(Fr. Stanko Cosic)
Joy!
(c)Mary TV 2013
J.M.J
February 6, 2014
St. Paul Miki and Companions
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! For this Feast Day I wish to tell you to open your hearts to the Master of all hearts. Give me all your feelings and all your problems! I wish to comfort you in all your trials. I wish to fill you with peace, joy and love of God. Thank you for having responded to my call." June 20, 1985
Fr. Stanko Cosic continues in his talk to pilgrims:
I
don't know how Christians lived before because I am quite young. But
Christians today have forgotten what joy looks like and what joy is.
Then when we see the program that has been given to us by Our Lady in
Medjugorje, we are talking about very simple things like prayer,
fasting, conversion. Again we ask the question, "Can we find joy in
these messages?'
We
start with prayer for example. If prayer is a dialogue, a conversation
from our heart with God, what result will we have out of it? We can
reflect on the everyday conversations that we have with each other.
Sometimes we are talking about completely empty things. And that is
something tiring for men. But when we are talking with someone about
something that is built into us we come out of it with more motives than
when we began the conversation. So how should our conversation or
dialogue be with God? there is no chance that God will tell us something
that is completely empty for us. And it is very important that this
conversation has both listening and talking, understanding and
listening.
How
many times do you have a situation when two people are talking, and one
is talking and the other one is silent. The one who is quiet is waiting
for the other one to finish so that he can start talking. And when this
one begins to talk he continues where the other one stopped. Actually
there is no listening in that kind of interaction. So when we talk about
our prayer, do we have moments when we are listening to God? St.
Elijah, for example, experienced both the storm and the fire. If we put
that into our own lives, we experience it as our problems, difficulties,
our prayers, our desires, our crying out. But only at the moment when
the storm and the fire are calming down, when everything is calming down
within ourselves, then the silence is coming. And this is the moment
when God is talking. We are not talking about this silence as a
privilege we have in our life, it is a necessity in our life. So it is
very important to understand that in prayer you have to talk and be
silent.
Mother Teresa said this in a very beautiful way:
The Fruit of silence is prayer,
The fruit of prayer is faith,
The fruit of faith is love,
The fruit of love is service,
The fruit of service is peace.
That
is how we reach our Queen of Peace, because she wants to lead us to
peace, the peace that we experience in our heart. That is why her
program leads us to joy.
First,
as we said, prayer has to be a joyful encounter. Fasting...it is
difficult for people to understand fasting as a joyful encounter. I have
to say for myself, I really love chocolate. I was just recently at a
seminar where we had fasting and silence. And there was one elderly lady
and she told me that it is impossible for her to fast on bread and
water unless she has a little piece of chocolate at the end of the day.
And I said to her, "I will join you." (Smiles) Just so she is not alone
in the situation! This is the spirit of St. Francis, guys!
Real
fasting is something that leads us towards the fulfillment of the aim
of our life. There was a doctor who recently said, "People just don't
have the time to enjoy the taste of Belgian Chocolate." That's really
sad. We are actually invited to enjoy our lives. Don't forget that the
first stop Jesus made on his way was the Wedding Feast at Cana. He
stopped there with His mother and His disciples. It was an invitation to
have fun! That is why we are all invited to glorify life.
When
we fast the sense returns to us of the taste of bread and water. There
is a Jewish proverb that says, "You can taste water when you are in the
desert, not before that." That is why it is very important for us to
give up something or renounce something. It is very important. Then we
can experience the benefit of the thing we are missing on certain
occasions.
There
was a priest for a long time who lived at the Holy Sepulcher for many
years. And he said to his fellow priests, "I have to go back to my
homeland." They asked him why. He said, "This Holy Sepulcher has become
like an everyday thing to me. It is nothing really special. Like any
other place. Therefore he wanted to separate himself from that place, in
order to feel the importance of that place again. That is why we always
emphasis fasting as a part of our fulfillment in our life. It is the
way we learn how to renounce things, how to give up something. In this
way we learn how to give up bigger things in our search for happiness.
If we talk about all the simple things in everyday life, as for the
married couples, there are always things you have to give up so that you
can gain more at the end of the day. And at the end, not only prayer,
but fasting causes us that feeling of joy. (Fr. Stanko Cosic, Fruit of
Medjugorje, Episode 101)
Fr.
Cosic has the gift of making spiritual things down to earth and
understandable. Prayer and fasting lead to joy!! They lead us to a real
understanding of who we are and the beauty God has given to us. I am so
grateful for his counsel!
Tomorrow will be the closing section of Fr. Cosic' talk.
God bless you,
Cathy Nolan
© Mary TV 2014
"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world!"
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please no anonymous comments. I require at least some way for people to address each other personally and courteously. Having some name or handle helps.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.