The means to achieve Paradise on the advice of the Saints

The means to achieve Paradise

In this fourth part, among the means suggested by different authors, to achieve Paradise, I suggest five:
1) avoid serious sin;
2) do the Nine First Fridays of the month;
3) the Five First Saturdays of the month;
4) daily performance of Tre Ave Maria;
5) knowledge of the Catechism.
Before we start we make three premises.
First premise: truth to always remember:
1) Why were we created? To know God, our Creator and Father, love him and serve him in this life and then enjoy him forever in Paradise.

2) Shortness of life. What are 70, 80, 100 years of earthly life before the eternity that awaits us? The duration of a dream. The devil promises us a kind of heaven on earth, but hides the abyss of his infernal kingdom from us.

3) Who goes to Hell? Those who habitually live in a state of grave sin, thinking only of enjoying life. - Who does not reflect that after death he will have to account to God for all his actions. - Those who never want to confess, so as not to detach themselves from the sinful life they lead. - Who, up to the last moment of his earthly life, resists and rejects the grace of God who invites him to repent of his sins, to accept his forgiveness. - Who mistrusts the infinite mercy of God who wants everyone safe and is always ready to welcome repentant sinners.

4) Who goes to Heaven? Those who believe in the truths revealed by God and by the Catholic Church proposed to believe as revealed. - Those who habitually live in God's grace by observing his commandments, attending the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist, participating in the Holy Mass, praying with perseverance and doing good to others.
In summary: whoever dies without mortal sin, that is, in the Grace of God, is saved and goes to Heaven; whoever dies in mortal sin is damned and goes to Hell.
Second premise: need for faith and prayer.

1) In order to go to Heaven, faith is indispensable, in fact (Mk. 16,16:11,6) Jesus says: "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned". St. Paul (Heb. XNUMX) confirms: "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because whoever approaches him must believe that God exists and gives the reward to those who seek him".
What is faith? Faith is a supernatural virtue that tends the intellect, under the influence of the will and current grace, to firmly believe in all the truths revealed by God and put forward by the Church as revealed, not for their intrinsic evidence but for the authority of God who revealed them. Therefore, for our faith to be true, it is necessary to believe in the truths revealed by God not because we understand them, but only because He revealed them, who cannot deceive us, nor can he deceive us.
"Whoever keeps the faith - says the Holy Curé of Ars with his simple and expressive language - is as if he had the key of Heaven in his pocket: he can open and enter whenever he wants. And even if many years of sins and indifferentism have made it worn or rusty, a little Oil of the Sick will be enough to make it shine and such as to be able to use it to enter and occupy at least one of the last places in Paradise ».

2) To save oneself prayer is necessary because God has decided to give us his help, his graces through prayer. In fact (Mat. 7,7) Jesus says: «Ask and you will get; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you ", and adds (Mat. 14,38:XNUMX):" Watch and pray not to fall into temptation, because the spirit is ready, but the flesh is weak ".
And with the prayer that we obtain the strength to resist the attacks of the devil and to overcome our bad inclinations; it is with prayer that we obtain the necessary help of grace to keep the Commandments, to carry out our duty well and to carry our daily cross with patience.
Having made these two premises, let's now talk about the individual means of achieving Paradise.

1 - Avoid serious sin

Pope Pius XII said: "The most serious present sin is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin." Pope Paul VI said: “The mentality of our time shuns not only from considering sin for what it is, but even from talking about it. The concept of sin has been lost. Men, in today's judgment, are no longer considered sinners ».
The current Pope, John Paul II, said: "Among the many evils that afflict the contemporary world, the most worrying one is constituted by a fearful weakening of the sense of evil".
Unfortunately, we must confess that although we no longer speak of sin, it, as never before, abounds, floods and submerges every social class. Man was created by God, therefore by his very nature of "creature", he must obey the laws of his Creator. Sin is the breaking of this relationship with God; it is the rebellion of the creature to the will of its Creator. With sin, man denies his subjection to God.
Sin is an infinite offense made by man to God, the infinite being. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the seriousness of a fault is measured by the dignity of the offended person. An example. A guy slaps a partner, who, in reaction, reciprocates it and everything ends there. But if the slap is given to the Mayor of the city, the guy will be sentenced, for example, to one year in prison. If you then give it to the prefect, or to the head of government or state, this guy will be sentenced to ever greater penalties, up to the death penalty or life imprisonment. Why this diversity of penalties? Because the gravity of the offense is measured by the dignity of the offended person.
Now when we commit a serious sin, He who is offended is God the Infinite Being, whose dignity is infinite, therefore sin is an infinite offense. To better understand the seriousness of sin we resort to the hint of three scenes.

1) Before the creation of man and the material world, God had created the Angels, beautiful beings, whose head, Lucifer shone like the sun in its greatest splendor. Everyone enjoyed unspeakable joys. Well a part of these Angels are now in Hell. Light no longer surrounds them, but darkness; they no longer enjoy joys, but eternal torments; they no longer utter songs of exultation, but horrible blasphemies; they no longer love, but they hate eternally! Who from Angels of Light turned them into demons? A very serious sin of pride that made them rebel against their Creator.

2) The earth has not always been a valley of tears. At first there was a garden of delights, Eden, the earthly paradise, where every season was temperate, where the flowers did not fall and the fruits did not cease, where the birds of the sky and the animals of his bush, mild and graceful, were docile to outline of man. Adam and Eve lived in that garden of delights and were blessed and immortal.
At a certain moment everything changes: the earth becomes ungrateful and hard at work, disease and death, discord and murder, all sorts of suffering afflict humanity. What was it that transformed the earth from a valley of peace and joy into a valley of tears and death? A very serious sin of pride and rebellion committed by Adam and Eve: original sin!

3) On Mount Calvary agonized, nailed to a cross, Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, and at his feet his Mother Mary, tormented by pain.
Having committed sin, man could no longer repair the offense made to God because it was infinite, while his reparation is over, limited. So how can man save himself?
The second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Son of God the Father, becomes Man like us in the most pure womb of the ever Virgin Mary, and throughout his earthly life he will suffer continuous martyrdom until culminating in the infamous gallows of the cross. Jesus Christ, as a man, suffers on behalf of man; like God, he gives his atonement an infinite value, whereby the infinite offense made by man to God is adequately repaired and thus humanity is redeemed, is saved. What has Jesus Christ made "the man of sorrows"? And of Mary, Immaculate, all pure, all holy, "the Woman of sorrows, the Sorrowful"? The sin!
Here then is the gravity of sin! And how do we value sin? A trifle, an insignificant thing! When the King of France, St. Louis IX, was very young, his mother, the White Queen of Castile, took him to the royal chapel and, in front of the Eucharistic Jesus, he prayed thus: «Lord, if my Luigino were to stain himself even with a only mortal sin, bring it now to Heaven, because I prefer to see him dead rather than having committed such a serious evil! ». This is how true Christians valued sin! This is why so many martyrs bravely faced martyrdom, in order not to sin. That is why many left the world and withdrew into solitude to make a hermit life. This is why the Saints prayed a lot not to offend the Lord, and to love him more and more: their purpose was "death better than committing a sin"!
Therefore serious sin is the greatest evil we can commit; it is the most terrible misfortune that can happen to us, just think that it puts us in danger of losing Heaven, the place of our eternal happiness, and makes us plunge into Hell, the place of eternal torments.
To forgive us for serious sin, Jesus Christ instituted the Sacrament of Confession. Let's take advantage of it by confessing frequently.

2 - Nine First Fridays of the month

The Heart of Jesus loves us infinitely and wants to save us at any cost to make us eternally happy in Paradise. But to respect the freedom he has given us, he wants our collaboration, he requires our correspondence.
To make eternal salvation very easy, he made us, through Santa Margherita Alacoque, an extraordinary promise: «I promise you, in the excess of the Mercy of my Heart, that my Almighty Love will grant the grace of final penance to all those who they will communicate on the first Friday of the month for nine consecutive months. They will not die in my misfortune nor without having received the Holy Sacraments, and in those last moments my Heart will be their safe haven ».
This extraordinary promise was solemnly approved by Pope Leo XIII and introduced by Pope Benedict XV in the Apostolic Bull with which Margherita Maria Alacoque was declared Saint. This is the most valid proof of its authenticity. Jesus begins his Promise with these words: "I promise you" to make us understand that, since it is an extraordinary grace, He intends to commit his divine word, on which we can make the safest trust, in fact in the Gospel of St. Matthew (24,35 , XNUMX) He says: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away."
He then adds "... in the excess of the Mercy of my Heart ...", to make us reflect that here it is a question so extraordinarily great, that it could only come from an excess of truly infinite Mercy.
In order to make us absolutely sure that he will keep his promise at any cost, Jesus tells us that this extraordinary grace will grant it "... the Almighty Love of his Heart ».
«... They will not die in my misfortune ...». With these words Jesus promises that he will make the last moment of our earthly life coincide with the state of grace, for which we will be eternally saved in Paradise.
To those who seemed almost impossible that with such an easy means (that is to say Communion every first Friday of the month for 9 consecutive months) the extraordinary grace of a good death and therefore of the eternal happiness of Paradise could be obtained, he must take into account that between this easy means and such an extraordinary grace stand in the way of "Infinite Mercy and Almighty Love".
It would be a blasphemy to think about the possibility that Jesus will fail to commit his word. This will have its fulfillment also for the one who, after having made the nine Communions in grace, overwhelmed by temptations, dragged by bad opportunities and overcome by human weakness, should go astray. Therefore all the plots of the devil to snatch that soul from God will be thwarted because Jesus is willing, if necessary, to do even a miracle, so that he who has done well on the Nine First Fridays will be saved, even with an act of perfect pain , with an act of love made in the last moment of his earthly life.
With what dispositions must the 9 Communions be made?
The following also applies to the Five First Saturdays of the month. Communions must be made in God's grace (that is, without serious sin) with the will to live as a good Christian.

1) It is clear that if one did Communion knowing that he was in mortal sin, not only would he not secure Heaven, but by unworthily abusing divine Mercy, he would make himself worthy of great punishments, because, instead of honoring the Heart of Jesus , would outrage her horribly with the most serious sin of sacrilege.

2) Whoever did the Communions to secure Paradise and then be able to abandon himself to a life of sin, would demonstrate with this bad intention of being attached to sin and consequently his Communions would be all sacrilegious and therefore would not acquire the Great Promise of the Sacred Heart and would be damned in Hell.
3) On the other hand, who with right intention began to do well (that is, in the grace of God) the Communions and then, due to human frailty, occasionally falls into serious sin, this man, if repented of his fall, returns to God's grace with the Confession and continue to do well the other requested Communions, will certainly achieve the Great Promise of the Heart of Jesus.
The infinite Mercy of the Heart of Jesus with the Great Promise of the 9 First Fridays wants to give us the golden key that one day will open the door to Heaven for us. It is up to us to take advantage of this extraordinary grace offered to us by his divine Heart, which loves us with infinitely tender and maternal love.

3 - 5 First Saturdays of the month

In Fatima, in the second apparition of June 13, 1917, the Blessed Virgin, after promising the fortunate seers that she would soon bring Francis and Jacinta to Heaven, added turning to Lucia:
«You have to stay longer down here, Jesus wants to use you to make me known and loved».
From that day about nine years had passed and here on December 10, 1925 in Pontevedra, Spain, where Lucia was for her novitiate, Jesus and Mary come to keep the promise made and to instruct her to make it better known and spread in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Lucia saw the baby Jesus appear beside her Holy Mother who was holding a leather and surrounded by thorns. Jesus said to Lucia: «Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother. It is surrounded by thorns with which ungrateful men pierce him every moment and there is no one who tears some of them with an act of reparation ».
Then spoke Mary who said: «My daughter, look at my Heart surrounded by thorns with which ungrateful men continually pierce him with their blasphemies and ingratitudes. You at least try to console me and announce on my behalf that: «I promise to assist in the hour of death with all the graces necessary for their eternal salvation all those who on the First Saturday of five consecutive months confess, communicate, recite the rosary, and they keep me company for a quarter of an hour meditating on the mysteries of the rosary with the intention of offering me an act of reparation ».
This is the Great Promise of the Heart of Mary which joins that of the Heart of Jesus. To obtain the promise of the Most Holy Mary the following conditions are required:
1) Confession - made within eight days and even more, with the intention of repairing the offenses made to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. If you forget in the confession to make this intention, you can formulate it in the following confession, taking advantage of the first opportunity you have to confess.
2) Communion - made on the first Saturday of the month and for 5 consecutive months.
3) Rosary - recite, at least a third part, of the rosary crown meditating on the mysteries.
4) Meditation - a quarter of an hour meditating on the mysteries of the rosary.
5) Communion, meditation, recitation of the rosary, must always be done with the intention of Confession, that is, with the intention of repairing the offenses made to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

4 - Daily performance of Tre Ave Maria

Saint Matilde of Hackeborn, a Benedictine nun who died in 1298, thinking with fear of her death, prayed to Our Lady to assist her at that extreme moment. The response of the Mother of God was most consoling: «Yes, I will do what you ask me, my daughter, but I ask you to recite Tre Ave Maria every day: the first to thank the Eternal Father for making me almighty in Heaven and on earth; the second to honor the Son of God for having given me such science and wisdom to surpass that of all the Saints and say all the Angels, and for having surrounded me with such splendor as to illuminate all Paradise as a shining sun; the third to honor the Holy Spirit for having ignited in my heart the most ardent flames of his love and for making me so good and benign as to be, after God, the sweetest and most merciful ». And here is the special promise of Our Lady which applies to everyone: «At the hour of death, I:
1) I will be present comforting you and removing any diabolical force;
2) I will infuse you with light of faith and knowledge so that your faith is not tempted by ignorance; 3) I will assist you in the hour of your passing by infusing your life of Divine Love into your soul so that it will prevail in you so as to change every death penalty and bitterness into great gentleness "(Liber specialis gratiae - p. I chap. 47 ). Mary's special promise therefore assures us of three things:
1) his presence at the point of our death to comfort us and keep the devil away with his temptations;
2) the fusion of so much light of faith to exclude any temptation that could cause us religious ignorance;
3) in the extreme hour of our life, Mary Most Holy will fill us with so much sweetness of love of God that we do not feel the pain and bitterness of death.
Many Saints, including Sant'Alfonso Maria de Liquori, San Giovanni Bosco, Padre Pio of Pietralcina, were zealous propagators of the devotion of the Three Hail Marys.
In practice, to obtain the promise of the Madonna, it is sufficient to recite the morning or evening (better still morning and evening) of the Three Hail Marys according to the intention expressed by Mary in Santa Matilde. It is commendable to add a prayer to St. Joseph, patron of the dying:
«Hail, Joseph, full of Grace, the Lord is with you, you are blessed among men and blessed is the fruit of Mary, Jesus. O Saint Joseph, putative Father of Jesus and Bridegroom of the Ever Virgin Mary, pray for us sinners , now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Some might think: if with the daily recitation of the Three Hail Marys I will save myself, then I will be able to continue sinning quietly, so much I will save myself anyway!
No! To think this is to be deceived by the devil.
Righteous souls know very well that no one can be saved without his free correspondence to the grace of God, who urges us gently to do good and to flee from evil, as St. Augustine teaches: «Whoever created you without you, will not save you without you".
The practice of the Three Hail Marys is a means that obtains the graces necessary for the good to lead a Christian life and to die in the grace of God; to sinners, who fall out of frailty, if with perseverance they recite the daily Three Hail Marys they will sooner or later, at least before death, the grace of a sincere conversion, of a true repentance and therefore will be saved; but to sinners, who recite the Three Hail Marys with a bad intention, that is, to continue maliciously their sinful life with the presumption of saving themselves for the promise of Our Lady, these, deserving punishment and not mercy, certainly will not persevere in the recitation of the Three Hail Marys and therefore they will not obtain Mary's promise, because she made the special promise not to make us abuse divine mercy, but to help us persevere in sanctifying grace until our death; to help us break the chains that bind us to the devil, to convert and obtain the eternal happiness of Paradise. Someone might object that there is great disproportion in obtaining eternal salvation with the simple daily recitation of Three Hail Marys. Well at the Marian Congress of Einsiedeln in Switzerland, Father G. Battista de Blois replied thus: "If this means seems disproportionate to the goal that you want to achieve with it (eternal salvation), you just have to claim from the Holy Virgin who enriched him with his special promise. Or better yet, you must take it out on God himself who has granted you such power. Besides, is it not in the Lord's habits to work the greatest wonders with means that seem the simplest and most disproportionate? God is the absolute master of his gifts. And the Most Holy Virgin, in her power of intercession, responds disproportionately to the small homage, but proportionate to her love as a very tender Mother ». - For this reason the Venerable Servant of God Luigi Maria Baudoin wrote: «Recite the Three Hail Marys every day. If you are faithful in paying this tribute of homage to Mary, I promise you Heaven ».

5 - Catechism

The first commandment "You will have no other God outside me" orders us to be religious, that is to believe in God, to love him, adore and serve him as the only and true God, Creator and Lord of all things. But how can one know and love God without knowing who he is? How can one serve him, that is, how can his will be done if his law is ignored? Who teaches us who God is, his nature, his perfections, his works, the mysteries that concern him? Who explains his will to us, points out point by point his law? The Catechism.
The Catechism is the complex of all that the Christian must know, must believe and do to earn Paradise. Since the new Catechism of the Catholic Church is too voluminous for simple Christians, it was considered appropriate, in this fourth part of the book, to report for the whole the timeless Catechism of St. Pius X, small in size but - as he said the great French philosopher, Etienne Gilson "wonderful, of perfect precision and conciseness ... a concentrated theology sufficient for the viaticum of all life". Thus are satisfied (and thank God there are still many) who have great esteem and enjoy it.