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God often does the impossible! Believe in Jesus!!
April 16, 2024
Dear Family of Mary!
Today I am sharing with you a wonderful homily:
English Homily in Medjugorje
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Fr. Joseph Jacobsen
Fr. Jacobsen shares several very important points
about our faith and how it should work!! It is well worth the read!!
Fr. Jacobsen was once a Lutheran Bishop, but has become a Catholic
priest!! He loves Our Lady of Medjugorje!! Thank you, Fr. Jacobsen!!
April 4, 2024.
HOMILY
Lord, sanctify us in Your truth. Your word is truth. Amen.
Dear friends,
Today,
we want to celebrate the fact, and at the same time take some warning
from the fact, that when God does something that is humanly impossible
in our presence and we see it and witness it, and then He tells us that
He’s going to do something else that is humanly impossible after that,
we are responsible for believing what He tells us. Okay.
Now,
most people don’t. Because it’s difficult, even when you see something
that is humanly impossible done by God, it’s difficult for us not to
think that the humanly impossible is impossible. That’s the way that
normal people think. I’m going to give you a few examples of that before
we tie into the main example that I want to use for my homily today.
The
first example of that is Moses and the children of Israel as they fled
from and were driven out of Egypt. They had 10 plagues to drive them
out. None of those plagues were humanly possible. They could only have
come because God willed them to come. And they got to the Red Sea, and
they were between the Red Sea and the hosts of Egypt, the humanly
impossible occurred again. They fully expected to be massacred there,
because they were trapped.
Well,
the cloud came and prevented the Egyptians from seeing where they were
going, the sea opened up, they went through the sea – has that ever
happened in a humanly possible way? So, they went through there and out
the other side to the other end, and then the cloud lifted and the
Egyptians followed them, and the humanly impossible happened again. The
water returned and drowned all of the army.
Now,
okay, they witnessed all of that. Do you suppose they should have
believed that they would actually be led through the desert to the
Promised Land by somebody who had done all of those things already for
them? Of course, they should have believed that. But they didn’t.
Well,
a few did. There was Joshua. There was Caleb. There was Moses; and I
presume Aaron and Miriam thought so, too. There may have been a few
others. But for the most part, it was very difficult for them, once they
were facing another set of difficult circumstances where their survival
seemed to be humanly impossible to believe that God would do once again
what He had done for them several times already. Right? Okay. Let’s
look at another example.
The
man in our first reading today was healed at the Beautiful Gate. Okay,
the whole upshot of that, as we heard in our first reading, is that
Peter challenged the people to believe that the power that raised the
man who they knew had been lying at that gate for years with legs that
were so useless that he couldn’t even crawl. Okay, the implication here
is that the power that accomplished that is the power that they should
have faced up to in terms of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
So,
the one led to the other. If you believe your eyes as to what humanly
impossible thing that happened with this man that was crippled here,
then why in the world don’t you believe that the one who did this was
the one who was raised from the dead, as we proclaimed?
Once
again, the humanly impossible in one instance, should have led… And did
it? Yes. We did see quite a few people that were converted because of
that. But not very many of the Sanhedrin; not many of the leaders. A
number of common people were, in fact, converted by that.
To tie in a little bit into what Father was saying before Mass, the same thing is true here.
We
have seen so many confirming signs of the truth of what’s happening
here. Now, what should that be leading us to do? It should be leading us
to take seriously what Our Blessed Mother has told us is coming upon
the world.
If
the confirming signs have been humanly impossible… anyone who anything
about the history of Medjugorje at all knows that there have been a lot
of humanly impossible things happening here. Well, that should lead us
to believe the message. That’s what it’s all about. The message is what
counts. And those confirming signs, and the humanly impossible things
that have happened initially here, are intended to bring us to a place
of accepting the message; about how we live our lives in an unbelieving
world, about what’s coming upon the world, and about the era of peace
that we are being led into, and about the purging and the chastising
that’s happening in order to get us there. All of those things that we
need to believe, because of the credibility of what’s happened here
already. Alright.
Now,
the theme that I want to bring to our attention. The heart and soul of
Medjugorje – and this is by the will of our Blessed Mother, herself – is
the Eucharist. That’s why you’re here. It’s the Eucharist.
Now
what is the Eucharist? I want to take us a little bit through John
chapter 6 today, and show you how in that chapter the same principle
that I just enunciated in these three instances applies as well.
It’s
very interesting how it starts. The disciples and Jesus are in the
wilderness, and they look around and they see a bunch of people coming
toward them – a whole lot of people – and Jesus does something very
interesting at that point. He says to Philip, “How are we going to feed
all these people?”
And
then John makes a comment which is fascinating. He says that Jesus did
this to test him; because He, Himself knew what He was going to do. Get
that? He knew what He was going to do. And what He was going to do was
the humanly impossible. And the test was: Do you believe that we can
feed these people through what I do that is humanly impossible. And so
it happened. They fed the people; and there were twelve baskets left
over. So, they had the experience of Jesus doing the humanly impossible
in feeding this multitude, precisely because He said that to test
Philip.
Now
a little bit later, the next day, there He is in Capernaum. And the
people come up to Him and they say to Him, “How did you get here?” and
so forth; but the key point that I want to get at here is that the
dialogue goes like this, at this point. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of
Life sent from Heaven. He who eats of me – who eats my flesh and drinks
my blood – will live forever. What I will give for the life of the world
is my own flesh.”
And,
of course, the Jews will go, “How can you do that?” Just like the
question of Philip, “How can we feed so many people? There’s no way we
can do this.” But Jesus says, “I will do this.” But the people say, and
the Jews ask, “How in the world can we eat His flesh and drink His
blood?” That’s a good question, right? That seems impossible. How in the
world is He going to do this? How is He going to achieve that?
Now
in the Tridentine Mass, the Latin Mass, when you come to the Daily
Requiem Mass, it’s a marvelous Mass that we use for praying for the
souls in Purgatory. The gospel for the day is the one I just gave you a
summary of from John’s gospel, about, “I am the Living Bread from
Heaven, and who eats of me will live forever. My flesh and my blood are
true food.” And just about 10 minutes later in the Mass, we come to the
point where, standing at the altar, the priest says, “This is the Body
of Christ. And this is His Blood.” That’s how the humanly impossible
there is achieved. We eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ
through the Sacrament.
Now
it was so impossible that so many of His disciples just left when he
said it. “How can He do this? He can’t give us His flesh and His
blood. That’s impossible.” Off they went. And Jesus says to the
disciples, “Are you going to leave me, too?” And Peter says, “Where will
we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter maybe didn’t get the
whole point that Jesus was going to figure out a way to do this, but he
got some of the point. He got some of the point.
And
we sure know from Our Blessed Mother that we had better take very, very
seriously that when we receive the Eucharist, we are getting the flesh
and blood of Jesus, and nothing else. The flesh and blood of Jesus.
Now
there’s one more interesting point that I want to make in this little
homily, and that’s this: We get the whole Jesus now in the
Eucharist. Because we are sinners, we tend to emphasize the Crucified
Christ. But, we also receive the Risen Christ. Okay. The whole Christ.
Well,
in a sinful world, it’s good for us to have the forgiveness of our
sins. The sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross is our focus as sinners,
because we need that desperately in order to get through to eternal
life. The forgiveness of sins is the basis of salvation. And you and I
need that desperately.
We
are told by many credible sources that in the age to come, it will be
the same sacrament but the emphasis will shift from the Cross to the
Resurrection – from what happened on the Cross, and also at the Last
Supper; to what happened at Emmaus, when Jesus gave Himself to them as
the Living Bread. They experienced Him now as alive.
Now,
this is very interesting; because the first time they received the
Eucharist, they thought He was going to live, when He was going to
die. The second time, they thought He was dead, while He was alive. Big
surprise! Okay?
Now,
we often are in exactly the same position, if you look at yourself
spiritually. The things we consider about Him as dead, are actually
alive; and the things that we consider as alive, are actually dead. We
need the Eucharist to set us straight on this point a lot.
But
the main point I want to make is this: When Jesus starts off by saying
in John 6, “I am the Bread of Life,” He’s underscoring the fact that the
whole Christ – the Christ who died on the Cross to save us from our
sins, and the Christ who rose from the dead to justify us and bring us
to paradise – is received in every last Eucharist. And the emphasis
today in our sinful world is certainly on the Cross. The emphasis in the
era of Peace will be more on the Life and on the Resurrection (for
obvious reasons). (Homily of April 4, 2024, Medjugorje)
Amen, Fr. Jacobsen!! Thank you!!
Fr. Jacobsen gave his testimony on Mary TV - Fruit Show 309! You want to watch it!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
(c) Mary TV 2024
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