Mary Converts Her Mocker PDF
Preview Mary Converts Her Mocker
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.
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