| October 28, 2010
Saints Simon and JudeDear Family of Mary!"Dear children! May this time be a time of prayer for you. My call, little children, desires to be for you a call to decide to follow the way of conversion; therefore, pray and seek the intercession of all the saints. May they be for you an example, an incentive and a joy towards eternal life. Thank you for having responded to my call."(October 25, 2010)
Our Lady invites us to the way of conversion with such seriousness and perseverance! She just doesn't give up! Ivan is well acquainted with the Mother Mary's untiring persistence! In Vienna he spoke about Our Lady's call to conversion and prayer: Christian: "When I came to Medjugorje for the first time, I got a virus from the family I was living with. It was not a sick virus, but it was a habit that they had. They fasted on Friday. And it was very easy to fast in Medjugorje. But when I came home I noticed it wasn't that easy to fast for a day. And I have a question, dear Ivan. On the 14th of August, 1984, you received a special message, and extraordinary message, that shows me specifically how seriously Our Lady takes us and how serious it is for Our Lady that we pray and fast. Can you tell us something about it?" Ivan: "Prayer, fasting and penance, forgiveness, those are the key messages through which Our Lady is calling us. Our Lady says, 'Dear children, may prayer be joy for you. Dear children, he who prays must not be afraid of the future.' Prayer with joy, that is hard sometimes. Our Lady knows that we are not perfect. Our Lady knows that it is hard to concentrate in prayer, that we have difficulties putting away the thoughts that burden us and problems that crush us. The Mother knows all that. But the Mother invites us that we may enter and be enrolled in the school of prayer and that we may learn every day in her school of prayer. We need to do the homework every day. We receive homework every day and we need to receive it and fulfill it every day. For me personally, every day for those 29 years, I received homework every day from Our Lady. And I need to do it, to do my homework, as well as I can. I try to do what she asks of my life, of my family, and I must put it into my life and my family. But in truth, we need to know how to forgive. Harmony is a great gift of God. Without forgiveness there is no healing, neither a spiritual nor a physical healing is possible. We need to know how to forgive. That is why Our Lady asks us so much to forgive. In prayer and through prayer, we become able to forgive. Our Lady calls us, endlessly she calls us throughout the years, she calls us to pray. How many times did she repeat, "Pray, pray, pray, my dear children"! Not like a machine, not with the lips, and not looking at the clock so that we may be finished as soon as possible. She asks us to decide to pray, that we may decide for God, that we may take time apart for God. May we place Him in the first place in our life and walk with Him into the future. "Our Lady says, 'My dear children, may prayer be joy for you.' Mother calls us to prayer with the heart. It means to pray in love and with love, pray with our whole being, that our prayer may become an encounter with Jesus, that our prayer becomes a rest with Him, that our prayer of the heart may be full of peace and joy and come out like that from our hearts. Pray with love. "In 1984 as the question already was asked, I prepared myself for Mass in the church and I wanted to go to the Rosary before the apparition. Our Lady came into my room. I was surprised! Our Lady said, 'Bring this message to the priests, for the world, that everybody in the world may fast on bread and water on Wednesday and Friday. And that they may pray the three parts of the Rosary.' Our Lady calls us to fasting and to penance. What is fasting? Many think and say, what do we get by fasting? What good comes from fasting, what does it bring me? Fasting is not a loss. Fasting is something to receive. Through fasting we cleanse ourselves, we strengthen our spirits, we strengthen our faith. We become more secure in our peace. I can compare fasting with the sentence of the grain of wheat in the Gospel. That grain we must throw into the earth so it may die. Then it will bear fruit later. What does it mean when the grain falls on the hard ground? No fruit. Our Lady wishes that the fruit will grow in us. God asks little of us and gives us 100 fold. Let us accept fasting and penance with love. Everything we receive and attempt in love will be much easier for us." (Visionary Ivan in Vienna, Sept. 23, 2010) We want to be the kind of ground that makes the wheat grow! Prayer prepares us to receive and fasting makes us soft and nutrient-filled ground! This is the environment that makes for conversion, as Our Lady asks! Thank you, Ivan, for your witness! Thank you, Mother for persistently knocking on our hard heads until we understand!
In Jesus and Mary!
Cathy Nolan
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Ivan and Marija in Vienna, 09/23/10
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