The Christmas Novena Day Four – Open your hearts to Jesus!
Open your hearts to Jesus! (c) Mateo Ivankovic 2017 December 18, 2018 Christmas Novena Day 4 Dear Family of Mary! Open your heart to Jesus! This is Our Lady’s constant plea: December 25, 1987 “Dear children! Rejoice with me! My heart is rejoicing because of Jesus and today I want to give Him to you. Dear children, I want each one of you to open your heart to Jesus and I will give Him to you with love. Dear children, I want Him to change you, to teach you and to protect you. Today I am praying in a special way for each one of you and I am presenting you to God so He will manifest Himself in you. I am calling you to sincere prayer with the heart so that every prayer of yours may be an encounter with God. In your work and in your everyday life, put God in the first place. I call you today with great seriousness to obey me and to do as I am calling you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” It seems that Our Lady knows that our hearts are rarely open to God. We are prone to closing them up, even locking them and hiding the key. We might think that it is safer to be locked away, to be in hiding, as it were, from God and probably everyone else. We have experienced the shock of being misunderstood, abused or rejected by others. We know how sad and ashamed this rejection can make us feel. Doesn’t it make sense to just close our hearts and hide away? Sin has created this inclination. Adam and Eve hid from God after they disobeyed Him. They knew that they had blown it, but somehow, hiding offered them a way out. They were afraid to meet God in the Garden after their eyes had been opened to sin, and to their own nakedness (which signifies their vulnerability). So, like our first parents, we also sin and hide, or experience others sinning against us, and hide. We just want to be safe inside. Our Lady knows this. And so she calls to us, “Dear children, I want each one of you to open your heart to Jesus and I will give Him to you with love.” This is Our Lady’s offer. If we will take a chance to open our hearts, she will place Baby Jesus in them. Who is afraid of a tiny baby? Who would want to hide from the New Born King? Baby Jesus is the key to healing our need to hide from God. He is a Baby!! He comes to receive our love and to entrust Himself to us! His presence in our hearts will heal them of shame and guilt and fear and loneliness. Come, Baby Jesus, and enter my heart and never leave it!!! Let us pray: May the Virgin Mary help us to open the doors of our hearts to Christ, Redeemer of man and of history; may she teach us to be humble, because God looks upon the lowly; may she enable us to grow in understanding the value of prayer, of inner silence, of listening to God’s Word; may she spur us to seek God’s will deeply and sincerely, even when this upsets our plans; may she encourage us while we wait for the Lord, sharing our time and energies with those in need. Mother of God, Virgin of expectation, grant that the God-who-comes will find us ready to receive the abundance of his mercy May Mary Most Holy, “Woman of the Eucharist” and Virgin of Advent, prepare us all to joyfully welcome Christ’s coming and to celebrate worthily his sacramental presence in the mystery of the Eucharist. -St. John Paul II We can add our Rosary to these prayers as part of the Novena! In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan ©Mary TV 2018