MARY, OUR MOTHER

Here is another powerful post from my friend Mark Mallett:

Triumph of Mary, Triumph of the Church

St. John Bosco’s Dream of the Two Pillars

WHAT is this "triumph of the Immaculate Heart" that Mary has spoken of? It is also the simultaneous triumph of the Church.

THE HEEL OF MARY

We see this concurrent triumph of Mary and the Church foreshadowed in the Garden of Eden:

I will put enmities between you (Satan) and the woman, and your seed and her seed: she shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel. (Genesis 3:15; Douay-Rheims)

What will crush Satan, but the little remnant flock who form her heel? Her seed is Jesus, and thus we, His body, are her seed as well by virtue of our Baptism. Do not expect to see Mary suddenly appear in the heavens with a chain in her hand to personally bind Satan. Rather, expect to find her beside her children, with the chain of the Rosary in her hand, teaching them how to become like Christ. For when you and I become "another Christ" on earth, then we rightly set about destroying evil through the weapons of faith, hope, and love.

Then the legion of little souls, victims of merciful Love, will become as numerous ‘as the stars of heaven and the sands of the seashore’. It will be terrible to Satan; it will help the Blessed Virgin to crush his proud head completely. —St. Thérése of Lisieux

This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4-5)

Note, that Genesis says Satan also has "seed."

Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus. (Rev 12:17)

Satan wages war through his "army," those who follow after the "lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life" (1 Jn 2:16). What is our victory, then, but to conquer the hearts of Satan’s children with love and mercy? The martyrs, "the seed of the Church" in particular, conquer evil by their ineffable witness to the truth of the Gospel. Satan’s kingdom will eventually fall, then, by the obedience, humility, and charity of little "red" and "white" martyrs formed by Mary. These form the "armies of heaven" that with Jesus will throw the Beast and the False Prophet into the Lake of Fire:

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war… And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses… The beast was captured, and with it the false prophet… These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone. (Rev 19:11, 14, 20,)

THE ARK OF VICTORY

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Rev 11:19)

(As I write you now, an extraordinary storm has broken out all around us with tremendous lightning and peals of thunder!)

Mary is the one appointed by Jesus to lead the Church to the Era of Peace. We see this foreshadowed when the Israelites, under Joshua, follow the Ark of the Covenant into the Promised Land:

When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord, your God, which the levitical priests will carry, you must break camp and follow it, that you may know the way to take, for you have not gone over this road before. (Joshua 3:3-4)

Yes, Mary is calling us to "break camp" with the world and follow her lead through these treacherous times. Like the Israelites entering the Promised Land, it is a road the Church has never gone over as it prepares to enter a new Era. Ultimately, Mary will accompany us to surround "the wall" of the enemy as did Joshua and the Israelites when they surrounded the wall of Jericho.

Joshua had the priests take up the ark of the Lord. The seven priests bearing the ram’s horns marched in front of the ark of the Lord… on the seventh day, beginning at daybreak, they marched around the city seven times in the same manner… As the horns blew, the people began to shout… the wall collapsed, and the people stormed the city in a frontal attack and took it. (Joshua 5:13-6:21)

Part of the remnant will be those bishops and priests whom Satan could not sweep away into apostasy. Some scripture scholars suggest that approximately two thirds of the hierarchy will not apostasize (see Rev 12:4). These "seven priests" bearing the ram’s horns (bishop’s miter) are not behind, but ahead of the ark carrying the seven Sacraments, symbolized by the number "seven" in this text. Do you see how the Mother always puts Jesus first?

Indeed, Satan’s attempts to entirely extinguish the Sacraments will meet utter failure, his grand efforts collapsing in an instant like the wall of Jericho. The Church will enter "at daybreak" into a new Era in which the Holy Spirit will descend in a Second Pentecost, and Christ will reign through His Sacramental presence. It will be an age of saints, with souls growing in unparalleled sanctity, united to the will of God, forming a spotless and pure Bride… while Satan remains chained in the abyss.

This will be the ultimate victory, the triumph of Mary, when evil is conquered in the hearts of the Church, until that final loosing of Satan, and the return of Jesus in glory.

In these "end times," ushered in by the Son’s redeeming Incarnation, the Spirit is revealed and given, recognized and welcomed as a person. Now can this divine plan, accomplished in Christ, the firstborn and head of the new creation, be embodied in mankind by the outpouring of the Spirit: as the Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 686

If before that final end there is to be a period, more or less prolonged, of triumphant sanctity, such a result will be brought about not by the apparition of the person of Christ in Majesty but by the operation of those powers of sanctification which are now at work, the Holy Ghost and the Sacraments of the Church. —The Teaching of the Catholic Church; cited from The Splendour of Creation, Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi, p.86