The Triumph
Posts: 3
Joined: Oct 2005
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November 02, 2005 9:49 PM
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Greetings in Christ.I am sending you a article of a nun who lived in Ohio. She died in 2000.Currently the archbishop of St.Louis is investigating.Her spirtual advisor was Archbishop Leibold for 32 years until his death in 1972.In the archives there are extensives letters between sister and Leibold as he led her on her spiritual path.Also included in those letters are approvals from Rome and the Holy Father concerning the imprimatur and 200 day indulgences attached to her works and prayers. He also had a ivory statuette of Our Lady of America made and gave to Msgr.Boffa to hand deliver to Luigi Riamondi,Apostolic delegate,WashingtonD.C.agift to the Universal Church and His Holiness.Leibolds personal secretary is still alive and will tell anyone that Leibold was about to give full approbation before his death.After John Paul II received letter about Sister Neuzil in 1997 he expressed his wishes to visit America one more time to dedicate a national shrine to Our Lady honoring her purity, in the publication, Inside The Vatican.
There is abundant evidence that Sister Mildred Mary Neuzil deserves to be included among the exemplars Not only did Sister Millie devote her life to living and proclaiming the fullness of intimate union with Jesus; she also received a mandate from Our Lady to call the youth of the United States to lead their nation and the world to new heights of holiness.
Sister Millie dedicated her life to God as a teenager. At the age of 13, she entered a convent and took her solemn vows some years later in 1933.[8] In 1938, she began to have mystical experiences, which were brought to the attention of her spiritual director, Fr. Paul Leibold, later Archbishop Leibold of Cincinnati, who acted as her spiritual director for 32 years, from 1940 until his death in 1972. During this period, she received the Mystical Marriage and was designated as the �Little White Dove��an expression full of meaning to anyone familiar with the spirituality of Blessed Dina Belanger.
In her spiritual diary, Sister Mildred recorded the visits that she received from Jesus, Our Lady, St. Joseph, and various angels and saints. Several themes predominated in their communications:
1) The crisis of faith and the impending deterioration of religious, social, and family life;
2) The importance of the interior imitation of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for the renewal of the Church and society;
3) the advent of a new era of intimacy between God and mankind, in which the original harmony between them would be restored.
In January 1957 Our Lady spoke of �the darkest hour�:
The hour grows late. My Son�s patience will not last forever. Help me hold back His anger, which is about to descend on sinful and ungrateful men. Suffering and anguish, such as never before experienced, is about to overtake mankind. It is the darkest hour. But if men will come to me, my Immaculate Heart will make it bright again with the mercy which my Son will rain down through my hands. Help me save those who will not save themselves. Help me bring once again the sunshine of God�s peace upon the world. [10]
Long before sex scandals involving priests and religious were exposed in the media, Jesus told Sister Millie about them:
Many unnatural acts are being committed in the name of love. This evil is being disguised and tolerated as an intrinsic right like any other. Even some of My priests and consecrated virgins are being caught up into this web of evil, not realizing its terrible consequences. [11]
From the beginning, the Blessed Mother showed Sister Millie that only the interior renewal of the Church could overcome the evil of this �darkest hour.� She asked her to tell her spiritual director of
The longings of my Immaculate heart to establish the reign of my Divine Son in the hearts of men and thus save them from the scourge of heaven both now and hereafter (emphasis added).[12]
This �reign of Jesus in hearts� was no mere avoidance of mortal sin but a total transformation of hearts into the likeness of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On February 3, 1956, Our Lady appeared to Sister Millie and told her:
To make your hearts grow more and more like to the Heart of the Son, you must go to the Mother, whose heart is most like His. From this Pure and Immaculate Heart you will learn all that will make you more pleasing to the Divine Heart of the Son of God. The Holy Trinity looks down with infinite delight upon such souls and makes them Its heaven on earth. [13]
The ideal of living the life of heaven on earth in the spiritual diary of Sister Millie sounded a theme that recurs continually in the writings of the other exemplars of the �new and divine holiness.� Indeed, it was no ordinary sanctity, but the very sanctity of Jesus and Mary to which Our Lady called her. She explained:
I am the Mother of the sacred humanity, and it is my special work as co-redemptrix of the human race to help souls reach the sanctity of the Father in eternal union by showing them how to put on Christ, to imbibe his Spirit, and thus become one with Him.
With these words, the Blessed Mother summarized the principles of the interior life of Jesus, as lived and explained in the writings of the exemplars. Like them, Sister Millie learned to focus on the first principle of the interior life of Jesus�the Will of his eternal Father. �The Will of the Father must be dearer to you than all else,� the Blessed Mother told her. Like them, she abandoned herself to the Will of the Father, through the reign of the Holy Spirit. And, like them, she allowed the Holy Spirit and Our Lady to unite her to Jesus in each moment so that He thought in her thinking, spoke in her speaking, and acted in all of her deeds. Our Lady described this state as the fullness of the Divine Indwelling, which she lived
Perfectly, always conscious of His presence, never forgetting that all her greatness came from within, from Him who dwelt there, working, loving, and doing good through her. [14]
In her writings Sister Millie anticipated a radical transformation of the world through the Divine Indwelling in souls. St. Michael the Archangel told her that he came to �announce the coming of the kingdom, the kingdom of peace . . . that the King may establish his Kingdom within you�[15] St. Louis De Montfort had written of days to come when the Holy Spirit and Our Lady would raise up great saints who would be compared to most other saints �like the cedars of Lebanon compared to little bushes.� The Servant of God Marthe Robin had identified modern times with the times of the cedars of Lebanon. Similarly, in Sister Millie�s Diary, the Blessed Mother spoke of miracles of the soul, spiritual miracles greater in the spiritual order than the physical miracles of Lourdes and Fatima.
I am pleased, my child, with the love and honor my children in America give to me, especially through my glorious and unique privilege of the Immaculate Conception. I promise to reward their love by working through the power of my Son�s Heart and my Immaculate Heart miracles of grace among them. I do not promise miracles of the body but of the soul. [16]
Appearing as Our Lady of Lourdes, the Blessed Virgin promised that �greater miracles than those granted at Lourdes and Fatima would be granted here in America, the United States in particular, if we would do as she desires.�[17] The spiritual miracles Our Lady predicted to Sister Millie promised a return to the original holiness of man before the Fall�the holiness that reigned in the Holy House of Nazareth. There, she said:
The Holy Trinity dwelt with us in a manner far surpassing anything that can ever be imagined. For ours was the earthly paradise where once again God walked among men. [18]
According to the Blessed Mother, nothing less than a restoration of paradise would be granted to those who abandoned themselves completely to the Holy Trinity.
As in our little home no sin was to be found, so it is the wish of the Heart of my Son and my Immaculate Heart that sin should, as far as possible, be unheard of in the homes of our children.
The Divine Trinity will dwell in your midst only if you are faithful in practicing the virtues of our life at Nazareth. Then, you also, my children, you also will become another paradise. God will then walk among you and you will have peace (emphasis added). [19]
Through her prayers and sacrifices for the restoration of God�s original holiness, Sister Millie echoed the prayer of Blessed Dina Belanger of Canada who offered her thoughts, words, and actions, together with Jesus, for �the restoration of the perfect harmony of all beings with your holy Will.�[20] Similarly, her words recall the words of Venerable Conchita to whom Jesus spoke of his longing for �holy laborers,� who would �restore all and . . . achieve the union of hearts in the unity of the Trinity.� [21]
The United States of America and the Era of Peace
The lives of St. Faustina and Sister Millie parallel each other in many ways. Both of them were shown the special place of their respective nations in the plans of Divine Providence. Jesus told St. Faustina that from Poland would come �the spark that will prepare the world for my final coming��a statement that many readers have interpreted as a reference to Pope John Paul II. In Sister Millie�s spiritual diary, the Blessed Mother identifies the United States as a nation with a unique God-given destiny to lead the world to God. She explained:
It is the United States that is to lead the world to peace, the peace of Christ, the peace that He brought with Him from heaven in His birth as man in the little town of Bethlehem. The Savior did not come to enter this world in a big city but a small town, again, a little one among many. Dear child, unless the United States accepts and carries out faithfully the mandate given to it by heaven to lead the world to peace, there will come upon it and all nations a great havoc of war and incredible suffering. If, however, the United States is faithful to the mandate from heaven and yet fails in the pursuit of peace because the rest of the world will not accept or cooperate then the United States will not be burdened with the punishment about to fall (emphasis added). [22]
Sister Millie feared that the United States would not be able to bear the burden of so great a responsibility, but
Our Lady assured me that Michael and the whole army of blessed spirits will give their assistance at all times. [23]
Through her encounters with Jesus, the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, Sister Millie learned that the renewal of the nation depended upon the sanctification of individual Catholics, particularly the youth, and, through them, of Christian families. She wrote:
Our Lady made known to me that she is particularly interested in the youth of our nation. It is they who are to be the leaders of this movement of renewal on the face of the earth. Their ranks will be swelled by the youths of other nations whom Our Lady also calls to help in the accomplishment of this great renewal.
But the youth must be prepared, and this must be done by instilling into them, not only the knowledge of the Divine Indwelling, but a serious study of it, a living It in such a way that the Divine Presence becomes, as it were, an intimate and necessary part of their life and daily living. From this will flow a great love, a conflagration that will envelop the world in the flames of Divine Charity. This is what Our Lady is working for, because this is the great desire of her Divine Son, and it is to the youth of America that she is holding out this challenge. [24]
St. Joseph and the Holy Family
In the lives and writings of Sister Millie and the other exemplars, the interior imitation of Jesus and Mary always reflects the Trinitarian nature of God. Like the Blessed Mother, they abandoned themselves to the Will of the Father, through the Holy Spirit, and allowed Him to unite them to Jesus in every moment�thus, realizing in themselves the fullness of the Divine Indwelling. In a similar way, Sister Millie learned to portray the family as a reflection of the Divine Trinity�with the father as the king, the mother as the queen, and the children as princes and princesses of the little domestic kingdom of God.
After Jesus and the Blessed Mother, Sister Millie�s greatest teacher concerning the holiness of family life was St. Joseph. He appeared to her many times, and identified himself as the �Protector of the Church and the home, as I was the protector of Christ and His Mother while I lived upon earth.� As if anticipating the crisis of fatherhood that had yet to manifest itself openly in 1958, he told her:
The privilege of being chosen by God to be the Virgin-Father of His Son was mine alone, and no honor, excluding that bestowed upon my Holy Spouse, was ever, or will ever, be as sublime or as high as this.
The Holy Trinity desires thus to honor me that in my unique fatherhood all fatherhood might be blessed.
Dear child, I was king in the little home of Nazareth, for I sheltered within it the Prince of Peace and Queen of Heaven. To me they looked for protection and sustenance, and I did not fail them.
I received from them the deepest love and reverence, for in me they saw Him Whose place I took over them.
So the head of the family must be loved, obeyed, and respected, and in return be a true father and protector to those under his care. [26]
In addition to her own personal formation in the interior imitation of Jesus, St. Faustina was given an image (the image of Divine Mercy), a feast day (the Feast of Divine Mercy), and a prayer (the Chaplet of Divine Mercy) through which to accomplish her mission of Mercy. After tremendous trials and tribulations, the Image and the Chaplet have been spread throughout the world and Pope John Paul II has made the Feast of Divine Mercy a universal feast. Although Our Lady in her apparitions to Sister Millie emphasized the importance of the interior life, she also offered certain concrete steps, which, if taken, would obtain the grace of interior conversion for the nation�in her case, these involved a medal, a statue, and a prayer. Sister Millie wrote:
A medal which Our Lady asked to be made is to be their shield against evil, the picture or statue of Our Lady, the protection of the home, the statue at the Shrine in Washington, D.C., a special safeguard for our country. [27]
With regard to the medal that Our Lady requested to be made, Sister Millie wrote:
I was told that as long as it bore the form of a shield, the medal itself could be of any shape desired. Around the image of Our Lady as she appeared September 26, 1956, these words are to be engraved: �By thy Holy and Immaculate Conception, O Mary, deliver us from evil.� Those who wear the medal with great faith and fervent devotion to Our Lady will receive the grace of intense purity of heart and the particular love of the Holy Virgin and her Divine Son. Sinners will receive the grace of repentance and the spiritual strength to live as true children of Mary. As in life, so in death, this blessed medal will be as a shield to protect them against the evil spirits, and St. Michael himself will be at their side to allay their fears at the final hour. [28]
On May 1, 1961, Sister Millie�s spiritual director, auxiliary bishop of Cincinnati Paul Leibold, gave his imprimatur to the medal�s design. One side bore the image of the Blessed Mother as she had appeared under the title Our Lady of America surrounded by the inscription, �By your Holy and Immaculate Conception, O Mary, deliver us from evil.� The reverse side displayed the coat of arms of the Christian family. This included a representation of the Divine Indwelling. On January 25, 1963, Bishop Leibold gave his imprimatur to the prayer �To the Immaculate Conception, Patroness of the United States,� a prayer which had been given to Sister Millie by the Blessed Mother seven years before. With the approval of the medal and the prayer by Bishop Leibold, one concrete step remained to be taken.
First, Our Lady asked Sister Millie to draw a picture of her as she had appeared under the title �Our Lady of America.�
She also requested a statue made according to this likeness and placed, after being solemnly carried in procession, in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. She wishes to be honored there in a special way as Our Lady of America, the Immaculate Virgin. . . The statue at the Shrine in Washington, D.C. [will be] a special safeguard for our country. [29]
Although he became Archbishop of Cincinnati before his death in 1972, Archbishop Leibold did not succeed in accomplishing Our Lady�s request regarding the statue before he died. However, he had a strong premonition that �someone� would arise later who would champion the cause�and he promised before his death to help complete the work from heaven. In the years since the archbishop�s death, the need for �a special safeguard for our country� has become more and more obvious. But to date Our Lady�s request has not been heeded.
The Power of Obedience to Divine Commands
In the history of the Church, there have been many examples of saints who have saved their nations through their obedience to prophetic commands. Heaven told St. Joan of Arc that France would be saved if the Dauphin were crowned at the cathedral in Rheims. Against seemingly impossible odds, she succeeded in seeing him crowned and France set free. In the early twentieth century, Our Lady told the children of Fatima, Portugal, to ask the pope to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They not only obeyed her request but inspired the hierarchy of Portugal to make their own, national consecration to the Immaculate Heart. Subsequently, Portugal alone�of all the countries in her region of Europe�escaped communist revolution and involvement in the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. Two years after the consecration, a Portuguese cardinal wrote:
A special blessing of God has descended upon the land of Portugal . . . especially if we review the two years which have gone since our vow, one cannot fail to recognize that the invisible hand of God has protected Portugal, sparing it the scourge of war and the leprosy of atheistic communism.[30]
Prior to the recognition of Sister Millie�s prophetic message by Bishop Leibold, there does not appear to have been a single example in the history of the United States of a similar approval by an American bishop. This in itself would seem to justify taking the request of the Mother of God seriously. But there are other compelling reasons to do so: First, there is the accuracy of the Blessed Mother�s analysis of the impending crisis of faith and family life, including her awareness of sexual deviations of some clergy and religious two decades before these evils became generally known. Second, there is the extraordinary fact that the national shrine of the United States still contains no statue of Our Lady under a title particular to our nation! Finally, one notes the striking concordance between the mystical life and writings of Sister Millie and the lives and writings of many modern saints, blesseds, venerables and servants of God who have been held up for emulation by the present pope.
Naaman the Syrian
The history of the message of Our Lady of America and its reception recalls the Biblical account of the Prophet Elisha and the Syrian general, the leper Naaman (cf. 2 Kings, Chapter 5). In Bible times, no disease inspired more horror than leprosy, a disease which often destroyed feeling in the victims� limbs, followed by the painful disintegration of the body and complete isolation from human society. According to the Book of Kings, Naaman the Syrian approached Elisha the prophet and asked him to ask the Lord to heal his leprosy. When Elisha told Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan River, Naaman reacted with anger. The solution seemed absurdly simple�and he refused to obey. Only when Naaman�s servant pointed out his willingness to do something arduous to procure a healing did Naaman recognize the illogic of his position. Reluctantly, he obeyed the prophet and received a total and instantaneous cure of his leprosy.
In the United States today, one might say that Catholics and non-Catholics alike suffer from a kind of spiritual leprosy. In Matthew�s Gospel, Jesus spoke of a time when �wickedness being multiplied, the hearts of most men will grow cold� (Matthew 24:12). With the multiplication of sacrilege, blasphemy, abortion, pornography, pedophilia, homosexuality, contraception, and divorce�all but a tiny number of souls have become desensitized, their consciences deadened, their compassion all but dried up. Like Naaman, souls seek a cure for their spiritual leprosy, convinced, like him, that any viable solution must be complicated in the extreme.
But God��who does nothing without telling his servants the prophets��has promised a cure for our spiritual leprosy�if we will obey the simple requests He has made through his prophet Sister Millie, approved by his representative, Archbishop Leibold. Is it possible that by placing our hope in the complicated remedies proposed by blue ribbon committees we have ignored�like Naaman�this simple divine remedy? And have we anything more to lose by obeying the Mother of God than Naaman did by washing seven times in the Jordan River?
Again and again, Jesus assured Sister Millie that obedience to Our Lady�s requests would obtain the sure grace of divine protection for the nation. One day the Guardian Angel of the United States told Sister Millie:
If the people of this land carry out faithfully the instructions and pleadings of the Lord Jesus and the Blessed Mother then they will be following me to the hour of peace. With this sword of the divine white flame of Love and the lightning bolts of His infinite Justice God will strike down his enemies and heal the repentant sinner. The Nation and all who follow in the pursuit of peace will know the protection of God and the destruction of those who fight and seek to destroy them through the evil powers of the infernal spirits of darkness and hate (emphasis added). [31]
Inevitably, the objection will be raised that it will be �impossible� to persuade more than a small number of people to take Our Lady seriously�and that even if those few were to succeed in carrying out Our Lady�s wishes, the rest of the world would not respond. But Our Lady anticipated such objections, and when Sister Millie asked the Blessed Mother about the possibility of a nuclear war, she answered:
What happens to the world depends on those who live in it. There must be much more good than evil prevailing in order to prevent the holocaust that is so near approaching.
Yet I tell you, my daughter, even should such a destruction happen because there were not enough souls who took my warning seriously, there will remain a remnant�untouched by the chaos who, having been faithful in following me and spreading my warnings, will gradually inhabit the earth again with their dedicated and holy lives.
These will renew the earth in the power and light of the Holy Spirit. These faithful ones of my children will be under my protection and that of the Holy Angels, and they will partake of the life of the Divine Trinity in a most remarkable way. [32]
In the light of such promises from our Heavenly Mother, can we delay any longer? With the Holy Family and the Holy Angels on our side, have we anything to fear but our own indifference?
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OUR LADY OF AMERICA P.O.Box445 Fostoria ohio 44830 USA 419.435.3838 fax419.435.7777
www.ourladyofamerica.com
Edited: November 10, 2005 at 11:44 PM by The Triumph
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