In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Amen. Our Lady of Fatima, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It's appropriate that on this first Saturday of March, which is in Lent, that we also keep in mind the messages of Our Lady of Fatima to observe the first Saturdays.
Because in one sense, the first Saturdays and the message of Fatima is, as Pope John Paul II said, is the message of the Gospel.
And the Gospel today tells us about how our Lord says, you know, the Pharisees added something to His teaching,
where it never appears in the Scriptures or in His giving of the law that they're to hate their enemies.
They put that accretion to it, and so our Lord is clarifying to them that that's not His teaching.
Rather, we're to pray for our enemies, pray for those who persecute us.
And as we know, Our Lady of Fatima said,
Our Lady of Fatima said to the little children, so many people go to hell.
So many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray for them.
And in one sense, those people are the enemies of the Church, the enemies of God.
People who are going to hell, as we know, are not in friendship with God.
So they are, in one sense, the enemies of God and the enemies of the Church.
And so what does Our Lady tell the children?
But to pray for them and offer sacrifice.
The message of Fatima is especially very Lenten in the fact that Our Lady says,
She said also, reminded the children of penance, penance, penance, as she also said at Lourdes,
that penance is a way to help not only sanctify ourselves, but also to obtain the grace of conversion for others.
That in the season of Lent, we're not just, you know, me and Jesus alone,
but rather, as we know, we are to participate in the salvation,
of souls, and not just religious, but even lay people.
You sitting at home, by offering your Lenten penances, by praying and offering those sacrifices
for the conversion of poor sinners, are involved in the missionary activity of the Church,
are involved in the work of salvation of souls.
And so let us pray especially that, you know, during this season of Lent,
we'll become more conscious of the fact that we need to do penance,
not just because we have bad habits that we need to overcome, which is very important to do so,
but we also want to help obtain the conversion of poor sinners.
We can see that sin is so glorified in our society today.
You know, people can live a horrible life in the eyes of God,
and the media and the press somehow want to think that, you know, this is a great thing.
We need to pray and help obtain the conversion of these people,
and even if the media is not pro-gospel,
we can still obtain, through our prayers and sacrifices, the conversion of sinners.
The media is not the power behind the world.
God is.
And when you are united with Christ and with the Holy Trinity, in your prayers and sacrifices,
you are a very powerful in and can obtain the conversion of sinners.
sinners. St. Benedicta,
Teresa Benedicta of the cross used to say that
he who serves God reigns. And so by serving God,
by being faithful to him, it says, you know, in the
Responsorial Psalm, happy are they who follow the law of the Lord.
The true happiness in life will not be by giving in to our
passions and our vices, but rather
by following the law of the Lord, living his law, his
Ten Commandments. And that's where true happiness will lie.
And that's where true power will lie. To the extent that we follow
God's way, we will have the power to do God's will.
We have the power to overcome the evil
that's in the world. As our Lord says, return good for evil.
As he said, to pray for those who persecute us.
And because if we don't pray for those who persecute us, then we're no better
than the pagans and those who are not Christian.
What sets us apart as Christians, as Catholics, is the fact that we have
the grace to be able to love as Christ loves. And that
was as he was loving us as we were crucifying
him. So we too will have the grace
because Christ gives it to us, to pray for those
who are crucifying us, persecuting us, and to pray for those who are
persecuting us, treating us as if we are
evil. And we will have that grace because
Christ has allowed us to share in his life of
perfect love. And he says at the end, he says, in a word,
you must be perfected as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
Our Lord does not ask the impossible of us. He would not say to us
to be perfected, to be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect
if he doesn't give us the grace to do it.
There are some saints in this life who have lived this out to its
fullest and that they, while still on this earth, lived
as if they were already in heaven. They were confirmed in grace.
We know that in the life of St. Francis, that when he received the
stigmata, he was confirmed in grace. That he was already living
as if he were in heaven while still on earth. He could not commit
a sin to offend God. The same goes with St. Teresa,
of Avalon, and also we know St. John the Baptist,
already sanctified in his mother's womb. So we know
our Lord is not asking the impossible. As the angel said to
our lady, with God nothing is impossible.
And with his grace, we can live out this gospel
today. We can live it out to its fullest
by praying for those who persecute us, praying for the salvation of those
who are in most need of grace.
As our lady said at Fatima, she did not want souls to go to hell.
She does not want the enemies of God to go to hell.
She has the same spirit that her son has,
that he does not wish the death of the sinner,
but that he be converted and live. In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Amen.