Author: Cathy Nolan

Open yourselves…   December 6, 2023 St. Nicholas Dear Family of Mary! The message for today is one of the darker messages from Our Lady. She is a strong woman, to be able to see what she sees in us, and to call it what it is. She is a brave woman to speak the truth, no matter how dark, in order to bring about conversion in her children. Here is the message: November 25, 2010  “Dear children! I look at you and I see in your heart death without hope, restlessness and hunger. There is no prayer or trust in God, that is why the Most High permits me to bring you hope and joy. Open yourselves. Open your hearts to God’s mercy and He will give you everything you need and will fill your hearts with peace, because He is peace and your hope. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Clearly, God is ready to deliver us from all evil. But we must open our hearts to Him, admit our sin, and ask for Him to come into our hearts with His Mercy. This message shows us another dimension of Advent. In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023

Prepare yourselves with joy!   December 5, 2023 Dear Family of Mary! In our message for today, Our Lady calls us to prepare with joy for the coming of Baby Jesus through renewed prayer in our families. I had never thought of joy being a way to prepare for Jesus’ coming! But it must be!! Here is the message: November 25, 2009  “Dear children! In this time of grace I call you all to renew prayer in your families. Prepare yourselves with joy for the coming of Jesus. Little children, may your hearts be pure and pleasing, so that love and warmth may flow through you into every heart that is far from His love. Little children, be my extended hands, hands of love for all those who have become lost, who have no more faith and hope. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Just as fasting and penance are necessary for our spiritual lives, so too is joy! When we enter into joy, we enter into the very heart of God, for He is only Light, only Happiness, only Truth, and totally Love! The only response to these awesome realities is Joy! Joy spills out of God’s heart into our hearts when we draw close to Him and worship Him in all His Mighty Glory. Joy is the way of life in Heaven. And so, Our Lady calls us to prepare for the coming of Her Son with Joy!! But how can we help our families to enter into prayer with joy? Many of our family members today do not talk about God and they are reticent to even pray the simplest prayers. But we can still lovingly work on their conversion, through our example, and our conversations with them and through the deep joy we carry in our hearts because of God. Our prayers with them can communicate that joy! Even the smallest prayer can open a closed heart. The Holy Spirit can do miracles through just such prayers. He quietly enters and speaks to those hearts, confirming the prayer that was prayed. We are not alone when we pray for and with our families. God joins in! Our Lady wants our Advent to be a time of joy in the Spirit! If our hearts are “pure and pleasing” then the love of God will flow through us to our families, and then into the world. Oh, come Holy Spirit and help us to become pure and pleasing, to be extended hands of love for those who are lost and have no faith or hope. May we renew our prayer and pray with our families until joy rules in our hearts, our families and the world! In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023

May hope begin to flow through your hearts…   December 4, 2023 St. John Damascene Dear Family of Mary! We have entered Advent, the season when we wait for the coming of the Messiah. This is a time of waiting for Jesus. And during this time, Our Lady teaches very much about how to wait, how to enter into the coming, how to be witnesses of that coming. Over the next three weeks I want to share Our Lady’s messages given for Advent, the ones she has given us on November 25 throughout the years. We need to keep them fresh in our minds as we travel through this most important Advent Season. Let’s join together in the journey with Our Lady! This message is so powerful, I can’t comment. I will during the Hour of Mercy! Ponder it deeply! November 25, 2008  “Dear children! Also today I call you, in this time of grace, to pray for little Jesus to be born in your heart. May He, who is peace itself, give peace to the entire world through you. Therefore, little children, pray without ceasing for this turbulent world without hope, so that you may become witnesses of peace for all. May hope begin to flow through your hearts as a river of grace. Thank you for having responded to my call.” In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023

The Theological Virtue of Hope   December 1, 2023 Dear Family of Mary! Here, again, is the message from Our Lady of Medjugorje for November 25, 2023: “Dear children! May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds, so that the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace may be felt in your hearts, families and in the world which does not have hope. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (November 25, 2023) Now we arrive at the Theological Virtue of Hope, which is portrayed for us in Our Lady’s November 25, 2023 Message. Our Lady wants us to feel the Virtue of Hope in our hearts! It is more than an idea, it is a state of being, a feeling that goes deep into the heart! It is the expectation of the King of Peace that is felt in our hearts!! Hope!! Infinite Hope in an Infinite God who loves us! The Catechism tells us about the Theological Virtue of Hope: Hope 1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” 84 “The Holy Spirit . . . he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.” 85 1818 The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity. 1819 Christian hope takes up and fulfills the hope of the chosen people which has its origin and model in the hope of Abraham, who was blessed abundantly by the promises of God fulfilled in Isaac, and who was purified by the test of the sacrifice. 86 “Hoping against hope, he believed, and thus became the father of many nations.” 87 1820 Christian hope unfolds from the beginning of Jesus’ preaching in the proclamation of the beatitudes. The beatitudes raise our hope toward heaven as the new Promised Land; they trace the path that leads through the trials that await the disciples of Jesus. But through the merits of Jesus Christ and of his Passion, God keeps us in the “hope that does not disappoint.” 88 Hope is the “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul . . . that enters . . . where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf.” 89 Hope is also a weapon that protects us in the struggle of salvation: “Let us . . . put on the breastplate of faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” 90 It affords us joy even under trial: “Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation.” 91 Hope is expressed and nourished in prayer, especially in the Our Father, the summary of everything that hope leads us to desire. 1821 We can therefore hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. 92 In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere “to the end” 93 and to obtain the joy of heaven, as God’s eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ. In hope, the Church prays for “all men to be saved.” 94 She longs to be united with Christ, her Bridegroom, in the glory of heaven: Hope, O my soul, hope. You know neither the day nor the hour. Watch carefully, for everything passes quickly, even though your impatience makes doubtful what is certain, and turns a very short time into a long one. Dream that the more you struggle, the more you prove the love that you bear your God! And [by that struggle]the more you will rejoice one day with your Beloved, in a happiness and rapture that can never end. 95 “Dear children! May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds, so that the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace may be felt in your hearts, families and in the world which does not have hope. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (November 25, 2023) In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023  

The Theological Virtue of Love   November 30, 2023 Dear Family of Mary! Here, again, is the message from Our Lady of Medjugorje for November 25, 2023: Dear children! May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds, so that the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace may be felt in your hearts, families and in the world which does not have hope. Thank you for having responded to my call. (November 25, 2023) Before we examine the Theological Virtue of Hope, I want to examine the Virtue of Love (Charity). Tomorrow we will tackle Hope. The Catechism tells us about the Theological Virtue of Love (Charity): Charity 1822 Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. 1823 Jesus makes charity the new commandment. 96 By loving his own “to the end,” 97 he makes manifest the Father’s love which he receives. By loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of Jesus which they themselves receive. Whence Jesus says: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.” And again: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” 98 1824 Fruit of the Spirit and fullness of the Law, charity keeps the commandments of God and his Christ: “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” 99 1825 Christ died out of love for us, while we were still “enemies.” 100 The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself. 101 The Apostle Paul has given an incomparable depiction of charity: “charity is patient and kind, charity is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” 102| 1826 “If I . . . have not charity,” says the Apostle, “I am nothing.” Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, “if I . . . have not charity, I gain nothing.” 103 Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues: “So faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the greatest of these is charity.” 104 1827 The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which “binds everything together in perfect harmony”; 105 it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love. 1828 The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. He no longer stands before God as a slave, in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him who “first loved us”: 106 If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, . . . we resemble mercenaries. Finally if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands . . . we are in the position of children. 107 1829 The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion: Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest. 108 From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Par. 1822 to 1829) Remember that Charity is a virtue that we receive from God. Jesus is Himself Love Incarnate. His every act, every word, every prayer to the Father was and is Love. To live the Virtue of Love we must live Jesus. We must receive Him and let Him live in us. The Saints show us this reality. It is a mystery beyond human understanding, but it is real. And we experience it at every Mass. Jesus died for us out of His great Love. We are his beloved children. So we see in this Theological Virtue the culmination of all the Virtues. Read this over a couple of times, because it is dense!! More tomorrow!! In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023

The Theological Virtues   November 29, 2023 Dear Family of Mary! Here, again, is the message from Our Lady of Medjugorje for November 25, 2023: Dear children! May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds, so that the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace may be felt in your hearts, families and in the world which does not have hope. Thank you for having responded to my call. (November 25, 2023) Our Lady tells us that we need “the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace” to be felt in our hearts. We need it to be felt in our families. And we need it to be felt in the world! This joy of the expectation of the King of Peace has a name. It is Hope! When we expect something good to come, we have hope. And nothing is more good than the coming of Jesus, the King of Peace! So we need to feel Hope in our whole being, as we thrill in expectation of Jesus’ coming! This Gift of Hope has me thinking. There are three Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope and Love. These virtues are not manmade, but given to us by God. I want to present to you what our Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us about these three Virtues so we will understand their incredible importance, especially Hope. Here is the intro and first virtue, Faith: II. THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES 1812 The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man’s faculties for participation in the divine nature: 76 for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive, and object. 1813 The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. 77 Faith 1814 Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith “man freely commits his entire self to God.” 78 For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work[s] through charity.” 79 1815 The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it. 80 But “faith apart from works is dead”: 81 when it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body. 1816 The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: “All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks.” 82 Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: “So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” 83 Read this over a couple of times, because it is dense!! More tomorrow!! In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023  

The joy of the expectation of the King of Peace     November 28, 2023 Dear Family of Mary! Here, again, is the message from Our Lady of Medjugorje for November 25, 2023: Dear children! May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds, so that the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace may be felt in your hearts, families and in the world which does not have hope. Thank you for having responded to my call. (November 25, 2023) Our Lady gave us two important ways to prepare for the coming of the King of Peace: prayer for peace and good deeds. She wants us to build peace into our lives with these two practices. Praying for peace must be a constant. Every Rosary, every Holy Mass, every hour spent in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, must be an expression to God of our need for peace, our desire for peace in our lives and the lives of others. And every generous act for our neighbor must be a step towards peace. But how can these two actions prepare us for the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace? Let’s hear from St. John the Baptist who was the first to prepare the people for the coming of the King of Peace: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberi-us Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysani-as tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness; and he went into all the region about the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” He said therefore to the multitudes that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the multitudes asked him, “What then shall we do?” And he answered them, “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than is appointed you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.” As the people were in expectation, and all men questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he were the Christ, John answered them all, “I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So, with many other exhortations, he preached good news to the people.” (Luke 3:1-18, RSV-CE) We see that St. John knew very well how to prepare for the coming of King of Peace. His instructions were very like Our Lady’s because they made for peace! He taught them to do good deeds, and to work for peace through repentance. He taught them that God is real, and He is Lord, and He is coming! They were moved towards repentance and the good. We can heed John’s words as well, for they mean the same for us as they did 2000 years ago. In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023      

Prayer for peace and good deeds   November 27, 2023 Dear Family of Mary! Here, again, is the message from Our Lady of Medjugorje for November 25, 2023: Dear children! May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds, so that the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace may be felt in your hearts, families and in the world which does not have hope. Thank you for having responded to my call. (November 25, 2023) Our Lady used a word I have not heard her say before: interwoven. “May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds…” This message is given just before Advent and so we can assume she is telling us how to live this time of Advent. In the message she used an image that I am sure she was well acquainted with during her life on earth. Women in the Middle East worked very hard. They must have had to weave cloth to make clothing. If they were poor they could not buy cloth, so they would have to do the weaving themselves. I suspect Our Lady knew how to weave. She knows that the threads for the weaving must interlock in such a way so that the cloth will be strong, tight, and have no gaps. She wants us to weave together the threads of our life so that what we do will be strong, tight and have no gaps. The main threads she mentioned to us are prayer for peace and good deeds. These threads in our life must fit together and make a strong cloth. Prayer for peace is essential for the whole world right now. All men need peace in order to live and grow properly. Prayers for peace are essential. And good deeds create peace where we live. Our generosity, service of others, and kindness can give peace to our neighbors. So with these two threads we can make peace a reality! May we find our way to interweave our prayer for peace and our good deeds this Advent, as Mother has asked!! May it be so! In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023

  November 25, 2023 Dear Family of Mary! Here is the message from Our Lady of Medjugorje for November 25, 2023: Dear children! May this time be interwoven with prayer for peace and good deeds, so that the joy of the expectation of the King of Peace may be felt in your hearts, families and in the world which does not have hope. Thank you for having responded to my call. (November 25, 2023) In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023  

You, little children, are my extended hands!   November 24, 2023 St. Andrew Dung-Lac Dear Family of Mary! As we wait for tomorrow’s message from Our Lady, let’s review the message we received last month. It is a very serious message, one that requires our full attention and response: October 25, 2023  “Dear children! Winds of evil, hatred and peacelessness are blowing through the earth to destroy lives. That is why the Most High sent me to you, to lead you towards the way of peace and unity with God and people. You, little children, are my extended hands: pray, fast and offer sacrifices for peace – the treasure for which every heart yearns. Thank you for having responded to my call.” In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c) Mary TV 2023