| April 17, 2012 Dear Family of Mary! Here are a few more examples of Our Lady's plea for prayer for our shepherds. They are indeed very special to her: Once again Our Lady called us to pray for our shepherds (priests) and said: "They have a special place in my heart. They represent my Son." (04/02/11)
"I am especially praying for the shepherds (priests), for God to help them to be alongside you with a fullness of heart." (05/02/11)
"I call you to pray with all your heart for your shepherds, because my Son chose them. Thank you." (08/02/11)
"I am especially praying for the shepherds that they may be worthy representatives of my Son and may lead you with love on the way of truth. Thank you." (09/02/11)
"In a special way I implore you not to judge your shepherds. My children, are you forgetting that God the Father called them? Pray! Thank you." (10/02/11)
After yesterday's reflection Kim sent me a link to an EWTN video on YouTube in which Mother Angelica talks with Father Steven Scheier. Father shares his amazing near death experience, and what he learned about spiritual realities through it. Here is the link:  | | Father Steven Scheier's Judgment Experience | You will learn a lot from this short video...But here is an excerpt that I have transcribed: (Father had been a priest for 12 years, and he thought he was doing fine. Then he had a terrible accident in which he received a broken neck and a head injury. He had only a 15% chance of survival, but amazingly recovered very quickly. He went back to his parish and here is what he experienced): I went back to the parish. One day I was saying Mass, a regular week day, I thought. When the Gospel according to Luke came up, a Gospel you have heard many times, about the farmer who went out to inspect his trees and vineyard, and he told the vinedresser, "For three years now I have come out to inspect this tree and have found no fruit. Why don't you cut it down, and throw it into the fire. Why should it clutter up the ground?" And the vinedresser said, "Sir, why don't I manure it and hoe around it and see if it bears fruit. If not, then I will cut it down." When I was reading it in the church, from the Lectionary, (I'm German, things don't happen to me like this...) the page became illumined, enlarged, and that page came right off the Lectionary towards me. I finished Mass as best I could, and went back to the Rectory, and sat in my lounge chair with a number of cups of coffee and there remembered a conversation that had taken place shortly after the accident, very shortly. I was before the Judgment Seat of Jesus Christ. I have no way of telling how long it lasted. What He went through...He was going through my life entirely...accusing me of various things, all to which I said "yes". There was no rebuttal. Now I had it planned, as I think many of us do, that when I got before His Judgment Seat, I could think of a lot of excuses I could use. "But Lord, she pushed me that day...to the point that I couldn't do anything else." Or, "Lord, I had a bad day, that day, I didn't feel too good. That was the reason why I didn't do this..." I had a number of "excuses" but that was not the case. I was talking to TRUTH. To TRUTH! And when you are talking to TRUTH, you can't give excuses. All you say is "Yes. That's the truth. Yes." All I said was "Yes, Lord, I know." At the end He said, "My sentence is hell." Again, I said, "Yes, Lord, I know." That was the only logical thing He could have said. I knew this was what I deserved. I didn't see Him, I just heard. Then I heard a female voice, "Son, will you please spare his life, and his eternal soul?" He said, "Mother he has been a priest for 12 years for himself, and not for me, let him reap the punishment he deserves." She continued by saying, "But Son, what if we give him special graces and strengths and see if he bears fruit and if not, Your will be done." There was a very short pause. He said, "Mother, he's yours." Ever since then, I have been hers. Routinely, supernaturally, any way you want to put it, as I was telling Mother Angelica, there are things she has told me and done for me that she should not have done. But this is the kind of Mother we have. You might say to me, "But Father you must have had a very special devotion to her before the accident." But, no, I have to give another indictment of myself. This is hard. But one believes in the Lord Jesus, Christ, the angels and the saints, the Blessed Mother, in two ways, I think, or in one of two ways, with the head, intellectual ascent and the heart. This is what is important. I believed up here (the head) but I didn't know anything about this (the heart). And so the Lord, the Angels and the Saints, I believed in them, but they were make-believe friends. They were not real. When I regained consciousness and was able to think again, that is one of the things I was very aware of. They are the only real things that exist. We are the ones in the shadow world. We have only one home, and it is not here. A lot of our priorities are mixed up. My own priorities were mixed up. My priorities should have been to save my soul, and to save others, which is what a priest should be doing anyway - to invest in the real future and not in happiness here on earth.... We have the Mother. I didn't have a special devotion to her. But since then, she has become everything. At the foot of the Cross Jesus looked down upon her and the apostle He loved, and He said, "Woman, behold your son." Meaning, "Mother I give you the whole church, as your sons and daughters, they are yours." She takes that very literally and very seriously. So anyone of us in the same stead would suffer the same consequences and experience the Divine Mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what I experienced. But His Mother is the one who came and received it for me. One thing I have learned since then is this beautiful truth: In the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, none of Them, not one, can say "no" to her. They cannot. It's impossible. They will not say "no" to her. Isn't that somebody we want on our side? (Excerpt from an interview with Father Steven Scheier on EWTN with Mother Angelica: ) Well, I couldn't stop transcribing, because every word Father Scheier spoke was so packed with meaning and power. He was speaking from his heart, from his experience of Jesus and Mary. He knew his priesthood had been lived according to the world's standards, not God's. He knew that his life was forfeit. But he also knows profoundly to this day that Our Lady interceded for him and brought down Mercy upon him, a second chance! Our Lady loves her priests. They are human, just like us but set apart to serve us with Christ's love. Let's love them with Mary's love, pray for them, and intercede for them. With Mary, we can draw down the Mercy of God upon them, now! What a Mother we have! "I am especially praying for the shepherds that they may be worthy representatives of my Son and may lead you with love on the way of truth. Thank you." (09/02/11) In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan ©Mary TV 2012 |
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