Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Mary TV Daily Reflection 12/4/2013


 
"My children, the Father comes to be known through the cross."
(c)Mary TV 2013


J.M.J.
December 4, 2013
St. John Damascene

Dear Family of Mary!

"Dear children, with a motherly love and a motherly patience I am looking at your ceaseless wandering and how lost you are. That is why I am with you. I desire to help you to first find and come to know yourself, so that, then, you would be able to recognize and to admit everything that does not permit you to get to know the love of the Heavenly Father, honestly and wholeheartedly. My children, the Father comes to be known through the cross. Therefore, do not reject the cross. Strive to comprehend and accept it with my help. When you will be able to accept the cross you will also understand the love of the Heavenly Father; you will walk with my Son and with me; you will differ from those who have not come to know the love of the Heavenly Father, those who listen to Him but do not understand Him, those who do not walk with Him - who have not come to know Him. I desire for you to come to know the truth of my Son and to be my apostles; that, as children of God, you may rise above the human way of thinking and always, and in everything, seek God's way of thinking, anew. My children, pray and fast that you may be able to recognize all of this which I am seeking of you. Pray for your shepherds and long to come to know the love of your Heavenly Father, in union with them. Thank you." (December 2, 2013)

The first words of this message echo a very poignant Scripture passage, the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Our Lady gives us the mother's point of view, something that is missing from the Scriptural story! She tells us:  "Dear children, with a motherly love and a motherly patience I am looking at your ceaseless wandering and how lost you are...." Is this not the state of the Prodigal Son?

And he said, "There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.' And he divided his living between them. Not many days later the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living... (v. 11-14)

The younger son wandered away from his Father, and wasted his inheritance in loose living. He became lost.  Distance from the Father makes us lost, for He is our true goal, our true source, and our real joy! But we may not even know that we need Him, as full of our own selves as we are!

And so she tells us that we need to first get to know ourselves, as we truly are. Our Lady tells us "That is why I am with you. I desire to help you to first find and come to know yourself..." We might ask why we need to know ourselves first. Well, isn't that the exact process that the prodigal son went through. He left his father, wandered away, and then squandered his living, and got himself into a mess:

And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed swine. He would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything... (v. 14-16)

This mess was the tool that helped the Prodigal Son begin to know himself. He began to realize that he was nothing without his father. He had no rights, no entitlement, nothing without his father. The citizen he was working for cared nothing for him. He was nobody. And that is the truth of it.   We also must learn to know ourselves. We are nothing without our heavenly Father. All that we are and have has come from Him. We are not entitled to it, and of ourselves we have no claim to anything. We are nothing without God.

This is the most fundamental understanding of ourselves! Without the heavenly Father we are nothing, have nothing, deserve nothing, and will become nothing.

As our Mother says: "I desire to help you to first find and come to know yourself, so that, then, you would be able to recognize and to admit everything that does not permit you to get to know the love of the Heavenly Father, honestly and wholeheartedly." She wants us to recognize all that gets in the way of our understanding who we are in relation to the Father. Honestly and wholeheartedly, we need to know that all comes from Him, and all will return to Him, and that we are His creatures. When we know this, there is nothing that can cloud our understanding. Nothing can keep us from loving the Father who made us and who sustains us.

Once we know who we are in relation to the Father we will be able to return to Him, like the Prodigal Son returned to his father:

But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father... (v.17-19)

This son ate humble pie. He rose up in humility! He returned to the Father, ready to be humiliated and chastised, treated as a servant. He knew it was only just. And so he embraced the cross of humiliation in order to return to the father! This is what Our Mother suggests in the message when she says: "My children, the Father comes to be known through the cross. Therefore, do not reject the cross. Strive to comprehend and accept it with my help...." Our Lady encourages us to accept the cross, because it is through the cross that we become humble and ready to receive forgiveness and love from the Father. The cross brings us home to Him.

What happens when we embrace the cross, when we accept our humiliation and our complete dependence of the Father? This is what happened to the Prodigal Son:

And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to make merry. (v.20-24)

The Prodigal Son learned to understand the love of his father through his humiliation and return. He saw his father's great love, compassion, acceptance, and forgiveness! He experienced his welcome home as a kind of rebirth! Our Lady tells us: "When you will be able to accept the cross you will also understand the love of the Heavenly Father; you will walk with my Son and with me..." When we accept the cross, we will see our Father running to embrace us, with compassion, and kiss us with tears of joy! We will walk with Jesus and Mary on the way of joy! We will be back in the family!

And so, we are being invited by Mother Mary to find our way home, to rise up and return to our Father's house, where we can humble ourselves before His greatness, and be embraced as His children! In this way we will be bonded to Him in the truth that He is our loving Father, and we are His children who need Him for everything!

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2013








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