The Queen of Peace is the Woman of the Apocalypse
The biblical figure to which the Queen of Peace refers directly is the Woman Clothed with the Sun from the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse. It should not be overlooked that, in the Holy Mass of the beatification of the two shepherd children of Fatima, Francisco and Jacinta, during which the third secret was revealed, one of the readings chosen was the passage from the Apocalypse, as if to indicate an analogy between the biblical text and that of the secret.
No one better than St. John Paul II could grasp a reference to the current historical moment, in the dramatic attack of the “enormous red dragon” on the Woman clothed with the sun. In fact, the beatification of the two shepherds, in the heart of the great Jubilee of the year 2000, coincided with the moment in which the Queen of Peace invited to the consecration to her Immaculate Heart “now that Satan is loosed from his chains”.
The Polish Pontiff was better able than anyone else to understand the anti-Christian role played by Russia in the world, because of which “many nations will be destroyed” and at the same time the meaning of the surprising and unexpected collapse of communism, which Our Lady had foretold already in the first year of the apparitions in Medjugorje.
The perspective with which St. John Paul II looked at Mary’s peace plan from Fatima to Medjugorje is that of a merciless war that the Dragon is fighting against the celestial Woman, trying in vain to seize her. The Pontiff was aware that the collapse of the ideologies of evil, Nazism and Communism, had not stopped the action of the dragon who, in the meantime, had succeeded in seducing the world with an even worse ideology, “the new totalitarianism”, a form of thought that excludes God and every form of transcendence and makes man the master of the world. An ideology, the Pontiff affirmed with anguish, that preludes a collective sin against the Holy Spirit. In fact, how is it possible to obtain the grace of divine mercy when the world has closed itself in the dark limit of total immanence?
The reference to the Apocalypse is explicit in the very way in which the Queen of Peace presents herself. Her head is surrounded by a crown of very bright stars, a distinctive feature of Medjugorje, which is not present in other apparitions of modern times. Furthermore, the cloud on which the Gospa rests her feet, hiding them from our sight, is an apocalyptic sign that concerns the second coming of Christ: “They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Mt 25:30).
While in ordinary apparitions she wears a gray robe, a sign of penance, and a white veil, a sign of the fullness of grace, the same are resplendent with gold in the great liturgical solemnities. The set of signs indicates the presence of Mary in the splendor of her royalty, as the one sent by God for battle and victory.
The Woman of the Apocalypse and the Queen of Peace are the same person and mean Mary and the Church at the moment of the decisive attack of the empire of darkness. There is no doubt that the text of the Apocalypse does not refer only to a particular moment of the war against the Church that will continue until the end of the world. However, it is now that the most destructive attack is launched, with which Satan tries to take over the world.
In connecting to the secrets of Fatima, Our Lady has given us an interpretation of the historical moment of a dramatic and shocking intensity. While in the scenario of the Apocalypse we are shown the dragon who, in his fury, tries to devour the child who is about to be born and, failing, throws himself against the Woman, in that of the secret of Fatima the description is historically limited and concerns the Via Crucis of the Church in a world at the mercy of the power of darkness.
True understanding of history is that which comes from the light of faith. Our Lady does not make sociological or political analyses of the events of the last century, but describes what is seen from heaven and which reflects what happens on earth. War, destruction and death rage in a world where contempt for God, hatred and sin abound. In this infernal picture the Church, in union with her Savior, walks her Via Crucis, up to the top of Calvary, where the blood of the martyrs is collected in amphorae and poured on souls to wash them and bring them back to life. This is the key to interpreting our time on which the eye of the Mother rests to unmask Satan’s infernal plan and save souls from ruin.
Her presence as Queen of Peace heralds a victory that saves the world from self-destruction and opens the prospect of a new time in the history of humanity. The picture of the secret of Fatima, in its three parts, concerns the century that we have behind us in its dramatic development and at the same time the one that we have before us. The secret of Fatima and those of Medjugorje are part of a single scenario in which the Woman and the dragon are the protagonists.”
