| +
J.M.J August 30, 2012 Dear Family of Mary! "Dear children! Also today, with hope in the heart, I am praying for you and am thanking the Most High for every one of you who lives my messages with the heart. Give thanks to God's love that I can love and lead each of you through my Immaculate Heart also toward conversion. Open your hearts and decide for holiness, and hope will give birth to joy in your hearts. Thank you for having responded to my call." (August 25, 2012) "Open your hearts..." How often do we hear this request from Our Lady? Almost every message!! It must be very important to have open hearts. But what does this mean? Again I want to turn to Fr. Slavko for an answer: There is one simple dimension in which we can become similar to Our Lady, and that is in the act of 'waiting for the Messiah'. What Mary did was to wait with an opened heart and mind. In this openness, while waiting, she prayed and fasted. There is no other way of waiting. If we are not waiting with openness, we cannot pray and fast. If we are not praying and fasting, then we are not waiting with openness. Many have lost the spirit of prayer and fasting because they have also lost the spirit of waiting. The greeting of 'Maranatha' which means 'Come Lord' was a greeting of 'waiting for the Messiah.' What we should ask ourselves is, "What can we do to remain in this waiting?" We pray, fast and read in the Bible how the prophets foretold this waiting. We must also find out what is hindering us, - what tires us from waiting for the Messiah and from losing this desire of 'Maranatha - Come Lord.' Sometimes what tires us is we expect that the answer to our prayer or our fasting will come quickly, or even immediately.... The basic question is love, the wait is love and the expectation is love. What we wait for is love. Love is the main thing that needs to be looked at each day. Are we loving others? Are we loving Jesus? Are we loving ourselves? If we meet Jesus every day when He comes, then our love is growing. We must be awake and always pray for this desire of waiting, this 'Maranatha - Come Lord!' When we lose this desire, we then forget that love is the expectation and thus we eventually lose the love. Our Lady makes us aware and helps us to remain awake for this everyday expectation and everyday love by her daily presence. (Fr. Slavko Barbaric. Be Similar to My Heart. p. 53-55) Openness of heart means that we are waiting for the coming of Christ, we are waiting for the coming of the Kingdom, we are waiting for love. Our hearts are open like a door is open, expecting the beloved guest to enter. Our desires are focused on one thing alone, the coming of the beloved. Our prayer is a prayer of hopeful expectation! Our fasting is an expression of our desire to make room for this guest. Our hope is that Love will come. And so our hearts are open if we are waiting with love for our Savior. And since Our Lady was the best at waiting, her Heart was and is the most open of all. If we examine our hearts and find them less than fully open, we can ask Our Lady to help us to root out anything that might be stopping us from waiting, stopping us from expecting, dimming our hope, extinguishing our desire for love. She can do it! Just read her messages and they will help. In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan ©Mary TV 2012 PS. Tonight we have another Fruit of Medjugorje! 8:00 pm, EDT! www.marytv.tv |
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.