Last winter was hard. Every evening for months I would lay in bed and watch videos of the 2011 Japanese tsunami. They didn’t help my mood. I would lay in the dark with the roaring of the waters in my ears and the cries of the people as they watched their entire town being washed away in seconds. I couldn’t stop watching. In some of the videos the water is like a dark beast, absolutely implacable and unforgiving, out seeking vengeance for some terrible crime, I don’t know what.
They entered my dreams of course. How could they not, these fevered apocalyptic visions? But this had happened to me before, my tsunami dreams, except the last time I had not installed them into my unconscious through electronic means. Around the year 2000 I started getting recurring nightmares of an enormous wave engulfing my house and being powerless to do anything about it. The feeling of utter dread and sheer panic were very hard to shake when I awoke.
These dreams were still occuring when my wife and I moved to Thailand in 2003. On Boxing Day 2004, as I walked down to the beach one morning in Phuket, I suddenly knew the exact dread I had known in my dreams. At about 9.30 AM the first of several large waves, each larger and more powerful than the last, would smash onto the beach where we were staying with my parents. As it was happening my father and I were dragged by the water up the beach, and I genuinely believed I wouldn’t survive. I knew in that moment that without a shadow of a doubt my dreams had been pointing to this moment. Of course this was not just happening on our beach, but all over South Asia, an earthquake-triggered tsunami was killing a quarter of a million people, the largest natural disaster in human history. We were lucky, the waves were not strong enough where we were to kill us, but I was forever changed by that experience.
Nothing would feel quite as secure as before after this. Some of my certainty had been washed away. But I always remember my reaction to this and how I knew with certainty that this had been foreseen, and how I was going to warn others of its gravity. Certainly I had a difficult time persuading my wife and mother of the enormity of what was happening. We spent the rest of the day up a hill with others from the village, but it wasn’t until we went to the local town and news reports started coming in that it was clear that this was a tragedy of enormous proportions.
I have a similar feeling at the moment. All around, I can see people who are not looking clearly at the present situation in the Church and the world, and who are thinking of business as usual, but it is not. How do you go about warning them, without feeling like Chicken Little?
Also I think there is something more to the flooding and tsunamis. In 1980, when asked about the third secret of Fatima at Fulda in Germany, John Paul II said this:
“On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this: if there is a message in which it is written that the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth, and that from one moment to the next millions of people will perish, truly the publication of such a message is no longer something to be so much desired.”
This means firstly, that the whole third secret of Fatima has not been revealed, as the official third secret revealed in 2000 says no such thing. It also means the chastisements mentioned in other revelations may well be ahead, especially those of Akita. Certainly Pope Benedict XVI affirmed that the message of Fatima and the message of Akita are essentially the same.
At Akita Our Lady said:
“If men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before.”
The news has recently surfaced that Sr Agnes Sasagawa, the 88 year-old nun at the centre of the Church-approved Akita apparitions and messages in 1973, has recently after thirty years received a new message from her guardian angel which you can read here.
It appears that the message of penitence (“put on ashes”) and prayer was given on October 6th, just hours after the pagan ceremony in the Vatican gardens. The reference to sackcloth and ashes is from the book of Jonah, and indeed in the message it directly mentions Jonah 3:6-10 which shows how God relented from the chastisement by the penance that the people did on the orders of the King of Nineveh.
Reading the book of Jonah I was struck by Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the whale:
“I called to the Lord, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and thou didst hear my voice.
For thou didst cast me into the deep,into the heart of the seas,
and the flood was round about me;
all thy waves and thy billows
passed over me.
Then I said, ‘I am cast out
from thy presence;
how shall I again look
upon thy holy temple?’
The waters closed in over me,
the deep was round about me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
whose bars closed upon me for ever;
yet thou didst bring up my life from the Pit,
O Lord my God.
When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the Lord;
and my prayer came to thee,
into thy holy temple.
Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their true loyalty.
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to thee;
what I have vowed I will pay.
Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”
It seems this prayer of Jonah has much to say to our situation right now.
One of the things which seems to be a connection is the link between Our Lady of Mt Carmel and the Fatima/Akita revelations. On Oct 13th 1917 at what is known as the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucia under three different aspects. Firstly a tableau of the holy family appeared, then Mary appeared as Our Lady of Sorrows with Jesus, and finally she appeared as Our Lady of Mt Carmel holding the brown Scapular. She then revealed who she was to Lucia, as promised, as Our Lady of the Rosary.
Clearly these three apparitions are symbolic of the Joyful, Suffering, and Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. The Holy Family are the subject of the Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful mysteries symbolised by Jesus in red garments and Our Lady of Sorrows, and the Glorious Mysteries, in which Mary appears crowned and Glorious alongside Our Lord in Heaven, is aptly captured by the image of Mary as Our Lady of Mt Carmel, who appears crowned holding Her Son and with the scapular, assurance of our own ultimate participation in the Divine Life if faithful to the end.
In the time I was in Rome during the synod, I visited the Carmelite church, St Maria in Traspontina, where all the idols were and sacrileges were happening daily. I wish now I had been more outspoken against what was happening. I prayed a rosary and an act of reparation in front of the statue of Our Lady of Mt Carmel, placing the images I had created of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts at her feet.
I have decided to join in the 40 day prayer and fasting recommended by Fr Heilman at his website , I think it would be good for all Catholics to do this. There is so much at stake, and the waters are rising all around us.