2. REGIONAL CENACLES ABROAD:
Even if the burden of my age is increasing, and my state of health is
precarious, I trust in our Blessed Mother’s help to fulfill the obligations that
I have undertaken.
I propose to go from January 16 to April 1 to the following countries: United
States (Miami - Jan. 18), Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina
and Chile; on June 27 to Slovenia; and from October 1-17 to Korea.
3. REGIONAL CENACLES IN ITALY:
Caravaggio - May 13; Ferrara - May 15;
Florence - May 19; Collevalenza - May 21;
San Gabriel - May 26; Rome - May 28; Pompei - May 29; Bari - June 1;
Loreto -
June 11; San Vito – June 16; Padua - June 18; Genoa - June 20;
Sardinia
-September 5-20.
4. MYSTERY OF LOVE AND OF SUFFERING:
A priest, called by Mary to become little and humble of heart, is also called to
suffer always more. The moment of suffering is precious and must be accepted by
each one of us with meekness and faith, because it conforms us to Jesus Priest
and Victim. It makes us collaborate in his work of salvation, and it is so
fruitful in these times of purification.
“In this [suffering] you are shaped into the likeness of Jesus Crucified [and]
this interior crucifixion will take place each day and in every moment of your
priestly day (…) It is above all in your priestly suffering that souls can be
begotten by you to the life of grace and to salvation.” (TTP, March 5, 1983, 260 j-l)
5. SHARE IN THE PASSION OF JESUS
a) The agony of Jesus
“Live with me today the passion of my Son Jesus. Each day this painful passion
is repeated. Enter, with me, into the depths of his divine Heart to savor all
the bitterness of his chalice: the abandonment by his own, the treason of Judas,
all the sin of the world which crushes Him under an impossible and deathly
weight. As He is crushed in this olive-press, the drops of blood escape,
trickling down his body and falling to irrigate the earth.” (TTP, April 17,
1981, 224 a-b)
b) The agony of today
“How heavily, even today, weighs on his Heart the ease with which so many turn
their backs on Him, to follow the ideas of the world, or the ways of those who
still reject and deny Him!
How many of his disciples daily sleep the slumber of indifference, of interior
mediocrity, of doubt, of lack of faith!”
(TTP, April 17, 1981, 224 c-d)
c) The condemnation of Jesus
“Again the blow which the servant dealt to his face is repeated, and that other
still more painful one, the blow which his soul receives from the High Priest,
as he accuses and condemns Him: ‘You have heard the blasphemy! Since He
proclaimed Himself the Son of God, He deserves death.’ (cf. Mt 26:65-66)”
(TTP, April 17, 1981, 224e)
d) The condemnation of today
“There is another secret Sanhedrin which, every day, judges and condemns Him,
often made up of those who, among his people, are invested with power.
The attempt to recognize Him only as man continues: the tendency on the part of
many to deny his divinity, to reduce his divine words to a purely human
interpretation, to explain all the miracles in natural terms and even to deny
the historical fact of his resurrection.
It is this trial which is still going on; it is the same ignoble and unjust
condemnation which is being repeated.”
(TTP, April 17, 1981, 224 f-h)
e) The immolation of Jesus
“See Him before Pilate who, (…)out
of cowardice, subjects Him to cruel violence: the horrible scourging, which
lacerates his innocent flesh and transforms his body into a single bloody wound,
the crown of thorns, the condemnation and the impossible climb to Calvary… Then
the scaffold of the Cross, the agony and his death, with his Mother nearby,
called to die with Him in spirit!” (TTP, April
17, 1981, 224i)
f) The immolation of today
“...live with me in silence, in prayer and in suffering these precious hours of
the passion being repeated in the Church, which is his Mystical Body; it is
being renewed in each one of you, called to be the ministers of his love and of
his sorrow.
Together with me, suffer the judgment of the world, the rejection, the
persecution and the condemnation on the part of a society which continues to
deny its God and to walk in the darkness of perversion, of hatred and of
immorality.
Together with me, carry your heavy cross each day. Pour out, with love, your
blood. Allow yourselves to be placed on the altar of his very scaffold.
Meek as lambs, allow your hands and your feet to be also transfixed with nails:
love, forgive, suffer and offer yourselves to the Father, with love, for the
salvation of all.”
(TTP, April 17, 1981, 224 j-m)
6. SHARE IN THE PASSION OF THE CHURCH
The Passion is renewed in the Church which is the mystical body of Jesus.
“Participate too in the sufferings of the Church as she lives through the hour
of her greatest abandonment. How ailing she is, this my most beloved Daughter!
In your hearts carry the sufferings of Jesus, and my sufferings as well, for the
agonizing condition in which the Church now finds herself in every part of the
world. (…) loss of faith is becoming a deluge…[and] the apostasy has now been
spread into every part of a Church betrayed even by some of her bishops,
abandoned by many of her priests, deserted by so very many of her children, and
violated by my Adversary.”
(TTP, August 26, 1983, 270 h-j)
Today, the only help that we can give to the Church is that of love:
of a
faithful and merciful love, a love that above all must be concretized in a
filial and impassioned presence, to share in her suffering and to carry with her
[the Church] her great Cross.
“I will bring you to love the Church very much. Today the Church is going
through times of great suffering because she is loved less and less by her own
children.
Many would like to renovate her and purify her solely by criticism and by
violent attacks on her institution. Nothing is ever renewed or purified without
love!”
(TTP, November 9, 1975, 86 p-q)
In the Immaculate Heart of Mary, this love of ours transforms itself into the
most intense suffering.
“This is how I find the Church today, the Mystical Body of Jesus Crucified. She
too is climbing Calvary, carrying a heavy cross; she too is experiencing the
hour of such abandonment and of betrayal; her body, also, is being tormented by
the scourges of the sins which strike at her and by sacrileges which open up
deep wounds in her…
This is how I find my Daughter today. I am close to her in the painful hour of
her Good Friday. With John, who is living again in each of my beloved sons
consecrated to my Immaculate Heart, together let us be willing to help her in
this, her agony.
Let us kiss her hands, again transfixed; let us cover with love her body, again
stripped bare; let us pour balm upon her numerous wounds; let us surround with
prayer and hope the bloody moments of her crucifixion.”
(TTP, April 9, 1982, 244g, i-j)
With our life we want to offer to the Church a help for her complete renewal,
beginning with us with humility and trust, following the road traced out for us
by the Blessed Mother.
7. SHARE IN THE PASSION OF HUMANITY
Humanity also is living the hour of its sorrowful passion, because it is being
lacerated by unbridled egoism, by hatred that is burning like fire, by violence
that is exploding, by immorality that is spreading, by drugs that seduce, by
wars that are expanding, by unhappiness that is increasing, “[by] evil, which so
easily takes root in the hearts of men today and, with the incommensurable
effects, already weighs upon our contemporary existence and seems to close the
way toward the future.” (Pope John-Paul II, “Prayers and Devotions”, edited by
Bishop Peter Canisius Johannes van Lierde, O.S.A.)
“Feel in your hearts the deep wounds caused me by the millions of infants
slaughtered in the wombs of their mothers; by sin which overabounds and seduces
souls; by immorality which, like a terrible cancer, corrupts consciences; by the
disorientation of the youthful victims of vice, drugs and violence; by the
breakdown of so many households.”
(TTP, August 26, 1983, 270g)
We must share in the great suffering of the world, making it our own, feeling
all its weight and placing it in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, because it is
offered by her to the Lord, as an immense cry that brings down upon humanity the
dew of Divine Mercy.
“With the Heart of Jesus, have love for all your brothers and my children … How
many have been wounded by sin, made into slaves of evil, victims of hate! How
many there are who are poor, who are exploited, weak, suffering… All the
sufferings of my children are like a desperate cry for help reaching up to me,
and deeply wounding my motherly Heart.”
(TTP, September 3, 1983, 271d)
8. THE PRESENCE OF THE MOTHER
Our task is to bring everywhere the tenderness of Mary, that is placed like balm
on all these open and bleeding wounds, and the presence of the Mother in the
midst of such a boundless desolation. For this reason the Blessed Mother calls
us to become ourselves instruments of the Merciful Love of Jesus and the
expression of her maternal presence, of her love, of her help, of her comfort,
of her protection and of her defense. It is for this reason alone that, with
such insistence, she asks us for the consecration to her Immaculate Heart.
“I have come down from heaven to manifest myself, through you, along all the
roadways of the world: along those traversed by the poor and the desperate,
along those grievous roads of the sinners and the wanderers, along those of the
sick, the agonizing and the dying.” (TTP, May 13, 1981, 225h)
“You yourselves be, with me, the refuge of sinners, of the poor, the sick, the
desperate, the little, the abandoned.”
(TTP, August 15, 1981, 228g)
“I am with you on all the by-ways of the world.
With maternal mercy I help those of my little ones who find themselves in
greater need; I save the perishing, restore health to the sick, console the
afflicted, encourage the down-hearted, raise up those who have fallen, find
those who have lost the way.” (TTP, September 3, 1983, 271 e-f)
“The time has come when I wish to live in you and to manifest myself to all
through you.
I want to love with your heart, to gaze with your eyes, to console and encourage
with your lips, to assist with your hands, to walk with your feet, to follow
your bloodied footprints and to suffer with your crucified body.”
(TTP, July 1, 1981, 227 q-r)
And so, in these times of passion for Jesus, for the Church and for humanity,
the presence of the Mother becomes for all “a sign of sure hope and
consolation.” (Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, Pope Paul VI – Nov. 21, 1964,
#68)
We are called today to be the glory of Mary because, every day, the Triumph of
the Immaculate Heart of Mary is accomplished in our lives.
I entrust to you, who are the directors, the task of sending this letter to the
members of the Marian Movement of Priests, that it may be read and well
meditated upon by them.
To all of you, I offer my affectionate greeting along with my priestly blessing.
I await your response, informing me of your news.
In the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
Your little brother,
Don Stefano Gobbi
Movimento Sacerdotale Mariano - Via Terruggia, 14 - 20162 Milano
www.msm-mmp.org
Official English translation
U.S. National Headquarters
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