by Alain Kerizo
To close this topic, let us say a few words about the reasons for their apparent and forbidding obscurity. Prophecies and oracles are, in fact, ordinarily incomprehensible whatever their language or style. First of all, they are given for a time of which their contemporaries have no idea. Would we have been able to imagine the television in the 12th century? The representation of the television being impossible, the words to describe it would have been very obscure, not corresponding to any concrete object familiar to the minds of men living at the time. Moreover, as regards prophecy, God would annul our liberty were He to reveal to us too distinctly the future. Why should we change our lives if we cannot change our destiny! To use the current language, such an attitude on God’s part would be demoralizing. But God, who created man free, totally respects man’s liberty. St. Augustine said that God, who made us without our will, cannot save us without our participation. This is so true that all the end times messages of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the last 150 years are always conditional: “If you do not convert…if you do not amend your life….” She has never affirmed that no matter what we do, there would be wars.
As for oracles, their obscurity results not only from the fact that Satan is the Ape of God, or that
enigma is a source of fascination and seduction and foments in men the desire for power; it also results from the fact that he is not the master of free wills, and thus cannot exactly predict the future. Thus obscurity, double and triple meanings, constitute opportune screens. He cannot fail or be taken in a lie. It is simply a precaution on Lucifer’s part. Besides, with the passage of time, it is clear that prophecy can never be perfectly understood until it has come to pass.
We conclude by answering a question that is surely in the reader’s mind. How can we men ever discern the true from the false, the miracle from prodigy, for want of knowing the secret of hearts and the laws of matter? The answer is to be found in traditional catechisms. We can discern the true from the false, the miracle from prodigy, by the gift of the discernment of spirits, which we receive in Confirmation. But the soul must be open to the reception of this gift.
What is needed is a faith submissive to the teaching of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church; a faith fortified by the reception of the sacraments and by perseverance in prayer and penance. But systematic doubt, “searching,” as they say today, discussion of revealed truths accompanied by a worldly and dissipated life lead sooner or later to supernatural blindness and render the soul extremely vulnerable to the deceits of the devil. This is what the Blessed Virgin has reminded us in her messages at La Salette, Lourdes, and Fatima, to name just the best known, and, moreover, incontestably recognized by the Catholic Church. That is the only possible protection against the devil. There is no other.
