Mary TV Daily Reflection 2/18/2013

 
Mary, Our Teacher!

          

J.M.J.      

February 18, 2013

 

Dear Family of Mary!

 

"Dear children! Love is bringing me to you - the love which I desire to teach you also - real love; the love which my Son showed you when He died on the Cross out of love for you; the love which is always ready to forgive and to ask for forgiveness. How great is your love? My Motherly heart is sorrowful as it searches for love in your hearts. You are not ready to submit your will to God's will out of love. You cannot help me to have those who have not come to know God's love to come to know it, because you do not have real love. Consecrate your hearts to me and I will lead you. I will teach you to forgive, to love your enemies and to live according to my Son. Do not be afraid for yourselves. In afflictions my Son does not forget those who love. I will be beside you. I will implore the Heavenly Father for the light of eternal truth and love to illuminate you. Pray for your shepherds so that through your fasting and prayer they can lead you in love. Thank you." (February 2, 2013)

 

Today I will begin to share the transcription of a talk given by Fr. Slavko Barbaric in 1997, which we aired on "Fruit of Medjugorje, Episode 54". This wonderful talk is full of wisdom. I believe that what Fr. Slavko understood about the events of Medjugorje is important for us at this time, as we see the Church and the world going through so much change. He began his talk this way:

 

Good morning to everybody. I was waiting outside. I didn't know you were inside! For this reason I am a little bit late, yah! I know you are listening to many talks. Sometimes it is too much? No? OK. I will repeat some things very briefly and present to you some intentions of Our Lady. So we believe that Our Lady is appearing still every day to four visionaries. Some are here...Vicka and Jakov... Marija is in Italy, Ivan will be back at the end of the month. Wherever they are, they have the apparition. It is now 15 years and 10 months and a few days since the beginning of the apparitions. We do not know how long they shall go on. Our Lady never said for how long...she didn't say....maybe it is not our problem. She can stop when she wants of course. For two visionaries she has stopped daily apparitions. She promised to appear to them once per year, Mirjana on March 18, and Ivanka on June 25.

 

She is appearing every day, but she gives a message once per month, the 25th of the month. And now I see that the people who didn't come into the messages at the beginning of this process, they have difficulties understanding why she appears every day, why so long, why she does speak and repeat the same things so often, and so forth. And there is a condition if you want to understand all these things, the length of the apparitions, daily apparitions, the petitions of Our Lady and so on... the condition is to accept Our Lady as Mother and as Teacher, with the pilgrim Church of these times. In the encyclical, "Mother of the Redeemer" of John Paul II, written in 1987, he said that Our Lady was not only the Mother of Jesus, she was also His teacher. And she is not only our Mother, she is our Teacher too. But you see we are not used to saying to Our Lady, "My Teacher, pray for me!" When you pray the Litanies of Our Lady you do not find this title. But the Pope speaks of her as teacher.

 

He said she is a pilgrim in the pilgrim Church. And she is living with the pilgrim church her second Advent. And she wants to prepare us for the 2000th birthday of Jesus. And the Pope said also, that Mary knows Jesus better than all the other saints together. Because she is Mother, and the Mother knows the Son better than the others. For this reason she can teach us better who Jesus is, and she can lead us better than all the other saints. And now when you hear what I will tell you it will be easier to understand. (Fr. Slavko Barbaric, April 1997, talk to pilgrims in Medjugorje, filmed by Mary TV)

 

I believe that this first point made by Fr. Slavko is very important. Our Lady is our Teacher. She is with us in these days to teach us how to be Christian, how to follow Jesus. Why did the Father decide it was necessary to send Our Lady to Medjugorje at this time, to send her on a daily basis? Could it be that He saw how far from the Faith we had wandered in the 20th Century? With the waves of humanism, communism, atheism, materialism, militarism, and all the other isms that have swept over us, we were at the point of drowning. The Church has been struggling valiantly to stay afloat, and to move forward with the gift of Faith, but the world was overpowering us. We needed to be retaught the basic truths in a way that would clear our minds and hearts of all the "isms". We needed the best of teachers.

 

And so God sent Our Lady to teach us the Faith as only she can! As Mother, she knows Jesus better than anyone. So she can teach us about Jesus, lead us to Jesus, acquaint us with Jesus better than anyone else. And that is what she has been doing in the lives of each person who has encountered her in Medjugorje or through Medjugorje. She has been teaching us, catechizing us in the Faith all these years.

 

I think it is important to relate to Our Lady as a teacher. In our prayer to her, in our conversation with her, we need to look to her as a teacher. There are so many things in our lives that we do not know how to handle. We do not know how to choose wisely, we don't know how live our Faith. We need help! And that is why Mother Mary is with us, to help us. She will give us practical advice if we ask her. We have only to ask her. She will come to our aid, and show us how to proceed.

 

In her messages, Our Lady has often referred to her role as teacher:

 

Be conscious, my beloved, that I am your Mother and I have come on earth to teach you to listen out of love, to pray out of love...(11/29/84)

 

I desire to teach you to pray.(6/12/86)

 

Dear children, you know that for your sake I have remained a long time so I might teach you how to make progress on the way of holiness. (1/1/87)

 

 

I am with you and I wish to teach you to pray with the heart.(10/25/89)

 

I love you and that is why I am with you, in order to teach you and to lead you to a new life of conversion and renunciation. Only in this way will you discover God and all that which now seems so far away from you. (11/25/92)

 

And of course the most recent message:

 

Love is bringing me to you - the love which I desire to teach you also - real love; the love which my Son showed you when He died on the Cross out of love for you; the love which is always ready to forgive and to ask for forgiveness.... I will teach you to forgive, to love your enemies and to live according to my Son.(2/2/13)

 

Let's look to Our Lady as our Teacher as well. She will help us, teach us, if we ask her to help. We have only to turn to her when we need her guidance, and she will be there. She can teach us so much!

 

Mary, Mother of Jesus, teach us to follow your Son.

 

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

Cathy Nolan

©Mary TV 2013