Mary TV Daily Reflection 2/1/2013

        
(c)Josip Zubac, 2013
Roland playing for Adoration in St. James!

          

J.M.J.      

February 1, 2013

 

Dear Family of Mary!

 

"Dear children! Also today I call you to prayer. May your prayer be as strong as a living stone, until with your lives you become witnesses. Witness the beauty of your faith. I am with you and intercede before my Son for each of you. Thank you for having responded to my call." (January 25, 2013)

 

Part 2 of the testimony of Roland Patsleiner. (as transcribed from "Fruit of Medjugorje, Episode 52):

 

I continued to ruin myself. And when I became 19, in my heart, because of what I was doing, I had accumulated an incapacity to feel love or to know what is the real sense (meaning) of existence. And so in my heart, in the desperation of what I was feeling, I began to say, "If this is life, it is not worth living. If nothing changes in a short time, I will take my life. I will stop everything." And in that moment when I said this in my heart, no one knew it. But the same people who had brought me to Medjugorje the first time invited me again, and I came the second time to Medjugorje. And I know it was not the case that I would have ever gone to Medjugorje without that first time because now I can also say that in that strange pilgrimage, that strange event, Our Lady had already done something, so that in that moment of desperation in my life, I heard a call of this place in which God is near to those who especially need a lot of conversion.

 

So I came here and I experienced something very special here. In coming here I stopped using drugs and doing bad habits. I started to "feel" in my heart, to even cry, and you know I felt at home, something I had never felt before. And I felt a kind of love that you can't say with words, but I want to say in a few words that it was like somebody saying "I love you just the way you are. Not as you want to be. Not as others want you to be." -- Because my slavery in my teenage years was to try to be somebody who I was not. Following idols who said you must do this, do that, or you will not be appreciated. I had all this slavery to myself and to others. And here I felt this strong experience of "I love you just as you are."

 

And so I met, through Confession, one of the Franciscan priests, who helped me more and more to understand what is sin, what is bad. And I started little by little to do what people do here, because I didn't understand what was Mass, what was prayer. I just followed what others were doing, and so little by little I understood, and I felt peace. Peace in my heart. That was the first thing. I was suffering a lot because of the consequences of what I had done and what I was. But the main thing is that I felt a very profound peace. And I changed. And I was aware that the suffering which I had before was destroying me, was growing in me hate, a hate against life, against everything. And yet here I felt that my suffering was good for me because it changed me, and helped me to resist what I wasn't able to resist before.

 

So saying it in a few words, it took a long time to get into my converted life. I remember one of the important moments, there was a message from Our Lady which I heard, and it said, "Dear children, decide for God." I was there and it was always on my mind, "decide for God." What did this mean? I didn't understand it. But through speaking with a person (she didn't give me a direct answer...) I understood after one of the pilgrimages, I understood that deciding for God meant for me to pray every day. Decide to pray every day. And there Our Lady gave me a big gift which was the desire to go to Mass every day and to pray the rosary every day. So through Rosary, Mass, Confession, as she said, little by little, by getting stable in this, I came out of a lot of big problems and out of not understanding what my life was about.

 

One of the big things also, was the music I was into -- it was this heavy metal stuff, and this evil music which was giving me the wrong input for my conscience and for my heart. I had always said that they are talking about strange things but I didn't understand well and I liked it. You know the thing about it was the pleasure of listening to and playing this music, the emotions it gave. But then, little by little, in prayer Our Lady said very delicately, "You know you have one leg here and one leg there. You have to leave it."   And so here in Medjugorje, I came one day and I said, "Ok, I understand that this music, the idolatry of the music scene, is not good for me." So I said, "OK, I will not play worldly music any more, I will just play for the Lord." So I started to play just for the prayer groups and Adoration, and it started one of the charisms...You know I live in a community...and we started using music for prayer. As you know music was important for me in a bad way, but music is so strong in giving messages, evil or good ones. And so I felt that in music I had a lot of healing in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and this music, Our Lady formed it here in Medjugorje, through the priests, through the experiences which I had, [she formed it] with that special sweetness of sound, also very calm, so that it can transmit joy and peace.

 

Also here in Medjugorje I met a very important woman for me, Mother Rosario who is an Italian woman who had her conversion also here in Medjugorje. She was a fashion designer. She left also her work and started to follow the messages of Our Lady in forming specially prayer groups. And I met her here in Medjugorje and she became a person who I needed to concretely help me. She helped me to, little by little, understand what is life, to start studies and get rid of incapacities. Then we started here in Medjugorje as a community since 1995, developing also this charism of music, animation of Liturgy and prayers.

 

So after finishing my theology studies, since 2002, I am here serving with this charism, for all the pilgrims who come. At the same time we developed our community, which I am in, and we are discovering what are God's projects for us, little by little. It has been very important in my life to hear, through the messages of Our Lady, when she said, "Dear children, God has a plan for the life of every one of us, and you have to discover it through prayer."

 

And I really thank God for this place which has saved me, because you know I remember that many of my friends with whom I was growing up at the time when we were on drugs and we were doing bad things, you know a lot of them died through overdoses, or they went to prison because of the things that we did. Or they went out of their minds. And a long time ago I said, "Why am I here, and the others ended up like that?" And Our Lady made me understand how important it is that we respond to Our Lady's messages here in Medjugorje, because she said to me that "somebody has sacrificed and has prayed for you." She also said through the visionaries, "I am very worried about young people, about youth, because they are living in a very bad, a very difficult situation. You can help them through sacrifice and prayer." And this is what we do also, and what we do, day by day, little by little, converting also.

 

Another thing which I really experienced was the grace of God, living with the faith which is grace. You know it is beyond the human capacities, the human reason, what you can organize, what you are able to do. To live in whatever vocation we are in, that only God's grace can help us fulfill to the end God's plan. Without God's grace which comes through prayer, confession, Mass, Adoration...the things Our Lady says in her messages, we are not able to be successful. So I thank God for what he has done through Our Lady and I wish that a lot people can understand how important is the grace of prayer, the prayer that we all can do, and which depends on us, as we decide for God and go to Mass and pray, also with the other things we have to do. So, God bless you and all the best! (To watch this testimony, go to www.marytv.tv in the "Fruit of Medjugorje Archives" Episode 52. Roland)

 

"Witness the beauty of your faith!"

 

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

 

Cathy Nolan

©Mary TV 2013