Fr. Daniel Reehil - English Mass 9/10/21
Forty years I endured that generation...
September 13, 2021
Dear Family of Mary!
On September 10,2021, Fr. Daniel Reehil gave the homily for English Mass in Medjugorje! I have transcribed it for you below. It is a homily you will want to ponder and pray over.
You can listen to him deliver it at this link:
Fr. Daniel Reehil
English Mass Homily Sept 10, 2021
Everyday all the priests on the entire planet pray the Liturgy of the Hours, something we promise to do at our ordination. And it’s the prayer for the Church. The first prayer in the morning when we get up starts with Psalm 95. It begins by saying: “Come let us sing to the Lord, shout to the Rock who saves us. Let us approach Him with praise and thanksgiving.” This is a very uplifting beginning. It is really David proclaiming this, right? We should be doing this. We should be giving Him songs and hymns and thanks and praise!
But the psalm ends a little differently, because then it changes to the perspective of God the Father. The way the Psalm ends is “Forty years I endured that generation. I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts have gone astray, and they do not know my ways. So, I swore in my anger that they shall not enter into my rest.’”
It is a bit daunting - the first thing in the morning, before coffee. But we have to be reminded also of God’s justice. It wasn’t a far stretch this past June 24th, as things came to fruition with forty years of Our Lady’s coming here in Medjugorje, that as I was praying that prayer, I thought of Our Lady. And I said to myself – I wonder if she feels the same way? “Forty years I endured that generation.”
Because we are no better today than we were back in 1981. In fact, many would argue that we are worse. The world is falling away. And so, I started pondering – what is Our Lady’s posture? And I thought of the natural order, in my own life…it is much easier to go to Mom when there is a problem or you are in trouble, than to go to Dad. So, I thought that in the spiritual realm it must be similar. It is much easier to go to Our Lady, because women, mothers by nature are said to be more compassionate, more kind, more forgiving.
And so, forty years…14,600 daily appearances. Why? To bring us back to her Son.
In today’s Gospel (Luke 6:39-42) Jesus asks us, “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?” The answer is yes! They both will. Humanity has been walking with a blind man for quite some time, following the ways of the world. For the most part we are not walking by faith, we are walking by fear. And the Church is not excluded.
In Proverbs 29 God tells us “My people perish for lack of vision.”
Our Lady has come to lead the blind and to give us God’s vision because we have strayed far away from Jesus, from His Gospel. And the tactics of the enemy have not really changed over the thousands of years he has been harassing us. We can learn much by looking back to Genesis 3.
This is where it all unravels. We continue today to grasp for that proverbial fruit. So let me just refresh you with some of Genesis 3:
“Now the serpent was more crafty that any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but God did say you must not eat the fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden. And you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ‘You surely will not die,’ the serpent said to the woman, ‘for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.’ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”
You see they disobeyed God because they wanted to be like God, in fact they wanted to be God. And thousands of years later, we still want to be God. We don’t want to be lorded over by God, we want to become God. We have removed God from our schools, from our marketplace, from our hospitals, and for many of us right out of our homes. And when Satan donned black robes in America, on January 22, 1973, we voted for the right to kill babies in the wombs, and we decided that we would determine when life begins and ends. Many nations have followed suit. Ireland and recently Mexico. These are very Catholic nations. Do you know that in Belgium children can ask for assisted suicide and the parents can’t stop it?
We are also under the illusion that man can assign his own gender. Something that was formerly a Divine Right. But now man proclaims he can do these things. We have taken the position of God. So, Our Lady who has been visiting us for 40 years, has come to steer us back to Jesus, back to truth and away from the world, the flesh and the devil. To truly walk as the children of God who we were created to be.
When you were made, God saw that you would become a saint, not just in heaven but in this life, reflecting God’s light to the world, just like Our Lady does. And drawing others back to Him. To take back his Kingdom! We pray it everyday in the Our Father: “Thy Kingdom come; Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven!”
Do you know how they do things in Heaven? They don’t do them like they do them here. In Heaven, when God asks something of an angel or a saint, three things happen. They do it immediately, they do it completely, and they do it joyfully. How many of us act like that when God asks us to do something for Him? I’ll be honest. Some days if I get 2 out of 3, I feel like I am doing pretty good!
Because it is hard! It’s hard being a Christian. If you find it easy, either you should be canonized, or you might be doing something wrong. He says to us, “Pick up your cross, daily!” Daily! So, every day there is going to be a cross somewhere. Often times it is the bending of our will to our Father. That is a very hard thing to do on a daily basis.
Now when considering all the many attributes of our Blessed Mother: her purity, her love, her courage, her compassion…one stands out for me…her humility! And directly tied to humility is obedience, because the only visible sign of humility is obedience! Her obedience is rooted in her perfect love for God. This is where obedience should always be rooted. It shouldn’t be done out of fear of retribution, it should be done out of love for God. So, if we are not in that place where we love God enough to do everything He asks, pray for more. Everything is a gift. Say, “Lord I want to be a saint!” Say it out loud! “I want to be a saint, and I want you to take any block away from me that is preventing me from being a saint in this life. Give me your perfect obedience out of love for You!”
This love Our Lady experienced for God was so profound that she never made a single decision in her entire life that was motivated by her own personal gain. Not one! Can you imagine? That is what she is calling us to do, to reflect the way she lived her life, the way her Son lived His life. All for the glory of God!
The days are growing darker, and time is running out. We have been called here to this place right now, to Medjugorje, to be strengthened by our Mother. To be given the same gifts she was given, her courage, her purity, her compassion, her humility, her obedience. You have been born for such a time as this. Just like Queen Esther! To be part of Our Lady’s army, and to fight for souls. This is a battle for souls. There is no higher price, and we are part of the army. The Militia of the Immaculata!
And there is some wonderful news in all of this. God has a secret weapon. It is called the Cross. And anyone who is uniting their cross to His Cross is going to be victorious, because the Cross always wins. It never loses for those who love God. So every day when you are picking up your cross, you unite it to His Cross and say, “Lord this is a suffering for me, it is a trial, so I give you my cross and I ask you to unite it to your Cross in the Mystical Body of Christ so that this cross can be converted into grace and rescue souls and take them back to your Kingdom. It might be the greatest thing you ever do with your life. There is nothing God likes more than when we unite with Him to save souls.
And there is one final great news in this. We look at our life and we say, today I am having a good day. I woke up rested. I had bacon and eggs for breakfast. All the lights turned green on the way to work. Nobody argued with me. This was a good day. Ok. It was a good day. That is the day that God gave you graces to enjoy the day. Other days everything goes wrong. You didn’t get any sleep, sour milk in the morning, red lights, pulled over by the cops, my boss was angry at me and threw me more projects to do, I’m going to be working late. Guess what, He is giving you crosses. These are the days He is giving you graces to endure. But these days are better than the days when you didn’t have crosses, because on these days you can save souls. If you start looking through life with that lens, there are no more good days and bad days, there is only days of grace. Truly!
Praised by Jesus and Mary!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
Mary TV 2021
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