Nella Fantasia

Fr dear Fr: In what sense is the pope in Rome going to consecrate Russia to the BVM this weekend - what is the point of such an obscure ritual nowadays?

Azov now, at 4pm GMT London time, in these same minutes, the pope in Rome is bringing together the various strands of prayer and praise and song in Rome during a service in which he is hoping to accomplish something that was promised to Mary of Nazareth some a hundred years ago, the consecration of holy mother Russia to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. There is some debate about the real meaning of the phrases in the Act of Consecration, and there is some discussion about the formulae used in the Act for the BVM as “queen of heaven” in the English, but as something else in the original Portuguese, or “terror of heaven” here denoting the sentiments of Yeats the poet that “a terrible beauty has been born” in his poem Easter 1916, a euphemism for something powerful and noble and great which humans have no control over - the same force of 1848 that appears in the encyclical Rerum Novarum as “spiritu rerum novarum”, the spirit of new things literally, but here having another meaning as intended by the consistory papal Latinists up high above the Square of Vatikanstadt. Anyway, the idea is to consecrate the traditional territory of Russia to the BVM and then stand back and see what happens, whether the soldiers far below Rome will give peace a chance.