Help Me Save the Country!

As I write, most of you will have passed into 2025. Here in New York, we are still keeping vigil for the great Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God – an utterly astounding title. Yes, I never cease to be astounded by the first chapter of both the Gospel of Saint John and his first letter. The depth of love, of condescension, of humility is incomprehensible.

This love is so poignantly portrayed in Saint Paul’s words to Timothy when he tells is that God “desires all men to be saved.” (I Timothy 2:4) Yet we know that, like the Pharisees in Luke 7:30, man in his freedom can frustrate the plan of God since, for love to be perfect, it must be free.

And this same poignant and powerful proclamation of love is echoed in the heart and cry of our Blessed Mother in the first words she speaks when she gives the Flame of Love of her Immaculate Heart for the first time on April 13, 1962 and which provides our theme for this new year: “There is so much sin in the country. Help me to save it!” Yes, “HELP ME SAVE THE COUNTRY!”

I hear this cry in my ears every morning when I awaken. Each night, I need to answer Jesus: “Take part in My redeeming work without ceasing. Don’t ask how. Desire that My Kingdom come for you and for every soul. When you go to retire for the night, look over your entire day: What have you done for the coming of My Kingdom?” April 20, 1962

My dearest brothers and sisters, we are compelled by this same love (II Cor 5:14). What a sublime calling! I feel very strongly and I know that Győző feels the same, that the most important thing we can do right now to answer our Blessed Mother’s call to “Help me save the country” is to ensure all of our people, all of our cenacles understand the scope and the purpose of the Flame of Love – “Help me save the COUNTRY”.

If our people believe that the goal is to create prayer groups for a new prayer devotion or that the goal is to enhance our own spirituality, that is exactly what we will do and we will have a rapidly growing, spiritually powerful prayer devotion. That’s good but that’s not “Help me save the country”. Please don’t misunderstand me. Our prayer cenacles are important and powerful. Our family holy hours are even more important but they are the matches and not the fire. They are the tools and not the goal. If we only focus on the tool, we will not achieve the goal.

Not everyone in the world will join a Flame of Love cenacle nor every person in the Church – there are many other jobs to be done in the Church besides participating in a Flame of Love cenacle. But everyone in the Church and in the world needs The Flame of Love! “You must strive for the blinding of Satan, which we will accomplish with the coordinated strength of the whole world.” November 27, 1963

When we all start pulling together in the same direction – through prayer, sacrifice, desire, and, where we can, labor for the Flame of Love to light in all hearts, (“So line up side by side, because the flame burning by hellish hatred will break on the power of sacrifice and prayer. The evil ones will be driven back more and more, their flame burning by hatred will go out, and the light of my Flame of Love will fill every part of the world.” December 6, 1964), then we can help our Blessed Mother “light in the entire country the flame full of grace, which I have given you from my Heart. This will be the miracle which catches fire and will blind Satan.” April 13, 1962.

So please help every one of our people in each one of your countries understand and work toward the goal – not just to pray, sacrifice, and desire that people join our prayer cenacles but to pray, sacrifice, and desire that the Flame of Love light in all hearts in our countries. With all our being, let us answer our Blessed Mother’s cry: “HELP ME SAVE THE COUNTRY!” That is our theme for 2025.