Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
As I have explained many times to our readers, one of the joys of our apostolate is the way that our members “speak the truth in charity” to each other, for the glory of God and for the good of souls. One of the members of our leadership team, Christian Bergsma, pointed out a mistake in my May 17, 2025, newsletter and provided some additional information which underscores the way that Ecumenical Councils of the first millennium upheld the literal historical truth of the sacred history of Genesis. In Christian’s words:
The council in 553 AD which first condemned Origenism was the Fifth Ecumenical Council, that being the Second Council of Constantinople, under Justinian. However, the Sixth Council (Constantinople 3 under Constantine IV) did condemn Origenism as well, this time more specifically concerning the abuse of Genesis 2. At the 11th session of the Council, the Fathers adopted the Synodal Letter of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem (who died some 50 years before the Council) and incorporated the text of the letter into the 11th Act of the Council. In the letter, St. Sophronius gives a profession of faith in creation and mentions errors drawn from Origen and his followers concerning creation, specifically the denial of the historical nature of the Garden of Eden narrative:
But it is not only on this point that the deranged err and go astray from the straight road (such impiety would be intolerable in comparison with [the other] evils), but they also make myriads of other statements contrary to the Tradition of the Apostles and the Fathers. They throw out the planting of Paradise, they do not want Adam fashioned in the flesh, they object to the moulding of Eve from him, they reject the utterance of the snake… But we, because we have been given to drink the rational and guileless milk of right and blameless and well-disciplined faith, and have tasted the good word of God, thrust away all their shadowy teachings.” – St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, Synodical Letter, 2.4, 3-4. https://tinyurl.com/3awdsfrm
The Third Council of Constantinople on Modern Errors
Is it not amazing to hear St. Sophronius cataloging errors that are routinely taught in Catholic seminaries, universities, schools, and homeschool coops all over the world today? And ought we not to tremble at the realization that the condemnation of these errors was incorporated into the Acts of an Ecumenical Council? As Christian explains:
Not only does the 11th Act of Constantinople III make this text its own, but it also renews and affirms St. Sophronius’ anathemas at the end of the letter against all the Origenists and against anyone who holds to the aforementioned positions. The Council Fathers later reconfirmed their “canonization” of the Synodal Letter in Act 13. The Acts of this Council were solemnly confirmed by Pope St. Leo II and are infallible dogma as part of a genuine Catholic Ecumenical Council. Therefore anyone who “throws out” the historical formation of Adam in the flesh has been anathematized by the Church. This was recognized to great effect by Bp. Melchior Cano, one of the Council Fathers of Trent and a great Dominican theologian, who was combatting Cardinal Cajetan’s purely figurative interpretation of the formation of Eve:
But nothing is more relevant to faith than the true knowledge and sense of the Divine Word. In the Church therefore resides the proven understanding of the Scriptures, from which we can surely have understanding and certainty of the standard of the Catholic Faith, and with the same standard we can also identify contrary errors. Of course, the most clear example of this first precept is in the earthly paradise, in the molding of Adam from the slime of the earth, in the formation of Eve from Adam’s rib, and finally in the temptation of the serpent. All these the Origenists perverted with allegorical and figurative interpretations. But since the Church has always accepted them not figuratively but literally as history, the eleventh act of the sixth (ecumenical) synod expelled [the Origenists] by law. – Melchior Cano O.P., theologian of the Council of Trent, De Locis Theologicis (Louvain, 1564), Book 12, ch. 7, p. 720. https://tinyurl.com/4wz6am3d
These kinds of official conciliar affirmations of the literal historical truth of the first chapters of the sacred history of Genesis underscore the fact that it is impossible to try to reconcile the Catholic Faith with biological evolution without willfully succumbing to collective amnesia in regard to the Church’s constant teaching on the origins of man and the universe. In the current atmosphere of diabolical disorientation, it is worth remembering what happened to the People of God before the destruction of Jerusalem when the leaders of God’s people willfully succumbed to collective amnesia, to the point that the scroll of the book of Genesis “in the hand of Moses” was stumbled upon by the high priest Helkiah in the Temple in Jerusalem, having been completely lost and forgotten for several generations!
The Prophet Ezekiel and the Queen of Prophets
The Prophet Ezekiel foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, but it is noteworthy that he saw the glory of God depart from the Temple before the physical destruction of the Temple in 587 B.C. Indeed, the Word of God reveals that God repeatedly called the leaders and the people of Judah to repentance and allowed them to suffer the consequences of their sins in waves of chastisements that increased in intensity until they culminated with the total destruction of the physical Temple in Jerusalem. In this we can see a foreshadowing of the ongoing diabolical disorientation within the Catholic community, as we persist in our failure to respond to the warnings of the Queen of Prophets, Our Lady of Fatima.
More than a hundred years ago, She came to warn us about the errors of Russia, knowing that the principal error that would take hold with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, just weeks after the Miracle of the Sun, would be the error of evolutionism, which would deny the very existence of God and offer a naturalistic myth that would replace God’s Genesis Revelation as to when, how and over what period of time He created the world for mankind. When her initial requests went unheeded and the communists took over Russia, Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucia on December 10, 1925, to ask for the Five First Saturdays of reparation for sins committed against her Immaculate Heart, a devotion intimately connected with the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation. Indeed, except for St. Augustine, who preferred an instantaneous creation of all things, virtually all of the Church Fathers held that God created the heavens and the earth and all that they contain in six 24-hour days. In this way, the seventh day became associated with the rest of the Lord in the perfection of the first created world, which had culminated with the creation of Eve from Adam’s side—two types that were fulfilled on Holy, or “Great,” Saturday, when the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam, rested in the tomb, having brought forth His Bride the Church from His side while He slept on the Cross. For her part, Mary, the New Eve, exemplified the Church, holy and immaculate in God’s new creation.
Just as Eve was the Mother of all the living in the natural order, so the Second Eve, Holy Mary, became the Mother of all the living in the supernatural order. Just as there is no human being anywhere in the world who is not a physical descendant of Eve, so there is no Christian who is not a spiritual child of Mary. Indeed, from her dwelling place in the heart of the Most Holy Trinity, as Mediatrix of All Graces Mary sealed even the smallest grace-filled act of the past, present, and future with her fiat.
The Roman Catechism on the Sabbath Rest of the Lord
As the sacred liturgy underscored the link between the Sabbath rest of the Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Catechism of the Council of Trent defined the Sabbath Day as a commemoration of a literal seventh day of rest after a literal six-day creation. Under the heading “The Sabbath,” the Catechism teaches that:
the seventh day was called the Sabbath, because God, having finished the creation of the world, rested on that day from all the work which He had done. Thus it is called by the Lord in Exodus.
If, according to the Catechism, God rested from creation on the seventh day and Adam and Eve were created “lastly,” that is, after all other creatures and before the sabbath rest of the Lord, it follows that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day. That the days of Genesis are literal is further confirmed when the Roman Catechism explains the Church’s reasons for changing the Lord’s Day to Sunday:
But the Church of God has thought it well to transfer the celebration and observance of the Sabbath to Sunday.
For, as on that day light first shone on the world, so by the Resurrection of our Redeemer on the same day, by whom was thrown open to us the gate to eternal life, we were called out of darkness into light; and hence the Apostles would have it called the Lord’s day.
We also learn from the Sacred Scriptures that the first day of the week was held sacred because on that day the work of creation commenced, and on that day the Holy Ghost was given to the Apostles (emphasis added).[3]
Here the Catechism teaches that the first day of creation was a Sunday and that the creation of light assigned by Moses to the first day of creation took place on that first Sunday. Now if the first day of creation is a literal day (Sunday), and the seventh day is a literal day (Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath) as the Roman Catechism teaches, and if Adam and Eve are created “lastly,” their creation cannot be assigned to any other day than the sixth day.
Saturday, the Sabbath and Our Lady
In the liturgical life of the Latin Church, Our Lady has long been intimately linked to Saturday; but this linkage goes back to the very beginning of the Church. The Fathers and Doctors, East and West, saw in the beauty and perfection of the first created world a foreshadowing of the beauty and perfection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Thus, the perfection of the first Saturday of the world found its fulfillment in the perfection of the Immaculate Conception.
St. Bonaventure sums up the teaching of all of the Fathers and Doctors when he writes that God stopped creating new kinds of creatures on the seventh day:
…[O]n the seventh day God desisted not from toil or work, for He still worked, but from the creation of new forms because He had done all things either in likeness, as in the case with those things which are propagated, or in a seminal reason, as is the case with those things which are brought into existence in other ways.[4]
In the Bridgetine Office, the daughters of St. Bridget make her prayers their own as they pray:
All things, then, foreseen by God, and present to him eternally, though as yet uncreated, had already that design and perfection which they would possess when his creating brought them to be. One thing excelled all others, designed and perfected by God with a special joy. This was Mary, the Virgin who was a Mother, the Mother who was ever a Virgin.
A second link between Saturday and Our Lady connects the Sabbath “rest” of Our Lord in the tomb on Holy (or “Great”) Saturday with the sorrows of the Mother of God on that day. From this linkage flowed a variety of liturgical practices on Saturday in honor of Our Lady, culminating in the message of Fatima and her request for First Saturday devotions in reparation for sins committed against her Immaculate Heart.
Our Lady of Fatima and the First Saturday Devotions
In an apparition of December 10, 1925, in Tuy, Spain, Our Lady told Sister Lucy of Fatima:
I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.
The purpose of this practice was to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and to make reparation for:
- Attacks upon the reality of Mary’s Immaculate Conception
- Attacks against the reality of Mary’s Perpetual Virginity
- Attacks upon Mary’s Divine Maternity and the refusal to accept her as the Mother of all mankind
- Those who try to publicly implant in children’s hearts indifference, contempt and hatred for Immaculate Mary
- For those who insult Mary directly in her sacred images
The devotion involves the following practices on five consecutive first Saturdays with the specific intention of making reparation for the offenses (above) against the Blessed Virgin:
- Go to Confession (within 8 days before or after the first Saturday)
- Receive Holy Communion
- Recite five decades of the Rosary*
- “Keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on fifteen mysteries of the Rosary” (separate from the Rosary itself)*
(*Preferably done in the presence of the Lord in the Tabernacle or at Exposition)[6]
The more souls believe in Mary’s supernatural maternity and universal advocacy for souls, the more they will join in confidently invoking her intercession not only for their fellow Catholics, but for all souls, past, present, and future—without any limits. Imagine the effect if millions of Catholics prayed confidently for poor sinners in this way! It is this kind of boundless faith that will bring the entire Mystical Body of Christ to its ultimate fulfillment. In the Mystical Body of Christ, the sanctity of Our Lady reveals the fullness to which all Christians are called–a fullness which was first revealed in the humanity of Jesus Christ and which will be achieved by the whole Church when her members attain what St. Paul calls, “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
Thus, the commemoration of the first Saturday of the month in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a reminder of the forgotten meaning of the Sabbath rest of Creation and a foretaste of the future rest of the Lord in His saints during the coming “era of peace” promised by Our Lady of Fatima.
The Urgent Need for Reparation
The prophet Ezekiel identified a remnant within Jerusalem who were marked by a tau, the sign of the Cross on the forehead, just as the doorways of the Hebrews before the Exodus had been marked by the blood of sacrificed animals. With the Five First Saturdays devotion, Our Lady of Fatima shows us how to protect ourselves and our loved ones and anyone who will listen to us, from the wrath to come, if most of our Church leaders continue to remain in a state of willful amnesia regarding the traditional teachings of the Church on the origins of man and the universe, and on the fundamental truths about marriage, the family, and sexual morality that flow from those teachings.
The Prophet Ezekiel relates that even after the Babylonians launched their first wave of attacks on Jerusalem, influential men within the city persuaded most of the people that they needed not to fear any further attacks. Rather than calling the people to repentance, these false teachers encouraged the people to be complacent with the status quo, which led directly to the total destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the Babylonian Captivity. Let us not be similarly deceived. Let us constantly remind ourselves that only a massive wave of true repentance, manifested by a worldwide practice of the Five First Saturdays and the Holy Face Devotion by millions of Catholics, can call down the graces necessary to prevent a global chastisement and the annihilation of nations.
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Tuesday, June 3rd is the Feast of the Holy Uganda Martyrs. On our first visit to Uganda, we performed a play with members of the local Catholic community about the first Catholic missionaries to the area and the Holy Uganda Martyrs. A video of the play can be viewed at this link.
