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J.M.J August 10, 2012 St. Lawrence Dear Family of Mary! I asked Our Lady to pick out a message for us today, as my mind is really blank. This is the message I pulled from my collection of messages: "Dear children! Today in a special way I invite you all to prayer and renunciation. For now as never before Satan wants to show the world his shameful face by which he wants to seduce as many people as possible onto the way of death and sin. Therefore, dear children, help my Immaculate Heart to triumph in the sinful world. I beseech all of you to offer prayers and sacrifices for my intentions so I can present them to God for what is most necessary. Forget your desires, dear children, and pray for what God desires, and not for what you desire. Thank you for having responded to my call." (September 25, 1991) Our Lady lays out the realities of our time very clearly in this message. Satan has declared all-out war in our day. He wants to drag as many souls as he can to hell with him, and his time is short. Our Lady, on the other hand is with us to bring about the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart! She wants to draw by cords of love as many souls as possible into heaven. And she has asked us to help her, to help her Immaculate Heart to triumph!
How can we help her? She makes it pretty clear: by setting our "selves" aside and choosing to desire what God desires in these days. Our way of joining in the fight is to focus with total fidelity on the will of God in these days, on His plan, on His call, on His design for battle. In that way we will be a support and not a hindrance in the fight. I also asked Caryll Houselander to give me a good passage from her letters to help describe how we can put ourselves aside and focus on God's call. And she gave me an awesome passage, which I will quote. She is so practical and at the same time so spiritual. I think you will find some help from her words: I feel that what you call fear is anxiety, an anxious, terrible depression, mixed with a feeling of guilt; and that, however much you reason that you are doing right, this sense of guilt remains and torments; and that you have this kind of anxiety in many, many respects. I do believe that this kind of anxiety, especially when it afflicts a busy person with a clearly sound mind, is the devil's work, and is for one object - namely, to distract your mind from God. Now, in many cases the grossest and most obvious temptations are good enough - a beef-steak on Friday is all the devil requires for his work, or a blatant carnal temptation. But when it comes to someone who has arrived at some measure of strongly conscious spirituality, who has proved a willingness to suffer for God and His truth, the devil must find subtler ways: he must find something which resembles God in this - that it is always present. What could be better than self?- and what more certain to imprison and ultimately obsess a sensitive soul than awareness of something wrong with self? Somehow or other the soul must be made to strive to attain a certain level of holiness, a certain peace or at least untroubledness, before abandoning itself to God. It will be held back by this, prevented from seeing more and more the beauty of God. The devil knows that the soul whose heart is fixed on God is lost to Hell, so he must drag the gaze back from God to self. He whispers, through a clergyman or friend, or just your own prompting: "You are doing wrong. Of course you have no peace; you are putting your peace of soul before the happiness of better souls, anyway"- and so one and so on. If you listen, you half agree; you begin again to examine your motives; you let conflict and anxiety rage in you - which is in itself exhausting. A vicious circle begins: you are too tired to pray; you think all consolation has been taken from you, aridity sets in - ultimately you can get a nervous breakdown, if you like! I feel sure that the treatment is to ignore the suggestions. Even ignore your own soul: keep your mind on God, on His love. For prayer, imagine (only it is not imagining, but true) that at every second of the day about four Masses are being said, and that you, your life, yourself as you are, now in this second, are your offering for the Mass; and offer yourself as you are in union with Our Lord's offering at Mass. Do not wait until you feel not uneasy; do not wait to be doing a more prayerful act; do not wait to feel more unity and completeness: offer yourself, your will to do right, your anxiety about not doing it, your being interrupted just now, the act of taking So-and-so's temperature - all, just as it is, to God. Leave it to God to transform all this into Himself. It's all you've got, and He gave it to you. We are like children whose father has given them a sixpence to buy a birthday present for himself. The father knows the child can't bring him a present costing a pound: he can only give back what he has been given, and whatever scruffy little object he produces, the father loves it, for it is his child's offering of all he can offer - and that is only his own gift back again, but back again made more loveable to him by an exchange of their love. Every time you hesitate, feel anxious, feel guilty, turn to God, say: "I can't cope with this: I'm doing my best as far as I see it: I put it into your hands to complete."... Drown the devil's voice with the name of Jesus: even when people are talking to you, say it inwardly again and again, until you seem to be breathing it. Don't trust your thoughts of Him: trust Him... (The Letters of Caryll Houselander. P. 148-150) Caryll is so right; the most clever temptation of the devil is to get our minds on ourselves, worrying about if we are good enough to serve God, anxious about our future, afraid we may fail, etc. These thoughts rage within, and keep us from even thinking about what God desires. Our eyes are focused on our self, and we stop praying. The answer: to forget about ourselves. As Our Lady says: "Forget your desires, dear children, and pray for what God desires, and not for what you desire." We will escape the trap of self-consciousness if we forget about ourselves. We can help Our Lady to triumph, because we will become offerings of love to the Father along with her. The idea of offering ourselves at each moment, in union with the Masses being offered all over the world is powerful! We can simply become offerings, in our normal, everyday lives. We can pray for what God desires, and offer our lives for His plan, simply by praying in this way. And on top of that, immersing ourselves in the name of Jesus! Wow! I leave you with this inspiration from Caryll Houselander. Let's forget ourselves this weekend, and pray with all our hearts for what God desires. We will see great miracles if we do! In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan ©Mary TV 2012 PS. Fruit of Medjugorje continues on www.marytv.tv !! Episode 8 is not archived and ready for viewing on demand. Each testimony builds more faith and joy in my heart. I hope you enjoy them as well!! Keep us in prayer as we move ahead, sharing the graces of Medjugorje! |
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