as Translated and Provided by Timothy A. Duff
Foul Ingratitude: Our Lady Explains the Cause of the Current State of the Catholic Church
from The Mystical City of God, Transfixion, par. 723-4
by Timothy A. Duff (5/23/13)
[Timothy A. Duff's foreword: The following are the verbatim words of Mary Immaculate taken from the Mystical City of God by Ven. Mary of Agreda, a book fully approved by the Catholic Church. This is part of the explanation and admonition given by our Immaculate Queen at the end of the chapters in this monumental 4-volume work. This passage by Our Lady could be called a “short history of the Catholic Church”. Please meditate upon them.]
Our Lady: “Thou art astonished, and justly so, to know on the one hand the power of the merits of my Son and of his Redemption and the ruin and debilitation they have caused in the demons; and on the other hand to see the power of the devil lording it over the world in haughty presumption. Although the light given to thee in writing this history is equal to this astonishment, I wish to add still another point of information in order that thou mayest guard thyself so much the more carefully against enemies so full of malice. It is certain that when hell came to the full knowledge of the sacrament of the Incarnation and Redemption, and of the poverty, humility and lowliness of the birth of my most holy Son, of his life and miracles ending in the mysterious Passion and Death, and of all the rest of his labors to draw men to Him, Lucifer and his demons were weakened and disabled, and they saw that they could not tempt the faithful in the same way as the rest of men and as they ceaselessly desire to do. In the primitive Church this terror and fear of the baptized and followers of Christ our Lord continued many years, for the divine virtues shone forth brightly in their imitation of Christ, in their zeal in confessing the faith, in following the teachings of the Gospel, and in practicing heroic virtues and most fervent love, humility, patience, and contempt of the vanities and deceits of the world. Many shed their blood and gave their life for Christ the Lord; they performed many admirable and exalted deeds for the glory of his Name. This invincible fortitude resulted from their living at a time so near to the Passion and Death of their Redeemer and to the prodigious example of his patience and humility, but also because they were less tempted by the devils, who could not so soon rise from the crushing defeat brought upon them by the triumph of the crucified God.
This close imitation and living reproduction of Christ, confronting the demons in the first children of the Church, they feared so much that they dared not approach them, and they precipitously fled from the Apostles and the just ones imbued with the doctrines of my divine Son. In them were offered up to the Almighty the first fruits of grace and of the Redemption. What is seen in the saints and in the perfect Christians in those times would happen in the present times with all the Catholics if they would accept grace and work with it instead of permitting it to go to waste, and if they would seek the Way of the Cross, for Lucifer fears it just as much now as in the times of which thou hast been writing. But soon the charity, zeal and devotion in many of the faithful began to grow cold, and they forgot the blessings of the Redemption; they yielded to their carnal inclinations and desires, they loved vanity and avarice, and permitted themselves to be fascinated and deceived by the false pretenses of Lucifer, obscuring the glory of their Savior and inveigling them into the meshes of their mortal enemies. This foul ingratitude has thrown the world into the present state and has encouraged the demons to rise up in their pride against God, audaciously presuming to possess themselves of all the children of Adam on account of this forgetfulness and carelessness of Catholics. They presume to plot the destruction of the whole Church by the perversion of so many who have fallen away from it, and by inducing those who are in it to think little of it, or by hindering them from producing the fruits of the blood and death of their Redeemer. The greatest misfortune is that many Catholics fail to recognize this great damage and do not seriously think of a remedy, although they can presume that the times of which my most holy Son forewarned the women of Jerusalem have arrived, namely those in which the barren should be happy, and in which many would call upon the mountains and the hills to cover and fall upon them (Lk. 23:29-30) in order not to see the devastation of wickedness cutting down the sons of perdition, the dried trees barren of all the fruits of virtue. In these evil times dost thou live, my dearest, and in order that thou mayest not be included in the perdition of so many souls, do thou bewail it in the bitterness of thy heart, never forgetting the mysteries of the Incarnation, Passion and Death of my most holy Son. I desire thee to give thanks in compensation for the great number of those who forget them, and I assure thee that the mere memory and contemplation of these mysteries are terrible to hell, torment and drive away the demons, and that they flee and withdraw from those who thankfully remember the life and Passion of my divine Son.” [my emph.]
[Thomas A. Droleskey afterword: Yes, it's me. I thought that you would like to know that Mr. Duff has been doing a
complete and proper corrected English edition (which he will publish as a
New English Edition) of the Venerable Mary of Agreda's The
Mystical City of God.
Mr. Duff actually wrote to me to state the following after this original afterword was published in order to correct my own misunderstanding of the nature of his proper and corrected English edition of The Mystical City of God:
I'm not actually re-translating the entire
work. That is way beyond me! Fr. Blatter's translation is excellent in
its own right; however, there are many typographical and citation
errors, as well as many mistranslated or missing phrases which I am
diligently re-translating.
It is a project of his that has been ongoing for fifteen years and upon which he has spent thousands of hours. Mr. Duff is making a tremendous contribution to Catholic scholarship and piety in this regard. Thank you, Mr. Duff, for giving this site the privilege of posting your foreword and translation.]
