reformation and just before the outbreak of the gravely destructive Thirty-Years' War (1618-1648). This historical novel was published within a similar historical context, that is, just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

The novelist sets the scene of the story in such a way that the Catholics of the time are generally shown to be a weak and spiritually listless and also a materially impoverished group of people who are losing ground, strength, and influence day by day. They have little resistance against the machinations of the Protestant mayor, Joachim Händel. 

In the year 1613, most of the local clerics, and also the nearby monastery, sought a faint-hearted accommodation with the growing Protestant power in the town. They send a sign of peace to the newly elected Mayor Händel, who draws his own wealth from his prosperous steel-and- armaments industry and whose hatred of the Catholic Church is only further fueled and fostered by her provocative weakness and her softness and decadence. The mayor is set to reduce the number of Catholics in the town since he received – after generous donations of armaments – from the Austrian Emperor Matthias the promise that the Protestants may receive more privileges should they come to be in the majority within the next three years. 

The sudden appearance of the pestilence in a nearby region gives Händel a good pretext to start repressing the Catholics. For supposed health reasons, he unjustly closes the Catholic churches and forbids any kind of public religious devotion such as processions. The Catholics of Steyr are being overwhelmed.

A young woman, Stephana Schwertner, along with the help of Father Albert Grünwald, her monastic confessor, both of whom are saintly and inspiring, will play the role of the Catholic leaders of a sustained resistance. Both can also be of great help to the increase of our own fitting responses and Catholic Faith.

Stephana, when we first meet her in this three-volume and more than 1,500-page-long novel, is an 18-year-old girl who has just moved to Steyr with her widowed mother and her three younger brothers and sisters, in order to open a restaurant at the outskirts of the town.

We are told that, at the age of thirteen, on the very day of her First Holy Communion, Stephana – whose name is a female variant of the name of the first martyr, Saint Stephen – had vowed to give herself completely to Our Lord; and thus she is already generously filled with a deep love for Our Savior. It becomes clear that this love of Our Lord is at the root of her moral and spiritual resistance against the conduct of the unjust mayor. In Stephana's case, her Faith helps her to have no debilitating nor compromising inclination to mere human respect. She would rather defend God and His Church, even if she thereby loses the respect and the praise of others, or even if her witness damages the commercial business of the family restaurant – and, as we shall see, even if it puts her own life at risk.

Her strong faith makes her promptly do the right thing at the right moment – and for the right reasons. 

Father Albert himself – a missionary priest who was specifically called to Steyr by the dying Abbot Wilhelm Heller of the Benedictine Monastery of Garsten to help him fight against the growing power of the Protestants, to preach against Mayor Händel, and thereby to reawaken the slothful and intimidated Catholics – soon tests the sincerity and character of Stephana when she comes to his Confessional for the first time.

Father Albert, a 30-year-old, stern and energetic man, asks Stephana, after her sacramental confession and absolution, whether her family still has holy images displayed in their family restaurant, in spite of the order of the unjust mayor to remove all holy images from public houses and places. When Stephana responds with a “Yes,” Father Albert urges her to remove them all, so as not to get into trouble with the civil authorities of the town. She first answers him with astonishment – for she had heard Father Albert's strong homilies and had therefore felt drawn to have him as her priestly confessor – and she thus promptly says that she has to obey God more than man and that the holy pictures will stay where they are. Although Father Albert threatens her then and says that she should henceforth not come to him to confession, Stephana stays strong and is even about to leave the confessional when the priest joyfully calls her back and reveals to her that he had only wanted to test her faith. His heart is leaping, because in her he finds the first Catholic in town with still such a pure heart and a strong faith!

At the end of this first confession – which took place significantly on the Feast of the Protomartyr St. Stephen, on 26 December – Father Albert leaves Stephana with the clear instruction to keep the holy images where they are and, additionally, to light a candle in the restaurant window in front of the image of the Blessed Mother on Saturdays, so that even passengers could see it from the outside!

In Father Albert, Stephana finds her guide whom she needed. He himself is ascetical, strict and filled with Holy Love and well-disciplined Holy Anger. He himself will thus soon also come to the test when his own very lax Prior Karl gives him instructions to stop preaching so strongly against Mayor Händel. Father Albert reflects upon this order in his little cell. Just when he himself has a moment of weakness, the local chronicler, a layman, comes into the room to tell him about the wondrous work of Stephana in her village and how people, through her example of purity and firmness, turn back to the Faith. Encouraged himself by her witness, Father Albert recovers his deeper fidelity and concludes: “I would rather be disobedient than a Judas!” With this renewed grace-filled fire in his heart, he preaches on the following Sunday an even stronger and holier sermon than he had before (while tactically leaving out the personal name of Händel), with the result that the faithful are moved to tears.

Father Albert and Stephana are two Catholic witnesses who will come to save Steyr from heresy and apostasy. They will now form the larger resistance against Händel and his evil pretenses to suffocate every single practice and devotion of the Catholic Faith in Steyr.

The Catholic churches are about to be closed upon order by the mayor, due to the threat of the spreading plague (but which had not yet reached Steyr). Shortly before the last Mass is offered prior to the closing of the churches for an uncertain period of time – in obedience to Händel's pestilence laws for the protection of public health – Stephana approaches Father Albert and proposes to organize a sacrificial pilgrimage to a famous pestilence-chapel (Pestkapelle) in Weng 75 miles away from Steyr which was known to be the place of prayers in times of the plague. Father Albert responds with all his might and calls everybody to join that pilgrimage. The faint-hearted Catholics receive encouragement by the calm witness of Stephana, who is the first to step up and to proclaim that she will go. Many women and men follow her example, and finally more than one hundred of the faithful promise to participate in the pilgrimage on the very next day, knowing well that this act of defiance might call down upon them the wrath and punishment of Händel. And indeed, Mayor Händel hears of the plan right away.

In order to forestall this pilgrimage, the mayor sends to the meeting place his own young son, Heinrich Händel, a very handsome, fiery, and dedicated 21-year-old man, but filled with an uninformed disgust for the Catholic Church and Her devotions and practices. 

The next day, surprised by the young Händel and his men – for, he is the valorous commander of the local militia – Father Albert and Stephana (who are at the head of the procession) refuse to give up their pilgrimage. Stephana, who holds one of the banners of the procession, is even able to swing it against the sword which the angry and prideful young Händel was trying to use so as to hit Father Albert on the head. Heinrich’s sword thus splits in two – indeed an embarrassing moment for a soldier to have been disarmed by a woman – and the life of the priest is thereby saved. A valorous woman, indeed, this Stephana Schwertner! (Schwertner in German contains the word “sword,” “Schwert.”)

Stephana and Father Albert are then arrested, and, while Father Albert as a priest is soon released and handed over to Catholic ecclesiastical authorities for his trial, in accord with the laws of the time, Stephana herself (as a laywoman) also has to pay the price for her disobedience against the pestilence and safety regulations of the town. Her attempt to solve the problem of the plague with supernatural means is now being thwarted by the laws of a man who would (and does) rather trust in his own temporal power and in the merely natural means of illness-prevention. 

The mayor, Joachim Händel, thus sentences Stephana to two hours of punitive exposure, while being chained in iron chains and standing at a pillar in a public place of penance. Masses of people crowd about her in her hour of suffering, and they insult her and demean her in the most unspeakable ways, just as the crowds of Jerusalem did with Our Lord. The iron of the chains cuts into Stephana's flesh, and she soon nearly faints and, rather, hangs at the pillar, instead of standing up erectly. The young Heinrich Händel, whose duty it is to execute his father's sentence, grows in pity for this beautiful young and innocent girl with golden hair whose only fault it was to turn to God for help. (While standing at the pillar, she prays the Rosary out loud, until someone rips it out of her hands.)

When, on top of it all, the crowds start accusing Stephana of having had a child out of wedlock – they claim that her youngest brother is really her own son – the young Händel goes into action and frees Stephana from her humiliating and disgraceful penance, in spite of the fact that he will now have to give an account and suffer grave punishment from his father for his disobedience toward his ruling by shortening Stephana's humiliating public penance.

 Later, Stephana is to confess to Father Albert that at the pillar she heard things that she had never heard before in her life and that she felt her soul was soiled thereby. That shows how deep her own purity was. Yet, “In the fire of suffering, her heroism matured,” as Handel-Mazzetti puts it beautifully.

In the wake of this incident, Stephana and her family have much to suffer. Their restaurant is less frequented, and they fall into poverty. While Stephana has to carry the burden of having caused this fate for her family, she does not shift or waver one inch concerning what she had done. She has no regrets, even though her mother, who is often too concerned with earthly matters, reminds her daily of how she had brought so much suffering into their family. Stephana does not regret her acts because she knows that they were acts of love for her One True Spouse to Whom she had given herself so completely at her First Holy Communion five years earlier. And her acts were also acts of love for the town of Steyr and its people, trying to prevent the pestilence from entering the city. She believed that only by turning to God in a penitential and reparatory pilgrimage could the pestilence be halted.

Soon, Stephana will turn this same ardent love into action again.

When four Catholic men of Steyr are condemned to death at the gibbet because they dared to oppose the mayor and his injustices, also toward Stephana, it is she who from within the crowd starts saying aloud prayers of repentance and of mercy, so that the condemned men standing on the public place of execution, and soon to be hanged, might still turn their own hearts to God and away from any vengeful hard anger and hatred of their Protestant enemy. At the moment when one of the men wants to cry out loud a curse against Händel, Stephana's beautiful angelic voice is heard, calling upon the name of Jesus.

The four convicted men, stirred by her prayers, fall on their knees and prepare their hearts for their moment of death. This is one of the most beautiful scenes of the novel. (We will notice that there was no priest then present – for fear of the mayor, who explicitly denied the visit of a priest.) As soon as the four men are hanged, and Stephana sees that she can do no more, she quietly slips out into a dark street and goes home. 

What is so striking in Stephana is that she is so steadfast and so little affected by human respect. Satan seems to have no access to the interior of her pure soul, though deviously perhaps is trying to grip it and torture it with remorse and self-doubts as to whether she should not have done what she did. She did not foresee nor wish the death of the four men, but indirectly she might have caused it. After all, these men had tried to defend her innocence. Yet, she walks the way God draws for her, not looking right or left. When any bad thought comes into her heart, she picks up a piece of unfinished work and goes about her dutiful chores. There is no time to squander. Stephana prays all fifteen decades of the Rosary every day while she does her needlework and other handwork. She is both a “Martha and a Mary in the same time,” as the author Handel-Mazzetti puts it.

Stephana's love does not stop at this one good deed of helping the four condemned men. Soon God calls her for more. She assists Father Albert, who is still imprisoned in a tower of his monastery outside of the city walls, when he detects from his tower the first wandering traveler infected with the dreaded pestilence. After Father Albert's having convinced his confessor, Father Ertelius, to let him secretly invite the sick man into his cell so that he can either cure or bury him, Stephana then provides food and medicine for the priest, who has put his own life at great risk for the greater common good of Steyr by taking care of the sick and infectious man and by preventing him from entering the town. Stephana and Father Albert now work together, in order to protect the weak and faint-hearted town, a town that has already shown so much cruelty, incomprehension, and injustice towards them.

But Father Albert and Stephana do even more. The saintly priest is able to reach the heart of the dying mercenary soldier who had spent most of his own life amidst moral sewage. (At the beginning, that man had come into the cell of the monk to only see whether he could steal money or food!) After a good confession, however, the sinner yearns to receive Holy Communion, and since Father Ertelius himself is too afraid to do it, it is Stephana who will carry Our Lord to him. She, too, puts her life at risk to bring consolation to a dying and highly infectious man. She will remember it as the most beautiful moment of her earthly life when she was given the privilege to carry Jesus on her heart, in a pix on a chain hanging around her neck. Glowing with that gift of divine love in the Blessed Sacrament, she enters the room of the dying man who, at her sight, calls out the name “Maria!”

Stephana performs all these heroic acts of virtue with a calmness and with a natural self-forgetfulness that can only be explained with her growing holiness. She thereby becomes an effective channel of grace to many others and is the mediating instrument of God's own merciful love. She is a saint who becomes, as it were, a counterrevolutionary, at the moment when a paganized Christian – Mayor Joachim Händel – who is more interested in material wealth and power than in the meeker and weaker aspects, much less the suffering side, of Christianity – confronts the Catholics of Steyr with the demand that they completely apostatize from the Catholic Faith. 

Stephana steps up when God calls her.

Stephana's Catholic witness had darkly inflamed the elder Händel with a deep hatred. Thus, when he learns of the fact that she had been seen one night climbing into the tower of Father Albert (when carrying the Blessed Sacrament on her heart), he is considering to use this potentially scandalous conduct as a pretext in order to demand that she and her family move, at once, out of town. While still hesitating to act in such a harsh manner, the Mayor now realizes that his own son, Heinrich, has ardently fallen in love with Stephana.

Both Händels, father and son, are at an audience with Emperor Matthias when Heinrich declares to the Emperor his intention to marry Stephana, whereupon the Emperor promises him to be the godfather of Heinrich's first born son. (Little did Heinrich then know about Stephana's secret promises to God.) Joachim Händel is surprised by his son's open-hearted disclosure of his love in front of the Emperor. As soon as his son left town to ride back to his love, the father writes up the order to expel the Schwertner family from Steyr, secretly hoping thereby to be able to win back his son's heart. Händel sends a messenger with the new public decree to Steyr.

The son, Heinrich, having arrived in Steyr before the arrival of the unjust decree, visits Stephana and asks her for her hand, but she declines and remains distanced from him. Leaving her home with a broken heart, Heinrich meets the messenger and hears of the grave charges against Stephana of secretly meeting the priest at night. He is now inflamed with jealousy toward the suspect Father Albert. Heinrich earlier himself had been wondering with a heavy heart why Stephana herself had never responded to his sincere attempts to approach her kindly and affectionately (even in helping her to recover her Rosary that she had lost during her humiliating public penance at the pillar) and he now thinks that he had found the true and heart-breaking reason for her conduct. 

Heinrich Händel rides in haste back to Stephana's house, still secretly hoping to be able to disprove the false claims alleged against her, about her secret love affair and nocturnal liaison with Father Albert. Heinrich encounters Stephana alone in the restaurant, just as she is lighting an oil lamp in honor of Saint Joseph. When challenged about her purportedly impure affair, she refuses to render any explanation because she had promised Father Albert never to reveal to anyone what they had done together, out of fear that the dead man's grave would then be dug up and that with it the pestilence would spread in Steyr. Loyal to her promise, Stephana remains silent. Heinrich Händel, who regards her behavior as a confirmation of her guilt, but who, in his ardent love, still does not want to expose her to another public scene of shame and disgrace, then has a dark and sudden fit of jealous passion, and he stabs Stephana with his own knife and kills her instantly.

Stephana Schwertner is dead.

Stephana indirectly becomes a martyr in the face of the hatred that the Protestant Mayor Joachim Händel has for the Catholic Faith. Tragically, this mayor comes to use his own son as the executor – the instrument – of his own arguably demonic hate. But, as is so often the case in the history of the world – and as it was at the moment when Jesus Christ Himself had died at the Cross – just when the evil powers believe they have achieved their goal and thought to have conquered the Faith, they lose. (In the same manner today, just when Satan may well believe that he will have conquered the Church, she will spring up again, with the help of the Blessed Mother!)

The death of Stephana likewise calls down so many graces from heaven upon Steyr, and inspires so many people that the majority of the town now returns sincerely to the Catholic Faith, and this within hours of her martyrdom. Steyr is Catholic again. Händel the mayor has lost his battle. Moreover, he in his juridical function as the mayor must now administer justice and thus even condemn his own son to death – according to his own laws – and he has to admit that Stephana, after all, has won, and with her the Catholic Church. Not even two years after his election as mayor, the ugly face of his tyranny has shown itself fully and it thoroughly disgraced him.

When the son Heinrich Händel is later being led out of the courtroom into the yard to be executed in public, his own most loyal soldiers suddenly shoot him so as to spare him a shameful death in front of the retributive citizenry. While Heinrich then lies dying, he unexpectedly calls for a priest. Filled with sorrow and sincere contrition – for, in the courtroom, Father Albert had finally related the whole truth about Stephana's visit to him by night in his tower – Heinrich now yearns to become a Catholic like his beloved Stephana.

Father Albert who had rushed to him firmly demands from the dying young man a renunciation of Satan and of his Protestant beliefs; then he removes from him the ban of excommunication; and, before giving the dying man the Viaticum, he hears his confession. Questioned by Father Albert about his own personal carnal sins, Heinrich admits that it was Stephana's purity which had kept him from falling into any kind of such sin. Stephana's purity had kept him pure. Father Albert, moved by this open-hearted statement, realizes that God had even made use of the earthly love of this young man for a beautiful young virgin, in order to prepare his own heart for heaven.

Heinrich's father, the tyrant of Steyr, who had rushed into the room where his dying son was lying, now witnesses his son's conversion. His last hatred against the Church dies away when he realizes that she in her love for the sinner reaches out to a young man who is despised by all mankind. The supernatural charity of the Church shines brightly in the room. Joachim Händel thus witnesses the peace that enters his son's soul after having received the sacraments of the Church and after having heard, as well, the touching counsel of Father Albert himself that he, Heinrich, might also soon see Stephana again, but now as brother and sister in Christ, and in heaven. Heinrich then prays: “Saint Stephana, Bride of Christ, pray for me, a sinner!”

Thus Heinrich Händel dies with Stephana's name upon his lips while her body is being carried through town and then exposed for veneration in a coffin placed in front of one of the churches whose keys Mayor Händel was just about to give back to Father Albert for its renewed liturgical use by the Catholics. Heinrich Händel himself was to be buried in the same church where, at the beginning of the tragedy, the plan had been made by Father Albert and Stephana to make a pilgrimage to Weng, in order to save the town of Steyr from the pestilence. As it turns out, God's plans went even further and did not only save the town from the pestilence, but also from the danger of apostasy, and from many other lesser forms of infidelity and sin. On the last pages of this novel, Father Albert is shown to give a blessing to the people of Steyr with the Blessed Sacrament which he then is able to return to the tabernacle in the church.

With this most stirring scene, this long historical novel ends. 

This deeply Catholic and most beautiful novel by Handel-Mazzetti can give us an example of how we are all called to become saints and, thereby, also to become heroic, but humble, counterrevolutionaries, even at the time of the corona virus where, as it seems, different players try to abuse the illness for their own political, anti-Catholic, and globalist intentions. LifeSite just reported that South Australia, for example, left the Catholic churches closed, even though they had no more active cases of the coronavirus! And Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, just stated in an interview with EWTN's Raymond Arroyo that there is a danger of the virus being used in an anti-Catholic way by dictatorial states and “some other ideological groups.” “We have to speak against the instrumentalization of this virus, of this global crisis” by dictatorial states and “some other ideological groups” who wish to “suppress the Church” and promote the “break down of the sacramental life of the Church,” he said. He added that the state cannot forbid the Church to worship God.

May this book be soon translated into English and may it inspire many other readers, under grace, unto personal sanctity and unto counterrevolutionary action – and, if it be God's Will, even unto martyrdom.

 

--Postscript--

In the following, I would like to present some very beautiful quotes from this Austrian novel.

“Does he think that, because of my mother, I shall be silent? Truth it has to be, truth is truth!” (Stephana Schwertner's reflection about a comment by Father Albert)

***

“Where the distress is the greatest, the closest one to us is God.” (Stephana Schwertner)

***

“Blessed be those who believe and do not fear death.” (Stephana Schwertner)

***

“What is mother and father in comparison with God and His Will and His Kingdom? If God has been merciful with your mother, you will find her again in heaven, to which only the Catholic path leads, but if not, then you shan't wish to be re-united with her.” (Father Albert to Heinrich Händel who was then hesitating to reject the faith of his beloved deceased Protestant mother)

***

“Or was it the case also with the Church as it was with Stephana herself, whom [Joachim] Händel had once called a harlot, and who was actually a saint?” (The interior thoughts of Mayor Joachim Händel himself, as presented by the novel's narrator)

***

“And [Joachim] Händel still closed off his hard and frozen heart against the Divine Grace, and yet he saw growing in himself the insight that the Church which he had so much persecuted was, indeed, much more than a human being.” (Enrica von Handel-Mazzetti)

***

“He whom the devil insults is loved by God.” (Stephana Schwertner to her fretful mother)

***

“Yes, Steyr is heretical, unfortunately. But when no good Christians want to live among the heretics and the heathens here, how, then, can the word of Our Lord about the good leaven be fulfilled; if you, maiden, find it hard to live in Steyr, think also of how Corozaim and Bethsaida were not so sweet for Our Lord either; but through a good example you can work much good here.” (Father Albert to Stephana)

***

“Goodness does not consist in tolerating error, and to be silent toward sin is the greatest vice of the pulpit.” (Abbot Wilhelm Heller to the lax Prior Karl)

***

“Preserve your devout Catholic courage, which is not a sinful form of pride. I will pray for that.” (Father Albert to Stephana Schwertner)

***

“If Steyr is evil, God helps us still so that we remain nevertheless good and faithful!” (Stephana Schwertner to her mother.)

***

“He is the greatest heretic in Steyr and the fiercest enemy of our Holy Church. Whoever wants to honor him, may well do so, but I shall not.” (Father Albert about Mayor Händel)

***

“'The most beautiful thing on this sinful earth is the Faith,' said the priest with a deep voice. 'Let us pray for such a Faith which even conquers God's omnipotence.'” (Father Albert to Stephana Schwertner)

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ALL NOVELTY AND EXPERIMENTATION TO STOP
"All manner of novelty and experimentation must be removed from My Church--NOW!
    "You have been given the rule. You have been given the way. Restore My House now, for a House in darkness wears a band of death about it. The doors will close! Souls will be starved for the light. Blood shall flow in the streets. Death shall become commonplace. Is this what you want?
    "The wages of sin is death. What will it gain you if you gain your whole world in treasures, but you cannot take them with you to your judgment? Your judgment is eternal, forever!" - Jesus, November 22, 1975

ALMOST A COMPLETE DESTRUCTION
The pastors, the shepherds whom We have given control over Our flocks of young souls, are leading many into error, and placing these young souls on the road to eternal damnation.
    "You must not, as shepherds, compromise My Son's House. I say compromise, because you are contaminating the pure waters; you are bringing in errors that can lead to almost--I say almost--a complete destruction of My Son's Church.
    "Recognize, My pastors, the signs of your times. You have fallen asleep. Delusion has been set upon you because of pride and arrogance. O Our sleeping pastors, you have fallen into error because of pride and arrogance." - Our Lady, September 28, 1976

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"YOU ARE RECRUCIFYING MY SON"
"What manner of abominations do you, Our pastors, permit in My Son's House? You are recrucifying My Son. You work like rodents to destroy. You are subversive to undermine My Son's House. Restore it before it is too late!
    "Can you not strip yourselves, O pastors, of your pride? Can you not humble yourselves and admit you have worked in error, rationalizing sin, rationalizing error to the destruction of the young souls and those entrusted to your care? Pastors, shepherds, you are scattering Our sheep!
    "The prophets who have been sent to you in the past ages of time, they gave you the building from the foundation, My Son. You are allowing the walls to crumble. You are changing the Book of life, your Bible, to suit your own purposes. Do not allow those who do not have the grace of the light to write and rewrite the Bible." - Our Lady, September 28, 1976

REMOVE THE BLINDNESS
"You, pastors of little faith, you have become symbols of worship among yourselves. Man is now building his own cross. Shall you set up man to be worshipped in the body? And what has become of the soul?
    "The Eternal Father will chastise those He loves. Are you, in your arrogance and pride, wishing this upon mankind? O My children, take the blindness from your hearts, and look upon the destruction you have wrought within My Church, within the hearts of those who trusted you to guide them. You have taken this trust given to you by Heaven, and what have you done? You have cast it aside, and you, too, My pastors, shall meet the fate of the fallen angels. Many mitres shall fall into hell!" - Jesus, September 28, 1976

SOUL DESTRUCTION
"I have heard the words of scorn and derision that have followed the message that I give to the world, My child. It is sad that this warning is being ignored by many. I have come as a Mediatrix between God and man. I have been sent by the Father to warn you that unless you change your ways and go back onto the narrow road set forth by the Father, I can no longer hold back the punishing hand of My Son. There are many seers throughout the world now who have been given the light and are instruments for the dispersal of My message throughout the world.
    "Priests in the houses of My Son, why do you waste your time trying to disprove My warnings to the world? You are rationalizing My supernatural manifestations. Pride and arrogance have set many onto the road to destruction, soul destruction.
    "It is sad, My child, that those who have the most power to do good are using this power now to destroy the young souls. Shout, My child, My message from the rooftops. The time is growing short. There will be a gross, immense, terrifying to many, Warning to mankind. And if mankind does not heed this Warning, a great Chastisement coming from the heavens shall be set upon mankind." - Our Lady, December 24, 1974

PASTORS HANDING OVER CHURCH TO ENEMIES OF GOD
"I repeat: you must pray for your bishops, pray for your cardinals--you who claim you are members of the Church of My Son, His House upon earth. Many pastors have buried their heads in the sands. They are blind of spirit, and why? Because they do not pray. They have given themselves over to worldly pursuits. They do not pray. They do not stay in the spirit but have become of the world, seeking gold and silver and honor and power among men, until in their pursuits they are handing over My Son's Church to the enemies of God.
    "Do you not recognize, My children, pastors in My Son's House, that satan is among you? He has come as an angel of light, deluding you with promises of humanism and modernism for mankind, promises of success and the salvation of souls for whom? For Lucifer!
    "When one becomes blind of spirit, you walk then in darkness. A house and a church in darkness, My children, wears a band of death about it! A church that falls into heresy and continued error will close its doors." - Our Lady, July 15, 1978

WHEN THEY SUCCUMB TO THE DARKNESS
"Pray much for your rulers, your government, your schools, and My Son's houses throughout the world. A House, a Church in darkness wears a band of death about it. Many will close their doors when they succumb to the darkness. Pray, My child, a constant vigilance of prayer. Prayer, atonement, and sacrifice, My voice cries, for the time grows short. The sands are running out, My child." - Our Lady, November 23, 1974

A SOCIALISTIC CHURCH
"Unless you restore My House, My Church, to its former glory your doors will close, your clergy will be persecuted, and only a remnant shall be left. Is this what you want, you who consort and try to form a socialistic church upon earth? No angels are building it with you; they are demons." - Jesus, July 25, 1979

MANY SHEPHERDS GIVEN TO THE WORLD
"My houses upon earth, churches, will undergo a great trial. It will be truly a test of faith. Many of My shepherds have given themselves to the world of the flesh and satan.
    "My Mother has gone throughout your world with a warning from the Eternal Father for mankind. She has met with much resistance because the hearts of many are hardened, and their hearts are blinded to the truth.
    "My Mother extended to you the way. You cannot leave this way and seek another, for you are fast then going into the darkness.
    "All My churches upon earth--all that go into darkness will fall. All that descend into darkness will close their doors. A House in darkness wears a band of death about it." - Jesus, June 5, 1975

"YOU SAY NOW THERE IS NO HELL"
"You say now there is no hell. Where do you think Lucifer was cast? And those who followed him? He was cast from the Kingdom of the Eternal Father, as you, too, shall be cast from the Kingdom. And where did he go? Deep into earth, setting up a kingdom, gathering the straying sheep by error, deception, heresy, untruth, delusion.
    "No! You shall not mislead My sheep; you shall not open My doors and greet a separated brethren with their errors and their corruption. You must convert, but you shall not convert by compromising the Faith.
    "Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth! Your times are such as have never been seen in the times of mankind. You sin in a manner far more foul than in the times of Sodom and Gomorrha. And whatever shall become of you? As in the time of the Flood the world was cleansed, you shall receive a baptism of fire.
    "Can I come to you--may I enter your hearts with words of cheer while My heart is torn with grief? The abominations committed in My House far exceed the measures of sacrifice mankind does now.
    "Clergy in My houses, where are your straying sheep? Can you not reprimand the evil doer? Shall you consort with satan, allowing all manner of foul conduct and abominations in My House? Cleanse your House now, pastor, for you are being judged. The Eternal Father looks into your heart; your time grows short.
    "All that is rotten will fall, and a Church or House in dark­ness wears a band of death about it. A House in darkness will close its doors." - Jesus, November 1, 1975

EXPERIMENTATION, HUMANISM, MODERNISM
"Bishops, awaken from your slumber! In your permissive behavior, you are sending many souls onto the road to hell! Unless you turn back from these ways that displease the Eternal Father, you, too, shall carry your mitres into hell.
    "Shall My Son return and find even a small flicker of faith left in the hearts of mankind?
    "Heresy, O mournful heresy! Abominations and filth seeping like cesspools, overflowing into My Son's Church! Corruption, evils diabolical! Cleanse My Son's Church now, or He shall return and take you in hand! He shall cast you from His Church. A Church in darkness wears a band of death about it. The doors will close. But the foundation, My Son, shall never be lost to mankind! And you pastors who have set yourselves to discredit facts of the existence of punishment and hell, shall you receive your lesson the hard way?
    "I say now, as your Mother--I plead to you, as your Mother, in the short time given to you, to restore My Son's Church!
    "Experimentation, humanism, modernism are all coming from the deep pit of hell! The way to the Kingdom is a simple way filled with thorns--meaning, My children, that you must strip your human nature of all corruption and corruptive forces and searchings. You may live in the world, but you must not succumb to the world. You must not darken your spirit." - Our Lady, May 15, 1976

Directives from Heaven... https://www.tldm.org/directives/directives.htm

D122 - Antichrist   PDF
D246 - Doctrines of Demons  PDF
D260 - Satan, the Deceiver of Mankind PDF
D261 - Punishment  PDF
D262 - Many will be lost PDF
D263 - Good vs. Evil PDF
D264 - Worldliness, Part 1 PDF
D341 - No Evil Is Ever Triumphant  PDF
D396 - Acceleration of Evil PDF
D397 - End of the Era PDF
D568 - Destruction Within the Church, Part 1 PDF
D569 - Destruction Within the Church, Part 2 PDF
D570 - Destruction Within the Church, Part 3 PDF
D571 - Destruction Within the Church, Part 4 PDF
D572 - Destruction Within the Church, Part 5 PDF
D574 - Gates of Hell Shall not Prevail PDF
D575 - The Church Will Rise PDF
D579 - Clergy Misleading the FaithfulPDF
D580 - False Prophets, Part 1PDF
D581 - False Prophets, Part 2PDF
D582 - Leaders Lax and Corrupt PDF
D583 - Churches will Close PDF
D588 - Satan has Poisoned Many Minds, Part 1 PDF
D589 - Satan has Poisoned Many Minds, Part 2 PDF
D590 - Pastors, Part 1 PDF
D591 - Pastors, Part 2 PDF
D592 - Pastors, Part 3 PDF

EDITOR'S COMMENT: Evil is accelerating and the Anti-Christ forces are gaining power in the world. When the persecution starts, all Christian web sites on the internet will be forced to close. Be sure to have in your possession all the following items: the Bayside Prophecy books, Bayside Medals, Douay-Rheims Bibles, the Protection Packets, Candles, Sacramentals, and Religious Books. Purchase these items now while they are still available! You will urgently need them in the days ahead. Also, you can print out all PDF files for the Directives from Heaven and all of the Bayside Prophecies. Copy Our Lady's messages and the Directives from Heaven now while they are still available! Pray to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and guidance on how to prepare now and for the days ahead when the Antichrist is revealed. Viva Cristo Rey!

Your names have been written in Heaven… "It is not by accident that you are called by My Mother, for your names have been written in Heaven.... But with this great grace you have great responsibility to send this Message from Heaven throughout the world, for if you are able to recover just one more for Heaven, an additional star shall be placed in your crown." - Jesus, August 5, 1975

A great obligation to go forward... "It is not by accident that you are called by My Mother, for it is by merit and the prayers that have risen to Heaven for your salvation. For those who have received the grace to hear the Message from Heaven, you have a great obligation to go forward and bring this Message to your brothers and sisters. Do not expect a rest upon your earth, for you will have eternal rest very soon." - Jesus, June 12, 1976

The sin of omission... "The sin of omission shall condemn many to hell, be they layman or Hierarchy. I repeat: not the sin of commission, but the sin of omission will commit many to hell." Our Lady of the Roses, October 6, 1980

My gift to help spread Our Lady of the Roses' messages to the world.

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