The World’s Greatest Secret
, which sold over 100,000 copies in the author’s life, and then made the startling pronouncement that:
“It will have success during the author’s life but will have greatest success after his death.”
John Haffert, a true disciple of the Virgin Mary and a man conscious of the change of Era congruent with the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (promised at Fatima) and its relationship to the mystery of the Eucharist said in response:
“I want to hurry up and die, because we may have a new world soon if enough people learn the secret!”
Explore the mystical meaning of the Eucharist as taught by John Mathias Haffert, Co-Founder of the World Apostolate of Fatima and one of the twentieth century’s greatest Marian apostles.
It is of highest importance to make the mystery of the Eucharist known and loved; the Eucharist is the central mystery of the Christian faith and the reason Christ came to dwell among us as a “bridegroom” and also the reason His Church is referred to as His “Bride” (Rev. 21:2). God and man, Bride and Groom are meant to become one mystical body of which He is the Head and she the Members. This greatest of all ad extra mysteries (Mysteries outside of the Holy Trinity), the mystery of the most intimate union and communion with the Holy Trinity as members of the Body of Christ, is fulfilled by means of the Eucharist – by It man and God are made one by the mystery of consummate nuptial unity – God and man are made one in sacramental marriage (Ephesians 5: 23-30). This is a “great mystery”, (the greatest of all mysteries regarding God and mankind) a mystery that reaches beyond the union of man and woman into the heights and depths of the ultimate consummate mystery of all unions, the ineffable union between God and man as husband and wife.
For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31-32).
(Matt 18:20).
“Nevertheless, our separated brethren, whether considered as individuals or as Communities and Churches, are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those who through Him were born again into one body, and with Him quickened to newness of life – that unity which the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church proclaim. For it is only through Christ’s Catholic Church, which is “the all-embracing means of salvation,” that they can benefit fully from the means of salvation” (Unatatis Derinedegratio)
to remain with Her forever even until the end of time (Matt 28:20). It is by means of the Eucharist that men and women, young and old, feeble and strong are brought into deepest Holy Communion with the Holy Trinity through Jesus, with Jesus, and in Jesus as the Body of Jesus made possible by worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist, the LIVING WORD OF GOD (John 1:1).
Who is this John Matthias Haffert who wrote such an astounding Book?
John Haffert is the co-founder of the World Apostolate of Fatima, an apostolate that under his leadership reached a worldwide membership of over two million people. John worked tirelessly to make the Message of Fatima known and lived. So successful was he at the effort, that the Communist Party in the Soviet Union recognized him as one of the top three causes inhibiting the spread of Communism throughout the world. John Haffert is simply one of the greatest Catholic laymen of the twentieth century. Many believe him to be a saint and are working for his canonization.
John personally knew Sister Lucia, the oldest and longest surviving oft the three children to whom the Mother of God appeared in 1917. She appeared several times afterward to confide messages to Lucia about the the conversion of Russia, and about many other things related to the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart and an Era of Peace following Her prophesied conversion of Russia; John was privy to most all of these.
Pope Benedict referred to Fatima as a “Sign of the Times”. In his own words, Fatima helps
“… us to understand the SIGNS OF THE TIMES and to respond to them rightly in faith.”
He further points out that the apparition of an Angel with a flaming sword crying out “Penance, Penance, Penance” reminds us of the apocalypse. Benedict said, that the flaming sword “represents the threat of judgment which looms over the world. Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems pure fantasy: man himself, with his inventions, has forged the flaming sword.”
The World’s Greatest Secret is a devotional book about the incarnation and the mystical meaning of the Eucharist through which Christ united Himself to humanity as a groom to His bride. The Eucharist is the ineffable gift of martial communion by which God and man are made one, by which His bride the Church, becomes one with Him (Ephesians 5:25-27). Husband and wife become one flesh of which He is the head and She is the sacred Body (Colossians 1:18).
Jesus is he “Word of God” The word however is much more than a sacred book, the Word is a living person who offers His life to mankind through the gift of the Eucharist
“In the beginning* was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1: 1-2).
The Word is not simply a Book, no matter how sacred. The Word is a living and Divine Person, The Son of God, who came to give us His life:
“I am the bread of life” (John 6:48)
He is divine life and He feeds us with His Divine essence, the Eucharist, the Bread of Life. Catholic and Orthodox Christians are graced to receive his the ineffable gift of His sacred Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, which is the Life of their souls. Those who receive this gift, the living gift of His Body and Blood, are promised eternal life:
I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world” (John 6:51)
This gift is an ineffeable gift beyind human comprehension. The Eucharist is the greatest ad extra mystery of the Trinity. At His birth, the infant Jesus was already proclaiming the mystery of the Eucharist, the great mystery by which He is making Himself one with humanity. There (1) lying in a bed of wheat in (2) Bethlehem, the City of Bread, in (3) a trough meant for feeding, He was silently proclaiming the central mystery of the Eucharist This gift requires grace and faith but is itself the source of all grace. It is so difficult to accept that some prefer the bible to the Eucharist, the “word” to the “Word”. They unknowingly wag their heads like the unbelieving Jews before them, saying :
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat? (John 6:52)
Nonetheless, those who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, believe what He proclaims about Himself and about the Eucharistic miracle by which He is TRANSFORMING men and women into His mystical body:
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever” (John 6: 53-58).
When we receive the Eucharist, His body and blood, they are united to our own body and slowly we are transformed into His body – our body becomes His Body. Thus the Eucharist is Divine Food indeed.
Do we understand this greatest of all mysteries outside of the Holy Trinity? Or do we on hearing this, “turn away”?:
“Many therefore of his disciples, hearing it, said: This saying is hard, and who can hear it? But Jesus, knowing in himself, that his disciples murmured at this, said to them: Doth this scandalize you? If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning, who they were that did not believe, and who he was, that would betray him. And he said: Therefore did I say to you, that no man can come to me, unless it be given him by my Father” (John 6: 60-65).
After this many who believed in Him turned away from Him and His gift of the Eucharist (John 6:66). Then, Jesus turned to His Apostles, the first princes and ministers of His Church and with heartfelt pain asked
“Will you also go away?
It was Saint Peter, the “Fisherman” and Vicar of Christ, head of the Holy Catholic Church speaking for all the rest (in the plural “we) who said some of the most poignant words ever to pour forth from the mouth of man:
“Lord to whom shall we go”
“Lord, we need you, every hour we need you, our one defense, our righteousness, of God how we need you!”
In other words, the words you speak are difficult, but we believe in you, we believe that there is no other Name under heaven by which man is saved. if You say it, we believe because:
“You are the Messiah the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).
Anyone who knew John Haffert knows how greatly he believed that Jesus is the Living Son of the Living God, the Living Bread that comes down from Heaven. John was a daily communicant who loved Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and His Blessed Mother – he made his habit tio pray 15 decades of the rosary daily. I know from personal experience that by by 10 AM following morning Mass, 10 decades had already been recited. John’s love for Jesus and Mary was hs whole life. He was like a man fulfilling the vision of St. John Bosco, a well-known vision of the two pillars of Christendom: The Eucharist and the Blessed Mother, the “Help of Christians” Maria, Auxilium Christianorum“.
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The Mystery of Fatima began with the Eucharist and culminated with the the Eucharistic vision of the Holy Trinity entrusted to Sister Lucia in the month of June, 1929.
Jesus and His Mother, the Virgin Mary are inseparable. He received His Body from Her, He was united to her in the womb and took his Body from Her flesh and blood. In a very real way, it can be said that Mary’s body, as the Mother of Jesus, is present with Christ on the Cross. Like any mother or father She alone can say to Jesus:
“Flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:21-23)
Most especially, Jesus who sits on the Throne of David as the King of Israel (the Church, His sacred Body–the “New Israel”), receives the homage of all those who receive His Body and Blood and who can therefore proclaim, “we are thy bone and thy flesh”; by receiving His flesh, we become united to Him as His mystical body:
“Then came all the tribes of Israel to David unto Hebron, and spake, saying, Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh” (2 Samuel 5:1)
Increase your love and awe for the Eucharist and fulfill the prophecy of St. Padre Pio by reading John Haffert’s “World’s Greatest Secret”, a book which Dr. Tom Petrisko, best selling author of the “Fatima Prophecies,” called “The greatest book on the Eucharist”.