CHARLTON – Popular author Father Michael E. Gaitley challenged about 700 people to be part of history-in-the-making last weekend, as he connected the Blessed Mother with the past and future. He was giving a Mercy and Mary Retreat on Friday and Saturday at St. Joseph Parish.
Father Gaitley is director of evangelization for the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, headquartered at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge. He is also director of formation for the Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy, lay people who organize these retreats at retreat centers and sometimes parishes.
The retreats include information from books Father Gaitley wrote for parish-based, do-it-yourself retreats, including “33 Days to Morning Glory.” This book leads people to pray a prayer, consecrating themselves to Jesus through Mary.
“I was just so inspired … by the books that I just wanted to see the author … and bring it closer to the heart,” said Joan Gero, of St. Roch Parish in Oxford. She said fellow parishioners appreciate him and many were attending the retreat.
Kevin Richardson, of Westfield, also wanted to see and hear the author of “33 Days.” His parish has offered the retreat.
“I love Father Gaitley,” said Elizabeth Williams, from Maine, whose parish used the book. “He makes us laugh, and yet he speaks the truth.” She brought her daughters, to inspire them.
“I’m hoping to just take the time to reflect and learn more about Mary,” her daughter Katherine Williams, an Assumption College senior, said Saturday morning.
“I’ve had a devotion to the Blessed Mother most of my life,” said Barbara Weddleton, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Worcester. “I’ve consecrated myself to Jesus through her twice with the ‘33 Days.’”
St. Louis de Montfort said total consecration to Jesus through Mary is the quickest way to become a saint, Father Gaitley said. He said consecration is a formal way of accepting Jesus’ gift of his mother from the cross, when he gave Mary to the beloved disciple, who took her into his home. (Jn 19:26-27)
“Jesus wanted us to have no less of a consolation” than he had, Father Gaitley said. “Mothers can make crosses into something sweet.”
He said St. Maximillian Kolbe sought to spread Marian consecration, to win everyone to Christ. Father Kolbe’s apostolate in Poland, which involved hundreds of friars, published a high-circulation monthly magazine, which was also published in Japanese. On the outskirts of Nagasaki he built a monastery, which was unscathed by the atomic bomb that killed many Christians there.
Father Gaitley said these Christians who died have been described as a holocaust to stop World War II. He said nuns among them were offering themselves to Jesus through Mary, as Father Kolbe had taught, when the bomb killed them. Then the Japanese emperor called for an end to the fighting, Father Gaitley said, attributing the war’s end in large part to Father Kolbe.
Father Kolbe himself was killed during the war, after voluntarily taking the place of a fellow prisoner condemned to an Auschwitz starvation bunker.
“We are now in the second largest push for Marian consecration,” Father Gaitley said. “It’s in Stockbridge.” He asked if that means suffering and World War III are coming.
“I hope it’s to prepare us for a new springtime,” he said. “I think it depends on our generosity of offering ourselves to Jesus through Mary. … If Mary could use a weak, broken instrument like me, she can use all of us.”
He said he made his consecration in college, but soon the “warm fuzzies” left him.
“It seemed to me that Mary was something of a nag,” he said. “I couldn’t do enough fasting … rosaries … so I avoided Mary. That went on for 15 years.” But, he said, “Her greatness is in her littleness; there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
His writing of “33 Days” helped heal his Marian devotion, he said.
“I had thought Mary had abandoned me,” he said. But she was doing her job; she got behind him and pushed him toward Divine Mercy.
The Divine Mercy image shows Jesus with red and pale rays streaming from his chest, and the words “Jesus, I trust in you.”
Father Gaitley recounted Adam and Eve’s sin of eating from the forbidden tree. He spoke of Mary as the new Eve, who gets people to the new tree – the cross – where they drink from Jesus’ side.
In Mexico, where abortion was legalized and there are drug cartels and a growing demonic cult, “33 Days” was a catalyst for a consecration to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Father Gaitley said.
“I would like to encourage you to be part of that push” to make or renew the consecration, he told listeners. He said they can tell Mary, “I don’t just want you to console me; I want to console you.”
Fatima visionary St. Francisco Marto wanted to console Jesus’ heart before working to convert sinners, and spent hours by the tabernacle, Father Gaitley said.
He likened Francisco to St. Teresa of Kolkata, who posted Jesus’ words, “I thirst,” by the crucifix and wanted her sisters to quench Jesus’ thirst for love – through adoration and in the poor.
Jesus “made himself vulnerable and in need of our love,” Father Gaitley said. “True friendship is always a two-way street.”
Jesus doesn’t give mercy from a pedestal, and neither should people today, he said. It’s as if Jesus asks sinners, “Would you have mercy on me by letting me save you?”
In extending mercy to the poor, people don’t have to give lots of money, but should make eye contact, Father Gaitley said.
Thinking in line with Jesus’ humility, those reaching out to the poor can reflect, “They’re letting us love, and that’s what saves us.”
“It was a personal retreat for me,” Father Robert A. Grattaroti, St. Joseph’s pastor, said Saturday afternoon. “We are better off because you are here,” he told Father Gaitley, who received a standing ovation.