SHOULD WE ADD TO SCRIPTURE?
QUESTION? /COMMENT!
A parishioner inserts one of the Flame of Love prayers in the Hail Mary while we say the rosary. Something inside me is telling me this is wrong. Am I off base or not?
ANSWER! / COMMENT!
Personally, I know about the ‘flame of love’ prayers but I don't insert the ‘flame of love’ prayers to my daily rosary. I pray what Our Lady instructed us to pray, no human being can improve on what Our Lady gave St Dominic of Guzman and Blessed Alan de la Rouche. The only person that can add to the rosary is Our Lady who gave us the ‘Fatima Prayer’ in 1917 to add to the rosary and a Pope (John Paul II) who added the ‘Luminous Mysteries’ which are 5 major events based on the life of Jesus Christ.
Cardinal Peter Erdo of Budapest, Hungary, has approved the Flame of Love as a private association of the faithful. The apostolate is based on the private revelations that Kindelmann reportedly received from Jesus and the Blessed Mother in the form of locutions. In contrast to an apparition, a locution is a supernatural communication to a person’s ear, imagination, or directly to his intellect…St. Faustina’s Divine Mercy messages have received formal Church approval as being of supernatural origin (worthy of belief in that regard), first by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Archbishop of Krakow, Poland, and then as Pope St. John Paul II. This has not yet occurred regarding Kindelmann’s reported locutions. Consequently, although the Catholic faithful are certainly free to participate in the Flame of Love apostolate and benefit from its doctrinally sound content, I urge caution regarding attributing a supernatural character to Kindelmann’s reported locutions or any others that have not received formal Church approval - The Flame of Love Apostolate and Elizabeth Kindelmann’s Related and Reported Private Revelations | Catholic Answers.
The Flame of love movement says that the ‘Unity Prayer’ given by Our Lady to Elizabeth Kindleman is to blind satan, but the prayer never mentions blinding satan at all. Here is the ‘Unity Prayer’:
Jesus told Elizabeth Kindleman: "This prayer is an instrument in your hands. By collaborating with Me, Satan will be blinded by it; and because of his blindness, souls will not be led into sin."
My Adorable Jesus
May our feet journey together,
May our hands gather in unity,
May our hearts beat in unison,
May our souls be in harmony,
May our thoughts be as one,
May our ears listen to the silence together,
May our glances profoundly penetrate each other,
May our lips pray together to gain mercy from the Eternal Father.
Amen. * (May 4, 1962)
Since the 60’s we have an explosion of lay people saying, “Jesus & Mary spoke to me and gave me this prayer and you have to say this in order for X to happen.” This sounds very gnostic to me. I become very suspicious when a person tells me, ‘God spoke to me, not to you & you need to do what I told you because its from God and not from me.’ This to me sounds like spiritual pride and the sin of presumption. Whenever someone says God spoke to me, what they're implicitly saying is “You can’t disagree with me because I feel God spoke to me.” Remember, feelings are not the measure of reality, moreover, demons have access to our emotions and demons can mimic a locution quite easily. Modernism see’s no distinction between the ordained Priest and the laity, in fact, we are quick to elevate lay people above a Catholic Priest when the lay person claims that God spoke to him or her and right away everyone is branding this person as a mystic. This is precisely the job of a Bishop and His Priests, to teach, govern and sanctify.
Elizabeth Kindleman says Our Lord Jesus Christ gave her the prayer to blind satan, however, the word “blind” is never used in that prayer. “When you pray, you get what you ask for (cf. Matt 7:7). Prayer has an effect; it begets what you ask for. Our Lord did blind the people in Sodom in Genesis 19:11. Our Lord called the Pharisees “blind guides” (Matt 23:24) and “the blind leading the blind” (Matt 15:14). Once again, the word “blind” is not used in the Unity Prayer so how can it blind demons if you're not asking God to do so.
I prefer to use Fr Chad Ripperger’s prayer to blind demons, their precise and specific. This is a veteran Exorcist whose prayers that he’s assembled on the website www.auxiliumchristianorum.org. These website is the fruit of prayer and actually doing the spade work of driving demons out from people for almost two decades. His books are the locus classicus on the topic of Catholic Spiritual Warfare, Fr Ripperger has spilled 2,223 pages of ink on Spiritual Warfare…
1) The Science of Mental Health – 692 pages.
2) Dominion – 586 pages.
3) Diabolic Influence – 810 pages.
4) Deliverance Prayer for use by the Laity – 135 pages.
The first prayer in the Auxilium Christianorum Prayers entitled: ‘Most Gracious Virgen Mary,’ we specifically ask her three times to blind the demons. This is the principle taught by Our Lord of “ask and you shall receive” (Matt 7:7). On the flip side, if you don’t ask you will not receive.
Let me give you my thoughts about adding words to the ‘Hail Mary’ as is done in the ‘Flame of Love’ rosary. It goes like this…
The Flame of Love Hail Mary:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee,
blessed are Thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
"spread the effect of grace of Thy Flame of Love over all of humanity,"
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Here is why I will not add those words to the ‘Hail Mary.’ The ‘Hail Mary’ prayer came literally from heaven, as it was first pronounced for human ears by the Archangel Gabriel when he appeared to Our Lady to receive her consent to be the mother of our Savior. Along with the Lord’s Prayer, with which it is usually prayed, it comes not as a mere human composition but as a prayer composed by God for our help and instruction. The Hail Mary is a scriptural prayer, I am not going to add to Scripture, we are clearly told not to by God (cf. Deuteronomy 4:2; Rev 22:18-19.
Here are the Biblical roots of this Marian Prayer:
“Hail (Mary), full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28).
“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb (Jesus)” (v.42).
Holy Mary – “you have found favor with God” (v.30),
Mother of God – “mother of my Lord” (v.43) – “pray for us sinners” - “pray for us (sinners), (Colossians 3:4; 1 Thessalonians 5:25; 2 Thessalonians 3:1).”
The last sentence says:
(CCC 2677) ‘Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.” By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the "Mother of Mercy," the All-Holy One. We give ourselves over to her now, in the today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender "the hour of our death" wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her son's death on the cross. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing to lead us to her son, Jesus, in paradise.’
At the end of the 12th Century, Saint Dominic of Guzman was worried about the French Catholics losing their faith to Albigensian heresy (founded in Albi France – this sect believed the body was evil, suicide was a sacrament, sex was evil, they were vegetarians because killing animals was evil). Our Blessed Mother appeared to him holding a rosary in her hand and she said to St Dominic that the best weapon to convert hardened souls and guard against error was through praying the Holy Rosary. Our Lady explained to St Dominic how to pray the rosary and she explained how much the Rosary pleased God the Father, because it reminded Him, of the moment that humanity, represented by Mary, had accepted his Son as the Savior of the world. Our Lady recommended the rosary as an instrument of salvation.
Saint Dominic began speaking of the devotion of the Rosary and people began to pray it with devotion, to live a Christian live, and to leave from their bad habits.
Saint Dominic died in 1221, after a life dedicated to preach and to promote the devotion of the Rosary among people of all social classes for the souls of Purgatory, for the triumph over evil, and the prosperity of the Holy Mother of the Church.
The prayer of the Rosary maintained its fervor for one hundred years after the death of Saint Dominic, and then began to be forgotten. In 1349, there was in Europe a terrible plague that was called ¨The black death “in which many people died. It was then when the friar Alan de la Roche, superior of the Dominican in the same province of France where the devotion of the Rosary had begun, had an apparition, in which Jesus, the Blessed Virgin and Saint Dominic asked him to revive the old custom of the prayer of the Holy Rosary. Father Alan began this work of promoting devotion to the rosary along with all the Dominican friars in 1460. With Church approval, the friars gave the rosary the structure that it has today. From then, this devotion extended in all the Church.
I don’t believe Elizabeth Kindleman can improve upon what Our Lady told St Dominic, and then Our Lord, Our Lady and St Dominic appeared to Blessed Alan de la Roche and told him to continue promoting the rosary and the Church gave the rosary the structure it has today. I believe it’s the sin of presumption for a person in these modern times to believe that she can improve upon a devotional prayer that has already been given and ratified by heaven.