Mary TV Daily Reflection 9/17/2013

   
St. James Church  

 (c)Mary TV 2013 

J.M.J.

September 17, 2013

St. Robert Bellarmine

Dear Family of Mary!

"...For the sake of Jesus, for the sake of my Son, love those whom He has called and long for the blessing only from the hands which He has consecrated. Do not permit evil to come to reign. Anew I repeat - only alongside your shepherds will my heart triumph. Do not permit evil to separate you from your shepherds. Thank you." (Message to Mirjana, (09/02/13)

In listening to Sr. Briege McKenna's testimony on "Fruit of Medjugorje, Episode 30" I realized something. The Lord sent Our Lady to Medjugorje as an answer to the heart felt cry of a priest! Sr. Briege tells the story of the prophetic beginnings of Medjugorje, which took place at a priest's retreat in Rome in 1981. It is a fascinating account of how the Holy Spirit worked in the heart of the priests at a retreat in Rome, to prepare the way for Our Lady's coming. Listen to Sr. Briege:

Yes it was a very big surprise to me when I finally heard about my part in Medjugorje. I was in Brazil and I didn't know anything about it because I didn't remember the priest or the prophecy I had given him until I was down in Brazil about to give a retreat. I was invited by the government to speak to the government officials and I had really begged the Lord about what I was supposed to speak on. I got a message that I was supposed to promote the Rosary, penance, prayer, and I was to speak on Our Lady. So I went to this meeting where all the cabinet members were going to be. The president had been sick that year, and he asked me to come and pray with him. So I went there armed with a bag of Miraculous Medals. I felt Our Lady prompting me when I was with the president, to ask him if he was practicing his faith, and I felt a voice saying "Miraculous Medal" so I gave one to him. And he said, "Oh, sister, I'm going to consecrate the country to Our Lady! And after he told me about it, my interpreter and myself came out of the room, and I received a letter telling us about the apparitions in Medjugorje. I hadn't heard of it. It was about a year after Medjugorje had happened. You know you can be living in the world and not know these things are going on. So we read through the letter and we were absolutely stunned. My interpreter said, it was absolutely amazing that we got the very same message to give in this country which was about to be consecrated by the Vice President who was flying to Aparecida to consecrate it to Our Lady on the Feast of the Rosary, October 7.

And in the letter it said that Sr. Briege McKenna had been to Rome, and this is when I realized what had happened. I had been invited to go to the International Conference for Priests. And because I am in a ministry for priests, I was asked by the priests to pray with them. So what we did was put them into groups according to country, and so I met with the group of priests from what was then Yugoslavia, because all those countries were under Communism. Then it all came back...the memory is like a great computer, so when the right button is pressed it comes up! I remember a Friar in his Franciscan habit saying to me that he was frustrated because he was the youth director for the diocese of Mostar. (I had never heard of Mostar, or any of these places...) He went on to tell me that the youth were being seduced by the communists who were taking them to cell meetings and using all kinds of propaganda to draw them away from Christ and from what he was trying to give them. So he asked me to pray that he could find a way. And one of the things I always do in my ministry is to say that it is not good to know too much about the priest beforehand. I tell them, "You know, Father you don't have to tell me everything about yourself. Not that I don't want to hear your story, but we are human and we can be influenced by what we hear. I don't really trust myself, it is better not to know anything about you."

But it so happened that on that day as I prayed with him... (I get these images. I tell people, you know your imagination can run away with you, but the Lord can use the imagination like an overhead projector. He can through images on it that can be the key for that person's life.) And what I saw was this Croatian priest sitting in the main celebrant's chair in front, and he was looking into the body of the church, and it was packed with young people. And from behind him on the altar there were streams of water, like rivers flowing, and the young people were cupping it and drinking it, and after they would drink it they would go out and bring others in. I said to him, "You know Father you don't have to worry, because many young people will come to your church." I shared this with him. Later he said that I told him that I saw a church with two huge steeples. And when I said this, almost immediately, Father Emile Tardif, who is a Sacred Heart Priest, a missionary, whom I have known, and who has died since, God rest his soul...walked over and got this prophetic word. He could not have heard what I had just said because I was speaking to another priest who was translating to the Croatian Friar. But Fr. Tardif walked over and said, "You know, Father, Our Lady is going to visit your church."

Now the extraordinary thing about it was that Fr. Tomislav (the Croatian priest) was not in Medjugorje yet. Medjugorje hadn't happened yet. None of us knew about a church with two steeples. It was completely news to him, bizarre, and he was probably thinking to himself, what does all this mean. He says that when he was sent there by the bishop, after Fr. Jozo was sent to prison, being the brilliant man that he was, the hope was that he would find out that this was not really true. And like any priest should do, he began to see the external signs and thought there was something extraordinary going on, but seeing the outside of it doesn't always make you believe. You can see things and still not believe. So what he did was really begin to pray because when he thought of these beautiful children, how could this be fabricated??

He began to struggle. I always tell people to remember that when Our Lady was asked to be the Mother of Jesus, she used her intelligence because to conceive a child you have to be married and have relations with a man, and so she asked a question, "How can this be?" God didn't reject her for that but the beautiful thing was that immediately she said "yes". Well Fr. Tomislav really prayed to the Lord to show him, and then he got this word: He heard my voice like a gramophone, he heard my voice and then he remembered the image. And it wasn't that he just had to imagine, because he heard the French Canadian priest saying, "Our Mother will visit your church." And he said, at that moment his heart was converted and he realized that it was like the Old Testament. At the time the word didn't have an impact on him, but now he had to make a decision because he heard the message [and experienced the reality] ("Fruit of Medjugorje, Episode 30")

Well, Our Lady came to Medjugorje, the village with a church constructed with two big steeples, and she began to pour out graces upon everyone there. Now, 32 years later, the graces are still pouring out of the Church. The rivers of grace are only increasing, it seems. Sometimes it seems like the river that is described in Ezekiel 47. The waters are creating life where ever they flow, and they just get deeper and more life giving all the time!

It is wonderful to hear Sr. Briege recount the prophetic beginnings of Our Lady's coming. Thanks be to God for such a coming! We need our Mother so very much.

In Jesus, Mary and Jospeh!

Cathy Nolan

©Mary TV 2013

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