Looking to the Goal

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a Bride adorned for her Husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be His people and God Himself will always be with them (as their God) (Rev 21:2-3).

    As we continue our meditation on the Little Way of Expiation, the theme for this year in Opus Angelorum, we want to place before our eyes the final goal, which sheds light on all the suffering and struggles and efforts we encounter on this way: Vitam eternam! Eternal life! In the Catholic Catechism we read,

Those who are united with Christ will form the community of the redeemed, “the holy city” of God, “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” She will not be wounded any longer by sin, stains, self-love, that destroy or wound the earthly community. The beatific vision, in which God opens Himself in an inexhaustible way to the elect, will be the ever-flowing well-spring of happiness, peace, and mutual communion. (CCC 1045)

This is the goal, this is the answer to all our “why’s” in the midst of this vale of tears, this is our driving force! All our choices have consequences; those that are aimed at eternal life have an eternal dimension and assuredly contribute to our eternal destiny. The Heart of Jesus has opened for us as the gate to eternal beatitude. He has taken upon Himself all our sins and guilt, our rejection of God, expiating for it on the Cross. Now His Heart, opened for our sake, is the new way to the Father. And the pierced Heart of Mary calls us to enter through Him. What joy awaits us, what love! But how many souls have lost the way, have passed by this door of their own accord? How can we help, how can we open their hearts and eyes to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary? And Our Lord answers, “Expiation—expiation—that is the hook that God casts out through His Angels in these days” (Mother Gabriele, The Little Way of Expiation).

The burden of expiation

    All of us have our “problem child”, the soul or souls for whom we beg God’s mercy and grace. In expiation, we concern ourselves not only with the burden of our own sin, but take upon ourselves also the sufferings which others have merited by their sins, in order to give them the relief and strength to return to God. This path, no doubt, will be burdensome to us. We feel the weight of the Cross, we feel as if forsaken by God, and are tempted to ask, “Why, Lord? Why must I suffer this?” But today, we want look to the heavenly Jerusalem, where all tears will be dried (cf. Rev 21:4) and where we will live together in eternal beatitude with our God: our Life, our Love, our All! And we will live there with those we love and who have been saved. Would it not be a shame that someone be missing, whom we might have helped to save, had we prayed more?

Our Lord Jesus Christ redeemed us at the end of His great way of Expiation by taking up all unredeemed suffering, every ‘why’ of the earth, into His cry: MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME! …And since then all the sufferings of the earth can be redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ, by the God-forsakenness of our Lord on the Cross. For, in the final analysis, is not every suffering, every ‘why’ raised against the Creator based on the experience (feeling) of  being forsaken by the blessing, by the grace, by the help of God, on the awareness of having been abandoned by God’s help? (Mother Gabriele, The Little Way of Expiation, p. 31)

Being in a state of grace, we are not actually forsaken by God. But just as Jesus allowed Himself to feel the abandonment by God in His great way of expiation, so too, He allows us to participate in His abandonment in our little way of expiation, for the sake of those for whom we offer ourselves, those who have lost the presence and peace of God through grave sin, that is, through the rejection of God and His law.

The battle of the End Times

    It is becoming ever more evident that we are in the Last Times, the era of the final battle of the spirits over the souls of men. The threat of world war on an unimaginable scale, the breakdown of law and order, the loss of moral standards and unbridled license of man in all areas are all signs pointing to the coming end. The battle for souls is becoming more intense, more urgent. How many souls were seen falling into hell in the vision of the Fatima children? And in our days, how much greater is the moral decay?

There is a creaking and cracking at all the structural joints of the world. Standards and orders and laws are shifting, falling, shattering—slowly or quickly; mankind must adapt itself to the standards of the End Time, to the standards of the spiritual battle that is being waged ever more manifestly on all sides with unparalleled force and intensity.

“Whoever is not with Me, is against Me!” Thus it is like a Menetekel before the eyes of all men. There can be no more hide-and-seek. Whoever does not grasp and reach out for the hand of God’s saving help and that of His Angels and Saints, shall grasp emptily in all directions and fall. (ibid.)

Just as the final battle of each individual soul is the most crucial and decisive—it is won either for heaven or for hell—so also is the final battle for all humanity the most imperative and decisive. After the vision of hell, Jacinta of Fatima could not get it out of her mind.

[She] often sat thoughtfully on the ground or on a rock, and exclaimed: “Oh, hell! Hell! How sorry I am for the souls who go to hell! And the people down there, burning alive, like wood in the fire!” Then, shuddering, she knelt down with her hands joined, and recited the prayer that Our Lady had taught us: “O my Jesus! Forgive us, save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need.”  (Sr. Lucia, Fatima in Lucia’s own Words, p. 125)

The Angels are sent to humanity as a wake-up call, calling us to expiation: your brothers and sisters, your sons and daughters, your spouses, even your priests are being lost! Each has been given free will as a talent, but also as a responsibility: we can either use it to love and serve God, or abuse it in self-deification. Mother Gabriele gives a moving image of the state of the world:

Upon this stretch of the way, the soul sees men moving along as if on a sieve. Whoever does not take care falls through the holes in the sieve into the devil’s lap. The soul wants to cry out for sheer anxiety, she wants to warn them, but she is mute. The Angel is mute. God is mute. Knowledge [of God and His will] hangs over humanity, it cannot be overlooked. The light of God hangs over humanity, it is bright. Free will rests as a gift from God in the breast of every man; each has eyes and ears, hands and feet; each can think and speak and freely decide for himself. And God speaks: “Do you see now how necessary it is that upon earth the one supports and holds the other, that no one abandons the other and leaves him alone, that the one lays himself down over the evil one’s points of attack, these holes, for the other, for the weaker one, for the one more blind; do you see how necessary it is that one catch these attacks with his own body, his own soul, in order to be the secure ground upon which the other can walk toward God?” (The Little Way)

The Lord pleads with us, He asks His faithful to thirst and battle with Him and His Angels for souls.

How long have I already been calling you to expiation? How often have I told you, do not deprive yourselves of the mighty help of your Angels? Behold how the devil is stretching out his nets (this sieve), so that the holes in between grow larger and larger? Soon you will no longer be able to cover them; you must have your Angels lie over them.” (ibid.)

The help of the Angels

    For those who want to make expiation, the help of the Angels is indispensable. Through the Angels we can contemplate God as through a telescope and recognize His transcendent majesty and greatness. At the same time, we will recognize our duty to know, love and serve Him, to adore and thank Him, to make expiation for our own sins and for the sins of others. The Angel can remind and spur us on to expiation, to offer up the difficulties of daily life out of love for God and for souls. Making the conscious intention to “give to God out of love”, our trials and sacrifices take on meaning and purpose, and our love for God will grow exponentially! St. Therese would say, “Merit does not consist in doing or giving much. It consists in loving much” (Letter 142, to Celine). Love is our weapon in the battle for souls. The Angel does all in his power to lead and save the soul in his charge. We can consciously join forces with the Guardian Angel of a dear one who has lost the way, of a priest in danger, and together with the Angel work more effectively. Mother Gabriele writes:

Were it not for the Angel, the last times would cause men to despair of God, of themselves, but especially of love. But no Guardian Angel ever lets the heart of man come completely to rest, but in the voice of conscience he directs man, again and again—as long as there is the least bit of good will,—to the knowledge of God, to the fundamental principles of “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” With what inferior clay the Angel must so often toil, with the oily, foul, sandy, revolting, stony, withered, self-deifying hearts of men! But he always has the love of God at hand, ready to forgive, to forget, to help and to give. (The Little Way)

    The Angel leads us by example on the way of expiation, and this is the way of love, the way of the imitation of Christ who gave Himself up for His own out of love. So too does the Angel love his charge selflessly. He does not draw back in disgust when we continue to wallow in the mire of our sins; rather, he does all in his power to lure and lead us back to the path to God. For the Angel saw his brothers in the Angelic world fall. Now he wants to do all in his power to save man from the same false step.

He stands here for the “non serviam” of those [Angels] who like him also came forth from God and are now no longer in the light of grace. He can no longer arrest their fall into the depths, but still, he does not want to indifferently accept as something that “simply happened”, this “non serviam,” which eternally hangs like a mark on the heavens of the world of spirits, as well as on the heavens of man’s world. Rather, he mobilizes all his angelic power for humility in the depths, for obedience in the depths, for adoration in the depths, for the Passio in the depths. And in fact, GOD gives each Angel this opportunity in his Guardian Angelship. Do you understand, O man, that Guardian Angelship is also a grace for the Angel?

Now the Angel is doubly dear to us. Now he draws even much closer to us. Now we can pour out our woes to him much better. He no longer circles about us, only at the command of God, like some other type of being that is more sunk in adoration than in sympathizing with our stumbling. How good You are, O God! The bond of love binds the Angel indissolubly to man, and consequently the Angel, the Angel of grace, the Guardian Angel, also shares in the imitation of Christ. (ibid.)

Growing in true love

    So, too, do we learn true love for God and neighbor when we walk this path of expiation with and in imitation of the Guardian Angel. Giving to God out of love, with burning zeal for souls, our daily life becomes a love song, a loving, hidden exchange between God and the soul in every moment, in our daily chores and in every sacrifice: “This is for You, Lord! Because I love You!”

True love always has a great depth and outwardly…one rarely sees anything. True love is a spectacle for the holy Angels; it is always a romance with God, ever new and ever different. You recognize it only and in particular in the things of daily life, even as one recognizes, for example, a true mother by the way she cuts the bread, by the way she prepares the meals and sets the table for her children, by the way she makes the sign of the Cross upon the forehead of her dear ones. The exchanges of God’s love are also most intense in the depths of daily life. Follow the ways of God, brother, sister, reflecting how God is beholding you from the Tabernacle when you pass by a church door on the street, how He draws you to Himself, yes, often tugs you to Himself, when, after a long separation on account of an illness, you have not been able to assist at Holy Mass for days… (ibid.)

Thus the little way of expiation is not a way of pain and drudgery. It is a way of love and joy, of loving dialogue and self-gift, of being a carefree child in the Heart of the Father and under the charge of the Angels.

Expiation as our own path to heaven through the Sacraments

    In expiation we not only help others on their path to God, but we also walk with sure steps toward our own salvation. “You only need to love, to love with faith, to love with hope, to love as an offering [of self to God] in the most simple fashion, without complicated prayers or devotions or works of penance” (ibid.). To love is not always easy, especially with difficult persons or situations in life. But Our Lord also provides us the strength, especially in the Holy Sacraments. “Cling to the Holy Sacraments, they are the heavenly ladder for you in the most beautiful sense of the word! Holy Baptism is the lowest rung; Extreme Unction, the uppermost. And the more simply you have accepted everything, the easier it will become for you now at the end of your way of expiation” (ibid.). Among the Sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation assist us on our little way of expiation.

    In the daily Sacrifice of the Holy Mass (if possible), we participate in the great way of expiation of Our Lord on the Cross. He gives us the strength to follow Him, to unite the sacrifice of our day and life to His Sacrifice of Redemption. In the Catechism we read,

In the Eucharist the sacrifice of Christ becomes also the sacrifice of the members of His Body. The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer, and work, are united with those of Christ and with His total offering, and so acquire a new value. Christ’s Sacrifice present on the altar makes it possible for all generations of Christians to be united with His offering….  In the Eucharist the Church is as it were at the foot of the Cross with Mary, united with the offering and intercession of Christ. (CCC 1368, 1370)

    Receiving frequently the Sacrament of Reconciliation for even venial sins not only reconciles our own souls to God, but also strengthens the whole Church, and those for whom we want to make expiation.

[For] sin damages or even breaks fraternal communion. The Sacrament of Penance repairs or restores it. In this sense it does not simply heal the one restored to ecclesial communion, but has also a revitalizing effect on the life of the Church which suffered from the sin of one of her members. Re-established or strengthened in the Communion of Saints, the sinner is made stronger by the exchange of spiritual goods among all the living members of the Body of Christ, whether still on pilgrimage or already in the heavenly homeland. (CCC 1469)

In every sacramental Confession, we place ourselves before the Judgment of God, with faith and confidence in His loving mercy and forgiveness. We are freed from our day-to-day faults, find peace and great consolation and strength for the daily struggle. Moreover, we “burn off” a little of our purgatory by loving contrition and by performing the penance received.

Whoever offers himself to God in expiation never comes free again! He is fixed to the hook of God and will be cast out ten or a hundred times to fetch home the errant souls, and each time he himself is brought home from the depths of his own guilt, and each time he is transformed by a portion of his invisible purgatory toward heaven. What a grace it is to be allowed to expiate! (Little Way)

The last stretch of our way

    The conscious practice of expiation, of offering everything: joys and sorrows, sacrifices and gifts to God out of love transforms us to such an extent, that the way of virtue becomes level and smooth for us.

Do you realize, brother, sister, that your little way of expiation runs like a golden thread, like a light-beam from earth to heaven? That which men find difficult, having to subordinate themselves, your love overcomes playfully. That which turns men cold: money, riches, has never oppressed you; giving has rendered you warm. That before which men tremble, the Judgment, you know already, for so many times you have already submitted yourself to the judgment of God and to the justice of God. You have already become a regular guest there, and know that love overcomes even the judgment, that true contrition always gains forgiveness and heavenly happiness. And the anxiety of men before death you cannot share. Death is for you the springing open of the door, at which you have already knocked so many times with your cross, with your tears, the tears of longing, with your ardent heart full of urgent love. (ibid.)

We want to ask our Angel to remind us constantly to make the offering, to consciously give everything to God out of love. From this we will be transformed and given the strength to overcome all the little trials of this world. We will learn to stand above things, free and detached.

    Further, once having reached the other shore of eternity, having walked the little way of expiation is our greatest hope for a merciful Judgment. For expiation is love and Christian perfection is love. It is love that opens the gates of heaven to us.

Judgment is justice, yes, most certainly! But the justice of GOD is always love of God! …If you have made the way of expiation, then from the very beginning you are sure to receive a merciful judgment, indeed, the most merciful judgment, for expiation out of love for God is holy mercy. It is a holy clothing of the nakedness of others, a holy offering of bread and wine, a holy ransom of captives. And ponder this on your knees, brother, sister, that the Lord will say: “You clothed Me in that individual, you consoled Me, you redeemed Me…” And then, most deeply moved, we shall say: “Lord, we are nothing and have done nothing to be worthy of You.” But God will say: “You have done everything, because you did everything out of love.”

Even in the other world, we will not let our prey go, those, namely, who are still walking the paths on earth. We will continue to long for and intercede for their salvation. Having entered the Heart of Jesus, we will burn with His love, thirst with His Thirst, until the Last Day and recapitulation of all things in Christ.

Plans of mercy

    Just as the Angel of Fatima encouraged the shepherd children on their way of expiation, so too his words speak of the “designs of mercy” for all who follow the little way: “Pray! Pray very much! The Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy on you. Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High.” The call to expiation for the support of priests and the salvation of souls is a great grace, a grace which transforms us into instruments of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. And our reward will be to be eternally one with those burning Hearts!

Soul, who follow the way of expiation to the end in the depths of daily life, in the depths of the hidden life, in the depths of your own nothingness, you have now finished the course, have preserved the faith, and brought love like a sheaf before the countenance of the Living God.

What God gives you as a reward, that remains hidden from the eyes of all. Remain small, remain blind, remain the last one here. You will never have measured the land of love out to the end, nor exhausted the view into the Kingdom of God to the end, nor gone the way of Jesus Christ and His Mother and His Angels and Saints to the end.

    On the other side of eternity, we will only want to confess our poverty and littleness, and to praise and thank and adore God for His infinite mercy, for having led us on this path with all His Angels and Saints, and with our Blessed Mother!        (SMB)