May 17, 2011
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! I call you, little children, to pray without ceasing. If you pray, you are closer to God and He will lead you on the way of peace and salvation. That is why I call you today to give peace to others. Only in God is there true peace. Open your hearts and become those who give a gift of peace and others will discover peace in you and through you and in this way you will witness God's peace and love which He gives you. Thank you for having responded to my call." ( Let's continue with the transcription of the question and answer session with Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, which took place in Sacramento, California on March 26-27. These two questions and answers very much resonate with the message given above from January 2000:
Question: How do you grow closer to Jesus and Mary?
Marija: From the beginning Our Lady allowed us to fall in love with Her. And we began to want to be with Her, and She helped us little by little to fall in love with Her. We began to fall in love with Our Lady and we began to live what She was saying and to follow Her. Our Lady kept saying, "I still desire a little more from you". Jakov, who was still a little boy, said to Her, "Our Lady, aren't you asking a little too much?" And Our Lady smiled and said, "When a dear, dear friend of yours arrives, you are not content to just give them something to drink, you want to eat with them, and have them stay with you, and you prepare a bed for them to have them stay, and even if you don't have an extra bed, you give them your own bed so that they will stay. And this is the way that Jesus would like to become your friend, your best friend, so that you treat him this way. So give more time to Jesus, so you can grow in your knowledge and love and friendship with Jesus." This is the way Our Lady was helping us to put God into the first place in our lives, to put God first in our daily living.
Question: Many of the [other] messages speak about the end of the world, about catastrophes, calamities, chastisements. But through our Lady's messages we see so much optimism and She speaks about a time of peace or a spring time of the Spirit. What should we be tending towards? Marija: We have seen that our real hope is Our Lady. And Our Lady is giving a time of opportunity. She was the one that stuck around and stayed with the apostles and took care of the apostles who had run away when Jesus died. She took care of them and She united them. She got them together and helped them to pray. And they prayed with Her. And because they prayed with Her the Holy Spirit came upon them. And through this coming of the Holy Spirit they changed and they had strength, they were courageous, and they became apostles and they went out and they began to spread the good news about Jesus in all the world whereas before they ran away and they were hiding. That's what
She wants with us. She gives us hope. Today many people are ashamed to say "I am a Christian, I am a Catholic". In many places in Italy, they make fun of you; they make sarcastic remarks; they put you down because you are Christian. Sometimes today to be a faithful Catholic and Christian, it is martyrdom. But Our Lady is calling us really for this. She is not really calling us to martyrdom like those in China who are still dying or like those who are being tortured and put to death in Egypt. But she is talking about a joyful martyrdom of dying to ourselves. This kind of martyrdom is a martyrdom of everyday things. You know I am a mother; I take my kids to school. When I get in front of the school with the other mothers, I have to put on a smile. And it costs. I take this and do it because it is a step forward in love on the path of holiness. Many times I go into church and see so many people with long faces, and so I put on a smile and I say hello because even if it is Lent, there is no reason to be sad. We are the ones who have to give joy. We are the ones who have to smile, even when it is hard. We don't know. This could be our last day to live. With the winds here, a brick could fall off the roof, and I would be gone. But in front of God, what example did I give? Our Lady isn't calling all of us to go to Africa to evangelize, but she is calling us to evangelize every day in what we are doing, in our tiny little things of every day, we have to be joy, peace, love. Our Lady says, "Be my extended hands." The extended hands of Our Lady are only hope, hope in a better world. Our Lady sees further than we are capable of seeing. She says it is possible. She says that through us we can do it. I believe that the presence of Our Lady for 30 years among us is a great, great sign, a great sign of God's mercy towards us that He is giving us through His Mother's presence. There is a joke in Italian that says a lot of people wanted to go to heaven. Saint Peter checked them out and said "You don't have all papers in order." (You don't have Father Victor's stamp saying you did the 9 first Fridays!) But Saint Peter started seeing those people around heaven and he asked, "How did you get in?" And they said, "When you turned us away, Our Lady opened a little window and let us in." This is the kind of hope Our Lady is giving us, a real hope. And even when there is no hope for us, She's going to give us that hope. (Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti. Translated by Kathleen Martin. Sacramento Marian Conference, March 26-27, 2011. See it at www.marytv.tv ) Love draws us closer to Jesus and Mary, and love removes all fear from our hearts so that we can face the future with joy! Thank you to Marija for 30 years of faithfulness to the coming of Our Lady! Thank you, dear Mother for coming! In Jesus and Mary!
Cathy Nolan
Posted via email from deaconjohn's posterous
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please no anonymous comments. I require at least some way for people to address each other personally and courteously. Having some name or handle helps.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.