"He is now ruling over you as a sure victor..."

All across the United States, Occupy Wall Street protests have erupted and are now becoming violent.  In Oakland, California things have spiraled out of control.  On May 13, 1993, Our Lady told Father Gobbi that, "Satan has set up his kingdom in the world.  He is now ruling over you as a sure victor.  The powers which are directing and arranging human events, according to their perverse plans, are the dark and diabolical powers of evil.  They have succeeded in bringing all humanity to live without God.  They have spread everywhere the error of theoretical and practical atheism.  They have built the new idols before which humanity is bowing down in adoration: pleasure, money, pride, impurity, mastery over others, and impiety.  Thus, in these years of yours, violence is spreading more and more.  Egoism has made the hearts of men hard and insensitive.  Hatred has blazed up like a scorching fire.  Wars have multiplied in every part of the world, and you are now living in the danger of a new terrible world war which will bring destruction to peoples and nations, a war from which no one will emerge victorious..."

Our Lady has been warning us for some time that we are the authors of our own chastisement.  But honestly, didn't we already know this?  The people of Nineveh repented of their sins and their city was spared from disaster.  The spirit of penance which saved them from chastisement was expressed through the sackcloth and ashes. We are told in Sacred Scripture that, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you. So Jonah set out for Nineveh, in accord with the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an awesomely great city; it took three days to walk through it. Jonah began his journey through the city, and when he had gone only a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh: 'By decree of the king and his nobles, no man or beast, no cattle or sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. Man and beast alike must be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; they all must turn from their evil way and from the violence of their hands.  Who knows? God may again repent and turn from his blazing wrath, so that we will not perish.' When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out." (Jonah 3: 1-10).

Where is our fast?  Where is our penance?  Saint Paul tells us that all men have the basic moral law before them, the Ten Commandments written in their hearts.  All men are capable of knowing good from evil:

"For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.  As a result, they have no excuse.." (Romans 1: 19-20).

But excuses are all we find today.  As Father Albert J. Hebert, S.M. put it, "All great pagan judicial systems admitted the fact of wrong-doing and their legal systems prescribed punishment for it.  It is only in our day that there is such a widespread denial of the existence of sin and moral laws.  This makes God appear as the Creator of evil, and God hates this blasphemy, pride, and hypocrisy on the part of His creature man...Today, persons great and lowly commit sin, deny it and even blasphemously call it virtue.  For example, active homosexuals and lesbians call their perverse practices 'love' and demand the legal status of normal married man and wife."

We have forgotten the words Our Lord spoke 2,000 years ago to another generation but which nevertheless apply to our own sin-sick generation:

"The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonah.  And behold a greater than Jonah here." (Matthew 12: 41).