Gearóid Ó Colmáin Offical site of journalist Gearóid Ó Colmáin.
The Pope’s recent consecration of Russia has, unsurprisingly, provoked controversy due to the use of a term often associated with a pagan goddess. But what if God allowed the ambiguity so as to focus our attention on the first Holy Saturday when he descended into hell?
‘Blessed earth, blessed Bride of God, earth untilled and saving the world.’
Cannon for Holy Communion, Ode one, Theotokos
There has been controversy concerning the wording of the recent ‘consecration’ of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s basilica in Rome on the Feast of the Annunciation.
‘Queen of Heaven’ is the translation in English of ‘terra del Cielo’ in Italian. Terra del Cielo translates as ‘earth heaven’ or ‘earth of heaven.’ What exactly does this mean and why was it not translated properly into English?
Andrea Tornielli, writing in Vatican News, says the expression is taken from a Byzantine/Slavic Akathistos hymn. It would be interesting to see the original Church Slavonic expression. It apparently dates to the VII century A. D. However, the Vatican has not given any explanation for why the term was mistranslated in English.
In what follows, I will argue that the only good we can hope from the recent consecration is that the modernist sect is annihilated, and Catholic tradition restored.
The linguistic confusion is a sign that God opposes the New World Order’s plan for a new Tower of Babel. It also underlines the absolute necessity of Latin as the universal language of the Church.
I suggest that the Latin version of ‘tierra del Cielo’ should become the slogan of traditionalists.
I conclude that neo-pagan geolatry can paradoxically inspire us to think about the Blessed Virgin as the pure, Edenic earth, but more importantly, what is below the earth, the four sections of Hell. Hence the importance of First Saturday devotions.
Enzo Bianchi’s ‘ecumenism’
The inspiration for this unusual description of Mary probably comes from the Italian writer Enzo Bianchi, who founded the Bose monastic community in 1965. A Catholic layman, Bianchi’s monastery includes nuns and also welcomes protestants and orthodox clergy in the ‘spirit of ecumenism’ of Vatican II.
In an interview with French KTO, Bianchi used the term « terre-ciel, earth heaven » to refer to the Italian tradition of placing statues in the gardens outside churches of the Blessed Mother holding the dead Christ in her arms. Bianchi’s devotion to the Blessed Mother does seem genuine. He has spoken about how he felt adopted as a child when his own mother died.
The Italian mystic spent some years in an Orthodox monastery in Serbia. If Bianchi is the source for this expression, he is likely to have encountered it there. On the monstery website, there is a beautiful translation of the hymn. But there is no link to the original Serbian text.
Bianchi was involved in the return of the Our Lady of Kazan icon to Russia. If the original source for the hymn can be found it will at least prove the catholicity of intention.
On the Bose Monastery website, Bianchi explains the meaning of ‘terra del cielo:
‘Among both Eastern and Western Christians, in different formulations, the Dormition-Assumption of Mary is a signal of ‘ultimate realities’, of those which happen in the future, not only in the chronological but figurative sense, a sign of plenitude to which our limits desire: in her, we intuit the glorification which awaits all the cosmos at the end of time, when ‘God will be all in all. (1 Cor 12,28) and in all.
She is the portion of humanity that has already been redeemed, a figure of that ‘promised land’ towards which we are called, a piece of that earth transplanted in heaven. A hymn of the Orthodox Serbian church sings to Mary ‘Earth of Heaven’, earth, from which we like Adam and her, are formed (Gen.2,7) but redeemed earth, Christianised, transfigured by the energies of the Holy Spirit, earth henceforth present in God forever, the anticipation of our common destiny.’
Of course, the term ‘tierra del cielo’ suspiciously evokes the pagan geolatry of the Bergolian papacy — Pachamama, the South American pagan goddess to whom children were sacrificed.
But there could be another sense in which the term earth-heaven might, Deo volente, point towards our future.
This return to the earth, to’ mother nature’; ecology, anti-consumerism, fake solidarity, and organicism –these social movements are indicative of a general human disenchantment with the post-industrial and technological world.
While the new-age ecological movement is clearly a dangerous form of Gnosticism, the Catholic homesteading and ‘back-to-the-land’ movement is real and important.
Nonetheless, the growing omnipresence of goddess ideology may be ironically preparing mankind for the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin.
Bianchi’s monastery is rather symbolic of our condition and that of the Church. He was asked to leave the monastery in 2017 by Cardinal Parolin. But he’s refusing to leave. In his aforementioned interview, Bianchi says his favorite saint is John the Baptist because he most resembles modern man: He fails to recognize Christ in the flesh, in spite of having prepared humanity for his arrival. This is a heresy that we will come to in a moment. But first, let us consider piety. It is the virtue we ask for in the first joyful mystery of the Rosary — pietatem petimus, we pray for piety.
The Death of Piety
It is worthy of note here that the Pieta theme corresponds to the Sixth Sorrow of Mary when her Immaculate Heart is all that remains of Christ in this world. In my previous article, I referred to Father Holzhauser’s theory of the Seven Ages of the Church. The fifth age is characterised by the triumph of money-power and hypocrisy in the Church, represented by the church of Sardis in the Book of the Apocalypse.
Holzhauers’s theory is just that. It is one or many plausible ways of thinking about the world in terms of ecclesial history. No one is suggesting it is without flaws.
When Christ is taken down from the cross, all that is left of His heart is the Immaculate Heart of His mother who has become the mother of all humanity. All that is left of Christ is his body. But His Sacred Heart continues to beat through the Immaculate Heart of His mother, who becomes the mother of all humanity.
When we look at the Pieta, we see Christ’s body, after His soul ‘descendit in Inferos’ descended into Hell. But what does that mean? Did Christ suffer in Hell? Catholics recite this in the Credo at mass, yet few understand what it means. I will try to show here that the reason why no one understands this phrase is that the Modernist church denies the physical reality of Hell.
Descendit ad Inferos
On the second day of his death, Christ ‘descended into Hell’. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, there are four levels of Hell: Gehenna, purgatory,(Purgatorio) Limbo of the Fathers(Limbus Patrum), and Limbo of the Infants (Limbus Infantum). Jesus descends into the Limbo of the Fathers, of all the righteous who died before His Crucifixion, opening the doors of Heaven.
Although the limbo of the fathers is technically part of Hell, it was the equivalent of earthly paradise, but not Heaven. In other words, the righteous who died before Christ did not suffer the torments of Hell and Purgatory but nor did they enjoy the Beatific Vision which is Heaven.
So, while the righteous souls did not suffer the torment of Gehenna, they nonetheless longed to be reunited with God. Inferos in Latin, therefore, refers to four different kinds of Hell.
John the Doubter?
I mentioned that Enzo Bianchi says his favourite saint is John the Baptist because he most resembles modern man: He fails to recognize Christ in the flesh, in spite of having prepared humanity for his arrival.
While this is certainly true of modernists, it is not true of St. John the Baptist. This heresy goes back to Pope John Paul II, who clearly didn’t understand the passage in Matthew’s gospel where the imprisoned St. John the Baptist asks about Christ.
Pope St.Gregory the Great(604) explains this episode as follows:
‘It seems almost as if John did not know the one he had pointed out, as if he did not know whether he was the same person he had proclaimed by prophesying, by baptizing, by pointing him out!
We can resolve this question more quickly if we reflect on the time and order of the events. When John is standing beside the river Jordan, he declares that this is the Redeemer of the world. But when he has been thrown in jail, he asks whether they were to look for another or whether he had come. This is not because he doubts that he is the Redeemer of the world. John now wants to know whether he who had personally come into the world would also descend personally into the courts of Hell.
For John had preceded Christ into the world and announced him there. He was now dying and preceding him to the nether world. This is the context in which he asks, ‘Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ But if he had spoken more fully he might have said, ‘Since you thought it worthy of yourself to be born for humanity, say whether you will also think it worthy of yourself to die for humanity. In this way, I, who have been the herald of your birth, will also be the herald of your death. I will announce your arrival in the nether world as the One who is to come, just as I have already announced it on earth.’
John did not have doubts about Christ. But he realised that his own martyrdom was soon and he would probably die before Christ. He wanted his own disciples to see for themselves that Christ was the Messiah.
St. John the Baptist’s offering to go down to the Limbo of the Fathers shows his absolute faith, not his doubt. No one had more faith than St. John the Baptist. He was the only human being to be born without original sin, as he was baptised in his mother’s womb when he lept during Mary’s Visitation to his mother Elizabeth.
Father George Leo Haydock explains:
‘Ver. 3. Art thou he that is to come? (Greek, who cometh?) i.e. the Messias. John the Baptist had already, on several occasions, declared that Jesus was the Messias. (John i). He could not then doubt of it himself but sent his disciples to take away their doubt. (Witham) — St. John the Baptist sent his disciples not to satisfy his own doubts, but for the sake of his disciples, who, blinded by the love they bore their Master, and by some emulation, would not acknowledge Christ to be the Messias. (St. Chrysostom in Baradius) — This expression of St. John is much-taken notice of, as conveying with it a very particular question. “Tell me, says St. John, now that I am departing out of this world, whether thou art coming to redeem the patriarchs and holy fathers; or wilt thou send another?” (St. Thomas Aquinas) — And St. Chrysostom also explains it thus, Art thou he that art to come to limbo? but the Baptist omitting this last word, sufficiently indicated to our Saviour what was the purport of this question. St. Jerome and St. Gregory say, that by his death, he was going to preach to the holy fathers that Christ, the Messias, was come. John does not here propose this question as ignorant of the real case, but in the same manner, as Christ asked where Lazarus was laid. So John sends his disciples to Jesus, that seeing the signs and miracles he performed, they might believe in him. As long, therefore, as John remained with his disciples, he constantly exhorted them to follow Jesus; but now that he is going to leave them, he is more earnest about their belief in him. (St. Thomas Aquinas)‘
It seems, then, that there is double movement here. John is sending his disciples to learn about the Messiah themselves. But also, the question seems to hold the possibility of deeper meaning, that John is asking Jesus whether he is now to go before him into the Limbus Patrum, the Limbo of the Fathers. Thus, John’s imprisonment may be a sort of prefiguration of the imprisonment of Hell.
Four Sections of Hell
Catholic tradition teaches that there are four sections of hell or the ‘nether world’: Gehenna, Purgatory, Limbo of the Infants, and Limbo of the Fathers. Limbus Patrum was the section of hell where the righteous souls who died before Christ’s death went.
But when Christ descended into the Limbo of the Fathers after his death, it became the equivalent of an earthly paradise. That is why Christ tells the repentant thief on the cross, ‘ today you shall be with me in Paradise.
Limbo of the Infants(Limbus Infantum) is for unbaptised children who die before the age of reason. They live in perfect bliss but do not have the Beatific Vision. Limbo of the Infants has been defined by several fathers and scholastic theologians of the Church. To deny Limbo is to deny the importance of baptism, which is to deny the essential role played by St. John the Baptist.
The modernists do not want to talk about what is below the earth, for most of them know in their consciences that that is where they will go when they die if they do not repent.
Did the Devil interfere with the Consecration?
Many suspect modernist foul play in the use of the term ‘tierra del cielo’, during the consecration. This term has been used to refer to goddesses in the Mapache culture and other pagan traditions. This does appear to be true and may have been one motivation for its inclusion.
But there is also a tradition among the Church fathers which views the Incarnation as the Word taking root in the soil of Mary. As humans are made of clay, so Christ became clay in Mary. In fact, this is one of the explanations given for the mystery of the ‘black madonnas’, revered in several Catholic countries.
St. John the Baptist is the opposite of modern man. For the essence of modernism is the denial of hell. In his KTO interview Bianchi says that if he gets to Heaven, he will ask God why he makes innocent people on earth suffer. But this is explained in the Book of Job. All Catholics understand the paradox of suffering in Christianity, why God often makes those he loves most suffer most. The attempt to downplay the necessary horror of the cross is another aspect of modernist heresy.
Nonetheless, there is something tantalizingly seductive about the idea of earth-heaven. Is it not the delusion of all leftists? the delusion of utopia? the delusion that ‘another world is possible, a heaven on earth?
But there is another possibility. The destiny of the Church is to become the Church of all the earth. The incorporation of themes and motifs from pagan cultures is nothing new. The Catholic Church has always incorporated the cultures in which it has taken root.
There could be a sense in which the return of goddess worship, of geolatry, is a sign that the earth, the kingdom of Satan, is about to transition to the Marian era, the sixth age of the Church, the age of consolation. God will turn the great apostasy into a great return.
But the inveterate evil that percolates through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will have to be burnt out. It is hard to see how any graces could come from this consecration, where once again, confusion, ambiguity, and arrogant tampering with language leave so many of the faithful in a state of anxiety.
That said, there were moments of beauty, the lines of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego, ‘Am I not your mother?’ should give us comfort as we face the Great Tribulation of forced vaccination, concentration camps, famine, war, and social anarchy. For there can be no redemption of man without suffering.
As the Mother of Christ, Our Lady is also the Mother of the Church. As the flesh within which the Word took shape, she is the co-mediatrix of grace. Perhaps no artist ever captured the sense of tragedy in Christianity better than Michelangelo’s Pieta. It is perhaps an image of the church of Sardis, where the son of man is dead matter but His beating heart is His mother. Yet her Immaculate Heart was the means by which the Word became flesh, and the earth Eden, earth-heaven.
Ukraine contains 25 percent of the world’s black earth (chernozem). It is why Ukraine is called the ‘granary of the world.’ As the prospect of global famine has now been confirmed by the US and French presidents, due to the NATO-provoked war in Ukraine, devotion to the Blessed Mother as Mediatrix of all graces will increase.
We can only hope that Our Lady understands tierra del cielo as the dark earth into which the Son of Man and light of the world was grafted, and not demons such as Pachamama to whom children were sacrificed.There is a book in Spain called La tierra del cielo, lecturas de mitos chilenos sobre los cuerpos celestes- Earth of Heaven, lectures on Chilean myths about celestial bodies.
In Mapuche mythology Wenu mapu, wenu signifies heaven where goddesses live, while mapu signifies earth where men live. If this is what the Pope had in mind, expect the imminent wrath of God upon the cursed earth!
Terra del cielo is also the name of an album by Argentinian electronic music producer Gabriel Epstein, who calls himself Janax Pacha, Quechua for earth of heaven. Epstein’s music is devoted to the demon Pachamama.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider has clarified that several saints used the metaphor of earth to describe the Blessed Virgin. St. Ephraim of Syria in his Hymns on Nativity sings:
‘The virgin earth of old gave birth to Adam who is lord of the earth, but today another virgin has given birth to the Adam who is Lord of heaven.
St. John Chrysostom in De Mutatione Nominum says that: ‘The word Eden signifies virgin land. Now, such was that region in which God planted paradise. Now, this virgin earth is a type of the Virgin. For as the land, without having received any seed, blossomed forth for us paradise; so too Mary without having conceived on man, blossomed forth for us Christ.’
For if our Blessed Mother is the earth in which the grain for the Bread of Life is to grow, she must be black. In these dark times, perhaps the Holy Spirit wants us to think about the miracle of photosynthesis, how light transforms the dark earth giving life once the seed is planted.
To survive the coming catastrophe, we will have to return to the land, grow our own food and live in simple, self-sufficient monastic-like communities, so that we as bits of earth, get to heaven
What if God allowed this controversy to take place so that we would focus on the idea of the Blessed Mother as ‘terra celestis‘? It is also fitting that Archbishop Schneider should have provided clarification from St. Damiano, as that great saint made it his mission to drive all the sodomites from the Church.
How ironic that a pope accused of protecting pederasts should echo the description of Mary as celestial earth.
In the French translation of the consecration prayer published online on the website Etoile Notre Dame, there is no mention of ‘heaven of earth’ nor ‘Reine du Ciel. In the French text, the line ‘earth of heaven, restore God’s peace to the world’ is missing. It’s a curious omission.
However, the French text posted on the Vatican website clearly states ‘terre du Ciel’.
Did different versions of the text circulate before the consecration? Did all the French bishops receive the same translation? The obvious problem here is that there is no official Latin version of the prayer. Spanish may be the native language of the Pope, and Italian the working language of the Vatican but Latin is the official language of the Church. Why wasn’t the prayer composed in Latin and recited in that language by the Pope?
The Tower of Babel
The German text gives us:
‘Führe, „du Irdische im Himmel“, die Welt wieder zu göttlicher Eintracht.- Lead, « You bit of earth in heaven », the world back to divine accord. It doesn’t say Erde vom Himmel which would be more accurate translation of the Spanish.
The Norwegian and Danish texts follow the sense of the German. But the Swedish text makes the same mistake as the English: du Himlens drottning means ‘you Queen of Heaven’.
The Romanian text give us « Pământ ridicat la Cer”- earth raised to heaven. This is clearer than the Spanish. The Russian «Небесная земля» means literally ‘ Of heaven the earth’. The other Slavonic languages follow the same pattern.
It is clear, in my view, from some of these translations that tierra del Cielo is in conformity with the tradition of Mary as terra celestis. But one would have to peruse all the translations posted on the Vatican website in order to come to a final conclusion about the text.
Perhaps there is another meaning we can glean from all of this. Did not God confuse the languages of man when he tried to build a tower to heaven? Is not the project of the New World Order, the dream of reconstructing the tower of Babel?
Mary, as terra celestis, is the only ‘bit of earth’ that ever made it directly to heaven. And no earthling will ever enter Heaven without her intercession.
Holy Saturday
We mentioned the fact that Enzo Bianchi, the man who coined the phrase ‘earth of heaven’, has spread the heresy, following Pope John Paul II, that St. John the Baptist had a crisis of faith while imprisoned by Herod.
It is often overlooked that the key message of Fatima is the reality of Hell. The first secret revealed to the three children Francisco, Lucia and Jacinta was a vision of hell. Our Lady assured the children that they would be saved before showing them the vision, so that they would not die of fear.
Our Lady said that most souls go to hell. That is why she asked for reparation to be made on the five first Saturdays. We might ask why ‘first’ Saturdays of each month? It seems to me that there is a reference here to her son’s descent into the Limbo of the Fathers after His death — the first Holy Saturday.
Hell is almost never mentioned by modernist Catholics. Recent moves have been made to deny the existence of Limbo, which has been defined by Church fathers and scholastics for centuries.
Pope Francis has even denied Hell.
In his work The Dogma of Hell, Father Francois Xavier Schouppe gives several harrowing proofs of Hell’s existence. Anyone who doesn’t believe in hell should read Schouppe! Christ warns about Hell over fifteen times in the Gospels.
The denial of Hell is part of the effeminacy of modernism, the idea that God is nice. God is not nice; God is just. God vomits lukewarm Catholic niceness out of His mouth!
The Church has always insisted on the mediation on the Four Last Things: death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell.
There are five sins against the Blessed Mother, which the faithful are asked to repair in five first Saturdays: Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception, blasphemies against Perpetual Virginity; blasphemies against her Divine Maternity, and blasphemies against those who seek to turn children from devotion to her, and offenses against her holy image.
The blasphemy against Mary’s Immaculate Conception does not require reparative action as she was a passive recipient of this gift. But the remaining four blasphemies require confession, communion, the Rosary and fifteen minutes of meditation during five first Saturdays.
In confession, one purifies the soul, thereby repairing the blasphemy against her Perpetual Virginity. Confession also prepares the soul for the first last thing: death.
In communion, one encounters Christ as the Bread of Life. Jesus was ‘tabernacled’ in the womb of the Blessed Mother. Communion honours Mary’s Divine Maternity. The second last thing is our encounter with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Christ in the Judgement.
In reciting the Rosary, we actively engage in spiritual warfare with the Devil, through devotion to the Blessed Mother. This third act can repair the cowardise and effeminacy of atheism. Recitation of the rosary builts the spiritual power necessary to fight real physical battles. The fifteen promises of the Rosary give every soul the chance of Heaven, the third last thing.
Finally, the fourth act of reparation requires meditation. We should about all of the souls falling like confetti into the fires of Gehenna. We should remember the billions of infants falling into the painless
paradise of Limbum Infantum, but denied that for which their souls were created: the Beatific Vision.
Conclusion
We should not expect anything from the latest botched consecration of Russia by the Vatican. We can only hope that Heaven will punish the reprobates in the Church and purify the earth. We should participate in that struggle through the First Saturday devotions.
The modernists have made a mockery of Saturdays for a long time, holding Sunday mass on Saturday evenings, so that people can do more important things on Sunday.
The Talmudists want all Christians to become Noahides, subjects of their Satanic laws. For them, Jews will rest on Saturdays but Christians will have no rest on Sundays.
The Talmudists are the children of Saturday, the day Christ’s body lay in the tomb after they murdered him.
We say to them and their modernist ‘ecumenists’ that Saturdays will be extra days of penance for us for their sins and blasphemies against the One True Church of God.
On Saturday we will think of the unfailing faith of St. John the Baptist, pre-baptized by the ‘terra celestis’, John the Baptiste who, subsequently imprisoned by tyranny, went happily to the Limbo of the Fathers, to bring the Good News.
The modernists have locked the faithful in a spiritual Limbus Patrum, where they await some kind of divine intervention. They twist and manipulate language, regularly participate in the five sins against our Blessed Mother, and seem hellbent on bringing on a chastisement of humanity the likes of which perhaps the world will not have known « since the days of Noah ».