Introduction

In 1981 the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in a village in Yugoslavia called Medjugorje. She wanted to be known as the “Queen of Peace” and she called us to:

Peace

Prayer

Fasting

Conversion

Faith

People were quick to point out that these messages are very biblical. However things were presented with urgency because she spoke of the chastisements to come.

When she was asked by the Visionaries about this, she asked us allegedly to look on our streets and see if God is honoured there. She also said that the chastisements could be alleviated by our following her messages. However they could not wholly done away with.

We accept the more pleasant aspects of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s visitation as being in accord with the Bible. I suggest that we will gain insight into the less pleasant aspects if we look into the Bible. By the grace of the Holy Spirit we will depth something of the urgency to live the messages and we will see that the chastisement of God is simply the other side of his all-provident love.

Mercy and Anger belong together.

Chastisements from God are related to the anger of God. “Many people find the wrath of God to be an unworthy or even offensive idea…. But what kind of person would someone be who was totally unable to summon up righteous indignation and anger in the face of obvious injustice and sinfulness? God’s mercy and wrath belong together [see Sir 5:7; 16:11]; God’s wrath is the obverse of grace. A God incapable of wrath would also be incapable of mercy and justice and grace.” Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., in THE COLLEGEVILLE PASTORAL DICTIONARY ISBN 0-8146-1996-7 Page 1110

Let us take the example of a child who persistently plays on the road when the child has been ordered to stay off the road. The parent, who sees a car coming, would be moved by love for the child to show very strong disapproval of the child’s action. If the parent showed indifference, we would come to the conclusion that the parent does not love the child. Having removed the child from danger, the parent would chastise the child to make sure that it did not happen again.

The Original Chastisement

The story of the Garden of Eden reveals the balance between the love and anger of God. Initially, God sets up a garden for Adam and Eve to live in and he can come and enjoy the company of his created friends. But they could not be friends if they could not be trusted. They failed the testing by Satan. So Adam and Eve had to leave the garden. Even then the promise of restoration is given to them.

So the balance is love + anger + mercy. The chastisements of God exist between the over-arching love of God and the practical mercy of God.

Chastising the Enemies of God’s People

As God’s plan of restoration started to unfold, rewarding and chastising were essential ingredients. The People of God is the hinge in God’s relationship with humanity. So right from the beginning rewards and chastisements for other people pivoted on their relationship with the People of God. When God first promised that he would make Abraham and Sera into a great people he also indicated how he was going to treat the other nations:

“I shall make you a great nation….I shall bless those who bless you and shall curse those who curse you.”

Genesis 12:2-3

God’s “signs and wonders” performed by Moses “in Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants and his whole country”

Deuteronomy 34:11 stand as the primary example of how God will chastise the enemies of his People. As he said: “Yes indeed, the Israelites’ cry for help has reached me, and I have also seen the cruel way in which the Egyptians are oppressing them.”

Exodus 3:9

Chastisement for Sin

Independent of their relationship with God’s People, other peoples are chastised for their sins. Sodom was destroyed “since the outcry to God against those in (Sodom had) grown so loud.”

Genesis 19: 13

An Intercessory People

In a previous judgement of the immorality of Sodom, God consulted with Abraham, as he wondered: “Shall I conceal from Abraham what I am going to do as Abraham will become a great and powerful nation and that all nations on earth will bless themselves by him?”

[Genesis 18:18] What follows is the delightful story of Abraham haggling with God and God accepting it. Knowing God’s plan of Salvation, “Abraham’s heart (was) attuned to his Lord’s compassion for men and he (dared) to intercede for them with bold confidence.”

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH {CCC} paragraph 2571

In a similar fashion, Moses interceded with God on behalf of his own People after they had been unfaithful. And he used very persuasive reasoning, letting God know what the Egyptians would say if God destroyed his People after bringing them out of Egypt; they would say: “He brought them out with evil intention”.

Exodus 32:12, So God did not carry out this particular chastisement.

It is as though God works in partnership with his Faithful People to bring mercy rather than chastisement

See CCC 2577. God is “slow to anger and rich in faithful love”

Exodus 34:6 and he will listen to those who “enjoy (his) favour”.

Exodus 34:9 Some sin is so horrendous that some chastisements must occur, as with the case of Sodom. But others will be lessoned or even avoided. As one intercessor (Milona Von Hapsburg) put it, during the Bosnian War in 1992: “We were giving God permission to do what God wanted to do.”

Withdrawing Protection

When the People of God settled in the Promised Land:

“They deserted the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt and they followed other gods, from those of the surrounding peoples…. they deserted God to serve Baal and Astartes. Then the Lord’s anger grew hot against Israel. He handed them to the enemies surrounding them…The Lord then appointed them judges, who rescued them from the hands of their plunderers.”

Judges 2:12-14,16

Basically God chastised his People by withdrawing his protection and letting them take the consequences of their action. He was treating them as adults.

In due time the Lord would anoint a special person to lead his People out of trouble. These were called Judges. They also kept people out of trouble by giving good judgements.

Warnings are Conditional

In the time of King David, the People of God had established a kingdom with defined borders. However, bigger kingdoms around them wanted their land. Rather than relying on God to provide for them as he promised in the Covenant, they would side with one foreign kingdom against another.

Many warnings were given to the people and when they turned back to God they were spared the consequences of their action. This happened about one third of the times in the incidents recorded in the Books of the Prophets. The most striking example is remembered in the Gospels; it was the repentance of the People of Nineveh and they were not even God’s Chosen People. [See Matthew 12:41; Luke 11:30,32] When Jonah preached that in forty days the Ninevites would be overthrown “the people of Nineveh believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least…God saw their efforts to renounce their evil ways. And God relented about the disaster which he had threatened to bring on them.” Jonah 3:5,10

Chastisement Lessened

Repentance and fasting can lessen chastisements, as the example of Ahab shows:

“ When Ahab heard those words, he tore his garments and put sackcloth next to his skin and fasted; he slept in the sackcloth; he walked with slow steps. Then the word of the lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, ‘Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Since he humbled himself before me, I shall not bring disaster in his day I shall bring the disaster down on his House in his son’s days.’”

1 Kings 2127-29

Winning Back

With the exile of the People of God from the Promised Land, a new aspect of God’s use of chastisements emerged. The People of God was seen as an unfaithful wife, who God was going to lead into the desert, where she would have to depend on him and he would win back her affection. In reality, the “desert” was the Babylonian exile. The Prophet Hosea was the first to develop this theme of restoring the love of a married couple through a chastisement:

“But look, I am going to seduce her

and lead her into the desert

and speak to her heart…

There she will respond as when she was young,

As on the day when she came out of Egypt.”

Hosea 2:16-17

Gospel Chastisement

The great concern of the People of God during the time of Jesus was the overthrow of the Roman authorities. Various groups had their solution to the problem of having any authority at the head of Israel, other than God himself. The solution of Jesus was to live out his teaching which is summed up in the Beatitudes. [See Matthew 5:3-10, also Luke 6:20-26] With sorrow, he made it perfectly clear the consequences if his people did not accept his way:

“As he drew near and came into sight of the city he shed tears over it and said, ‘If you too had only recognised in this day the way of peace!…Yes, a time is coming when your enemies…will leave not one stone standing on another within you because you did not recognise the moment of your visitation.’” [ Luke 19:41-44; See 21:20-24]

Jesus saw the blood spilling by the Roman authorities and the life-destroying fall of the ‘tower at Siloam’ (See Luke 13:1-5) as urgent calls to repentance. “Unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”

The Oppressors of Christ’s Faithful

The oppressors who surround the faithful People of God with the purpose of annihilating the Church will be chastised with “fire”.

“They came swarming over the entire country and besieged the camp of the saints, which is the beloved city. But fire rained down on them from heaven and consumed them.” [ Revelation 20:9]

The Church today to the extent that it is faithful to the Lord’s teaching is surrounded by enemies, in what the Pope speaks of as a “conspiracy” of the “culture of death”.[Pope John-Paul II, EVANGELIUM VITAE] People are calling out for God to come and help. We can only guess what the intervening “fire” will be. But I suggest that we do not look for meteors from the sky (which is not impossible) but:

Either God withdrawing his protection and letting human activity take its course, resulting in massive confusion and breakdown of society

Or a massive move of the Holy Spirit, a “global Pentecost”.

Or something in between.

Conclusion

In the contemporary western world, God has been left out of the picture. Humanity is no longer seen as “made in the image and likeness of God” by legislators and the international community tends to treat the papacy as an annoyance, while other voices are listened to.

[See GLOBALIZATION’S DARK SIDE at www.ewtn.com/getstory.asp/number=18680] As the history of the anger of God indicates, things will just not go on as they are. There will be a chastisement unless people convert. God uses his ‘prophets’ to call to conversion and he listens to ‘intercessors’ to extend his mercy.

Whether there is a massive chastisement, a lessened chastisement, a chastisement mixed with blessing, or a withholding of chastisement depends on whether we repent and conduct our affairs on earth in God’s way. As the messages of Medjugorje indicate, the call is prayer and conversion is urgent.