(c)Mary TV 2013
J.M.J.
October 15, 2013
Saint Teresa of Jesus
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! I call you to peace. Live it in your heart and all around you, so that all will know peace, peace that does not come from you but from God. Little children, today is a great day. Rejoice with me. Glorify the Nativity of Jesus through the peace that I give you. It is for this peace that I have come as your Mother, Queen of Peace. Today I give you my special blessing. Bring it to all creation, so that all creation will know peace. Thank you for having responded to my call." December 25, 1988
Yesterday, as I was waking
up, I was aware that my thoughts were dark, full of temptations. I must
have been wrestling with darkness in my dreams. And I felt unpeaceful as
I awoke.
Through prayer I was able to
overcome these thoughts, and at Mass I gave the temptation to fear to
the Lord and it went away. But I was made aware that peace in my heart
is not to be taken for granted. Peace is a great gift that we have been
given by Our Lady, as we live her messages, and it is sorely missed when
we lose it.
I believe that peace is the
great message of Medjugorje. In almost every testimony that we have been
given for "Fruit of Medjugorje" episodes, we are told that peace is one
of the first things the person notices upon arriving in Medjugorje.
Peace gently wraps the pilgrim up in its warm and comforting embrace. It
is noticed at some point by each pilgrim. If you watch "Tea with Rosie"
for this week, Bishop Bob Gruss says it too, "I feel that peace that
Mary brings, by being here. Hopefully it will deepen the peace I feel in
my own heart. I think in some ways I will be a different person, a new
person when I go back to America, to share the message of the Gospa. I
have just been filled with joy in the experience I have had here!" (Tea
with Rosie, Episode 58 - October 14, 2013)
Peace! It is the missing
ingredient in most of our lives. We live in anxiety and fear most of our
lives. We don't even notice it, but the turmoil and unrest engulf us.
Our Lady has come to fight those things in our lives, and to give us
hearts full of peace.
Yesterday during the Daily
Rosary, I asked for thoughts about peace from our prayer group. I have
been wondering what peace really is. I got a great response from Reuben.
He wrote:
Hi Cathy,
I am just responding to your request we all think and pray about what peace means.
This
morning, I too was given a lot of potentially discouraging thoughts, and
in the midst of seeking consolation, I turned to the book of Job. It
seems what first restores Job's fortunes on earth is his sense of peace,
and what brings him that peace is his choosing to stay in the
fellowship of God exactly when it least makes any apparent and rational
sense to do so. It's not wrong of him to rail and beg questions and be
tempted even to despair, nor to use his reason to try and understand why
suffering persists in his life, but once he accepts that not all
suffering can be so easily or immediately understood, the suffering is
eased by a peace which surpasses understanding. It really helped me to
embrace the cross of my continued struggles. It's easy for me to build
up expectations of receiving a peace which takes away suffering rather
than turning it to good advantage, especially when something so huge as a
world consecration to Mary has just taken place. It's like I become
excitable, and subconsciously come to expect some big firework display
of God's grace, and not the much more important morning star rising
gently in my heart. I forget Mary's humility and maternity!
So I guess
I'm thinking I stay in God's presence most effectively when I stay in
Mary's presence, and I do that best when I stay more humble, and
therefore more childlike. Crosses help me stay that way sometimes, so
suddenly, I realize what I need to realize over and over again: that my
suffering is sometimes given me in love, and I am truly peaceful if
truly present in humble prayer with my mother. The fullness of a joy
which embraces its difficulties is surely what Christ gives us every day
that we ask for it, and it seems to be the very gravity behind crushing
the serpent's head.
How blessed I am to believe. I don't know what thoughts others are having, but these are mine.
Ave!
Well said, Reuben. In fact,
peace comes when we are in Mary's presence. She connects us to God most
effectively, and of course God is our peace. When Job finally had said
his piece and he experienced God, he regained his peace because he
regained the presence of God. When we are troubled, we regain our peace
when we again are in Mary's presence because she brings us to the Lord.
Peace is God. Peace is not the absence of suffering, but the presence of
God!
"Dear children! I call you to peace. Live it in your heart and all around you, so that all will know peace, peace that does not come from you but from God..."
Peace comes from God
because peace is in God. He is peace. He is everything. In Him there is
no lack, no fear, no loss. God is all for us! He is our peace.
God bless us all,
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2013
"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world!"
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