Mary Converts Her Mocker

40 Pages·2011·4.46 MB·English

Introduction by Most Rcvcrend
J.
FULTON SHEEN
Mary And The
Mocker
by
William Hermanns
Third Edition, 15,000
Published in U. S. A.
June 3, 1955
By
OUR SUNDAY VISITOR PRESS
Huntington, Indiana
~'
Note:
Sunday Visitor, Inc. published the
OUI
rd
pamphlet in the I through 3 Editions
st
under the title Mary and the Mocker and
included the poem Mary and the Mocker.
Our Sunday Visitor then published the
4th
Edition under the title
Mary Converts Her Mocker,
and added the outstretched priestly garbed
arm in a welcoming gesture to the cover
illustration, but left out the poem that
spanned I8-pages.
Kenneth Norton, Trustee,
The William Hermanns Trust
o The William Ilcnnanns Trust-
conlaCI [email protected]
Nihil Obstat:
REV. EDWARD A. MILLER
Censor Librorum
Imprimatur:
+
JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D.O.
Archbishop, Bishop of Fort Wayne
Mary Converts Her Mocker
by
'Villiaul Hermamls
To
EDWARD JOSEPH tAIIER
a humble Irish priest who loves Mary
and 10 all who ,10 nol love her
Nihil Obstat: Imprimatur:
REV. JAMES J. O'CONNOR >it LEO A PURSLEY, DD.
Censor Librorum Bishop o( Fori Wayne-Soulh Bend
Fourth Edition
Printed and published in U.S.A. by
OUR SUNDAY VISITOR INC.
Huntington. Indiana
..p
626
Preface
BY ~tOST REV. FULTON SHEEN. D.D.
N ATUS ex Maria Virgine:-"Bom of the Virgin Mary:'
Such is the Creed's simple affirmation of the temporal
origin of the humanity of Christ, whose Divine Nature as the
Son of the living God is eternal. But if Christ, the Head of
the Mystical Body, is horn of Mary, it is true in a lesser degree
that every true Christian who is a member of the Body is
also hom of her.
This book tells the story of a man who came to Christ
through Mary, as Christ comes to us through her. Tills story
reveals that a ~lother is a portal through which God comes
to man, and man goes back again to Cod.
Mary is not the curtain where the eye of the soul stops
to adore; she is the window through which the Light comes
to us, and through which our eyes scale the heavens! She is
God's Fifth Column in the world of evil! Those who would
not immediately surrender to her Divine Son, she solicits and
tempts with ber virtue and the starry treachery of her eyes,
and then with "traitorous trueness and loyal deeeit" delivers
them over to her Divine Son.
In the natural order. man makes the cities, but woman
makes the man. Man lives more for the present, but a woman
is the guarantor of Eternity through procreation. A man is
afraid of dying; a woman is afraid of not living, in the sense
of not fulfilling her co-creative powers under God.
In the Divine order too, a woman who was the occasion
of man's loss of God, is fittingly chosen hy God as the condi
tion through which man again finds His God! No greater act
of freedom in aU the world was ever known, than that of a
Woman pondering an Angel's suggestion that she become the
2 MARY CONVERTS HER MOCKER
Mother of the Messias, and then accepting it when it was
revealed that she would stilJ remain a Virgin.
"Be it done to me according to Thy Word," is one of the
three great Fiats of the universe. The others were: "Let there
be light," said at Creation; and "Not My Will but Thine be
done," spoken amidst the olive roots of Gethsemane.
The author not yet strong enough intellectuaUy to accept
Christ the Savior thought he was preserving his freedom hy
accepting only the Beauty of the Woman. But she too makes
men her slaves, as she "sold" him into the glorious liberty of
the children of God through belief in Christ, Teacher, King,
and Priest.
It may be asked why the author of this book, once he was
betrayed by a Lady into the Hands of the Living God, should
center his talents around Our Lady of Fatima, instead of
around the less catastrophic emphasis on her Assumption and
Coronation. I can only guess, but knowing his life, I would
say it is because, purified by suffering, grief, and persecution,
he understands best the Christian mystery that just as dehts
demand payment, so sin calli for expiation, eitber on the part
of the sinner, or on the part of those who feel that sin as their
own. This is the core of the Mystery of Fatima.
TI,e Revelation of Fatima, which took place in the eve
ning of World War I, announced that World War II would be
averted if men returned to God through penance in atone
ment for the sins of the world. At Fatima we may picture
Mary the Mother, holding the arm of her Divine Son, beg
ging Him not to allow the full consequences of the world's
sin to fall upon a guilty world! All tbe while, she pleads to
those who are her lovers to pray, atone, suffer, that another
apocalyptic war-sucide be not loosed again upon the world.
The author, who saw his people hurned like holocausts in
the fiery furnace, and who had dragged himself from shell
hole to shell-hole in the mucky mire of the Western front as
all hell broke loose overhead, came to see that in some way
pain can not only sear and embitter a soul, but also purify
MARY CONVERTS HER MOCKER 3
it, so that in its denuded and de-materialized state, it will
reach out through a Cross to Him Who hangs upon it.
To such a soul, the Message of Fatima has a heartrending
appeal for it reveals that suffering and pain are tied up with
guilt, not necessarily in the same person, but in the world.
As it takes the blood of a healthy person transfused into the
veins of an anemic to cure him of that condition, so it takes
the prayers of the healthy members of Christ's Mystical Body
to save the guilty of the world. Fatima merely reproclaimed
the injunction of St. Paul: "Bear ye one another's burdens."
The corrupted nature of humanity can bc compared to a
sponge, in the sense that it is a mixture of being and nothing
ness. The more good a man does, the mOre he increases his
Godlikeness and being. The more evil he does, the more he
annihilates himself from God, which means he gets closer to
nothing.
Evil is like the holes in that sponge; it is a non-plenitude,
a void. If the "sponge" exists, it is because of the parts that
are still solid, for man never ceases to have being and im
mortality.
Evil is not bcing; it is the corruption of being, a disorder,
an eccentricity; the privation of being. Sin is an action; suf
fering is its reaction. We create sin hy a free act \vithin, but
the resulting chaos, and crises, and wars strike us &om the
outside.
To avert these external manifestations of the sins of the
world, Our Blessed Mother at Fatima asked that the good
souls graft intensified spirituality on others, as physicians
might graft skin on those who are burned.
Holiness is uncompromising with e\~I, and yet it bears
all things patiently. Combined with heroic efforts toward
purity, the good have an unlimited pity toward evil. God de
sires not the death of the sinner, Scripture tells, but that
the sinner be converted &om the evil of his ways and live.
This is tl'e clarion call of Mary at Fatima.
2 MARY CONVERTS HER MOCKER
Mother of the Messias, and then accepting it when it was
revealed that she would still remain a Virgin.
"Be it done to me according to Thy Word," is one of the
three great Fiats of the universe. The others were: "Let there
be Ught: said at Creation; and "Not My Will but Thine be
done," spoken amidst the olive roots of Gethsemane.
The author not yet strong enough intellectually to accept
Christ the Savior thought he was preserving his freedom hy
accepting only the Beauty of the Woman. But she too makes
men her slaves, as she "sold" him into the gloriOUS liberty of
the children of God through belief in Christ, Teacher, King,
and Priest.
It may be asked why the author of this book, once he was
betrayed by a Lady into the Hands of the Living God, should
center his talents around Our Lady of Fatima, instead of
around the less catastrophic emphasis on her Assumption and
Coronation. I can only guess, but knowing his life, I would
say it is because, purified by suffering, grief, and persecution,
he understands best the Christian mystery that just as debts
demand payment, so sin calls for expiation, either on the part
of the sinner, or on the part of those who feel that sin as their
own. This is the core of the Mystery of Fatima.
The Revelation of Fatima, which took place in the eve
ning of World War I, announced that World War II would be
averted if men returned to God through penance in atone
ment for the sins of the world. At Fatima we may picture
Mary the Mother, holding the arm of her Divine Son, beg
ging Him not to allow the full consequences of the world's
sin to fall upon a guilty worldl All the while, she pleads to
those who are her lovers to pray, atone, suffer, that another
apocalyptic war-sucide be not loosed again upon the world.
The author, who saw his people burned like bolocausts in
the fiery furnace, and who had dragged himself from shell
hole to shell-hole in the mucky mire of the Western front as
all hell broke loose overhead, came to sec that in some way
pain can not only sear and embitter a soul, but also purify
MARY CONVERTS HER MOCKER 3
it, so that in its denuded and de-materialized state, it will
reach out through a Cross to Him Who hangs upon it.
To such a soul, the Message of Fatima has a heartrending
appeal for it reveals that suffering and pain are tied up with
guilt, not necessarily in the same person, hut in the world.
As it takes the blood of a healthy person transfused into the
veins of an anemic to cure him of that condition, so it takes
the prayers of the healthy members of Christ's Mystical Body
to save the guilty of the world. Fatima merely reproclaimed
the injunction of St. Paul: "Bear ye one another's burdens."
The corrupted nature of humanity can be compared to a
sponge, in the sense that it is a mixture of being and nothing
ness. The more good a man does, the more he increases his
Godlikeness and being. The more evil he does, the more he
annihilates himself from God, which means he gets closer to
nothing.
Evil is like the holes in that sponge; it is a non-plenitude,
a void. If the "sponge" exists, it is hecause of the parts that
are still solid, for man never ceases to have heing and im
mortality.
Evil is not being; it is the corruption of being, a disorder,
an eccentricity; the privation of being. Sin is an action; suf
fering is its reaction. We create sin hy a free act within, hut
the resulting chaos, and crises, and wars strike us from the
outside.
To avert these external manifestations of the sins of the
world, Our Blessed Mother at Fatima asked that the good
souls graft intensified spirituality on others, as physicians
might graft skin on those who are burned.
Holiness is uncompromising with evil, and yet it bears
all things patiently. Combined with heroic efforts toward
purity, the good have an unlimited pity toward evil. God de
sires not the death of the sinner, Scripture tells, but that
the sinner be converted from the evil of his ways and live.
This is tbe clarion call of Mary at Fatima.