Introduction by Matthew Bellisario O.P.
In this article, we learn about lesser-known warnings concerning the Most Holy Eucharist and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which offers us insight into the loss of public Masses across Western Civilization over the entire course of Lent, the Easter Tridium, and beyond. The two mystics mentioned in this article are Saint Faustina and a lay-Dominican Dorothy O'Neil Weimar. They offer us an insight into the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the neglect of its sacrificial nature in recent times. Father Stanley Smolenski is a priest who personally knew well the Third Order Dominican, mystic and victim soul Dorothy Weimar, who is unfortunately largely unknown to most Catholics today. In this article, you will get a little introduction into the insight she was given concerning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the Eucharistic Presence of Our Lord and the importance of the role of Our Lady in participating in the Mass.
I would encourage you to consider picking up the booklet Father Smolenski has published over at New Hope Publications called, 'Dorothy O'Neill Weimar: A Star in the School of Mary, Women of the Eucharist' for more important information concerning Our Lady's role in understanding the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We are again being called to pray the Rosary in yet a more profound manner! I am working on a book review on it and hope to publish it soon. There is no greater teacher than Our Lady and how sad that most do not sit down at her feet to learn from her.
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Published in the Homiletic & Pastoral Review – 18 January 2020
And republished in National Catholic Register January 2020
ARE EUCHARISTIC PROPHECIES BEING IGNORED?
Fr. Stanley Smolenski, SPMA
The startling news of the lack of faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist in about 69% of Catholics today should come as no surprise to those familiar with the messages and missions of St. Faustina Kowalska and Dorothy O’Neill Weimar, both of the 20th century, one in Poland and the other in the United States.
St. Faustina is well known because her diary has been translated into many languages and her message of devotion to Divine Mercy has been instilled in the hearts of many through the Feast of Divine Mercy, the image of The Divine Mercy, the special chaplet, the daily 3 o’clock observance and the novena requested by Jesus.
On the other hand, Dorothy O’Neill Weimar is hardly known because her Marian and Eucharistic message and mission were revealed in the midst of the theological and moral mahem following Vatican II. The relevancy of her graces should become apparent as we must now face the statistical facts.
St. Paul clearly defines the problem in 1 Corinthians 11. 27-30 where he speaks of the unworthy reception of Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He describes succinctly the effects of a deficient faith in the Eucharist, “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”; that is, spiritually, from this lack of Eucharistic faith.
St. Faustina’s message about the Mass
St. Faustina herself made important entries in her diary concerning the Eucharist of the Last Supper, the first Mass. “During this hour of prayer, Jesus allowed me to enter the Cenacle, and I was a witness to what happened there. However, I was most deeply moved when, before the Consecration, Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and entered into a mysterious conversation with His Father. It is only in eternity that we shall really understand that moment. His eyes were like two flames; His face was radiant, white as snow; His whole personage full of majesty, His soul full of longing. At the moment of Consecration, love rested satiated – the sacrifice fully consummated. Now only the external ceremony of death will be carried out – external destruction; the essence [of it] is in the Cenacle. Never in my whole life had I understood this mystery so profoundly as during that Hour of Adoration. Oh, how ardently I desire that the whole world would come to know this unfathomable mystery!” .[684]
Faustina added elsewhere, “Oh, what awesome mysteries take place during Mass! A great mystery is accomplished in the Holy Mass. With what great devotion should we listen to and take part in this death of Jesus. One day we will know what God is doing for us in each Mass, and what sort of gift He is preparing in it for us. Only His divine love could permit that such a gift be provided for us. O Jesus, my Jesus, with what great pain is my soul pierced when I see this fountain of life gushing forth with such sweetness and power for each soul. While at the same time I see souls withering away and drying up through their own fault. O Jesus, grant that the power of mercy embrace these souls.” [914]
In the first quote, she states the scriptural and theological facts. In the second she adds the woeful response to this supreme Divine Gift to mankind.
Dorothy O’Neill Weimar’s focus on the holy sacrifice
Dorothy O’Neill Weimar’s messages were aimed more directly to our problems. Her experiences, as recorded in her journal, centered on the Real Presence of the Sacrifice of Calvary in the Mass. What St. Padre Pio experienced at the altar, Dorothy experienced as an ordinary participant in the church pew through a mystical union with the celebrating priest.
Although her journal begins with the first mystical entry in July 1940, describing her vocation as a victim soul. her unique participation in the Passion during the Mass seems to have begun in December 1947. The following was a constant occurrence at Mass until Dorothy’s death in 1974 and she recorded the experience several times. Its structure was based on (1) a vision of the world enveloped in sin, (2) a revolting experience of the ugliness of sin, (3) the way of salvation: the passion and death of Jesus, (4) at the consecration, the acceptance of this filial sacrifice of supreme love by God the Father, (5) the universal effects of this divine sacrifice: “…and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12.32), (6) the sacramental fulfillment of 1 Peter 2.24, “By His wounds you have been healed,” and an absorbing union with the Paschal Savior in communion.
Dorothy’s message met obstacles because they were deemed outmoded, old fashioned, not in sync with contemporary liturgical praxis. The theological trend was to focus on the communal dimension to the degree that the sacrificial dimension was ignored and then totally forgotten.
Addressing this dirth of Euchristic faith, Bishop Robert E. Barron of Los Angeles recently declared on a “Word on Fire YouTube video that, ”It represents a massive failure – and I include myself, we’re all guilty – a massive failure on the part of Catholic educators and catechists, evangelists, teachers… If on this central matter of our belief and practice there is much deep misunderstanding, something has gone substantially wrong.”
In the book Born of the Eucharist, the Dominican scholar Fr. Gabriel O’Donnell, OP pinpoints the cause. He opened the section on the sacrificial aspect of the Mass by stating: “The notion of the sacrificial character of the Mass has been muted in ordinary Catholic teaching in the last few decades. Without clarity on this point, there is no true theology of the Eucharist.” This “clarity” is precisely the point Our Lord told Dorothy O’Neill Weimar that He wanted to be presented to the Church in our times because, from what Jesus showed Dorothy, our age has special need to know and appreciate this.
In a letter to a priest dated February 6, 1970, Dorothy focused on this: “He [Jesus] took my hands and said, ‘I want the knowledge of the real meaning of the Mass made known now.” The year previously she wrote to the same priest, “Our Lord showed me the priests and told me that ‘I have told them to preach My word, but they preach their own.’"
She repeated this in another letter to him a few weeks later. That priest, Msgr. Anthony La Femina, who worked in the Vatican for over 25 years, recalled that on January 5, 1969, “to Dorothy’s wonderment – for she had never seen or heard Our Lord like this before – He, very angry, said, ’Woe to those who make up themselves the meaning of the Mass and teach it to others. They shall be damned to the everlasting fires of hell!’ Dorothy understood from this how important the Mass is to Our Lord, and how imperative to Him that His priests teach its true meaning to His faithful.”
In an undated tape to her Dominican spiritual director, Dorothy speaks on the same subject. The Lord told her that it is the priests ‘who through intellectual pride’ that are doing them harm. A note of consolation was included in a letter to Msgr. La Femina, dated October 20, 1972. Our Lord had told her that the Church “will be strengthened by this adversity”.
The Decadent Decade
Please note that this message was given by Our Lord to Dorothy in 1972. That is very significant because the years 1965 to 1975 are referred to as the Decadent Decade – a time noted for theological and moral uprooting whose turbulence still influences us now on many church and social levels.
Isn’t it logical, therefore, to believe that Dorothy was chosen to be a providential instrument in the restoration of the theology of the Eucharist, specifically the Mass, the source and summit of our Christian life? The fact that she was an ordinary devout person in the pew, as St. Faustina was an uneducated Sister in the kitchen, shows that this is of divine and not human origin.
Apropos to this, Dorothy told Msgr. La Femina, who knew her as I did since our high school days, that Our Lord wanted him to write on the Mass. Since St. John was present in Dorothy’s experience of the Passion, he chose to study that Apostle’s Last Supper account. After an intense 35-year analysis, he produced a ground-breaking book, Eucharist and Covenant in John’s Supper Account – [New Hope Publications]. It contains the same truth as St. Faustina. Monsignor explains this matter in his book, but it seems that St. Faustina’s account is unfortunately not yet correctly understood.
Let us recall that such messages are meant to be remedial. They do not change or add to public Revelation but only bring out some of its forgotten or neglected elements which is of particular importance in a given historical period. What is evident in the Church today, empty churches and empty seminaries, is very much the result of this loss of faith in the Real Presence of the Sacrifice in the Eucharist.
In a letter to her spiritual director dated June 17, 1963, Dorothy points out how essential the Mass is to the life of the Church. “He [Christ] told me that without the Holy Sacrifice even the sacraments wouldn’t exist and wouldn’t be effective because it was His death on the cross that all prayers must go through and all being cleansed from sin.”
Speaking of prayer, Pope Benedict XVI declared on the occasion of the ordination of priests in 2009 that “The Eucharistic Celebration is the greatest and highest act of prayer, and constitutes the center and source from which even the other forms receive ‘nourishment’: the Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharistic adoration, Lectio divina, the Holy Rosary. meditation.” This shows that Dorothy’s statement is aligned with the teaching of the Church’s magisterium.
Dorothy’s Marian Dimension
Our Lord told Dorothy many times to keep close to Mary, as they walked together with him on the way of the cross during Mass. Our Lord placed a mystical star over Dorothy’s head saying, “My little Star of Mary, you will shine with my love; through your sufferings, through Father’s Mass [her spiritual director], you will lead many souls to Me.” On another occasion, Our Lady repeated that title, “You are my star… Your soul shall shine above men as my star.”
The Rosary was essential to Dorothy’s spirituality – something natural to a member of the Dominican Laity. Its importance is shown on how frequently it is emphasized in her journal and letters. It is usually connected to the Mass. At one time Our Lady placed the Rosary around her heart. That recalls the prayer of Pope St. John XXIII, “O Mary of the Rosary, bind me forever with your Rosary to Jesus of the Blessed Sacrament”.
Contrary to the common preaching at that time, St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II clarified the relationship of the Rosary to the Mass. Pope Benedict XVI stated that the Rosary “is a natural and ideal complement” to the liturgy, “especially as a preparation for the Eucharistic celebration”.
Probably the most important indication of the connection of the Rosary to the Mass is found in this reference. “About this time [October 1946]… whenever I was attending Holy Hour… and the priest and people would start the Rosary, I would find myself kneeling next to our Blessed Mother. She would place her hand over mine. I would hear her voice, sweet, rich. I would kneel unable to move as she told me the story of each mystery and at the same time I would live each moment. Mary often told me to live her Rosary.”
Our Lady declared, ‘To all who come to me I will tell the story of my Rosary – the story of the Mass – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus’”. Jesus himself told her to “Meditate on Me in the Rosary and praise Me in the Mass”. The final words of the Eucharistic Consecration are “Do this in memory of Me.” The profounder our Rosary meditation, the more heartfelt our memory of him as well as the awe and thanksgiving that Pope St. John Paul II said should pervade all participating in the Mass.
Let us recall that the Decadent Decade was also the decade without Mary, when the Rosary was degraded with other devotions as was adoration of the Blessed Sacrament because of the emphasis on the communal celebrations, especially by the erroneous reinterpretation of the Mass, leading to its gross misrepresentation and to the severe loss of grace - presented in detail in my booklet, Dorothy O’Neill Weimar – A Star in the School of Mary, Woman of the Eucharist – New Hope Publications, 2018.
If our Lord expressed his displeasure at the state of our Eucharistic worship in such an extraordinary manner, so too it must disturb God the Father who mercifully gives us his Son in this sacrificial banquet of the New Covenant. The restoration of the Mass as our Lord formed it at the Last Supper is of crucial importance to the eternal life of each member of the Church.
That explains and validates the contemporary prophetic messages and missions of St. Faustina Kowalska, Apostle of Divine Mercy, and of Dorothy O’Neill Weimar, the Star of Mary.
Fr. Stanley Smolenski spma, a canonical Baptistine hermit, is the director of the diocesan Shrine of Our Lady of Joyful Hope – Our Lady of South Carolina in Kingstree SC.
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