Daily Reflections
by Cathy

The Kingdom is in our midst.

(c)Mateo Ivankovic 2017

 

November 17, 2017
St. Elizabeth of Hungary

Dear Family of Mary!

March 25, 2008 “Dear children! I call you to work on your personal conversion. You are still far from meeting with God in your heart. Therefore, spend all the more time in prayer and Adoration of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, for Him to change you and to put into your hearts a living faith and a desire for eternal life. Everything is passing, little children, only God is not passing. I am with you and I encourage you with love. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

 

A Homily by Fr. Max (November 16, 2017, Medjugorje)

“For behold the Kingdom of God is among you.” Another translation would say it is in our midst. It is in your midst. In the midst of the Pharisees, in the midst of our congregation, in the midst of the Church, of humanity. Christ is the source and the center of all being, everything exists in Him, St. Paul exclaimed in the Letter to the Colossians.

Christ is also in the midst of our hearts, although we are not aware of it. Therefore, how important it is that we enter into the silence of our hearts, enter into the stillness to listen to His presence, who expresses Himself without words.

In our search for God, many times we remain on the intellectual level. We look for new ideas about God. But God is not just a thought. He is Wisdom Incarnate. He became flesh, so He wants us to encounter Him fully, as a friend. The Book of Wisdom speaks about the friendship of God. God wants to create in each of us a friend! And Mary has said, “You forget that Jesus is your greatest friend!”

So in our depths dwells God. And so our prayer life should bring us into interiority, but true interiority. Pope Benedict wrote, quoting a great mind of our times, “This time, this moment, this age cannot be understood as a world of any kind of interiority, we live an external life.” It is very superficial. Like a branch who won’t find a reason for his being in himself without looking at the tree. Even our prayer becomes a self-reflection. But we have to go beyond, enter the stillness, and let God reveal Himself to us.

It is not so much that we find God, but that we let ourselves be found by Him. In prayer, that is the first step. Prayer is not our doing; it is a gift of God. And so Mary, in many messages says, “Open yourselves up to prayer.”

We cannot find in our hearts only here and now. We have a great ability to escape from the present moment. As Jesus said, “You look here and your look there…” We escape into time and space. These are the main dimensions in which we escape. And there we think of the “old days”, the glorious days, the golden days of the past. Or we look forward to the springtime, when it finally comes, the Triumph. Or we go here or there looking at all sorts of places.

Yes, of course, grace follows the principle of incarnation. It has a specific time and a specific place. Medjugorje is truly a place of grace in this, our time. Mary speaks about a time of grace. But where grace mostly reveals itself is in our hearts. And therefore instead of looking outside for that springtime when it finally comes, we should look interiorly, and look at today.

Jesus wants to create that springtime in you together with Him. The task is of daily conversion. Mary is called “The Seat of Wisdom”. Today, these days, we read the Book of Wisdom. Yes, she is the Seat of Wisdom, and so she is capable of expressing the highest truth in very simple words. That is a sign of great wisdom. Because normally, we, when we express great truths, we get very complicated. Some books you can understand nothing, yet we think it is great wisdom.

There are different types of wisdom. But Mary, in her messages, since she is the Seat of Wisdom, expresses the highest truth in simple words. And those who say that she says always the same thing have obviously understood nothing of true wisdom.

So in one of the messages she says, “You can’t say that you are converted, for your conversion has to become a daily one.” So she introduces us to the “here and now”. “Now is the time of salvation.” “Today salvation has entered into your house,” Jesus says to Zacchaeus.

This essential aspect of conversion is expressed beautifully in the words of a great soul, Louis Bosio (?) in Italy. Now is the process of his beatification. He was the spiritual father to many people. So he said in one of his writings, “From the great things run to the little ones. From the little ones go to the smallest. From the smallest, go to nothing. Therein is God. He will let himself be found at any time if we just look gently in ourselves. And don’t stop at ourselves but go beyond. “In the stillness of your hearts,” Mary says, “be with Jesus.”

But how can we receive this wisdom? Louis de Montfort gives us several ways to gain this wisdom. He says first of all you need a great desire. If we don’t desire holiness, if we don’t desire to proceed forward in our spiritual life, we will stand still. But there is another very important point. The spiritual life is not like holidays. You know when we stand still for a while and then we go on. If we try to stand still, we go backward. Because it is life, not a doctrine. It is not something we can acquire and put in our pocket. It is continuous living. And to live this continuous life, you have to enter as He has opened wide His Heart wide on the Cross.

So there are different wisdoms. St. Louis de Montfort tells us about earthly wisdom. That is the wisdom of those who live for the things of this earth. There is fleshly wisdom for those who look for wisdom in the desires and pleasures of this life. And there is a diabolic wisdom for those who look for wisdom in honors, in being admired and being counted as important. There are three kinds of wisdom, all present in us, I think so. We have to be honest with ourselves.

The Divine Wisdom is the Wisdom of the Cross. The Friends of the Cross are the friends of Christ. There is no Christ without the Cross, and there is no Cross without Christ. And we should not forget both of those truths. Because if we try to carry the Cross all by ourselves, we are just miserable. We get angry, nervous. But if we find in our daily cross, our union with Jesus, and carry it together with Him, then we realize it is He who carries it, in us and with us, the greater part, and gives us just a little share. And you will have the merits which we receive in heaven.

St. Gertrude the Great, the saint for today, speaks about meeting Jesus in our hearts. She said, “One evening as I knelt down in prayer, in my mind afterwards came the words in Jesus’ Gospel where He said, ‘If somebody loves me, he will be loved by My Father, and we will come to Him and make Our dwelling, Our home, in Him.’ And then I realized that You have come and You are with me and in me.”

Now Jesus again will be born and die on this Altar. He dies for you and me to come and dwell in our hearts. Let’s truly receive Him. Let us continuously after we go out of the church, return to Him. That is more important than looking left or right, or up or down, to yesterday or tomorrow. Let us stay in His presence, in this blessed present moment with Him. Let’s return to Him continuously, for He is the Kingdom of God in our midst.

(English Homily, Medjugorje, November 16, 2017 https://marytv.tv/?page_id=192 )

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan

©Mary TV 2017

PS. Any mistakes in this transcript are my fault! But I feel that His words are very important for us all! You can listen to him at the link above!!

 

Mission Statement

Mary TV is a lay apostolate founded to put at the Gospa’s service (Our Lady’s service) modern communication technologies to bring her presence in Medjugorje – and her school in Medjugorje – to the world.

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“Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world!”

Pope St. John Paul II – February 24, 1990

“Dear children, my real, living presence among you should make you happy because this is the great love of my Son. He is sending me among you so that, with a motherly love, I may grant you safety!”

Our Lady of Medjugorje – July 2, 2016

“Rejoice, little children, because God is merciful and loves you all with His immeasurable love and leads you to the way of salvation through my coming here!”

Our Lady of Medjugorje – June 25, 2018

“My Son promised me that evil will never win, because you, the souls of the just, are here!”

Our Lady of Medjugorje – November 2, 2014

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Our Lady Speaks

Vicka's Note MaryTV

Vicka, one of the visionaries in Medjugorje, wrote the note (above) after Our Lady spoke with her during an apparition in Medjugorje in April, 1999, about Mary TV’s  plan to build a television facility in Medjugorje.

Vicka wrote to Denis: “Our Lady says that the plan is good – but you need to wait a little.  Now you can get prepared little by little, until Our Lady tells when the right moment is.  You don’t need to hurry, make haste, but to be patient.”

When Our Lady said this to Vicka, the technical genius in Medjugorje that she had her eyes upon, who would begin Mary TV’s live streaming from Medjugorje, was seven years old.

Totus Tuus (Totally Yours)

Immaculate Conception, Mary my Mother, Live in me, Act in me, Speak in me and through me, Think your thoughts in my mind, Love through my heart, Give me your dispositions and feelings, Teach, lead me and guide me to Jesus, Correct, enlighten and expand my thoughts and behavior, Possess my soul, Take over my entire personality and life, replace it with Yourself, Incline me to constant adoration, Pray in me and through me, Let me live in you and keep me in this union always.

Our Lady gave this prayer 25 years before She started appearing in Medjugorje. This prayer is being answered through Our Lady’s presence in Medjugorje and through Her messages. Mother Immaculata writes: “This is Mary’s hour and She is about to crush Satan’s head. Her very being is like incandescent heat in the center of the Trinity and the manifestation of Her power is growing daily. The Immaculate Conception prayer (which is what Our Lady called the prayer she gave me for union with Her) has been used by exorcists who have told me that the devil reacts violently to it and is subdued by it. We are praying daily for the success of Mary TV!“

Our Lady Gives A Sign…

Mary_with_Sun

MARY TV was LIVE STREAMING Ivan’s May 24, 2013 apparition on Mt. Podbrdo (Apparition Hill) in Medjugorje. My wife, Cathy, was praying in front of her computer in the US, connected through the Internet, welcoming Our Lady along with everyone gathered on the mountain. She couldn’t see anything on her computer screen because it was late at night and Ivan had said, “No lights.” She found herself asking Our Lady for a sign – a little light – as a sign that MARY TV was on the right track and really serving her. Just after the apparition, when she went to give an account on Mary TV’s Facebook page, the page opened with this picture that she had never seen before, captioned: “MARY APPEARS OVER BUILDING IN MEDJUGORJE, PHOTO TAKEN BY PILGRIM.” Our Lady is standing directly over MARY TV’s studios, her feet right where we have two POV cameras STREAMING 24/7 LIVE TO THE WORLD Apparition Hill & Cross Mountain!

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Our Lady spoke to Vicka during an apparition in Medjugorje in April, 1999, about the importance of Mary TV’s mission. At that time she told Vicka that she herself (Our Lady) would begin Mary TV! She did! But she didn’t do it alone. The generosity of her children made Mary TV a reality for her. Your generosity is needed now for it to continue!