“To be your devotee, O Blessed Virgin, is a weapon of salvation which God gives, to those whom He wishes to save.”

Newsroom (06/12/2022 18:00, Gaudium Press) Through the promise of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we know that the Church is immortal. But let us not imagine this immortality in a human sense. That is, we must not think that her journey in this world is like that of men, who are born, grow up, reach youth, and then set out on the road to old age, senility and death.

Not so in the case of the Church! For her, immortality does not imply reaching such an old age that she loses her strength, and yet, weakened, she continues to live.

When Our Lord said to Peter: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it“, He was not only affirming that the Church, His Mystical Body, would be immortal, but also that it would always grow in holiness, grace, beauty and truth.

Mary, Mother of the Church

Having turned its back on God and armed itself to proclaim that He does not exist, our troubled world is engulfed in a tremendous moral crisis and threatened by a third world war. It would seem that the Church is no longer able to stay alive. Nevertheless, in the midst of this grave situation, and in only two years of the online course of Consecration to Jesus through the hands of Mary, promoted by the Heralds of the Gospel, the number of consecrated persons has passed one million.

How can we walk firmly towards holiness? At the very moment when sin seems to triumph, the call to holiness arises with vigorous force! Inspired by the Holy Spirit, it gathers souls and pushes them towards the practice of virtue.

This is proof not only of the Church’s immortality, but also that she does not become infirm. She is made to grow and to triumph. Our gaze now turns to Mary Most Holy, Mediatrix of all graces, and through Her to God our Lord.

With our eyes fixed upon Her, we renew our act of absolute trust in the immortality of the Church. She will triumph over evil. Let us remember the exhortation which Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us: “Trust, trust, trust! I have overcome the world” (Jn 6:33).

At a time when a great threat is looming over the earth, more than a million people have already consecrated themselves to Our Lady, a sensitive proof of the Church’s coming triumph.

Let us strengthen our confidence that one day the Kingdom of Christ, through Mary, will be complete, responding to the request of all the faithful for two millennia: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. One day, after we have passed through this crisis, we will see the Church triumphant and more beautiful than she has been in all the ages of history.

Let us trust, therefore, in this triumph and let us embrace the path of holiness, as St. John Paul II, in the Apostolic Letter ‘Novo Millennio Ineunte’, stated that we have all been called to holiness and that holiness is possible, even in this tormented world in which we live.

All that is needed is to create the conditions for holiness to flourish, and soon souls will arise who wish to follow its paths! Our Lady is that sweet Mother who leads us to Jesus, always by the fastest and surest way.

Msgr João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, EP

Compiled by Sandra Chisholm