October 13, 2011
Image by Lawrence OP via Flickr
Dear Children of Mary!
"Dear children! I want you to understand that I am your Mother, that I want to help you and call you to prayer. Only by prayer can you understand and accept my messages and practice them in your life. Read Sacred Scripture, live it, and pray to understand the signs of the times. This is a special time; therefore, I am with you to draw you close to my heart and the heart of my Son, Jesus. Dear little children, I want you to be children of the light and not of darkness. Therefore, live what I am telling you. Thank you for having responded to my call."
(August 25, 1993)
It is important to Our Lady that we understand things. She wants us to understand that she is our Mother. She wants us to understand her messages. She wants us to understand the signs of the times. She has called us to understand many things over the years: her call, her love, the gift of God through her presence among us, the value of prayer, the beauty of a life of giving and renunciation, etc. She wants us to really take in the wonder and beauty of a life lived out of love for God. She doesn't want us to respond to her like robots. She wants our full participation in this new life she is bringing to us.
But how can we understand all that Our Lady is offering us? It isn't by listening to long lectures on the subject. She herself does not employ a lot of words and description. She doesn't come out and say it. When she tells us of her desire for us to understand something, she usually directs us to pray. In the message above, she says, "Only by prayer can you understand and accept my messages and practice them in your life." Prayer
Image by Lawrence OP via Flickr
is the way to understanding.
And what is prayer? It is a conversation with God! Our Lady sends us directly to the source of all understanding! She doesn't pretend to tell us about the signs of the times or about love or about God's plan for each of us. She knows that it is only if we hear it from God that we will understand it fully. Only if we are taught by the Holy Spirit, will we understand the things of God. And it is only in prayer that we can be taught by the Lord. (Note that it is a very personal and individual thing, prayer. God converses with each one of us personally. No mass media here! This is one on one communication. God wants to talk to each one of us, Father to child, Brother to brother/ sister, Spirit to spirit!)
Right after prayer on Our Lady's list comes the reading of Sacred Scripture. She wants us to read it every day and pray over it. How wise she is! Scripture is a gift from heaven for us. In Scripture we can find everything we need to know about God and the way God thinks and does things. Through Scripture we can get filled with God's ideas about us and about life and about our relationship with Him. And that is a great help in learning to discern what we hear in prayer. So Scripture is a huge help in understanding what God is up to in our lives. God can also anoint Scripture for us so that a passage will speak very deeply to us. So much understanding comes from Scripture! It is really important for our growth in discernment.
Anyway, what I am trying to get at is this: Our Lady doesn't come to fill our heads up with her words and directions. She comes to connect us with God so that He can lead us and direct us and bless us and teach us and sing to our hearts His song of love! She knows that we will understand so much as we live every day in God's presence through prayer and the reading of Sacred Scripture. I love how much she respects our need to freely choose the good and to walk upright with God into the Kingdom. I love it! We are called by God, through Our Lady, to become saints! It is a very individual call, a very unique call for each one of us. And Our Lady of Medjugorje is gently guiding us into that call through her messages. In Jesus and Mary!
Cathy Nolan
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