Chapter
IX: THE PROMISE GIVEN IN PARADISE OF THE REDEMPTION TO COME THE PASSING
DOWN OF THE PROMISE, AND EARLY PROPHECIES OF THE COMING OF THE MESSlAS.
1. Immediately after
the Fall of our first parents and even before their repentance and
recognition of the gravity of their crime, the infinite Goodness of God,
in a display of un-bounded Mercy, prepared the remedy for them in advance,
promising them future Redemption, to be brought about by the Woman and the
Son to be born of Her; thus casting a beam of hope into their souls which,
dejected and downcast in bitter despair, would not have been able to rise
from such misery without this profoundly instructive promise:
2. "I
will put enmities between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and Her Seed:
She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for Her heel"
(Gen. III, 15). This is the
primitive or proto-Gospel revealed by God to mankind, the first proclama-tion
of a Redemption to come albeit in words veiled in mystery. Even in this very first Promise the Redeemer and the
Corredemptrix appear side by side, thus expressing the perfect oneness and
unity which the Woman and her Son - Mary and Christ - would have in the
Work of Reparation and Redemption. The
` Seed ' of Mary is Christ together with His whole Mystical Body which is
the Church, for Mary is whole Mother of the whole Christ.
In the light of this Bible text, we affirm that when Christ at the
wedding Feast of Cana spoke to His Mother calling Her ` Woman ', and again
at Calvary from the Cross, He proclaimed that Mary His Mother was this
very Woman foretold in Genesis.
3. Adam and Eve well
understood that the Pair that had been announced to them were the Most
Holy Souls of Christ and Mary; the use of the definite article when God
said "The Woman", shows plainly that they knew which Woman He
was referring to.
4. Through Adam's sin
the devil gained a great victory over mankind, bringing it under his yoke,
though not for good; for thy head of this infernal serpent was to be
crushed by the Woman together with Her Seed - which is the whole Christ -
and fallen humanity would be redeemed.
Nevertheless, the infernal dragon would lie in wait for the Woman's
heel- which is the Church Militant on earth - in all of its members, by
means of deceit, temptation and seduction, and for this end making use of
the flesh and the world.
5. If Adam had not
allowed himself to be seduced by Eve, humanity would not have lost its
Original Justice whose transmis-sion depended by divine decree or Adam's
conduct. Here there is a
profound analogy in reverse between this first sinful pair and the second
redeemer Pair, Christ and Mary. Mary,
the second Eve, possesses an irresistible influence over Christ, the
second Adam, and it is this that makes Her Suppliant Omnipotence.
In the Salve Regina we name Mary "our
Life, our sweetness and our Hope", for She gives us that Life
which is Christ. Without
Christ however, who is Life by mature, Mary, who is Life by grace, could
not give Life to us.
6. The two pairs which
we meet in these decisive moments
of the first promise offer us profound and opposing contrasts that arouse
in us amazement and dread, and at the same time assured and certain hope.
The first Adam and the first Eve became sorry victims of Lucifer,
ruined by their sin, and responsible for the loss of divine life in man;
on the other hand the second Pair formed by the Souls of Christ and Mary
offer themselves as spiritual victims who one day would restore the grace
lost and reinstate divine sonship in the human race.
7. When He created the
Most Divine Soul of Christ and the Divine Soul of Mary, God gave them
parenthood over the whole visible and invisible Creation, making them the
Bridge between creatures and the Creator, and placing in their hands the
sceptre of all power. And God,
enraptured before the majesty and beauty of these two most beloved
creatures, held back the Arm of His aveng-ing Justice, which otherwise
would have destroyed Adam and Eve at the time of their sin, and in the
promise He makes to this sinful pair invites them to place all their faith
and hope in the Divine Pair of Souls.
8. We desire to state
and confirm the belief that our first parents Adam and Eve enjoyed their
earthly paradise for no more than part of the one and only Day of Creation;
and that the Fall and consequent Promise of Redemption occurred towards
night-fall of this Day when all things visible and invisible were created.
9. Mankind, though
disheartened by the loss of divine sonship, was guided, encouraged and
comforted by the Souls of Christ and Mary, who continued as spiritual
parents and did not abandon man - though tarnished by the greatness of his
sin, soiled by the uncleanness of his flesh and plunged into the mire of
the punishment he bore.
10. In the proto-Gospel
(Gen.III, 15), the Woman above all others appears in all her grandeur and
might; and in apocalyptic times it is She who will again appear in majesty
as a great wonder in the heavens, as we read in the Bible's very last book,
for it is She who opens and closes the long drama of Salvation.
11. The promise
revealed at the threshold of History was handed down from father to son as
guarantee of their hope in salvation to came, breath of life always close
by; and thus two thousand years flowed by till God began to choose and
make known the patriarchs from whose descendants the Messias would be born.
12. Owing to the Flood,
humanity was reduced to only a single family, from which the forefathers
of Christ had inevi-tably to spring.
Thus Noe is the first Patriarch to whom God openly promises the
Coming of the Redeemer, making a covenant with him and his descendants.
To Noe was entrusted the guardianship of the Mysterious Sacrament
of the Old Testament, the Triple Benediction, which he kept in the Ark
whilst they were sheltered within her, as the Book of Wisdom refers: "The
hope of the world fleeing to a vessel which was governed by Thy
hand, left to the world seed of generation" (Wisd.XVI, 6).
In this verse we see clearly how the seed from which the Virgin
Mary, Mother of the Messias, was to be born was enshrined within the Ark.
13. Now we must speak
of Noe's sanctification. Comparing
the Bible (Gen.VI, 13) with the revelations of Saint Catherine Emmerick
and others, we find complete agreement between the different texts.
Correctly interpreting these texts we assert the following: the
Divine Soul of Mary in Cloud-form and the Most Divine Soul of Christ in
human form within the Cloud bearing the Sacrament of the Triple
Benediction, appeared to Noe; and when Christ touched the Patriarch's
heart with the Most Sacred Mys-tery, Noe received Sanctifying Grace into
his soul. Then Christ
instructs Noe to build the Ark, for He desires to chastise man-kind by
destroying all. The Divine
Souls vanish taking with them the Triple Benediction. Once more giving the correct interpreta-tion to the
revelations already mentioned, we assert that shortly before Noe entered
the Ark, the Three Divine Persons appeared to him in human form enveloped
in the Cloud of the Divine Soul of Mary; and to Noe Christ delivered the
Sacrament of the Triple Benediction in the Chalice of Melchisedech.
The holy Patriarch then bore the Mysterious Sacrament in procession
into the Ark, where he enthroned it as the living Tabernacle of this
Shrine that harboured the Church.
14. By the special
blessing given to his firstborn Sem, the Patriarch Noe leaves record of
the course of the Promise; and ten generations later the great Patriarch
Abraham, a descendant of Sem, receives the formal promise that in one of
his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and this is
Christ (Gen. XXII, 18). From
Abraham the Promise passed to Isaac to whom God renews it; and from him to
Jacob by special providence. And
Jacob on his death-bed tells Judah that from his tribe would come the One
who was to be sent, and He would be the expectation of the nations (Gen.
IL, 10).
15. Finally the
Promise focuses, once and for all on the House of David of the Tribe of
Judah, so that ` Son of David' becomes a Messianic title.
This is the line of Promise that God makes known from Noe down. In the course of the centuries however, God little by little
revealed more features and details of the awaited Messias, some of which
we shall briefly mention:
16. An outstanding
prophecy in the Old Testament is made by Job, figure of Christ the Man of
Sorrows and who delivered himself up completely to the Will of God; he
expresses his hope in the Redeemer to come as follows: "For
I know that my Redeemer liveth;and in the last day I shall arise out earth"
(Job XIX, 25); thus clearly
showing his awareness of the pre-existence of the Redeemer in His Most
Divine Soul.
17. Impelled by the
powerful light of the Holy Ghost, this Holy Council declares that the
Patriarch Job was presanctified in his mother's womb in the ninth month
from his conception, the Holy Ghost dwelling in his soul from this moment
and filling him with other special gifts and graces.
Job's great holiness is clearly seen in the pages of his Book; the
Holy Patriarch kept the innocence of his soul his whole life long, free
from any kind of remorse for sin, and he practiced the most heroic virtues
in the midst of overwhelming trials.
Job however was tried not only in his possessions, family and flesh,
but also in his very soul by a long dark night of bitter interior
desolation, believing that his terrible sufferings were caused by some
secret fault hidden from his conscience, but which must truly be very
grave indeed that God should chastise him so. The mere thought of having per-haps offended God gives rise
in Job to such bitter sorrow that he breaks out in doleful laments, and
curses himself and the day he was born, for he earnestly desires never to
have lived rather than to have offended his God whom he loved so much.
In his grievous complaints however, Job always spoke correctly and
with-out any offensive expression, as the Lord Himself bears witness in
his regard at the end of the Book. His
dark night is the sure sign of the close and intimate union with God in
which the Holy Patriarch lived.
18. Our next Scripture
reference to the Messias comes from the lips of Moses who, shortly before
his gentle dormition and translation to the Planet of Mary, gave his
people this prophecy, which he in turn received from God Himself: "I
will raise them up a Prophet out of the midst of their brethren like to
thee: and I will put my words in His mouth and He shall speak all that I
shall command Him" (Deut. XVIII, 18).
19. Jesus referred to
this prophecy when in the Gospel he said: "For
if you did believe Moses, you would believe Me also: for he wrote of
Me" (Jn. V, 46). The
Holy Leader Moses is in his own person an eminent figure of Christ, for
besides being a great prophet he is at once Lawgiver, Healer and Liberator
of his people from the bondage in Egypt, symbol of the bondage of the
devil.
20. In the fourth Book
of Moses, to our surprise we find a prophecy of the future Redeemer on the
lips of one who is not of the Chosen People, and of very suspect virtue,
but who serves as instrument in God's plans.
He is the soothsayer Balaam, hired by Balac king of Moab, that he
curse the People of Israel then in their journey through the desert.
Told off however by his own donkey and an Angel along the road, by
order of God he was made to utter four predictions in verse on the Chosen
People and their glorious destiny; the fourth of these is outstanding and
announces the Coming of the Messias as follows: "I
shall see Him, but not now: I shall behold Him, but not near.
A STAR SHALL RISE out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from
Israel" (Num. XXIV, 17).
21. This prophecy was
known to the Three Wise Kings, and
when they saw the supernatural Star appear in the sky, enlightened from
Heaven above they recognized the fulfillment of Balaam's prophecy; moved
by grace they undertook the long journey to Bethlehem, there to adore the
new-born Saviour of the world.
22. In later chapters
we shall cover at greater length and in more detail further prophecies.
