The Penance God Wants

Many Apostolic Catholics in the tradosophere are calling for increased prayer and penance in light of all the events of Church and State. I agree we need to increase both. Recently I have been asked: What is the penance we are to do? If we look at the past saints we see fasting, but we also see more intense tools of mortification like the hair-shirt and even the spiked-cilice. Of course, fasting is the most classic and healthiest of all physical mortifications, and we probably all need a lot more fasting in our life.

Last summer, on a drive back from Moab to Denver, I was listening to the Our Lady of Revelation series by Fr. Philip Wolfe FSSP. This is a Vatican-approved apparition where the Mother of God appeared to Bruno Cornacchiola (born 1913) who at one point had planned on killing Pope Pius XII.

Knife with which Bruno planned on killing Pope Pius XII.

Following his conversion, Mary had many things to say about the future of the Church. Many things surprised me on this podcast called the Virgin of Revelation, but the most surprising was a seemingly-boring line that the Immaculate Virgin Mary said directly to Bruno:

“It is love that wins everything. Do penance on every occasion that is presented to you. It is a request of love. The penance He asks of you is to love your neighbor and to give a good example through your life.”

Now, if you have ever ready my blog, you know that I am always preaching against the inversion of the First and Second Great Commandment. Modernism always puts love of neighbor ahead of love of God. So, I preach against this error all the time. That is why I was hesitant to write a whole blog post on the above paragraph that seems to put kindness ahead of, say, fasting, hair-shirts and the cilice. While not dissuading you from physical mortification (if done with the aid of your spiritual director) I have to yield to the Mother of God on this, that she directly said that the penance God would want most from us is: “to love your neighbor and to give a good example through your life.”

I realize this is a rather milquetoast peance as we read of saints who threw themselves in hot ovens and cold rivers. Why didn’t Mary suggest this for darker times than ever? I truly do not know God’s truth on this. But I have a guess: In a worldwide lockdown of mass-delusional psychosis, we are more irritable and defensive than any time in Christian history. It’s not just because we’re weaker than our forefathers or the early Christians (though that is true, too.) It is because we are facing a divine-and conquer government that wants us to hate our neighbor. Could this be the reason why the 20th century Virgin of Revelation prepared us uniquely for a 21st century of untold psychological warfare by a penance to simply love one another?

Perhaps. Or, perhaps, it has always been the difficult goal to simply love one’s neighbor. A few weeks ago we had the feast of St. John the Apostle. In the ancient Divine Office, we read this:

The Blessed Evangelist John lived at Ephesus down to an extreme old age, and, at length, when he was with difficulty carried to the Church, and was not able to exhort the congregation at length, he was used simply to say at each meeting, “My little children, love one another.” At last the disciples and brethren were weary with hearing these words continually, and asked him, “Master, wherefore ever sayest thou this only?” Whereto he replied to them, worthy of John, “It is the commandment of the Lord, and if this only be done, it is enough.—6th reading of Matins, old Divine Office on the Feast of St. John the Apostle

Notice that all the old Apostle (who rested on the chest of Jesus) only seemed to say one thing over and over at the end of his life: “Love one another.” The early Christians, clearly annoyed at such repetition from the last living Apostle, obviously wanted more words of wisdom that something seemingly so shallow. Again, St. John the Theologian insisted that “if this only be done, it is enough.” (si solum fiat, súfficit.)

Of course, the Apostle of Love made clear in his writing that this was never detached from the First Great Commandment, for he wrote in his first letter: “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as He has commanded us.”—1 John 3:23. Notice there are two simple commandments here that will bring us to union with God:
1) Believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ.
2) Love one Another.

That’s it. These are the two keys to sanctity.

So, while I love reading of saints who beat up their bodies, and while I blog til I’m blue in the face that Divine Revelation can not change, I also realize that we are the only Catholics ever in history living under a 7-continent psychological warfare replete with constant gaslighting that turns us against each other. As we live under ruthless despots of both Church and State trying to divide us by conquering us into two categories (Novus Ordo and TLM…vaxxed and unvaxxed) I tend to believe that Our Lady of Revelation (again, a 20th century Vatican-approved apparition) has given us post-modern men the most perfect penance to overcome hatred of neighbor in simple terms: