MESSAGES OF OUR LORD TO MYSTIC BERTHE PETIT / OUR LADY OF OLLIGNIES [OUR LADY OF THE SORROWFUL AND IMMACULATE HEART]
Our Lord, September 8, 1911: “The Heart of My Mother has the right to be called Sorrowful and I wish this title placed before that of Immaculate because She has won it Herself. The Church has defined in the case of My Mother what I Myself had ordained – Her Immaculate Conception. This right which My Mother has to a title of justice, is now, according to My express wish, to be known and universally accepted. She has earned it by Her identification with My sorrows, by Her sufferings: by Her sacrifices and Her immolation on Calvary endured in perfect correspondence with My grace for the salvation of mankind. “In Her co-redemption lies the nobility of My Mother and for this reason I ask that the Invocation which I have demanded be approved and spread through the whole Church. It has already obtained many graces; it will obtain yet more when the Church will be exalted and the world renewed through its Consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother.” Then nine days later, on September 17, 1910, the Mother herself appeared to Berthe and revealed in a symbolic way the bodily martyrdom that she suffered at the foot of the Cross. Berthe saw her brow wounded and bleeding and her hands and heart pierced. She then said: “Now you can understand the sorrows which my Heart endured and the sufferings of my whole being for the salvation of the world.”
Our Lord: "The title of Immaculate belongs to the whole being of My Mother and not specially to Her Heart. The title flows from my gratuitous gift to the Virgin who was to give me birth. My Mother has acquired from her Heart the title of ‘Sorrowful’ by sharing generously in all the sufferings of My Heart and My Body from the crib to the cross. There is not one of these Sorrows which did not pierce the Heart of My Mother. Living image of My crucified Body, her virginal flesh bore the invisible marks of My wounds as her Heart felt the Sorrows of My own. Nothing could ever tarnish the incorruptibility of her Immaculate Heart. The title of ‘Sorrowful’ belongs therefore to the Heart of My Mother, and more than any other, this title is dear to Her because it springs from the union of her Heart with Mine in the redemption of humanity. This title has been acquired by her through her full participation in My Calvary, and it precedes the gratuitous title ‘Immaculate’ which My love bestowed upon her by a singular privilege."
Our Lady and Our Lord, March 24/25, 1911: “I am called The Immaculate Conception. With you, I call myself the Mother of the Sorrowful Heart; this title, that My Son wants is the dearest to Me of all My titles and its through it that shall be granted and spread everywhere graces of mercy of conversion and of salvation” During this vision Our Lady miraculously healed Berthe of a serious condition of an ulcer on her foot accompanied by periostitis. Our Lady told Berthe that a torrent of grace was ready to spring from her wounded heart. Our Lord told Berthe “It is co-redemption that My Mother was above all great; that is why I ask that the invocation as I have inspired it, should be approved and diffused throughout the whole Church… by consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother, the Church shall be uplifted and the world renewed.”
Berthe Petit, Enghien, Belgium, 1938
Status: Cause for Beatification [pre-Vatican II], Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat awarded to messages, Promoted by Cardinals Mercier of Belgium and Bourne of England.
Episcopal Remarks: The former granted an indulgence of 100 days to the invocation, “Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us who have recourse to Thee.” Ratified by Pope St Pius X in a hand-written letter to the Cardinal. His pastoral letter to the clergy and faithful read: “Fulfilling therefore, the ardent wish which has been expressed to me, I shall consecrate in the very depths of my soul, during the Office of Good Friday, our Diocese, and in the limits of my power, our dear Country, to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. I exhort the priests to unite their intentions to mine, and the faithful to repeat devoutly the invocation to which I have already granted and indulgence of 100 days; Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us who have recourse to Thee.”
Cardinal Bourne followed suit and not only granted an indulgence of 100 days for the invocation but also prepared the way for a solemn consecration in accordance with the demand made by Our Lord. His pastoral letter of September 3, 1916 said: “We should fail to honour duly Her Divine Son, were we to forget and fail to honour, praise and use the power which He has willed to bestow upon Her in return for the Sorrows which united Her Heart so closely and so intimately with His in the supreme sacrifice of His life. Nowhere in Christendom should honour be paid more readily to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary than here in England. Of old, in the days of united Faith, Her purity and Her Sorrows were ever held in loving veneration. In those days, England was in very truth Our Lady’s Dowry. It is therefore, not with the idea of introducing any new devotion, but rather in order to give fresh meaning and greater force to thoughts long cherished by us all, and deep-rooted in the history of our race, that we desire to consecrate this renewed effort of prayer, which the special circumstances of the moment so urgently demand, to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
Biographical Information:
Berthe Petit, was a humble Franciscan Tertiary, a victim soul and apostle of Devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Born January 23, 1870 in Enghien, Belgium and died 1943. She had been privileged with visions of both Our Lord and The Blessed Virgin Mary since the age of 4. These are the words that were spoken to her by the Holy Infant Jesus as he traced a cross on her forehead, while she knelt in front of the Tabernacle: "You will always suffer, but I am with you."
At the age of 10 she received her First Holy Communion. The effects of which had never left her. It may be said that her whole life was a preparation for Holy Communion with Jesus and one of perpetual prayer and thanksgiving. She was known to spend long periods of time lost in prayer, meditation and thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion, oblivious to those around her.
Her life-long vocation was revealed to her on this the day of her First Holy Communion. She said to her teacher, a nun, "I must suffer a great deal, I must be like Jesus." "Who told you that?" asked the nun. "The little Host which is my great Jesus," was the child's immediate reply. And indeed, suffer she did with a life history of painful illnesses, diseases and broken bones. Berthe's illnesses brought her to the brink of death on several occasions causing her to receive the last rites seven times. But by far the worst suffering Berthe endured was the spiritual suffering, as she was continually beset by diabolical persecution. Her soul was tormented night and day by great fears, doubts and perplexities. And on one notable occasion she was literally thrown down a flight of eighteen stone stairs by the devil and almost died on the spot had it not been for miraculous intervention of Our Lord. The devil threatened her - hissing angrily, "I shall fight you till the end, haunting the minds, hardening the hearts and feeding the passions." But through all her suffering, Berthe Petit maintained a countenance of cheerfulness and sweetness with caring and great sympathy for other's pain. This humble victim soul shunned any public notoriety in the least. And few were her acquaintances or friends. His Eminence Cardinal Mercier, one of the few who knew her personally, had great reverence for her sanctity and knew of her personal holiness and genuineness as reflected in his obedience to the divine warnings and request by Our Lord for him to solemnly consecrate his country to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and by his writings.
Almost five years after the Germans had left Brussels, Berthe returned to her home only to find it had been completely plundered. Berthe was obliged to take up residence with the sisters of The Sacred Heart at their convent in Overyssche and lived with them for some time. One of the nuns assigned to her room was asked by her superiors to see if Berthe took food secretly in her room because they found she ate nothing, save a little coffee in the morning and a small glass of wine in the afternoon, which she promptly rejected. For one whole year the sceptical nun observed carefully everything Berthe did or said and was left with nothing but admiration for this humble and virtuous soul. Berthe, it was confirmed, lived on nothing but the Host. Jesus alone sustained her. As the sister testified, "The fact that people came to know of her life without food, was a real mortification to her." (Sr. Valesine, Trinitarian, at Vevey, charged with Berthe at the convent during the Great War.)
Berthe Petit was called to a dual mission. The first was to offer her life of suffering for a good priest of God's choice since she herself was not to become a sister. In her younger days, she had desired with all her heart to become a Sister of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, but it was not to be, as her family fell on hard times and she was forced to provide for them with her earnings. As a young teenager Berthe offered the sacrifice of her dream to God that her sacrifice might be a source of grace for a holy priest - which would one day bring back many souls to God. God graciously accepted her offering. And it was made known to her that she would one day meet the priest she had sacrificed and suffered for.
The second and most profound mission was revealed to Berthe during a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Anne, in Alsace, that her greatest mission was to obtain: THE CONSECRATION OF THE WORLD TO THE SORROWFUL AND IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY. Berthe knew she would not to live to see the day of the fulfillment of this great commission given her by Our Lord. At the end of her life, in excruciating pain she was heard to say pitifully over and over, "Sitio" - "I thirst". After having been fortified by the rites of the Holy Catholic Church, Berthe Francoise Marie Magdalene Ghislaine Petit entered peacefully into her eternal rest on Friday March 26th, 1943.
Source: The Seven Dolors of Mary A Brief Biography of Berthe Petit - Apostle of Devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary
The Messages
Our Lord, December 25, 1909: "Teach souls to love the Heart of My Mother pierced by the very sorrows which pierced Mine."
February 7, 1910: The Seer saw Two Hearts were seen fused together surmounted by the symbolical dove of the Holy Spirit, and on the following day were seen to be surmounted by luminous rays of light. The picture is a facsimile of the one drawn by Berthe Petit at the express command of Our Lord." (From the book, "The Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary"). Our Lord said “My desire that this picture, guided by My hand, be spread far and wide, simultaneously with the invocation. Wherever it will be venerated, My Mercy and My Love will be made manifest and the sight of Our Hearts, wounded by the same wound, will encourage tepid and weak souls to come back to their duty."Our Lord, September 8, 1911: “The Heart of My Mother has the right to be called Sorrowful and I wish this title placed before that of Immaculate because She has won it Herself. The Church has defined in the case of My Mother what I Myself had ordained – Her Immaculate Conception. This right which My Mother has to a title of justice, is now, according to My express wish, to be known and universally accepted. She has earned it by Her identification with My sorrows, by Her sufferings: by Her sacrifices and Her immolation on Calvary endured in perfect correspondence with My grace for the salvation of mankind. “In Her co-redemption lies the nobility of My Mother and for this reason I ask that the Invocation which I have demanded be approved and spread through the whole Church. It has already obtained many graces; it will obtain yet more when the Church will be exalted and the world renewed through its Consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother.”
Our Lady September 17, 1911: Our Lady appeared to Berthe showing Our Lady’s forehead pierced and bleeding with Her Hands and Heart transfixed. Our Lady said “You have the understanding of the sorrows that My Heart endured of the sufferings of all My being for the salvation of the world.”
Our Lady and Our Lord, March 24/25, 1911: “I am called The Immaculate Conception. With you, I call myself the Mother of the Sorrowful Heart; this title, that My Son wants is the dearest to Me of all My titles and its through it that shall be granted and spread everywhere graces of mercy of conversion and of salvation” During this vision Our Lady miraculously healed Berthe of a serious condition of an ulcer on her foot accompanied by periostitis. Our Lady told Berthe that a torrent of grace was ready to spring from her wounded heart. Our Lord told Berthe “It is co-redemption that My Mother was above all great; that is why I ask that the invocation as I have inspired it, should be approved and diffused throughout the whole Church… by consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother, the Church shall be uplifted and the world renewed.”
Lady, March 25, 1912: "I have called myself the 'Immaculate Conception'. To you I call myself, 'Mother of the Sorrowful Heart'. This title willed by my Son, is dear to me above all others. According as it is spread everywhere, there will be granted graces of mercy, spiritual renewal and salvation."
Our Lord, July 12, 1912: Our Lord told the mystic that the heir to the Catholic empire of Austria/Hungary would be assassinated; a double murder. This came to pass when Archduke Ferdinand was killed, which triggered World War I. Berthe spent the years of World War I in Switzerland. She constantly predicted various events occurring during the war.
Our Lord, 1914: “It is with an unshakeable resolve that my Son wills souls to have recourse to my Sorrowful Heart. With my heart overflowing with tenderness, I am awaiting this gesture on the part of souls, that I may reiterate to the Heart of my Son whatever will be confided to my own Heart, and thus obtain graces of salvation for all.”
Our Lord, undated, 1918: Our Lord told Berthe that without Our Lord’s intervention obtained by Cardinal Bourne’s consecration of England to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary the victory would have belonged to the other side - “material force would have prevailed over justice.”
Our Lord, January, 1918: “Let My apostle Francis (Cardinal Francis Bourne) know that My favourable gaze rests upon him and his flock. Let him renew with the faithful the solemn consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother – this time in thanksgiving, for gratitude draws down still more favours. Let him confide to Me entirely his country and the Church of which he is the shepherd, in the way I shall inspire to you. Thus will My reign be established firmly in that nation; then more and more souls will open their eyes to truth; peace and prosperity will reign there and My Mother, glorified in a fitting manner, will extend to them Her Maternal protection…. Thus and in this way alone will the internal struggles die down. And I shall scatter blessings upon that nation.”
Our Lord, Undated 1919: “It will soon become apparent how unstable is a peace set up without Me and without the intervention of Him who speaks in My name, the Pope. The nation which is thought to be conquered, but whose strength is only temporarily diminished, remains a threat to your nation and France. Trouble and danger will spread to all countries. It is because this peace is none of Mine that wars will blaze up again everywhere: civil wars, racial wars, what should have been so great, so true, so beautiful, so durable, is delayed… Humanity is rushing toward a dreadful storm, which will divide the nations more and more. All human plans will be annihilated, the pride of the Lords of the moment will be broken. It will be clearly shown that nothing can subsist without Me and that I remain the sole master of the destiny of nations.”
Our Lady, undated, 1922: “Events have taken place, acts have been accomplished which will prove to be the unassailable foundations of work which you serve. It will attain its end with the full amplitude which is God’s will.”
Our Lord, Undated, 1941: “By confident consecration to My Mother, the devotion to My Heart will be strengthened and, as it were, completed.”
Our Lord, April 25, 1942: “A frightful torment is in preparation. It will be seen that the forces launched in such fury will soon be let loose. It is now or never, the moment for all of you to give yourselves to the Sorrowful Heart of My Mother. By Her acceptance of Calvary, My Mother has participated in all My sufferings. Devotion to Her Heart united to Mine will bring peace, that true peace so often implored and yet so little merited.”
Our Lord, undated: "It is hearts that must be changed. This will be accomplished only by the Devotion proclaimed, explained, preached and recommended everywhere. Recourse to My Mother under the title I wish for her universally, is the last help I shall give before the end of time."
Our Lord, undated: "It is as a Son that I have conceived this devotion for my Mother. It is as God that I impose it."
Our Lord, undated: "The safety of your country, internal peace and confidence in My Church will revive through the spread of the Devotion and the Consecration which I wish in order that The Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother, united in all to My Heart, may be loved and glorified. Deliverance will thus be the work of our two Hearts, the triumph of our love for the people upon whom this Consecration will bestow confidence according to My promises."
Our Lord, undated: "By confident consecration to My Mother, the Devotion to My Heart will be strengthened and, as it were, completed. This Devotion, this Consecration will be, according to My Promise, a renovation for My Church, a renewed strength for Christianity which is too often wavering, a source of single graces for souls, who thereby will be more deeply penetrated with love and confidence."
Our Lord, undated: "The clear light to be granted, through recourse to My Mother, will bring about, above all, the conversion of a multitude of straying and sinful souls: The pity of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother will implore Mercy for them from My Heart."
Our Lord, undated: "The title of Immaculate belongs to the whole being of My Mother and not specially to Her Heart. The title flows from my gratuitous gift to the Virgin who was to give me birth. My Mother has acquired from her Heart the title of 'Sorrowful' by sharing generously in all the sufferings of My Heart and My Body from the crib to the cross. There is not one of these Sorrows which did not pierce the Heart of My Mother. Living image of My crucified Body, her virginal flesh bore the invisible marks of My wounds as her Heart felt the Sorrows of My own. Nothing could ever tarnish the incorruptibility of her Immaculate Heart. The title of ‘Sorrowful’ belongs therefore to the Heart of My Mother, and more than any other, this title is dear to Her because it springs from the union of her Heart with Mine in the redemption of humanity. This title has been acquired by her through her full participation in My Calvary, and it precedes the gratuitous title ‘Immaculate’ which My love bestowed upon her by a singular privilege."
Our Lord, undated: "The worst calamities which I had predicted are unleashed. The time is now ripe and I wish mankind to turn to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother. Let this prayer be uttered by every soul: ‘Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.’ Let this prayer dictated by My Love as a supreme succor be approved and indulgenced, no longer partially and for a small portion of My flock, but for the whole universe, so that it may spread as a refreshing and purifying balm of reparation that will appease My anger. This Devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother will restore faith and hope to broken hearts and to ruined families: it will help to repair the destruction: it will sweeten sorrow. It will be a new strength for My Church, bringing souls, not only to confidence in My Heart, but also to abandonment to the Sorrowful Heart of My Mother."
Our Lord, undated: "Teach souls to love the Heart of My Mother pierced with sorrow that transfixed My Own Heart."
Our Lord, undated: "My desire flows from My love on Calvary. In giving John to My Mother as a son, I entrusted the whole world to her Sorrowful Motherhood."
Our Lord, undated: "My Mother's Heart has the right to the title of Sorrowful. I desire that it be set before her title of Immaculate because She herself has won it. The Church has recognized what I Myself did for My Mother: her Immaculate Conception. Now it is necessary and it is my wish, that this title, which is by right My Mother's, should be understood and recognized. This title she earned by her identification with all My sufferings, by her sorrow, her sacrifice, her immolation on Calvary, and indeed for the salvation of mankind."
Our Lord, undated: “The hurricane of calamity has not died down and grave dangers from within still threaten all the nations.”
Our Lord, At the beginning of the First World War: “The worst calamities which I have predicted are unleashed. The time is now ripe and I wish mankind to turn to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother. Let this prayer be uttered by every soul: ‘Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.’ Let this prayer dictated by My Love as a supreme succour be approved and indulgenced, no longer partially and for a small portion of My flock, but the whole universe, so that it may spread as a refreshing and purifying balm of reparation that will appease My anger.
“This Devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother will restore faith and hope to the broken hearts and to ruined families: it will help to repair the destruction: it will sweeten sorrow. It will be a new strength for My Church, bringing souls, not only to confidence in My Heart, but also to abandon themselves to the Sorrowful Heart of My Mother.”
Our Lord, Two years into the Great War: “It is through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother that I will triumph, because having cooperated in the redemption of souls, this Heart has the right to share a similar cooperation in the manifestations of My justice and of My love. My Mother is noble in everything, but she is especially so in Her wounded Heart, transfixed by the wound of Mine.
“Desiring for Her Heart a radiant, dazzling, brilliant triumph, I have awaited this time of universal distress which finds an echo in the Sorrowful Heart of My Mother, a Heart universal as My own. To adopt this Devotion and to spread it, is to accomplish My Will and to respond to the wishes of My Heart. Because, by prayer and by the consecration made to this Heart, graces of light will be obtained. They will gradually bring souls to the full knowledge of Our United Hearts, which have been wounded by the same wound, the inexhaustible source of all good for humanity, and the glory of which is now, and ever will be, the happiness of the elect for Eternity.”
Picture of Our Lady of Ollignies
The image in the picture represents the Mother of God, holding in her left hand a lily, symbol of her Immaculate purity -- the gratuitous gift of her Divine Son; the finger of the right hand points out to her Sorrowful Heart surmounted by flames and pierced with a sword. The far-away gaze of the penetrating eyes seems as if the Blessed Virgin is beholding with sorrow the sins of mankind, which have caused the suffering expressed on the gentle countenance of her head, slightly inclined to the right. The gentle expression of the face is not quite unlike that of the "Pieta," so often seen in our Churches. At first, copies of this picture were distributed with discretion; but soon it came to be widely known and eagerly sought after all over Belgium. It bore "au verso," the Act of Consecration dictated by Our Lord Himself to Berthe Petit, and used by His Eminence Francis Cardinal Bourne, Primate of England, during and after the Great War, and the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Tournai.
Prayer of Personal Act of Consecration to the Sorrowful Heart of Mary composed by the seer:
“Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, dwelling pure and holy, cover my soul with your maternal protection so that being ever faithful to the Voice of Jesus, it responds to His love and obeys His Divine Will. I wish, O, my Mother, to keep unceasingly before me your co-redemption in order to live intimately with your Heart that is totally United to the Heart of your Divine Son. Fasten me to this Heart by your own virtues and sorrows. Protect me always. Amen.”
Source: Messages taken from "The Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Message of Berthe Petit, Franciscan Tertiary (1870-1943)" Translated from the French by a nun of Kylemore Abbey, "The Art of Divine Love or Berthe Petit." a biography written by Rev. I. Duffner, M.S.C. adapted from the french by Rev. Louis M. Shouriah in 1955 and Peter Heintz A Guide to Apparitions of Our Blessed Virgin Mary (Gabriel Press, Sacramento, California 1995) p. 14-21)
"Let every soul cry out: Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us."
THE SORROWFUL AND
IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY: THE REVELATIONS OF BERTHE PETIT
What are still little known worldwide
are the private revelations of Our Lord made public through the
famous and very holy Belgian mystic, Berthe Petit, a Franciscan
Tertiary (1870-1943), who enjoyed the highest respect of Cardinals,
Bishops, theologians and other members of the Church hierarchy at the
time. While attending midnight Mass in 1909, she saw the wounded
Heart of Jesus and closely adherent to it was the Heart of Mary
pierced with a sword. Then she heard these words: “Cause My
Mother’s Heart transfixed by the sorrows that rent Mine to be
loved.”
Then on February 7, 1910, she saw the
Hearts of Jesus and Mary interpenetrating each other and hovering
over the Hearts was a Dove. Jesus then spoke: “You must think of My
Mother’s Heart as you think of Mine; live in this Heart as you seek
to live in Mine; give yourself to this Heart as you give yourself to
Mine. You must spread the love of this Heart so wholly united to
Mine.” A few days later her mission was revealed to her. It was to
obtain the consecration of the whole world to the Sorrowful and
Immaculate Heart of Mary.
For many years this holy Franciscan
Tertiary, while leading a life of hidden suffering in the world, a
voluntary victim for the expiation of sin, received repeated
revelations from Our Lord of His desire that the whole world should
be publicly consecrated to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. She
once saw the divine face under a crown of thorns in a great glory of
light at the moment of the elevation of the Host. Our Lord then said
to her once more: “The world must be dedicated to the Sorrowful and
Immaculate Heart of My Mother as it is dedicated to Mine. Fear
nothing, no matter what suffering and obstacles you may meet. Think
only of fulfilling My will.”
On Easter Sunday, 1910, while in Rome,
Berthe again saw the Hearts of Jesus and Mary fused with one another
under the wing of a dove. This time she heard these words: “What I
desire derives from what I did on Calvary. In giving John to My
Mother for her son, I confided the whole world to her Sorrowful and
Immaculate Heart.” Our Lord then bade her to make the drawing of
the vision of the two Hearts, adding: “I will guide your hand.” A
few months later, she received a further communication from Jesus: “I
desire that the picture for which I guided your hand should be widely
diffused as well as the invocation ‘Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart
of Mary, pray for us.’”
On September 8, 1910, after receiving
Holy Communion, Our Lord said to Berthe: “The Heart of My Mother
has a right to be called Sorrowful and I wish this title to
be placed before that of Immaculate because she has won it
herself. The Church has defined in the case of My Mother what I
Myself had ordained—her Immaculate Conception. This right which My
Mother has to a title of justice is now, according to My express
wish, to be known and universally accepted. She has earned it by her
identification with My sorrows, by her sufferings, by her sacrifices
and by her immolation on Calvary, endured in perfect correspondence
with My grace for the salvation of mankind. In her co-redemption lies
the nobility of My Mother and for this reason I ask for the
invocation which I have demanded be approved and spread throughout
the whole Church. It has already obtained many graces; it will obtain
yet more when the Church will be exalted and the world renewed
through its consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My
Mother.”
Then nine days later, on September 17,
1910, the Mother herself appeared to Berthe and revealed in a
symbolic way the bodily martyrdom that she suffered at the foot of
the Cross. Berthe saw her brow wounded and bleeding and her hands and
heart pierced. She then said: “Now you can understand the sorrows
which my Heart endured and the sufferings of my whole being for the
salvation of the world.”
At a Holy Hour devotion during the
night of March 24-25, 1912, the eve of the feast of the Annunciation,
the Blessed Virgin spoke again to Berthe of her Sorrowful Heart: “I
am called the Immaculate Conception. With you, I call myself the
Mother of the Sorrowful Heart. This title that my Son wants is
the dearest to me of all my titles and it is through it that shall be
granted and spread everywhere, graces of mercy, spiritual renewal and
salvation.”
July 12, 1912 marked the beginning of a
different phase in the mystical experiences of Berthe Petit. Until
that time her heavenly communications dealt solely with religious
matters but on that day she received the first of several revelations
concerning political events. They were similar to some of the
messages of a political nature which were given by the Blessed Virgin
Mary to St. Catherine Labouré in 1830, by the Virgin of La Salette
to Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud in 1846 when she wept copiously,
and… to Ida Peerdeman in Amsterdam in 1945-1984.
On that day, Jesus told Berthe that the
heir to the Catholic empire of Austria-Hungary would be assassinated:
“A double murder will strike down the successor of the aged
sovereign, so loyal to the faith.” He was referring to Archduke
Franz Josef I (1830-1916), who was 82 years old at the time. Jesus
added: “It will be the first of those events (World Wars)
full of sorrows, but from whence I shall still bring forth good and
which will precede the chastisement.”
This prophecy was fulfilled a little
less than two years later on June 28, 1914 when Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and his wife Sophia, the Duchess of Hohenburg, were
assassinated by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist.
The following day, June 29, Jesus said to Berthe: “Now begins the
ascending curve of preliminary events, which will lead to the great
manifestation of My justice.” Indeed that “preliminary event”
in Sarajevo led to World War I which started about five weeks later
on August 4, 1914 when Germany violated Belgium’s neutrality, and
by midnight Great Britain and Germany were at war. That war
eventually led to World War II, which may well culminate in a World
War III in this nuclear age with the possibility of the annihilation
of several nations.
According to Berthe Petit, when the
Germans entered Brussels and violated Belgium’s neutrality, just as
He harshly criticized the Pharisees, as recorded in the Gospels,
Jesus had harsh words to say about the German invaders: “The proud
race and its ambitious ruler (Kaiser William II) will be chastised on
the very soil (Belgium) of their unjust conquest… The worst
calamities which I predicted are unleashed. The time has now arrived
when I wish mankind to turn to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of
My Mother. Let this prayer be uttered by every soul: ‘Sorrowful and
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us’ so that it may spread as a
refreshing and purifying balm of reparation that will appease My
anger. This devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My
Mother will restore faith and hope to broken hearts and to ruined
families. It will help to repair the destruction. It will sweeten
sorrow. It will be a new strength for My Church, bringing souls, not
only to confidence in My Heart, but also to abandonment to the
Sorrowful Heart of My Mother.”
Pope Pius X died on August 10, 1914
soon after World War I began and he was succeeded by Pope Benedict
XV. As Sir Nicholas Cheetham commented in his History of the
Popes: “How ought the Holy See to react to a murderous conflict in
which Catholic Austria-Hungary and partly-Catholic Germany stood
initially opposed to an alliance of Catholic, but officially
irreligious France, with Orthodox Russia and Protestant Great
Britain?”
This indeed was the problem facing the
Pope, shortly to be complicated by Italy’s entry into the war. In
his first statement on September 8, 1914, the feast of the Nativity
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he mourned the bloodshed and pleaded for
a quick end to the war just begun. He also denounced the war as a
crime against religion, humanity and civilization, perpetrated as it
was by Catholic countries.
In his first encyclical Ad
Beatissimi Apostolorum, issued on November 1, 1914, Pope Benedict
criticized the warring Christian peoples: “Who could realize,” he
wrote, “that they are the children of the same Father in heaven?”
He then closed with a call for a prayer to Christ and the Blessed
Virgin Mary, “who bore the Prince of Peace.” Then the following
year, on May 3, 1915, he sent a letter to the Dean of the Sacred
College, Cardinal Venutelli, which concluded with the following
recommendation addressed to all the bishops of the world: “Let us
send up our prayers, more than ever ardent and frequent, to Him in
whose Hands lie the destinies of all peoples, and let us appeal with
confidence to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, the most
gentle Mother of Jesus and ours, that by her powerful intercession
she will obtain from her divine Son the speedy end of the war and the
return of peace and tranquility.”
Berthe Petit spent the years of World
War I in Switzerland where she was frequently told in advance of the
calamities that would befall the Allies. However, the two Cardinals
who cooperated most with her were Cardinal Desiré Mercier, Primate
of Belgium, and Cardinal Francis Alphonsus Bourne, the Primate of
England and Archbishop of Canterbury. Cardinal Bourne (1861-1935)
became acclaimed for his patriotic speeches during the war and
Cardinal Mercier (1851-1926) became the spokesman of Belgian
opposition to the German occupation for which the Germans placed him
under house arrest. He was Berthe’s spiritual director for several
years, was deeply impressed by her heavenly communications, and
energetically promoted the devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate
Heart of Mary in Belgium. In fact, he had also approached the
predecessor of Pope Benedict XV, Pope Pius X (1903-1914), and
attempted to win his approval for the worldwide devotion. Seventeen
petitions were made to the Pope, however, sadly to say, the Pope did
not find it appropriate to promote a new worldwide devotion at that
time, but it was certainly never condemned on doctrinal grounds.
However, like Pius X, Pope Benedict XV also did not judge the time
opportune for a worldwide devotion.
In February, 1915, Our Lord said to
Berthe: “It is through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My
Mother that I will triumph, because having cooperated in the
redemption of souls, this Heart has the right to share a similar
cooperation in the manifestations of My justice and of My love. My
Mother is noble in everything but she is especially so in her wounded
Heart, transfixed by the wound of Mine.”
Berthe in the interim remained quietly
patient in Switzerland awaiting God’s good pleasure and continued
to receive heavenly communications. Our Lady later showed her in a
vision an untold multitude of every race and color, sick and
suffering, all praying with arms raised to heaven. Some were
physically healed, others, touched by grace, fell on their knees. “It
seemed a regeneration of the whole world,” said Berthe.
Meanwhile, as the war continued, on
March 7, 1916 Cardinal Mercier announced that during the Good Friday
ceremonies he would dedicate his diocese and his beloved country
Belgium to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, and in England
Cardinal Bourne continued to rally the faithful towards this
devotion. In a pastoral letter of September 3, 1916, he wrote:
“Nowhere in
Christendom should honor be paid more readily to the Sorrowful and
Immaculate Heart of Mary than here in England. In the days of united
faith (that is, before the Reformation), her purity and her sorrows
were ever held in loving veneration. Throughout the realm, Our
Blessed Lady, God’s Mother, were terms and titles dear to every
English heart. England was, in very truth, Our Lady’s dowry. It is,
therefore, not with the idea of introducing any new devotion, but
rather in order to give fresh meaning and greater force to thoughts
long cherished by us all and deep-rooted in the history of our race
that we desire to consecrate with renewed effort the prayer, which
the special circumstances of the moment so urgently demand, to the
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary…
“For these
reasons, we desire and enjoin that in all the churches and public
chapels of our diocese, Friday, September 15, the feast of the Seven
Sorrows of Our Blessed Lady, or on the following Sunday, during
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the Stabat Mater be
sung, to be followed by the recitation of three Hail Marys and the
invocation (repeated after each Hail Mary) “Sorrowful and
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us,” in order that, by this
public homage, all our dioceses, and, insofar in us lies, our whole
country and empire may be solemnly consecrated and dedicated to Our
Blessed Lady under this special title.”
That day, September 15, 1916, marked
the greatest success of the British. In fact, each time public
devotions were performed in England, the British armies swept forward
to unexpected victories, so much so that Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the
Commander in Chief of the Allied forces in France, observed in his
“Memoires” that, strangely enough, the English seemed scarcely
aware of how those successes could have come about. “I will never
repeat it too often,” he wrote, “that the English fought in a
most extraordinary way. They won victory upon victory. At the
beginning of October they had broken the formidable Hindenburg line
at its strongest point. But still more wonderful, these victories
were won almost unknown to themselves.”
Among those notable successes of the
war by the Allies was the capture of the village of Passchendaele by
the Canadians ending the third battle of Ypres and the enemy then
lost all hope of piercing the line to Calais. There was also the
success of the Allies in driving back the Germans on the Marne,
relieving the threat to Paris.
On August 15, 1917, Cardinal Bourne
once more consecrated England to the Sorrowful Heart of Mary (This
was repeated solemnly on Christmas day). On August 22, 1917, the
feast of the Queenship of Mary, Our Lord sent the following message
through Berthe Petit to Cardinal Bourne: “I ask My apostle Francis
[Cardinal Francis Alphonsus Bourne] to exert an ever increasing
activity in favor of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother…
Let him hasten what he calls his ‘first step’ so that a still
more solemn consecration may be timed for the feast of the Sorrows of
My Mother—that great feast of her Heart as Co-Redemptrix. When the
nation (England) of my apostle Francis will be entirely dedicated to
this Heart he will see that he has not listened to My word in vain,
for my providential intervention is reserved for all the people
consecrated to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother. I
wish thus to show the power of this Heart which is linked in
everything with My own.”
When the tide of battle turned against
the Allies in the dreadful spring of 1918, Jesus explained to Berthe:
“It is a necessary trial for after My protection had helped them to
conquer, they attributed the glory to their own prowess. Reverses are
now showing these soldiers how human means alone are powerless to
repel the surge of invasion.”
However, by mid-October 1918, the
Germans were all but finished and desertions were skyrocketing.
People had had enough. Governments fell and chaos prevailed over
central Europe. Then on October 17, 1918, Our Lord told Berthe:
“Were it not for
my intervention, obtained by My apostle [Cardinal] Francis through
recourse to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother, the
victory would have belonged to those who strained every nerve during
so many years to prepare and organize a great war for the attainment
of their own ambitions…. Material force would have overborne
justice and right and this more especially so for your own country
(Belgium). For why should I come to the help of a people in France
intent on persecuting My Church? That is why trials will continue
until the day when, humbly acknowledging her errors, this nation will
render Me My rights and give full liberty to My Church.”
During that month Our Lord also warned
Berthe: “The world is hanging on the edge of utter cataclysm. My
justice cannot preside over the machination of those who work in
their own interests to forward a peace totally unworthy of the name,
and which can never be genuine except through My intervention.”
Three weeks later, after a most bloody
conflict among the nations, and after ten million people had died and
many more maimed and displaced, the greatest global war in known
history at that time ended abruptly and gloriously in favor of the
British. It was at eleven a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh
month of 1918 when the Armistice took place. On May 24, 1919, the
Archbishop of Westminster again consecrated his country to the
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary in thanksgiving for the great
victory in what was thought to be “the war to end all wars.”
In July, 1919, eight months after the
Armistice, Our Lord spoke as follows to Berthe:
“Internal strife
is more rampant than ever in your country. It is being fanned by the
evil seed sown by the invader. It is fed by egoism, pride and
jealousy—malevolent germs which can only generate moral ruin…
Time will prove that a peace established without Me and without him
who speaks in My name (referring to Pope Benedict XV) has no
stability. The nation (Germany), which is considered to be vanquished
but whose forces are only momentarily diminished, will remain a
menace for your country and likewise for France. Confusion and terror
will steadily spread through every nation. Because this peace is not
Mine, wars will be rekindled on every side—civil war and racial
war. What would have been so noble, so true, so beautiful, so lasting
in its fulfillment is consequently delayed. Humanity is advancing
towards a frightful scourge which will divide the nations more and
more. It will reduce human schemes to nothingness. It will break the
pride of the powers that be. It will show that nothing subsists
without Me and that I remain the sole Master of the destinies of
nations.”
“A peace totally unworthy of the
name,” said Our Lord to Berthe. Let us research the history of that
rebuke. Now, Pope Benedict XV had adopted a rigidly neutral position
between the belligerents, and while denouncing the war as a crime
against religion, humanity and civilization, he had blamed both sides
equally for allowing it to happen and to continue. However, neither
side appreciated his attitude nor responded to his exhortations. In
fact, it later transpired that one of Italy’s conditions for
entering the war in 1915 with the Allies was the exclusion of the
Holy See from any eventual peace conference.
After his suggestion of a general
Christmas truce in 1914 was totally ignored by the Allies, on August
1, 1917, he issued a seven-point peace plan to each of the
belligerent nations. Ignored by most powers, only Austria-Hungary
regarded it with any degree of seriousness. However, the Pope strove
continually and imperturbably for a negotiated peace as opposed to a
dictated one, and being barred from the Palace Peace Conference,
which began in January 1919 in Paris caused him to stigmatize the
Treaty of Versailles (not unfairly) as a “consecration of hatred”
and a “perpetuation of war.”
Now Germany had refused to acknowledge
any sole guilt and responsibility for the war and the German people,
having agreed to set about forming a democratic republican
government, felt that they were entitled to a just peace. However,
when the terms of the Versailles Treaty, laid down by the Allies
without negotiation with Germany, were published in Berlin on May 7,
1919, they came as a staggering blow to the German people. Germany
was made to pay “reparations” far beyond her power of payment and
in contravention of the plain understandings upon which she had
surrendered. She was put in a position of economic serfdom.
Angry mass meetings were then organized
throughout the country to protest against the treaty and to demand
that Germany refuse to sign it. Indeed, the treaty was branded as
“unreasonable and unbearable,” and intolerable for any nation, so
much so that Phillipp Scheidemann, who had become the first
Chancellor of the Weimar Assembly, exclaimed: “May the hand wither
that signs this treaty!” In fact, Field Marshall von Hindenburg,
President of Germany, came to the conclusion that he could not help
feeling that it was better to perish honorably than accept a
disgraceful peace.
However, the Treaty of Versailles was
eventually signed in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles
on June 28, 1919 with objections from the German government,
protesting that they did so “under the threat of force.” On that
day Germany became a house divided. In fact, when he read the Peace
Treaty, Marshall Foch burst out: “This is not peace! This is an
armistice for twenty years.” Indeed, twenty years and sixty-seven
days later, once more Great Britain and France declared war on a
militant Germany! As Our Lord had said to Berthe Petit: “Time will
prove that a peace established without Me and without him who speaks
in My name has no stability.”
Yet another critic of the Versailles
Peace Treaty was Winston Churchill. In his book “The Second
World War”, he began his magnum opus with these words:
“The economic
clauses of the Treaty were malignant and silly to an extent that made
them obviously futile. Germany was condemned to pay reparations on a
fabulous scale. The triumphant Allies continued to assert that they
would squeeze Germany “till the pips squeaked” and that Germany
should be made to pay “to the uttermost farthing.” All this had a
potent bearing on the prosperity of the world and the mood of the
German race. History will characterize all these transactions as
insane. They helped to breed both the martial curse and the economic
blizzard. All this was a sad story of complicated idiocy in the
making of which much toil and virtue was consumed. Thereafter mighty
forces were adrift, the void was open, and into that void after a
pause there stood a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and
expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the
human breast—Corporal Hitler.”
