All of mankind is cre­at­ed and re­deemed, but many of us don't know it. Since Vat­i­can II, 1962-1965, we are liv­ing in the times of the 'new evan­ge­li­sa­tion' and so fi­nal­ly, hope­ful­ly, the laity has re­dis­cov­ered that they are called to evan­ge­lise every­one and in do­ing so, learn to 'love their neigh­bour as them­selves.'

This process starts in our own fam­i­lies, moves to the wider com­mu­ni­ty and then to the na­tion. The dif­fer­ence in this new evan­ge­li­sa­tion is the joy ex­pe­ri­enced through rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and con­ver­sion which takes place when we are born again in the holy spir­it. This joy can be seen in the Charis­mat­ic Move­ment in the Ro­man Catholic Church which is al­ready over 40 years old.

John the Bap­tist was the pre­cur­sor of Je­sus Christ and he was called to be a prophet but not just 'a prophet'. Je­sus Him­self said: "I tell you solemn­ly, of all the chil­dren born of women, a greater than John the Bap­tist has nev­er been seen; yet the least in the king­dom of heav­en is greater than he is." (Mt 11:2-11). John him­self said: "Re­pent, for the king­dom of heav­en is close at hand," (Mt 3:2). And of course to­day, as it was 2,000 years ago, the king­dom of heav­en is with us through the re­al pres­ence of Je­sus Christ in the holy eu­charist.But when one looks around to see how we are liv­ing our lives, this is not ap­par­ent at all as I'm sure it wasn't ap­par­ent to many 2,000 years ago that Je­sus Christ was God made man.

Of all the prob­lems in the mod­ern world, one of the most se­ri­ous is the wide­spread ig­no­rance of the truth of the Catholic faith, lead­ing to mass sec­u­lar­i­sa­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in west­ern civil­i­sa­tion since the sec­ond world war. This has caused a de­cline in the ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion by the laity in the faith. God is still call­ing mankind to all sorts of vo­ca­tions, but of course mankind does not seem to be lis­ten­ing or in­ter­est­ed. God still loves us just as much as be­fore these sad times and so He re­sorts to many and var­ied ways of call­ing us to Him­self. Among these is by us­ing His blessed moth­er who has been very ac­tive in try­ing to re-awak­en her chil­dren and warn them about the dan­ger­ous paths they are tak­ing.

The pro­longed and con­tin­u­ous ac­tiv­i­ty of the Blessed Vir­gin Mary in his­to­ry is still oc­cur­ring. There have been doc­u­ment­ed re­ports of ap­pear­ances of the Blessed Vir­gin Mary from 1251 to to­day.

Some of the bet­ter known were to Juan Diego, Mex­i­co 1531; Bernadette Soubirous, Loudes 1858; Fran­cis­co and Jac­in­ta Mar­to and Lu­cia Dos San­tos at Fa­ti­ma, 1917. Per­haps these para­nor­mal events are sim­ply re­minders that chris­tian­i­ty it­self is found­ed on a mir­a­cle, the mir­a­cle of the in­car­na­tion–where almighty God was hid­den on earth as the ba­by Je­sus. We re­call the birth of Je­sus at Christ­mas time.

They can al­so re­mind us of the dai­ly mir­a­cles oc­cur­ring in the church that Je­sus Christ found­ed; the mir­a­cle of the holy eu­charist and the oth­er sacra­ments. Our La­dy's mes­sage through­out the years is the same as at the wed­ding feast at Cana in Galilee: "Do what­ev­er He (her son Je­sus Christ) tells you," (Jn 2:5). She is call­ing us to re­turn to the mar­riage feast with the Trin­i­ty.

Pe­ter Gen­tle

Min­istry of Hu­man Sex­u­al­i­ty and Nat­ur­al Fam­i­ly Plan­ning.