Why is it a great charity?
We all know that the second commandment brought by Christ in the Gospel and placed by him on the same level of importance as the first commandment is the following: "you shall love your neighbor as yourself". These days, everyone talks about solidarity, helping others, NGOs and so on. So there's a lot of media coverage of these issues.
But what does it really mean to love your neighbor? Loving your fellow man means wanting to do him good in all its forms, in a hierarchy of common sense: from the good that is most important to him, to the good that is least important. Indeed, would it make sense to relieve a person of a small wound and leave aside a hemorrhage that urgently requires a compression point? Of course not.
Man can suffer from two types of evil: one material and temporary (poverty, illness, suffering) and the other spiritual through the loss of his Soul and eternal Hell after his death. While charity in material form is important, the fact remains that the greatest service to be rendered to a person is to enable him to go to Heaven and avoid eternal Hell, a dreadful punishment even compared to the worst trials on earth. This is l'work of absolute charity than succeeding in saving a person from Hell. And that's what contemplative religious orders are all about: while they have no direct material impact on people, because they are cloistered, they do save thousands of people from Hell through their prayer and self-sacrifice.
Devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary goes in the same direction and is justly designed to save souls from Hell. This is one of Our Lady's primary concerns. She came for it, asked for it at every apparition, and asks us to take action. Remember how she cried at La Salette, saying "men fall into Hell like leaves in autumn".
In Fatima, she will never cease to explain to us in concrete terms how to act to save thousands of souls:
"You've seen Hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wants to establish devotion to my Immaculate Heart throughout the world.. If we do what I'm going to tell you, many souls will be saved and we'll have peace".
Our Lady, Pontevedra December 10, 1925
"Sacrifice yourselves for the sinners who are going to Hell and have no one to pray for them."
Our Lady, Pontevedra December 10, 1925
So for all those who want to do something for others, here's what they can do the most powerful means given by Divine Mercy. Charity isn't just about giving a penny to the poor or writing a cheque to charity. It's about loving a poor person as a brother and a child of God, and therefore, in addition to the necessary material help, also wanting above all to help them get to Heaven, so that they can have eternal happiness and not just temporary relief. Let's remember what Christ says in the Gospel:
"What good is it for a man to win the world if he loses his Soul?
We could paraphrase: What's the point of helping a man for a few days if we let him lose his Soul at the same time? Material charity is intrinsically linked to spiritual charity, especially at a time when so many people have lost all faith. France: A land of mission!
The Immaculate Heart of Mary is God's most powerful and rapid means of saving souls. It's up to us to act.
