"My children, the Father comes to be known through the cross."
(c)Mary TV 2013
J.M.J.
December 4, 2013
St. John Damascene
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children, with a motherly love and a motherly patience I am looking at your ceaseless wandering and how lost you are. That is why I am with you. I desire to help you to first find and come to know yourself, so that, then, you would be able to recognize and to admit everything that does not permit you to get to know the love of the Heavenly Father, honestly and wholeheartedly. My children, the Father comes to be known through the cross. Therefore, do not reject the cross. Strive to comprehend and accept it with my help. When you will be able to accept the cross you will also understand the love of the Heavenly Father; you will walk with my Son and with me; you will differ from those who have not come to know the love of the Heavenly Father, those who listen to Him but do not understand Him, those who do not walk with Him - who have not come to know Him. I desire for you to come to know the truth of my Son and to be my apostles; that, as children of God, you may rise above the human way of thinking and always, and in everything, seek God's way of thinking, anew. My children, pray and fast that you may be able to recognize all of this which I am seeking of you. Pray for your shepherds and long to come to know the love of your Heavenly Father, in union with them. Thank you." (December 2, 2013)
The first words of this
message echo a very poignant Scripture passage, the story of the
Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Our Lady gives us the mother's point of
view, something that is missing from the Scriptural story! She tells
us: "Dear children, with a motherly love and a motherly patience I am looking at your ceaseless wandering and how lost you are...." Is this not the state of the Prodigal Son?
And
he said, "There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them
said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that falls to
me.' And he divided his living between them. Not many days later the
younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country,
and there he squandered his property in loose living... (v. 11-14)
The younger son wandered
away from his Father, and wasted his inheritance in loose living. He
became lost. Distance from the Father makes us lost, for He is our true
goal, our true source, and our real joy! But we may not even know that
we need Him, as full of our own selves as we are!
And so she tells us that we need to first get to know ourselves, as we truly are. Our Lady tells us "That is why I am with you. I desire to help you to first find and come to know yourself..."
We might ask why we need to know ourselves first. Well, isn't that the
exact process that the prodigal son went through. He left his father,
wandered away, and then squandered his living, and got himself into a
mess:
And
when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and
he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the
citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed swine. He
would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave
him anything... (v. 14-16)
This mess was the tool that
helped the Prodigal Son begin to know himself. He began to realize that
he was nothing without his father. He had no rights, no entitlement,
nothing without his father. The citizen he was working for cared nothing
for him. He was nobody. And that is the truth of it. We also must
learn to know ourselves. We are nothing without our heavenly Father. All
that we are and have has come from Him. We are not entitled to it, and
of ourselves we have no claim to anything. We are nothing without God.
This is the most fundamental
understanding of ourselves! Without the heavenly Father we are nothing,
have nothing, deserve nothing, and will become nothing.
As our Mother says: "I
desire to help you to first find and come to know yourself, so that,
then, you would be able to recognize and to admit everything that does
not permit you to get to know the love of the Heavenly Father, honestly
and wholeheartedly." She wants us to recognize all that gets in
the way of our understanding who we are in relation to the Father.
Honestly and wholeheartedly, we need to know that all comes from Him,
and all will return to Him, and that we are His creatures. When we know
this, there is nothing that can cloud our understanding. Nothing can
keep us from loving the Father who made us and who sustains us.
Once we know who we are in
relation to the Father we will be able to return to Him, like the
Prodigal Son returned to his father:
But
when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired
servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I
will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father I have
sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called
your son; treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and came
to his father... (v.17-19)
This son ate humble pie. He
rose up in humility! He returned to the Father, ready to be humiliated
and chastised, treated as a servant. He knew it was only just. And so he
embraced the cross of humiliation in order to return to the father!
This is what Our Mother suggests in the message when she says: "My
children, the Father comes to be known through the cross. Therefore, do
not reject the cross. Strive to comprehend and accept it with my
help...." Our Lady encourages us to accept the cross, because
it is through the cross that we become humble and ready to receive
forgiveness and love from the Father. The cross brings us home to Him.
What happens when we embrace
the cross, when we accept our humiliation and our complete dependence
of the Father? This is what happened to the Prodigal Son:
And
he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance,
his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him and
kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against
heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But
the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put
it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring
the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my
son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they
began to make merry. (v.20-24)
The Prodigal Son learned to
understand the love of his father through his humiliation and return. He
saw his father's great love, compassion, acceptance, and forgiveness!
He experienced his welcome home as a kind of rebirth! Our Lady tells us:
"When you will be able to accept the cross you will also
understand the love of the Heavenly Father; you will walk with my Son
and with me..." When we accept the cross, we will see our
Father running to embrace us, with compassion, and kiss us with tears of
joy! We will walk with Jesus and Mary on the way of joy! We will be
back in the family!
And so, we are being invited
by Mother Mary to find our way home, to rise up and return to our
Father's house, where we can humble ourselves before His greatness, and
be embraced as His children! In this way we will be bonded to Him in the
truth that He is our loving Father, and we are His children who need
Him for everything!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2013
"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world!"
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