your Excellency my dear brothers and sisters God Providence assure us that nothing happens by chance we rightly open these commencment exercises with the Holy Mass this year on May 13 just over 100 years ago in 1917 on this very day God sent his Blessed Mother to Fatima with the warning of impeding crisis If the message that she carried were not followed at the heart of this message was the call to penance and prayer the were grave difficulties in this year 1917 Europeans were dealing with material distress an un parment antic clericalism and Spectre of foreign
enemies especially World War I and the Russian Revolution caused great fear throughout the world so start to return to their home with stories of Horrors that the Communist Russian regime was the inflicted has much changed since 1917 I would contend that the situation is much Graver not only in terms of barbaric War again in the part of Europe and evolving a Russia the liquidation of God from our lives is even more tragic more and more countries are detecting and themselves from their roots from their Christian Roots in what St John Pauli called a silent apostasy
not only as God being abolished but the reality of evil is being buried evil is good good is evil love becomes the satisfaction of several Primal sexual instincts and the truth are all relative since the individual is only point of reference we get by without any binding rules everyone can interpret the church's message in his own way adapting it to his own idea to create mare Paradise the disparity of disparity is especially significant with respect to moral question when God is AB is abandoned and the church and the teachings are seen as irrelevant man no
longer knows who he is he loses his reason and become blind he rejects the laws of his nature and looks to recreate himself nowhere is this ethical fatalism seen more tragically than in gender ideology and the disg and the disr of human life whether abortion in the womb of a mother or eutanasia sweetened as called a suicide what follows is piling and fed Bri vience if we pass laws to strike an innocent child in the womb or to cut short the existence of a defendless Elder person what is there to stop man from taking the
life of someone considered to be an enemy or threat even the piles of corpuses in the concentration camps on the per perverted Feast of destruction of two world where have taught us nothing such developments should shake us and surprise us as we heard in today's first reading from The Book of Genesis after Adam and Eve has sinned God said to the I will put inity between you and the woman he will strike you ahead and you will strike this healed here in the very first pages of sacred scripture we find the announcement of an ending
battle between Satan and human beings the role of the Blessed Mother in this ongoing battle is pivotal as St John Paul II highlighted in his ascal letter Redemptorist matter the mother of the Redeemer I quote Mary present in the Church of the mother of the Redeemer takes part as a mother in that Monumental struggle indeed we find the very last book of the Bible also speaking of of a battle a woman closed with the sun on the moon under her feet and on her her head a crown of 12 stars as she prepares to give
birth to son to son whom Satan tries unsucessfully to devor the battle is ferocious but will won Mar's Immaculate Heart triumphs in this perduring Monumental struggle we too need to take Mary as our mother there is no one more efficacious or closer to Jesus than her his mother she who was bornn without the inheritant flows of sin today's Gospel presents one of the final acts of Jesus before his death from the cross Jesus looks at his disciple at his beloved disciples standing next to his mother and says behold your mother the same verse continues from
that hour the disciple took her into her own home we too are invited to take Mary into our own home or even better into our own Affairs into every aspect of our lives like Mary and with her help our task not least through our association with the colleage that bear the name of Christendom is to generate and regenerat Fallen men to turn back to God make no mistake this college and all of us here are engaged in a battle on behalf of of mankind at Fatima Mary shows us the weapons prayer Pray and do penis
the reason is clear prayer turns us away from a self-centered and unbridled individualism and back to God that is why prayer ultimately consists of remaining in silence for a long time we wait for him to come to us in the smallest of Whispers to recreate Us in the immensity of God in the Silence of prayer we obtain peace peace in the world and peace in our in our souls especially by praying the rosary as a weapon for these battles both physical words and internal struggles pness involves our body in the search of God in Silence
of prayer we deny this body not only foods but also certain pleasures and basic bi biological needs out of love of God for God to nurture an interior disposition Mother Teresa tells us God could do nothing for someone already full you have to be completely empty to let him in to do what he Wills that is why for the beginning of Christian tradition Chasity virginity consecrate cacy and fasting became indispensable expression of the privacy of God and of the faith in him dear brothers and sisters let let us never forget that the peate mass was
celebrated on the May 13 the memorial of Our Lady of Fatima let's allow the final command of Jesus to us his Parting Gift To Us his last words to sing deeply into our hearts and bring us great joy behold your mother [Music]
