Numerous years ago, an unusual item was placed for sale on the Internet auction site, eBay. The bidding for it began at 5 cents and eventually reached $400. What was it? The listing read “20 year-old Seattle boy’s SOUL, hardly used,” yet in “near mint condition!” The “owner,” a professed atheist, intended the posting as a joke of sorts. Yet “many a truth is said in jest,” and the truth behind this one reflects an attitude becoming more prevalent in an increasingly secular society: that the soul – its existence, its state, and its destiny – need not be taken seriously. After all (some think), if the soul is just undying energy, if human choices are neutral – never right or wrong, and if God is infinitely tolerant, then how could a soul ever really commit sin or be “lost?” It is not a surprise then that far too many, convinced of this, have fallen into habits of great neglect for their spiritual lives. In their minds, they surmise, “Why bother? All of us will end up in the same place – heaven – no matter what.”
The messages of Our Lady of Fatima challenge the world on a number of issues, but perhaps the most central truth among them is that the soul exists, the soul has great value, and the soul needs even greater attention. In the appearance which took place on August 13, 1917, Our Lady lamented that many souls were going to hell because no one was praying and offering sacrifices for them. In another on June 13, 1917, she insisted that Jesus wanted modern men and women to embrace devotion to her Immaculate Heart as the means of saving endangered souls, promising that those who do “will be loved by God as flowers placed … before His throne.” So, if (as some think) there is no soul, no sin, no possibility of eternal loss, then someone needs to inform the Son of God and the Mother of God about this!
Yet, we know that the words of Our Lady of Fatima are instead ratification from heaven that precisely the opposite is true. At a time when too many are saying the soul does not matter, we learn from the Blessed Mother that not only does it matter, but that nothing – nothing – matters more. And modern men and women need to assume habits that reflect this fact. The Mother of God wants us to go to heaven. That is why she cared enough to come and tell us the sobering realities which she related at Fatima. She knows our choices have moral and eternal implications. That is why she spoke of hell with sorrow on her face! Like any good mother, Mary does not want her little ones to play with fire! She wants us to have peace and happiness. And most of all she wants us to want it more than we do! We cannot and must not buy into the lie of modernity.
Legion members, the anniversary of the apparitions of Fatima should be for us an invitation to do something more than only promote the Rosary – a prayer which I love and which I hope will be recited fervently every day. We must also look into the face of our Mother from heaven, hear her words again, and dedicate ourselves anew to working for the salvation of souls. The truth is that, although we know from the Handbook that saving souls is one of our two principal objects (the other being “giving glory to God” – cf. H, 67), although we are taught to be “absorbed” in laboring for souls (H, 74), and although we pray repeatedly in our Concluding Prayers for the grace “to undertake and carry out without hesitation great things for … for the salvation of souls,” our fire for souls can be and is being dowsed by modern secularism and subjectivism. We must resolve instead to never forget the value of one soul, we must seek to do all we can to save souls, and we must make sure that the “difficult works” of seeking the conversion of souls are not neglected in our assignments in our praesidia. A sign that this may precisely be happening among us is a weakening of the will to evangelize and a drifting away from the works of evangelization.
Our Lady’s words at Fatima manifest how much she needs the Legion’s help. Our spiritual reading today could not say it any better. Filled with a yearning like that within Jesus and Mary, we must throw ourselves with all our might into the effort of the “harvesting of stricken souls” (H, 190) – souls whose infinite value is affirmed, not because they were bought by an auction-goer, but because they were bought by the blood of the Lamb, Jesus, our Savior! Let the anniversary of Fatima renew our will to be Our Lord and Our Lady’s instruments in fighting to save them!
Allocutio/May 21, 2017/Philadelphia Senatus/Rev. Frank Giuffre
Handbook, pp. 189-190 – Chapter 32, section 10