The Doors of Faustina

THE “Illumination” will be an incredible gift to the world. This “Eye of the Storm“—this opening in the storm—is the penultimate “door of mercy” that will be open to all of humanity before the “door of justice” is the only door left open. Both St. John in his Apocalypse and St. Faustina have written of these doors…

THE DOOR OF MERCY IN REVELATION

It seems that St. John witnessed this door of mercy in his vision after the “illumination” of the seven churches:

After this I had a vision of an open door to heaven, and I heard the trumpetlike voice that had spoken to me before, saying, “Come up here and I will show you what must happen afterwards.” (Rev 4:1)

Jesus revealed to us, through St. Faustina, the proximate period into which humanity has entered when He said to her:

Write: before I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy. He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice... —Divine Mercy in My Soul, Diary of St. Faustina, n. 1146

It is hard to imagine that the Lord’s language was not carefully worded when He spoke of an open “door.” For she also wrote:

I heard these words spoken distinctly and forcefully within my soul, You will prepare the world for My final coming. —n. 429

The book of Revelation is, of course, that book which prophesies the eschatological events of the last days…

Blessed is the one who reads aloud and blessed are those who listen to this prophetic message and heed what is written in it, for the appointed time is near. (Rev 1:3)

…and so it is no surprise to read this language of an “open door” to Heaven also in that book. It is opened by Christ Himself who holds the key of David to the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem.

The holy one, the true, who holds the key of David, who opens and no one shall close, who closes and no one shall open… (Rev 3:7)

This door of His mercy, in fact, leads to a safe harbor of refuge and protection for all who will enter it in these last times. ^[1]The Great Refuge and Safe Harbour

I know your works (behold, I have left an open door before you, which no one can close). You have limited strength, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name… Because you have kept my message of endurance, I will keep you safe in the time of trial that is going to come to the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold fast to what you have, so that no one may take your crown. (Rev 3:8, 10-11)

THE DOOR OF JUSTICE IN REVELATION

Those who pass through the door of mercy are safeguarded against the door of justice that will be opened to begin purifying the earth. Just as Judas held the ignoble key of betrayal that opened the “door of justice” in the Garden of Gethsemane, thereby beginning the Passion and Death of Our Lord, so too, a “judas” will also open the “door of justice” in these last times to betray the Church and begin her own Passion.

Then the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. It was given the key for the passage to the abyss. It opened the passage to the abyss, and smoke came up out of the passage like smoke from a huge furnace. The sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the passage. (Rev 9:1-2)

In Judaism, “stars” often referred to fallen leaders. ^[2]cf. footnote New American Bible, Rev 9:1 Some believe this “star” is a fallen leader from the Church, the “false prophet” who rises from the earth to deceive its inhabitants and require all to worship “the image of the beast.” ^[3]cf. Rev 13:11-18

The smoke that rises from the abyss darkens “the sun and air,” that is, the light and Spirit of truth.

…through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God. —Pope Paul VI, Homily during the Mass for Sts. Peter & Paul, June 29, 1972,

But the spirits of deception unleashed from this abyss have no affect upon those who have entered the door of mercy:

Locusts came out of the smoke onto the land, and they were given the same power as scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or any tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. (Rev 9:3-4)

The “door of justice” is essentially opened by those who refuse the mercy of God, who choose to “open wide” the “culture of death.” Scripture says that the king of the abyss is named Abaddon which means “Destroyer.” ^[4]cf. Rev 9:11 A culture of death, very simply, reaps death both physically and spiritually. Jesus said,

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him. (John 3:36)

Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie, that all who have not believed the truth but have approved wrongdoing may be condemned. (2 Thess 2:11-12)

The door is finally shut when Antichrist, the instrument of destruction, has himself been destroyed along with all of his followers, and Satan is locked in the abyss for a time: a “thousand years.”

The beast was caught and with it the false prophetwho had performed in its sight the signs by which he led astray those who had accepted the mark of the beast and those who had worshiped its image. The two were thrown alive into the fiery pool burning with sulfur. The rest were killed by the sword that came out of the mouth of the one riding the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh. Then I saw an angel come down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the abyss and a heavy chain. He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is the Devil or Satan, and tied it up for a thousand years and threw it into the abyss, which he locked over it and sealed, so that it could no longer lead the nations astray until the thousand years are completed. After this, it is to be released for a short time. (Rev 19:20-20:3)

THE DAY OF THE LORD

Write this: before I come as the just Judge, I am coming first as the King of Mercy. Before the day of justice arrives, there will be given to people a sign in the heavens of this sort: All light in the heavens will be extinguished, and there will be great darkness over the whole earth. Then the sign of the cross will be seen in the sky, and from the openings where the hands and the feet of the Savior were nailed will come forth great lights which will light up the earth for a period of time. This will take place shortly before the last day. —Divine Mercy in My Soul, Diary of St. Faustina, n.83

St. Faustina writes that the Illumination in the sky occurs before the door of justice will be fully opened. The doors of mercy and justice are thus opened “shortly before the last day.”

In Scripture, the period that describes the eventual final return of Jesus in glory is called the “day of the Lord.” But the Early Church Fathers teach us that the “day of the Lord” is not a 24 hour period but one that follows the liturgical pattern: the day is marked with the vigil, passes through the dark of the night, culminating in the dawn and noonday until the next vigil. The Fathers applied this “day” to the “thousand years” of Rev 20:1-7.

…this day of ours, which is bounded by the rising and the setting of the sun, is a representation of that great day to which the circuit of a thousand years affixes its limits. —Lactantius, Fathers of the Church: The Divine Institutes, Book VII, Chapter 14, Catholic Encyclopedia; www.newadvent.org

Thus, the setting of the sun, the evening of the Church in this age is when darkness falls: when there is a great loss of the light of faith:

Then another sign appeared in the sky… Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to the earth. (Rev 12:3-4)

The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church. — POPE PAUL VI, Address on the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Fatima Apparitions, October 13, 1977

Indeed, St. Paul warns His readers that the day of the Lord will not dawn…

…unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition… (2 Thess 2:2-3)

Thus, midnight, the thick of the night, is the appearance of Antichrist:

Then I saw a beast come out of the sea… To it the dragon gave its own power and throne, along with great authority. (Rev 13:1-2)

You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is—apostasy from God… there may be already in the world the “Son of Perdition” of whom the Apostle speaks. —POPE ST. PIUS X, E Supremi, Encyclical On the Restoration of All Things in Christ, n. 3, 5; October 4th, 1903

The rising of the “sun of justice” is the manifestation of Christ’s power that scatters Satan’s darkness, defeating his army, and chaining him in the abyss for the “thousand years”.

…the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming… Then I saw the heavens opened, and there was a white horse; its rider was called “Faithful and True”… Then I saw an angel standing on the sun. He cried out [in] a loud voice to all the birds flying high overhead, “Come here. Gather for God’s great feast, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of military officers, and the flesh of warriors, the flesh of horses and of their riders, and the flesh of all, free and slave, small and great…. (2 Thess 2:8; Rev 19:11, 17-18)

St. Thomas and St. John Chrysostom explain… that Christ will strike the Antichrist by dazzling him with a brightness that will be like an omen and sign of His Second Coming… The most authoritative view, and the one that appears to be most in harmony with Holy Scripture, is that, after the fall of the Antichrist, the Catholic Church will once again enter upon a period of prosperity and triumph. —Fr. Charles Arminjon (1824-1885), The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life, p. 56-57; Sophia Institute Press

This triumph of the Church is the noonday, the Vindication of Wisdom, when the Church Fathers say that creation itself will experience a purification of sorts.

On the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall, the light of the moon will be like that of the sun and the light of the sun will be seven times greater (like the light of seven days). (Is 30:25)

The sun will become seven times brighter than it is now. —Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, The Divine Institutes

This “day of the Lord” lasts until the next vigil when, according to Scripture, Satan is released from his prison to gather the nations against the “camp of the saints.” ^[5]cf. Rev 20:7-10 But fire falls from Heaven bringing about the end of time, the Final Judgment, and a New Heavens and a New Earth. ^[6]cf. Rev 20:11-21:1-5 St. Peter writes:

The present heavens and earth have been reserved by the same word for fire, kept for the day of judgment and of destruction of the godless. (2 Pet 3:7)

But then he qualifies that this judgment, the “day of the Lord,” is not a single 24 hour day. ^[7]cf. The Last Judgments and Two More Days It will come like a thief and then conclude when fire dissolves the elements.

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day… But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out. (2 Pet 3:8, 10)

Therefore, the Son of the most high and mighty God… shall have destroyed unrighteousness, and executed His great judgment, and shall have recalled to life the righteous, who… will be engaged among men a thousand years, and will rule them with most just command… Also the prince of devils, who is the contriver of all evils, shall be bound with chains, and shall be imprisoned during the thousand years of the heavenly rule… Before the end of the thousand years the devil shall be loosed afresh and shall assemble all the pagan nations to make war against the holy city… “Then the last anger of God shall come upon the nations, and shall utterly destroy them” and the world shall go down in a great conflagration. —4th century Ecclesiastical writer, Lactantius, “The Divine Institutes”, The ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol 7, p. 211

THE LAST HERALDS

It is significant, then, that the illumination of the churches that St. John witnessed in his vision occurred on the day of the Lord, ^[8]cf. Of the Sabbath as if marking the approaching dawn of this Day:

I was caught up in spirit on the Lord’s day and heard behind me a voice as loud as a trumpet, which said, “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches…” (Rev 1:10)

It is also striking that both John and St. Faustina are told to “write” what they see and hear, instructed by a “loud” and “forceful” voice; they both are given to understand of an open door, and both at the point of illumination of the Church. Let me explain…

As I wrote in Revelation Illumination, the Church began to undergo an “illumination of conscience” in the 1960’s. In St. John’s vision, after the illumination of the seven churches, he sees an open door to heaven. So too, after the 1960’s, the door of Divine Mercy was at last opened to the world. St. Faustina’s revelations, given in the 1930’s but banned for four decades, ^[9]It was forty years from Faustina’s last diary entry in 1938 to its eventual approval in 1978 were finally pressed into a more accurate translation by Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Krakow. In 1978, the year he became Pope John Paul II, the Diary of St. Faustina was approved and the message of Divine Mercy began to spread throughout the entire world.

From [Poland] will come forth the spark that will prepare the world for My final coming. —Jesus to St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in My Soul, Diary, n. 1732

This same Pope, then, in a symbolic and powerful gesture as a herald of a new era, threw wide open “the great door” of the Jubilee to prepare the Church for the “third millennium”. Symbolically, he showed us that the way into the “millennium” of an “era of peace” is making a decision to choose the door of Mercy, who is Jesus Christ:

To focus upon the door is to recall the responsibility of every believer to cross its threshold. To pass through that door means to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; it is to strengthen faith in him in order to live the new life which he has given us. It is a decision which presumes freedom to choose and also the courage to leave something behind, in the knowledge that what is gained is divine life (cf. Mt 13:44-46). It is in this spirit that the Pope will be the first to pass through the holy door on the night between 24 and 25 December 1999. Crossing its threshold, he will show to the Church and to the world the Holy Gospel, the wellspring of life and hope for the coming Third Millennium. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Incarnationus Mysterium, Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, n. 8

Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy.—Divine Mercy in My Soul, Jesus to St. Faustina, Diary, n. 300

St. Faustina is really an echo, a herald that the definitive unveiling of Revelation has begun. In fact, St. John even foretold in a vision to St. Gertrude (d. 1302) that St. Faustina—without mentioning her name—would carry on His work: ^[10]cf. The Last Effort

My mission was to write for the Church, still in its infancy, something about the uncreated Word of God the Father, something which of itself alone would give exercise to every human intellect to the end of time, something that no one would ever succeed in fully understanding. As for the language of these blessed beats of the Heart of Jesus, it is reserved for the last ages when the world, grown old and become cold in the love of God, will need to be warmed again by the revelation of these mysteries. —Legatus divinae pietatis, IV, 305; “Revelationes Gertrudianae”, ed. Poitiers and Paris, 1877

The door of mercy has been opened; we are on the threshold of the door of justice. The message to Prepare! could not be louder and more urgent than it is now.

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1	The Great Refuge and Safe Harbour
↑2	cf. footnote New American Bible, Rev 9:1
↑3	cf. Rev 13:11-18
↑4	cf. Rev 9:11
↑5	cf. Rev 20:7-10
↑6	cf. Rev 20:11-21:1-5
↑7	cf. The Last Judgments and Two More Days
↑8	cf. Of the Sabbath
↑9	It was forty years from Faustina’s last diary entry in 1938 to its eventual approval in 1978
↑10	cf. The Last Effort