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Book Reviews
Most Admirable Advocate for Our Times
Cyndi A. Cain
Book-review on The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana - Volume I
by Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira, translated by Marian T. Horvat (Los Angeles: TIA: 2005), 258 pp.
Having been given the grace by Almighty God during my continued illness to be able to read, I have been veryblessed to have read The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana by Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira, translated by Dr. Marian Therese Horvat of Tradition in Action.
Dr. Horvat first presented to the English speaking world the revelations of the Blessed Mother, under the invocation of Our Lady of Good Success, to her chosen daughter, Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, a Conceptionist Religious in Equador, who lived from 1563 to 1635. The first two books released by Dr. Horvat, Our Lady of Good Success - Prophecies for our times, and Stories and Miracles of Our Lady of Good Success, gave readers their first glimpse into the late 16th, early 17th prophecies of Our Lady of Good Success to Mother Mariana de Jesus concerning the very times in which we live. For Our Lady showed to her beloved cloistered religious daughter much of what would happen to The Church in the 20th Century, and beyond.
Those first two books should have whetted the appetite of any sincere Catholic who desires to follow Heaven's plan for our times, for we are most definitely living in a time never before witnessed in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. The prophecies are quite clear and precise, if one is discerning of Our Lady's words with the grace of the Holy Ghost. It is unmistakable that we are the souls chosen by God before time began to live at this time when, to our great reward in Heaven, we would be able to assist the Mother of God by our prayers, sacrifices and the practice of all virtues, to hasten the moment when She will come to the aid of the lost and suffering flock of Her Divine Son Jesus Christ.
Now, Marian has released the first volume of the translation of Fr. Manuel Sousa Pereira's nearly 600-hand-written pages in Spanish on the biography of Mother Mariana de Jesus. It was his work that Marian's first two shorter works were also based.
The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana became for me an essential book that I have kept by my bedside every day, and from which I read every single day. It is far, far more than a book of prophecies by Our Blessed Mother under the invocation She desires to be called upon by her children in these dire times. It is an essential book for all Catholics, whether you are among the few who have fled the Novus Ordo, recognizing it for what it is (the work of Satan), or if you are still among the countless Novus Ordonarians who are there in the pew, being as conservative as your parish priest will allow - striving to obey the laws of the Church, to obey a Pontiff whose words and actions make him suspect of even being a Catholic.
Now, with this translation of The Admirable Life of Mother Mariana, I truly believe that you will find, upon reading this masterpiece of spiritual writing, an awakening within your heart and soul that will recall to your mind what true Roman Catholicism is and will always be, despite the enemies of God who have deliberately set in motion a plan to destroy this sure path to salvation in the One, True Faith which Christ established, which is the Roman Catholic Church.
Yes, I was vitally interested in the prophecies of Our Lady of Good Success, and these I read with great care, listening to the whisperings of the Holy Ghost so that I might truly grasp all that Our Lady's words contain for us, living in the times she prophesied more than three centuries before. But something else happened during the first reading. I became very aware of the presence of Blessed Mother Mariana de Jesus at my side, and I felt her placing upon my soul certain spiritual aspects of this work that might escape the reader who hungers for the prophecies, and fails to see the remedy for the evils which assail us today, not the least of which is the disunity of those who have retained the True Faith in attending only the Tridentine Mass.
Marian has assured her readers that devotion to Our Lady of Good Success is "not some new or questionable devotion." Rather, the devotion and apparitions were formally approved by the eighth bishop to head the See of Quito His Excellency Bishop Salvador de Ribera, who blessed the miraculous statue and officially installed Our Lady of Good Success as the perpetual Abbess of the Convent. In fact, every year from 1611 on, the Convent and the faithful of Quito celebrate her feast on February 2 "with full approval of the ecclesiastical authority." Her cause for beatification and canonization has been established, but as of yet - in this era of the 'saint factory' established by John Paul II - her cause still remains on the back-burner. Perhaps it is because until now she was not so well known nor her holiness revealed. I pray and hope that multitudes of believers will be edified by the life and fiat of this saintly nun whom I would term, a "Saint of Tradition."
This first volume is a treasure from Heaven. Our Good Lord, in His Infinite Mercy, by keeping hidden not only His Mother's prophecies concerning this epoch in the Church, but hiding the name and person of Blessed Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres as well, has saved for us a fresh, untainted look at what our holy religion, the ONLY TRUE FAITH that Christ established for the salvation of the souls He died to save, looks like, feels like, sounds like, when we read the life of Mother Mariana de Jesus.
We see our holy Roman Catholic faith lived in the splendor of its truth, of the reverence of those times when the faithful strove to be holy, despite the abuses that, even then, were apparent at the ecclesiastical level in the Church and in the religious orders which flourished at that time. Here, in this first volume alone, you will find yourself transported back before Vatican II was even thought about. If you are of a certain age, then you will remember what your faith was, and how much it meant to live a life of virtue, morality, and to seek constantly to keep your faith alive with devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Rosary, along with the sacramental life of Holy Mother Church.
It becomes apparent as you read the life of Mother Mariana de Jesus, that Our Lord hid her life - not revealing it until now, when we Catholics have lost so very much of our faith, letting it slip away from us by our own lax and dissipated lives. But Mother Mariana de Jesus stood in the face of the evils of her own time, a victim of seraphic love, of such humility and charity, that our breath is taken from us as we read the heroic sacrifices she underwent for the salvation of her own soul, her Order of Conceptionist Religious, and for us in these times. Yes, Mother Mariana de Jesus suffered her entire life as an expiatory victim for us in this age when all would seem lost. And each one of us must see in her life an example for our own life, no matter to which state of life we have been called.
While Mother Mariana de Jesus suffered in order to stay the hand of Divine Justice for the relaxation of the Rules of Religious - both men and women, cloistered and active - we are all called to follow her example and defend and protect our Roman Catholic Faith just as she did by the practice of all the virtues, by an intimate connection with Our Blessed Savior in the Most Blessed Sacrament, by frequenting the Sacrament of Penance...and doing our penance, mortifying ourselves every day, and praying to Our Lady of Good Success, confiding to her everything that transpires in our life. In particular we have to confide to her our struggle to know what is right for us to do regarding our faith, so that we will not be swept into the abyss by the infernal serpent.
As Our Lord told St. Francis of Assisi, when the Rule for the Friars Minor was approved by Pope St. Julian II, that he and all who would belong to the Franciscan family must follow the Rule "to the letter, to the letter, to the letter; without comment, without comment, without comment!" When I read those words, feeling the presence of Mother Mariana De Jesus at my side, I realized that God says those same words to each one of us in the practice of the Authentic Roman Catholic Faith, as held to this day in the infallible Deposit of Faith as defined from the time of St. Peter through the death of Pope Pius XII.
This is the Faith of our Fathers, the Faith of great Saints raised up as examples for us to emulate in our own time. And from reading this book, you will gain many graces to do just that: To know with certainty that the authentic Roman Catholic Faith is that one which we must follow to the letter, and without comment, if we are to save our souls. It is all there...word for word, incident by incident, revelation by revelation given to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres by Our Lady of Good Success.
Posterity will be eternally indebted to Dr. Marian Therese Horvat for her tireless work in learning everything she could about this approved apparition to Blessed Mother Mariana de Jesus by Our Lady of Good Success, and translating the source documents, which still exist within the cloistered walls of the Convent in Quito, Equador, where Heaven descended to teach us, through Mother Mariana de Jesus, what we are facing, why we are facing it, and what we, as true sheep of the Flock of Jesus Christ's One True Church, must do about it.
While we eagerly await the printing and distribution of Volume II of this work on the "Admirable Life of Mother Mariana," we must not sit idly by and do nothing. No, we must become warriors, as Mother Mariana was a warrior for her own times and ours. We must not delay in heeding the words of Our Lady of Good Success, to hasten Her Hour when She has promised, as she did at Fatima, to intervene in a miraculous way, to restore the True Church in all its glory.
This book should be in every household, and this 256-page book should look dog-eared and used over and over and over, for only in this way can your soul grasp all the sublime messages from Heaven that are contained there for us. We cannot afford to be idle for a moment; rather, let us unite, and for those who have the temporal means to help, I urge you to help Tradition in Action in any way that you can so that Dr. Marian Therese Horvat's second volume of the translation of the Admirable Life of Mother Mariana can be published and distributed around the world as quickly as possible.
Thank you, dear Marian, for being the instrument of Our Lady of Good Success to bring to the English speaking world this marvelous story of God's Merciful graces to a particular nun who, imbued with every virtue, is united to us in these days by her willing sacrifices and mortifications made specifically for us, to hold back the Divine Justice, until that moment when Our Lady of Good Success will come to our rescue.
May Our Lady of Good Success bless Tradition in Action, Dr. Marian Therese Horvat, and every soul who reads these works. Following the example of Mother Mariana, and hearing what Our Lady of Good Success says to her about our times, we have the opportunity to win Heaven for ourselves and many others. For the answers we have all searched for are contained in the life story of one young girl from Spain, who came to Equador to save it - and subsequently the rest of the world - from annihilation.
Please, buy this book, available from Tradition in Action for only $16. Read the features of the book at Tradition in Action. Then read the book, love and treasure it, and get it for all of your friends, acquaintances, and spread the good news...and change your life in whatever way you must to do what Our Lady of Good Success asks. Then we shall see the end of satan's revolution, and the reign of Jesus Christ as King of Heaven and Earth, where there will be one flock and one shepherd.
Cindy Cain is a columnist at www.DailyCatholic.com
This book review was first posted on that website -Volume 16, no. 154, June 3, 2005
Posted June 28, 2005
Related Topics of Interest
More on this Book
Visit Our Lady of Good Success Bookshop
Commonly Asked Questions about Our Lady of Good Success
A Soldier Converts - The Autobiography of Mother Mariana
The Christ Child Crucified on Mount Pichincha
Testimonials of Favors Received from Our Lady of Good Success
Prayers to Our Lady of Good Success
Feast Day of Our Lady of Good Success and the Purification, February 2
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