(c)Mary TV 2013
J.M.J.
November 5, 2013
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children! From day to day I wish to clothe you in holiness, goodness, obedience and God's love, so that from day to day you become more beautiful and more prepared for your Master. Dear children, listen to and live my messages. I wish to guide you. Thank you for having responded to my call." (October 24, 1985)
Yesterday
we heard from Fr. Ruairi O'Domhnaill about the importance of Our Lady's
messages. He called her our "Anam Cara", the Friend of our soul,
because she gives us spiritual direction through her messages.
Today, we will hear
from another priest, Fr. Benny McHale, also from Ireland. He gave a very
brilliant talk about Our Lady's messages and their purpose. I will
share the first half of his homily today, and the second half tomorrow:
I have
noticed that most of our readings are warnings, warnings about using our
time well, waiting for the second coming. I often think of the story of
the priest in the States who was in the classroom with a bunch of young
people, and he said to them, "Nobody knows when they are going to die."
And one little boy put up his hand and he said, "Excuse me, Father,
your wrong. My uncle knew." And the priest said, "No he couldn't. No
that's impossible." And the little boy said, "Yes he knew the year, the
month, the week, the day. He even knew the time of day he was going to
die." And the priest said, "That's impossible. How could he know that?"
And the little boy said, "The judge told him."
But apart
from that kind of pre-knowledge, all we can manage to do, as we've heard
all week, is to use our time well. I often wonder why Our Lady came
here to Medjugorje. She came to renew the Church. That's what she is all
about. Medjugorje is about the renewal of the Church. And how is she
going to do that? By giving us the messages that we can take home to our
own parishes, and renew the parish there. That's why she brought you
here. Coming here is a great privilege. It also carries a great
responsibility. Because there is a battle going on between two kingdoms,
between the Kingdom of evil and the Kingdom of right, the Kingdom of
God and the Kingdom of Satan. And we've got to decide whose side we are
on in that great struggle. It has been there since the beginning of
time, of eternity, with Adam and Eve who opened the gates to evil, and
it has spread to us. That battle is still going on. And as somebody
said, "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good people do
nothing."
I'm going
to challenge you this morning, you good people who have been brought
here (Nobody decides to come here, everybody is brought.) to realize
that Our Lady has brought you here to renew you so that you can go back
and renew your church. The one thing we need to do that is to be holy.
"Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am Holy." Because holiness, like the
mosquitos that attacked our group the other night, always finds
attractiveness. Did you ever meet a holy person? You just know it.
They've got some character, some quality that draws you to them. And our
Church is called to be holy, but that can't happen unless each of the
members accepts that challenge.
So the Lord
has brought you here to make you holy. And twice in that first reading
St. Paul used that lovely word, "for our sanctification." We've been
freed from sin, and now the second part of our journey is to become
holy.
I must say I
am often disappointed when people come here and ignore the messages.
Some people don't even know the messages. People come here and they
don't live the messages. Then they wonder why the Church is not being
renewed. Look, Our Lady brought you all here for a purpose, to renew
your church at home.
I'd like to
talk a little bit about the messages this morning, because for some
people, I'm not saying they shouldn't come here, but it's awfully
important that you hear what is being said in the messages and go out
and live them. If you don't it's like someone buying a cook book, and
instead of making the recipe, they buy another cookbook with the same
recipes in it. The old Chinese proverb says, "What you hear you tend to
forget. What you see you remember. What you do, you understand." So it
is only when you do the messages, when you live them, you understand
them. You could read them to the end of your life and still not
understand, but start doing them and they become alive.
Try to
remember that Medjugorje is not a place. Medjugorje is a spirituality.
Because wherever the visionaries are, Our Lady appears to them. It is
centered here in Medjugorje like the Catholic Church is centered in
Rome. But Rome isn't the Catholic Church. It is where it is centered.
And Medjugorje is the center. And you know the real center of Medjugorje
is your heart. Until your heart becomes infused with the messages,
somehow we turn Medjugorje into a place of pilgrimage but not something
that makes us vitally alive.
So I would
ask you before you go home, would you all buy a copy of the messages?
There are lots of books in the book stalls. And read them. Read one
every day, and ask the Lord, "Lord would you make that message alive in
me?"
Can I suggest a few ways you might live the five stones she gave us?
First is
fasting. That is probably the most difficult one, because in the western
world we live in, we are probably too well fed. But do you ever feel
that life is going very quickly? Do you want to slow it down? Then start
fasting. Just start fasting and you will see how long the day is! You
will wonder will the next meal ever come. You'll also lose a lot of
weight, which in our world today can be very helpful. But seriously when
we fast, as you heard Paul say in that first reading "Put your bodies
at the service of righteousness for your sanctification." Fasting
empties us of our ego, and makes room for God. Not just fasting from
food. Not everybody is able to do that, but you do what you can. Often
fast from television because we waste a lot of time watching empty
programs. I think Groucho Marx once called television "chewing gum for
the eyes." You watch the thing and then you yawn and go off to bed, and
it does you no good. Imagine if we spent that time in prayer, if we
spent that time in opening our hearts to the true love of God.
The second
thing is the Bible. She asks us to read a little bit of the Scriptures
every day. And again we have that message in today's Psalm, "Happy the
man whose delight is the law of the Lord." We should read a bit of
Scripture every day. Then we wouldn't be embarrassed when a Jehovah's
Witness or a Mormon knocks at our door and starts quoting Scripture. We
feel so inadequate. As Catholics I am afraid, we have fallen down on
Scripture. We often think it is a Protestant book. It is a tragedy of
the Reformation. And that Psalm today is challenging us, "Happy the man
whose delight is the law of the Lord." That is Jesus' way of saying that
if you want to be happy let My Word come into you. And if you notice
that before the Gospel today, we made three crosses, one on our
foreheads, one on our lips, and one over our hearts. They represent our
hope that the Word of God will come into our mind to change the way that
we think, be on our lips and change the way we speak, and above all be
in our hearts and change the way we love. And once I discovered that, I
make a fourth cross and put it on my ear to change the way I listen to
allow the Word of God to seep into my heart. (Fr. Benny McHale, Homily
of 10/24/13 in St. James Church)
Fr. Benny said that the
center of Medjugorje is each of our hearts. How beautiful! And how true.
Our Lady comes to renew, purify, strengthen and prepare each of our
hearts for the Kingdom of God. It is through our hearts, filled with the
light and love of Christ, that the kingdom will come to others.
More tomorrow!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2013
"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world!"
