Day: February 17, 2020

  Pray with the heart! February 17, 2020The Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order Dear Family of Mary! October 25, 1989 “Dear children! Today also I am inviting you to prayer. I am always inviting you, but you are still far away. Therefore, from today, decide seriously to dedicate time to God. I am with you and I wish to teach you to pray with the heart. In prayer with the heart you shall encounter God. Therefore, little children, pray, pray, pray! Thank you for having responded to my call.” This week we are going to review the Five Stones of Our Lady. These Stones are the five basic requests Our Lady has made of us, her program for our healing and strengthening as her apostles. The first stone is “Prayer with the heart!” It is the basic stone, the basic call she has given us. I have transcribed a somewhat hilarious description of this stone, according to Fr. Leon Pereira! It is from a talk he gave in North Carolina in March of 2019 at a conference at St. Mark’s Church. You can watch her talk in the Fruit of Medjugorje archive, Show 355! Fr. Leon speaks about the first stone, Pray with the Heart: The five stones are really the heart of Our Lady’s messages in Medjugorje. The are called the “Five Stones” because of David the shepherd boy. He goes to meet Goliath with a sling and five pebbles from the stream. So, these are five weapons that Our Lady gives us. And the first weapon she says, is “Pray with the heart.” Pray from the heart. Pray with words that comes from the heart. Don’t just say words from the lips. I want you to think about when we apologize. You know, when you say “sorry”. I know you are all polite. Americans are all very polite. And you are sincere. In England we are not so sincere!! We are masters of passive-aggression. If someone steps on my foot or bumps into me, I will turn to them and say, “Sorry…” Meaning, “get off my foot you idiot!” Or more and more you get to be someone like a politician caught in hanky-panky. And he or she will say, I am sorry for the distress this has caused for the people I represent and for my family. Meaning…I am sorry I got caught, I wish I could get away with it. (I’m a bit cynical) But when a small child says sorry, they cry. They cry because they mean it. The sorry comes from the heart. This is what Our Lady means by pray with the heart. Pray and mean it. But she says something quite mysterious. She says, “Pray the Rosary from the heart.” What is the Rosary? The Rosary is a time machine. Because when you pray the third Joyful Mystery, you are not just imagining the first Christmas. The power of the first Christmas comes to you today. Now, wherever you are. So, it is a time machine in that sense. I want to tell you a quick story, I need to tell you this story to emphasis the Rosary. When I was a kid my parents went out for the evening and left us to mind ourselves. We got bored, we took down all the black and white photo albums. And we were looking through these pictures of my grand mother’s family and we were saying, “Oh look, we are not in these pictures. So, what can we do about that to set that straight? So, we got a big orange crayon and we drew ourselves in. So, at my mother’s baptism there is a great big, gigantic stick figure of my sister, looming over the cradle with a crazy grin. At my parent’s wedding, all four of us were waving in the front row! This reminds me of Renaissance paintings in Italy. Why? (It was a masterpiece, even if I do say so!!) Why? Because what do you get? You get the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, with Our Lady, St. Joseph, Angels, wise men, shepherds, and…Don Cossimo and his wife, Donna Fabritsia. What are they doing there? That is what the Rosary is, your orange crayon to draw yourself into that Masterpiece. It’s a time machine. The power of those mysteries comes to you today. Now, when you pray the Rosary. Now, Our Lady began with the villagers slowly. She said, “Pray the seven Our Fathers, Hail Marys and Glory Bes.” This was the tradition in the village, and they asked her if they should pray it and she said yes. They prayed it every day. Then she said, “Please add the Apostles Creed.” So, they did. By the way that is her favorite prayer. Then after a few months she said, “I would like you to pray five decades of the Rosary.” So, they did. And a few months after that she said, “Now pray every day fifteen decades of the Rosary.” The complete Rosary. And when she said that, the villagers said, “that’s too much.” Impossible. And she said, “You do not understand what little time this takes up.” What did she mean by that? If you take up the Rosary and pray it properly, it will take you fifteen minutes. This is slowly. In Singapore where I grew up, we used to “gabble” the Rosary, saying it quickly. Even in Singapore we called it “Irish Beads, because we said it so quickly. If you have ever been to Ireland, you will know what I mean. And I remember a friend of mine said, “You Catholics, you are so weird. What is so blessed about a monk’s women?” We scratched our heads, what is he talking about? We didn’t understand until we started the Rosary…Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed art thou a monk’s women…” (Ha ha!) So slow down!! Remember the Rosary is powerful. The demons hate the Rosary. During exorcisms the demons will say, “We hate that thing.” They use a bad word for it. Then they say that thankfully most priests don’t promote it anymore. But the Rosary is powerful! Every Hail Mary is a hammer blow to Satan’s head. Every Rosary destroys their power. Chains that bind the demons. But don’t pray it just because it eliminates evil, pray because it sanctifies us. And Our Lady asks for it. She says, “Pray the Rosary from the heart every day.” (Fruit of Medjugorje – show 355 – Fr. Leon Pereira speaking at St. Mark’s Church in North Carolina in 2019 –  https://marytv.tv/fruit-of-medjugorje/  )   PS.  Mike Nolan is leading a pilgrimage to Medjugorje from April 13 to 22, 2020!  Denis and I will be joining the group!  There is still room for more pilgrims. Join us!!   Here is Mike’s contact information and website: Mike Nolan: [email protected] 574-335-9952 https://www.pilgrim-medj.com/pilgrimages.html