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To pray, you must take time!
(Pictured is our dear Franjo Zubac! He was a member of the prayer group Our Lady began and has never stopped living her program of prayer! Pray for us, Franjo!)
September 20, 2023
Dear Family of Mary!
Here is the August 25, Message again:
Dear children!
In this time of grace,
I am calling you to prayer with the heart.
May your hearts, little children,
be raised in prayer towards Heaven,
so that your heart may feel the God of love
who heals you and loves you with immeasurable love.
That is why I am with you,
to lead you on the way of conversion of heart.
Thank you for having responded to my call. (August 25, 2023)
Today we are on Teaching Two in Fr. Albert Shamon's little booklet on prayer. Fr. Shamon makes the case that prayer requires a commitment of time, lots of time!! We can't just fire off a rosary and think we are finished with our prayer!!
Fr. Shamon wrote:
Chapter 2:
To pray you must take time
Prayer is a meeting with our Lord. If you want to meet with someone, you have to take time for them. You have to sit down, have a cup of coffee or lunch together and talk. The important thing is, you have to take time!
Our big sin today is that we have not time for God. Our Lady said: "The sin of the world consists in the fact that people are not interested in God. The cities and villages are full of churches...but people do not go to ask how they must live. The sin of the world today lies in this, that there is not interest in or time for God." (8/25/82) We have time for everything else; but when you say you have no time for prayer, you are really saying, I have no time for God.
Our Lady begs us to take time for prayer. She said: "Pray when you can. Pray how you can, but always pray more and more." Then she added "Each of you could pray even for four hours a day. But I know many people do not understand this, because they think they can live by their works alone."
Ah, there's the rub! We still think God is of no use to us. We think what counts most in life is our own efforts, our own endeavors, our works. So again Our Lady warned; "Do not forget: man does not live by work alone but also by prayer. Your work will not go well without prayer." You can work continuously and come up with nothing. Or you can pray, as you should, and come up with everything. If you don't believe that, read the prophet Haggai. When Israel neglected God, their works were in vain--"He who earned wages earned them for a bag with holes in it." (HG. 1:6)
So on July 5, 1984, Our Lady again pleaded: "Dear children...Always start our work with prayer and end your work with prayer...These days you have been praying too little and working too much. Pray therefore. In prayer you will find rest."
In the Our Father, Our Lord taught us to pray: "Lead us not into temptation." The great temptation today is to depend totally on our own resources, to try to go it alone without God. The truth still is "without Me you can do nothing" - absolutely nothing!
When two people are in love, time stands still for them. They love to spend time with the beloved. When we do not want to spend time in prayer, what is that saying?
It is saying, "We really do not love God."
It is saying, "We are sick spiritually."
If you don't want to eat, you are physically sick. If you don't want to pray, you are spiritually sick. If you have to be forced to eat, you are sick-you've lost your appetite for food. If you have to be forced to pray, you are sick- you've lost your appetite for God.
We have basic needs, like eating and sleeping. When you don't eat, you feel hungry. When you don't sleep, you feel sleepy. When you don't pray and you don't feel anything then God is no longer basic to your life. You've lost Him.
We try to gloss over this atheism by pleading we are too busy. Yet we have time to eat, time to sleep, time to work, time for television (sometimes three or four hours a day)- but no time for God? That means we are in reality, atheists. We have lost the faith!
Our Lady went so far as to tell the visionaries; "You can pray even four hours a day." When someone said that's asking a lot, Our Lady answered: "It is only one sixth of a day."
The paradox is, If we give time to God, then God will give us all the time we need for everything else. If we have not time for God, we shall soon discover that we shall be pressed for time to do even the things we must do.
Our Lady asked Jelena to form a prayer group (June 24, 1983). "I wish to have prayer groups," she told her. "Everyone can participate, but I commend it particularly to young people (because they are free from engagements) and especially to those young people who wish to lead a consecrated life."
To Jelena's prayer group, Our Lady asked for at least three hours of prayer each day - three hours! At least one half hour in the morning and one half hour in the evening. If you praying the morning and in the evening, it prevents your day from unraveling. You'll find you will finish your work in a shorter time than before and you will have time on your hands-more than you need.
Our Lady asked Jelena's prayer group to devote themselves to the prayer group for four years before choosing any vocation, whether it be to the religious life or to marriage. When Our Lady was asked, "Why this wait-especially if one wanted to go into religious life?" The Mother of God replied: "...the most important thing is to enter into the depth of prayer and then you will be able to make the right choice."
So there you have it. How much time do you spend in prayer? Our Lady is telling us that what is needed is more than quick, off-the-cuff prayers; more than conscience-easing prayers at the beginning and the end of the day. She wants us to become prayerful persons committed to prayer, persons who are dissatisfied with the meager crumbs of prayer that so often are thrown to God. Our Lady is asking us for a major, not a minor, commitment to prayer.!
(From "Our Lady teaches about Prayer at Medjugorje", by Rev. Albert J.M. Shamon)
We can see that the pilgrims in Medjugorje find themselves living just such a life of prayer while they are in Medjugorje. Usually they have morning prayer with their group, Mass in the morning in their language group, the rosary prayed while climbing Apparition Hill or Cross Mountain, meditation at the Risen Christ Statue, and the evening program of prayer which is easily three hours long. It sounds impossible to pray that much, but not when we are being guided by Our Lady. Prayer becomes the air we breathe in Medjugorje!!
Let's try to live Medjugorje at home!!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
(c) Mary TV 2023
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