Heavenly Robbery
May 12, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? Last Sunday, 2nd Sunday of May, we celebrated Mother’s Day. I prayed I’d be able to make an ecard to greet all of you. Each and every woman is a mother and has the heart of one, married or single, Religious, consecrated, celibate, lay.
Today we are celebrating the feast day of Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, an exemplary pastor in the service of the Church and a most faithful son and successor of Saint Josemaria, Founder of Opus Dei.
O God, merciful Father,
you granted your bishop Blessed Alvaro, the grace of being, with our Lady's
help, an exemplary pastor in the service of the Church and a most faithful son
and successor of Saint Josemaría, the Founder of Opus Dei. Grant that I
also may respond faithfully to the demands of the Christian vocation, turning
all the circumstances and events of my life into opportunities to love you and
to serve the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Deign to grant the canonization of
Blessed Alvaro, and through his intercession grant me the favour I request… (here
make your petition). Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be to the Father.
With
ecclesiastical approval
Tomorrow the Church will be celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima. Let us ask her to intercede for each one of us, sinners, that each one of us may be converted back into the family of God. Let us pray unceasingly to her for peace in the hearts and minds of all men all around the world. Tell her to show to each one of us that she is our mother and that she will always bring each one of us to her Son, Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.
13 May
Our Lady of Fatima
Between May 13 and October 13, 1917,
three Portuguese children (Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos)
received apparitions of Our Lady at Cova da Iria, near Fatima, a city 110 miles
north of Lisbon. Mary asked the children to pray the rosary for world peace,
for the end of World War I, for sinners and for the conversion of Russia. The
third visionary, Lucia dos Santos, became a Carmelite nun and died in 2005 at
the age of 97.
Mary gave the children three secrets. Since Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta the following year, Lucia revealed the first secret in 1927, concerning devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The second secret was a vision of hell.
Pope John Paul II directed the Holy See's Secretary of State to reveal the third secret in 2000; it spoke of a "bishop in white" who was shot by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows into him. Many people linked this to the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981.
The feast of Our Lady of Fatima was approved by the local bishop in 1930; it was added to the Church's worldwide calendar in 2002.
Comment:
The message of Fatima is simple: Pray. Unfortunately, some people - not Sister Lucia - have distorted these revelations, making them into an apocalyptic event for which they are now the only reliable interpreters. They have, for example, claimed that Mary's request that the world be consecrated to her has been ignored. Sister Lucia agreed that Pope John Paul II's public consecration in St. Peter's Square on March 25, 1984, fulfilled Mary's request. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prepared a June 26, 2000, document explaining the “third secret”.
Mary is perfectly honored when people generously imitate her response “Let it be done to me as you say” (Luke 1:38). Mary can never be seen as a rival to Jesus or to the Church's teaching authority, as exercised by the college of bishops united with the bishop of Rome.
Quote:
“Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs which go to the heart of human events and which, to the surprise of believers and non-believers alike, play their part in the unfolding of history. These manifestations can never contradict the content of faith and must, therefore, have their focus in the core of Christ's proclamation: the Father's love which leads men and women to conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon oneself to him with filial devotion. This too is the message of Fatima which, with its urgent call to conversion and penance, draws us to the heart of the Gospel” (The Message of Fatima, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 26, 2000).
Following now let us continue with the second word of Jesus on the Cross (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
Second Word
This Day Thou Shalt Be with Me in Paradise
There is a legend to the effect that when, to escape the wrath of Herod, St. Joseph, and the Blessed Virgin were fleeing into Egypt with the Divine Child, they stopped at a desert inn. The Blessed Mother asked the lady of the inn for water in which to bathe the Babe. The lady then asked if she might not bathe her own child, who was suffering from leprosy, in the same waters in which the Divine Child had been immersed. Immediately upon touching those waters baptized with the Divine Presence, the child became whole. Her child advanced in age and grew to be a thief. He is Dismas, now hanging on the Cross at the right hand of Christ!
Whether the memory of the story his mother told him now came back to the thief and made him look kindly on Christ, we know not. It might have been that his first meeting with the Savior was on the day when his heart was filled with compunction on hearing the story of a certain man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers. Perhaps, too, his first intimation that he was suffering with the Redeemer came to him as he turned his tortured head and read an inscription that bore His name, “Jesus”; His city, “Nazareth”; His crime, “King of the Jews.” At any rate, enough dry fuel of the right kind gathers on the altar of his soul, and now a spark from the central Cross falls upon it, creating in it a glorious illumination of faith. He sees a Cross and adores a Throne; he sees a Condemned Man, and invokes a King: “Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
Our Blessed Lord was owned at last! Amidst the clamor of the raving crowd and the dismal universal hiss of sin, in all that delirium of man’s revolt against God, no voice was lifted in praise and recognition except the voice of a man condemned. It was a cry of faith in Him whom everyone else had forsaken, and it was only the testimony of a thief. If the son of the widow of Nain, who had been raised from the dead, had cried out a word of faith in the kingdom of One who was seemingly losing His kingdom; if Peter, who on the Mount of Transfiguration had seen His face shine like the sun and His garments whiten like snow, had acknowledged Him; if the blind man of Jericho whose eyes were opened to the light of God’s sunshine had been opened anew to proclaim His divinity, we would not have been surprised. Why, if any of these had cried out, perhaps the timid disciples and friends would have rallied, perhaps the scribes and the Pharisees would have believed! But at that moment when death was upon Him, when defeat stared Him in the face, the only one outside the small group at the foot of the Cross to acknowledge Him as Lord of a kingdom, as the Captain of souls, was a thief at the right hand of Christ.
At the very moment when the testimony of a thief was given, Our Blessed Lord was winning a greater victory than any life can win and was exerting a greater energy than that which harnesses waterfalls; He was losing His life and saving a soul. And on that day when Herod and his whole court could not make Him speak, nor all the power of Jerusalem make Him step down from the Cross, nor the unjust accusations of a courtroom force Him to break silence, nor a mob crying, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save” bring from His burning lips a retort, He turns to a quivering life beside Him, speaks, and saves a thief: “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.” No one before was ever the object of such a promise, not even Moses or John, not even Magdalen nor Mary!
It was the thief’s last prayer, perhaps also his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When our spirits stand with John on Patmos, we can see the white-stoled army in heaven riding after the conquering Christ; when we stand with Luke on Calvary, we see the one who rode first in that procession. Christ, who was poor, died rich. His hands were nailed to a Cross, and yet He unlocked the keys of paradise and won a soul. His escort into heaven was a thief. May we not say that the thief died a thief, for he stole paradise?
Oh, what greater assurance is there in all the world of the mercy of God? Lost sheep, prodigal sons, broken Magdalens, penitent Peters, forgiven thieves! Such is the rosary of divine forgiveness.
God is more eager to save us than we are to save ourselves. There is a story told to the effect that one day Our Blessed Lord appeared to St. Jerome, saying to him, “Jerome, what will you give me?” Jerome answered, “I will give you my writings,” to which Our Lord replied that it was not enough. “Then,” said Jerome, “what shall I give you? My life of penance and mortification?” But the answer was, “Even that is not enough!” “What have I left to give Thee?” cried Jerome. Our Blessed Lord answered, “Jerome, you can give me your sins.”
Dear Jesus! Your kindness to the penitent thief recalls the prophetic words of the Old Testament: “If your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow: and if they be as red as crimson, they shall be white as wool.” In Your words of forgiveness to the penitent thief, I understand now the meaning of your words: “I have not come to call the just, but sinners. . . . They that are in health need not a physician, but they that are ill.” “There shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance.” I see now why Peter was not made Thy first vicar on earth until after he had fallen three times, in order that the Church of which he was the head might forever understand forgiveness and pardon. Jesus, I begin to see that if I had never sinned, I never could call You “Savior.” The thief is not the only sinner. Here am I! But Thou art the only Savior.
— The Seven Last Words
Indeed! Thou art the only Savior, Lord Jesus Christ! We are all sinners. We need to be converted every minute of the day. Do not consider what we truly deserve but grant us your mercy and forgiveness.
Let us talk to the Lord about the above ideas in the quiet moments
of our conversation with Him. Let us
listen intently and heed whatever he may tell us as He always does whenever we
listen and respond.
Would you allow me to present to you my little friend by my window every morning and every now and then? I took a shot of him yesterday and then I was inspired to take a video of his greetings and our exchanges. Just couldn’t get over my young moments.
There
it is, Tweet Tweet, my morning guest. He
waits for me to greet soon as I return to the room after the Mass. I cannot send you the video; my laptop says
it is a heavy file. Sorry about that.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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