Mary TV: May 1, 2017 Reflection - In silence!

       
(c)Mateo Ivankovic 2017

J.M.J.

May 1, 2017

St. Joseph the Worker

 

Dear Family of Mary!

 

Denis shared this reflection with me, and I am passing it on to you! Thanks, Denis:

I never understood Our Lady's July 25, 1989 message until I heard Fr. Leon's April 28, 2017 Snippet before Mass:

July 25, 1989 "Dear children! Today I am calling you to renew your hearts. Open yourselves to God and surrender to him all your difficulties and crosses so, God may turn everything into joy. Little children, you cannot open yourselves to God if you do not pray. Therefore, from today, decide to consecrate a time in the day only for an encounter with God in silence. In that way you will be able, with God, to witness my presence here. Little children, I do not wish to force you. Rather freely give God your time, like children of God. Thank you for having responded to my call."

Fr. Leon's April 29 Snippet (available in "On Demand" at www.MaryTV.tv ):

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!

I want to talk to you about something personal. And when I was thinking about this I even got emotional. I was thinking about what Medjugorje means to me. I have known about Medjugorje - I was trying to count the years - for the majority of my life... 35 years. And I've been coming to Medjugorje for 26 years - since my childhood. (Now that doesn't make much of a difference if... I was thinking how come ­- after all these years - I'm still not converted)  And I was walking early in the morning through the rain, and thinking how beautiful it is - how beautiful it is to be in Medjugorje and for me to live in Medjugorje. I'm not rubbing this in your faces, because all of you have to go home - most of you have to go home, and I get to stay here.

But I was thinking how beautiful it is to live here. It's such a blessing! The thing about Medjugorje is: you get what you put into it. As you sow so shall you reap.

There is so much grace here in this place. There is so much peace in this place. But it really depends on us. We come here with our problems, our anxieties, and preoccupations; also our egos, and they clash with other people's preoccupations and worries and egos. And then we lose our peace. And there is so much beauty in this place, being offered to us by God. ... so much grace, and for that we need SILENCE. We need silence in our hearts, in Church, around the church, on the mountains. Otherwise we can't recollect ourselves, we can't experience the peace that God wants to give us. The peace that Our Lady has come to give us.

 

The peace that Christ comes to give us, He says, is not like the world gives. And I often think of this as - you know, in the depths of the ocean the waters hardly move. And that's something like how Christ's peace is in us. On the surface of the ocean the waves, the water is variable, it could be tumultuous, it could be calm, it could be a tsunami, who knows? And those are like our emotions. Our emotions from day to day change. But don't put too much stock in your emotions. Focus in the depths of your soul, on the peace that Christ gives. And that peace is precious. The world can't give it. And many of us are afraid that when we leave Medjugorje this peace will be lost. But it doesn't have to be.

 

Yes, we might go back to some of our old bad ways. But as soon as we turn back to Our Lord again, as soon as we shut that door, we go into the inner room of our soul. As Saint Catherine of Sienna says: "Make a cloister in your soul for prayer!" As soon as we go back, that peace is there to be rediscovered. And that peace has to be fostered. Nurtured. Without it, many of the things that we're distracted by are not terribly important.   Well, you might think, Father, you don't know what my life is like. My problems are terribly important.

 

I'll put it to you in this way. If you knew that when the clock strikes 11:00am - at the end of Mass when the clock strikes 11:00am you're going to drop dead - how important would your problems now be? If you're going to die at 11:00 O'clock. And then that will give you an idea of how important they really are. Because most of them we'll think, well, their kind of relative suddenly. If I have to drop dead at 11:00 I'm not so bothered now about the quarrel, my 50-year feud with my sister. In fact, I'd ring her straight after Mass and say, "I'm sorry. And if you can, forgive me!" Things like that. Suddenly they cease to be so important and looming on our horizon.

 

Now we have to live every day like this, prepared to die.   I keep saying, if we knew we had to die we would all suddenly change our lives. And that means something important. It means we are not actually ready to live. If we're not ready to die, it means we're not ready to live. And we haven't actually been living. We've just sort of been distracting ourselves and kind of plodding on through life. But you can always tell someone who is ready to die. He or she is at peace, with God and with his or her brothers and sisters. And there's nothing they've left unprepared. They're ready.  It's raining. It's a beautiful day. What a beautiful day to die. What a beautiful day to live. 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen....

 

May we all make a cloister in our souls for prayer!

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
(c)Mary TV 2017

"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world."
Saint John Paul II
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