All pictures by Ivan Petrina
(c)Mary TV 2013
J.M.J.
October 17, 2013
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! Also today I call you to conversion. You are concerned too much about material things and little about spiritual ones. Open your hearts and start again to work more on your personal conversion. Decide every day to dedicate time to God and to prayer until prayer becomes a joyful meeting with God for you. Only in this way will your life have meaning and with joy you will contemplate eternal life. Thank you for having responded to my call." (April 25, 2000)
This is the only
message I know of in which the word contemplate is used. But it fits so
well. To contemplate... the Miriam-Webster dictionary gives this
definition: " to view or consider with continued attention : meditate
on - contemplate the vastness of the universe." To contemplate something
means to take time with it. We pay attention to it for a long time. We
just sit with the thing, viewing it from all sides, soaking it in.
Contemplating is not something we do much in our busy, noisy society.
But Our Lady in this
message is calling us to do just that. She is telling us that we spend
far too much time on worldly matters and not enough time with God. So
she urges us to dedicate time to God, time to prayer, time to meet God.
This kind of time spent on God can become contemplation. God is so vast,
eternal and beautiful, that we need to spend time just taking Him in.
I observed something
neat while I was in Medjugorje. During the night that I tried to stay at
the Blue Cross with our crew, in order to film Mirjana's apparition the
next morning, I was observing one of our photographers. He was
"playing" with a feature on his camera by which he could open up the
lens for as much as 30 seconds. He would keep the camera very still and
open up the lens, and the resulting picture contained an amazing amount
of light. He was doing this in the pitch dark of the Blue Cross, over
and over again. The pictures he got were amazing! (Here are some of his
pictures from that night.)
I was especially
impressed with the way the stars became visible in the pictures. The sky
in the pictures just teams with stars! I could not see them with my
eyes! But the pictures captured them through the time-lapse process.
They were incredible. They spoke to me of the vast creative power of
God.
Well, it occurred to
me that our hearts are a bit like that camera. When we pray with open
hearts it is like we are opening up the lens of our heart, and focusing
it on God. As we do that, the light just collects on our heart, and we
begin to really see all that God has done, all that He is, all that He
has made. We see it in a much more pronounced way when we "contemplate"
through the lens of our heart for a long time, sort of a time lapsed
photo session with God!
Well that is it. I
want to take Our Lady's call to prayer, to dedicated time with God,
seriously. Maybe this image of the lens will help me to sit still, open
up, and let God shine into my heart. I may begin to see much more of Him
that way, and begin to contemplate eternity, full of stars!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2013
"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world!"
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