Day: April 27, 2022

April 28, 2022 Reflection – True Devotion to Mary

  True Devotion to Mary! April 28, 2022 Feast of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort Dear Family of Mary! Here again is the April 25, 2022 Message from Our Lady of Medjugorje, Queen of Peace: “Dear children! I am looking at you and I see that you are lost. That is why I am calling all of you: return to God, return to prayer – and the Holy Spirit will fill you with His love which gives joy to the heart. Hope will grow in you, also for a better future, and you will become joyful witnesses of God’s mercy in you and around you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (April 25, 2022) Today is the Feast Day of St. Louis de Montfort! St. Louis was a prophet in his day, and is a prophet in our day as well. He understood through the gift of the Holy Spirit, how God would choose to raise up Our Lady in the last days to guide His people into the safety of His Truth. I believe that God has sent Our Lady to Medjugorje for that very purpose. Her messages have guided us little ones into the Truths of the Faith for 40 years now. And as this most recent message reveals, she is still with us, calling us into prayer, showing us the way to receive the Holy Spirit, to be filled with God’s love, and to witness God’s Mercy to a very fallen world. We need Our Lady desperately. And she is with us. Maybe today we can pray this prayer by St. Louis De Montfort, letting his devotion to Our Lady inform us and give us a deeper devotion to her. The aspirations in this prayer are spot on!! St. Louis de Montfort’s Prayer to Mary Hail Mary, beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father! Hail Mary, admirable Mother of the Son! Hail Mary, faithful spouse of the Holy Ghost! Hail Mary, my dear Mother, my loving Mistress, my powerful sovereign! Hail my joy, my glory, my heart and my soul! Thou art all mine by mercy, and I am all thine by justice. But I am not yet sufficiently thine. I now give myself wholly to thee without keeping anything back for myself or others. If thou still seest in me anything which does not belong to thee, I beseech thee to take it and to make thyself the absolute Mistress of all that is mine. Destroy in me all that may be displeasing to God, root it up and bring it to nought; place and cultivate in me everything that is pleasing to thee. May the light of thy faith dispel the darkness of my mind; may thy profound humility take the place of my pride; may thy sublime contemplation check the distractions of my wandering imagination; may thy continuous sight of God fill my memory with His presence; may the burning love of thy heart inflame the lukewarmness of mine; may thy virtues take the place of my sins; may thy merits be my only adornment in the sight of God and make up for all that is wanting in me. Finally, dearly beloved Mother, grant, if it be possible, that I may have no other spirit but thine to know Jesus and His divine will; that I may have no other soul but thine to praise and glorify the Lord; that I may have no other heart but thine to love God with a love as pure and ardent as thine. I do not ask thee for visions, revelations, sensible devotion or spiritual pleasures. It is thy privilege to see God clearly; it is thy privilege to enjoy heavenly bliss; it is thy privilege to triumph gloriously in Heaven at the right hand of thy Son and to hold absolute sway over angels, men and demons; it is thy privilege to dispose of all the gifts of God, just as thou willest. Such is, O heavenly Mary, the “best part,” which the Lord has given thee and which shall never be taken away from thee- and this thought fills my heart with joy. As for my part here below, I wish for no other than that which was thine: to believe sincerely without spiritual pleasures; to suffer joyfully without human consolation; to die continually to myself without respite; and to work zealously and unselfishly for thee until death as the humblest of thy servants. The only grace I beg thee to obtain for me is that every day and every moment of my life I may say: Amen, so be it -to all that thou didst do while on earth; Amen, so be it -to all that thou art now doing in Heaven; Amen, so be it-to all that thou art doing in my soul, so that thou alone mayest fully glorify Jesus in me for time and eternity. Amen In Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Cathy Nolan Mary TV 2022  

April 25, 2022 – Marija speaks to Fr. Livio about Our Lady’s Message

A conversation between Marija Pavlovic Lunetti and Fr. Livio about the message of April 25, 2022 given by Our Lady, Queen of Peace, of Medjugorje! Father Livio:  Dear friends, we now have, live, Marjia from Medjugorje who is about to give us the April 25, 2022 message of the Queen of peace! Hi Marija! Marjia: Hello Father Livio! A greeting to all the listeners of Radio Maria and I wish everyone a late Happy Easter although we are in the time of Mercy and we just had the Sunday dedicated to the Feast of Divine Mercy. Today, like every 25th of the month, Our Lady gave us the following message: Marjia: reads the message in Italian and Croatian as usual: “Dear children! I am looking at you and I see that you are lost. That is why I am calling all of you: return to God, return to prayer – and the Holy Spirit will fill you with His love which gives joy to the heart. Hope will grow in you, also for a better future, and you will become joyful witnesses of God’s mercy in you and around you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (April 25, 2022) Here we are Father Livio F. L. Here we are Marija! So Our Lady was very serious even today like the other two times? M. No, she was peaceful. However the message is very intense, especially in the passage: “I am looking at you and I see that you are lost”. I felt that Our Lady was also telling me that we are not doing enough! We are lost because we are not attached enough to what she is guiding us towards: holiness. She looks at us with the eyes of Heaven while we are tied to earthly things. I am asking the Lord to guide us to become more and more filled with Him and open to His Will, because the world is lost and we are often dragged along with it. For this reason, Our Lady repeats again today: “Return to God, Return to prayer…” by speaking to us this time in a very concrete way. She says: “the Holy Spirit will fill you with His love which gives joy to the heart”. We Christians are often too serious and not joyful.  Many times we worry about witnessing in our rigidity; while instead Our Lady is calling us to the joy of Easter! Because our gaze is not towards Heaven where God, with His Love, is giving us so many graces that we can’t even recognize them and put them into practice. I believe we are not thankful and we don’t pray enough to be able to recognize all these graces! For this reason, I am thinking that the message is also directed to me and to all three of us seers! We are lost because we are not lost in God, therefore we must get lost in this Love that He grants us through the daily presence of Our Lady. F.L. Marija, I believe that Our Lady has already used this phrase on other occasions: “I am looking at you and I see that you are lost”. (July 25, 2016, May 25, 2021) She had already used it again in a very difficult situation, now I no longer remember when, but I thought that perhaps Our Lady expected something more from this Easter. This was a particular Easter. Perhaps you in Medjugorje did not realize it but in fact those living in other parts of the world on television, radio and newspapers did nothing but talk about war. Not even a truce for this Easter that passed with deaths, killings, hatred! This is, let’s say a little, the situation of the world where, as the Pope said so many times, it is preparing for war. The situation is getting worse and worse, the world concentrates on killing, war, death, precisely in this great solemnity that calls for prayer, confession, and conversion. And we have been distracted by this terrible event that is affecting us all. M. Yes it is true! Because what you are saying Father Livio we have also heard, because many times in people’s hearts there is this terrible war. Just tonight somebody asked me: Marija did Our Lady make some reference to Ukraine in tonight’s message? We all expected something because this situation is becoming difficult as the Ukrainians have asked Russia for a truce that did not happened for Easter, and at the same time the terrible thing that struck me a lot is that we are Christians against Christians. This is one thing that I just do not understand: same faith, same God but we are making a slaughter of ourselves. Another subject is abortion. We don’t realize how many abortions Christians have and this is the greatest tragedy. In this way, I say we go against ourselves. We ought to pray! For this we are lost because we no longer are aware of the situation. In reality we no longer have this sensitivity in our hearts… We are not Christian enough! We do not believe enough! This war situation .. we do not pray enough. Our Lady is calling us back to prayer more and more and this makes my heart very sad. Then I say to myself: “The Lord will help us, in some way He will give us the joy of Easter, because as you said Father Livio in Medjugorje we live like in a “small oasis on earth” where we and the pilgrims deeply feel the presence of Our Lady and live her messages. We lived Lent together with the families in prayer, renunciations, fasting, and confessions that Our Lady taught us. There are very few people who here in Medjugorje have not prepared for Holy Easter. Instead in the world it is not quite like that. I sincerely hope that prayer groups will be able to pass on in their parishes what they have learned and seen here in Medjugorje. They told me that some parishes during the time of the pandemic have become like a community and this is a beautiful thing! We must also act as a community where if one part of one’s body suffers, the whole body suffers. This situation of paganism, of the war and death does not come from God. I do not know if you are aware of this but I see how Satan is making fun of us! Therefore this must invite us to make sacrifices. Years ago I wrote to Gorbachev, now I would like to write to Putin: “Enough with this war”. It seems that he is making improvements through the help of some priests, that his life is changing and that he is converting, but then where is the fruit of this conversion! The Lord calls us to be bearers of peace, of joy; we can say this to him but also to ourselves because we are called to be witnesses. F.L. Marija, except for one year when it was impossible (in the time of your war, in Bosnia) I have always come to Medjugorje and I remember you praying and fasting for the war to end. Our Lady said at the beginning of the war: “How long this war will last, it will depend a lot on your prayers.” Now I wanted to ask you Marija in your opinion, if we ourselves and the whole church start praying and fasting, can this miracle be performed to make the war stop? M. I believe so, I believe so, because I have seen the power of prayer. Many times at the beginning, Father Livio, we witnessed miracles in the people who arrived sick; we prayed, fasted and they were healed. And many other times couples without children who were desperately trying to have them would come to me and I told them to pray, to fast and to believe with the certainty of obtaining the miracle. Because if there is prayer, if there is fasting, if there is a request from heart to heart, when we knock, the Lord opens the door of His heart. For this situation of the war I also deeply believe as Our Lady told us “When you pray like this, the end of the war will come soon.” Although we have prayed we have not done it enough, probably because evil is strong, evil is confusion, evil is war. All these situations that are not normal, are causing more and more damage. When we find ourselves inside this “centrifuge” as you can say, we no longer think straight with our own head but act instinctively like a beast, it’s then that Our Lady calls us to look with the eyes of God. F.L. Yes, this is what I wanted to tell you, but Our Lady does not get tired of inviting us again to return to God to return to prayer. That is, she is patient, she never gives up, she always hopes that we will answer. M. Yes, yes, thank God, yes! Let’s try it, I am going to start with myself because I say: I have highs but also lows and when I feel down because of all my troubles, I recover with great agility and go back and return to prayer, fasting, sacrifice, thank Heaven! Then I wake up an hour earlier in the morning to be able to pray my personal prayer! Because you cannot give if you have not experienced “the Holy Spirit, Who will fill you with His love which gives joy to the heart”. Once we will become witnesses of all this, our future will improve, and then we will transmit the best of ourselves to the world! We will be able to pass on our holiness, prayer, joy, and love for God. F. L. But perhaps, Marija, we should begin to think that there are no mass conversions; that is, there has been mass de-Christianization because in a few decades we have become pagans. Because in any case we live in a world where the mass media fill us with worldliness! But becoming Christians again must be accomplished one by one. It is a work of progress that one must do personally and with great effort. M. It depends: a lot of effort or a lot of joy! Because Father Livio, if we have met the Lord, at that point our Christian life becomes a joy, because it is not a challenge but an act of Love that we feel; an act of Love towards God, an act of Love towards one’s neighbor. When we bear witness to what we have lived, to feel God in our heart, we then live God in our heart, in our family, with our prayer. He gives me joy, and I will cry, as long as I am alive, that the Lord is great and merciful! He is good and merciful to us because even though with our humanity we have to fight every day, still at the same moment we see that the Lord sends His Mother! She who never tires of calling us, loves us, and leads us to the path that she calls the “path of holiness”, “the school of prayer.” We are passing through… this life is short… eternity awaits us! And even though we do not live well, we are afraid of going to Heaven, we are afraid of dying, we all must accept our end. Just the other day we had a small earthquake, well not small but big enough! Anyway we all tried to save our lives, we went outside of our homes. Very few people remained inside saying that if they were to die they would do it in their own bed! Almost everybody went outside. This shows that we don’t trust enough; we may lack this trust too and for this we should ask: Lord help our faith to become stronger even in these difficult moments, moments of trial so that we can be like the first martyrs who testified with their lives, with their example even when they were mistreated, slaughtered, mauled alive by lions in the Colosseum in Rome. They prayed and praised God by going to death with a very clear conscience and strong faith. Also today, through so many sacrifices, we witness even though there are others who call us fanatics, retrogrades because we still believe in God. At the time of Communism in our country, we were told that faith was “the opiate of the peoples” and imagine that Our Lady has come to tell them: “this is what the opiate of the people is, the presence of God, my presence, I who am the Woman of the future, I am coming to you to guide you and say that life is passing, eternal life awaits you and hell or purgatory awaits you also. F.L. Marija Our Lady also wants to bring us to Pentecost, to the Feast of the Holy Spirit! In fact: “return to prayer – and the Holy Spirit will fill you with His love”! In the end, true conversions even those where you have to struggle in the sense that you must leave sin and many times the bonds are very radical – the bonds of evil in people who have not confessed for a long tim!, But true trust is in the Holy Spirit because He gives us strength, gives us light and it truly works miracles in our hearts. M. Yes, Our Lady tells us to: “return to prayer – and the Holy Spirit will fill you with His love which gives joy to the heart!” If we pray the Holy Spirit will use us, we will be shaped by the Holy Spirit, He will fill with his Love. At that point we will become not only better, but also our future becomes better because through our choices we do good and bad many times and if we have chosen holiness, chosen well, the joy of Life, our future becomes better and we witness God’s mercy towards us and through us for others. F.L. I really liked this expression Marija: “will fill you with His love which gives joy to the heart”, that is, it is truly feeling loved by God that fills you with joy. M. It is exactly what I so many times try to witness: to witness is a joy for me, it is not an obligation, but I feel I have to say it because the Lord has filled us, He has given us, He is shaping us with His love and this Love is not just any love, that “superficial love”, that love for interest; no this is a Love of God that fills our heart with the joy of grace, fills us with peace, it gives a meaning to our life because when we have God we have the meaning of our life. The perspective changes completely, that is, that of being loved by God, we are not alone, that we are born into eternity and that we will go to Heaven. This is a beautiful thing that we can say because we are all brothers; at this point my neighbor becomes my brother, he becomes my joy, he becomes my friend, he becomes the reflection of God, hope will grow within us, hope in a better future, in Paradise. I am not interested in Purgatory or Hell, because my stable point and my preoccupation is Heaven. Here on earth, in my small way I will try to live my holiness. But yes, Our Lady says: “I am looking at you and I see that you are lost”, yes many times we are lost but we get up once again, we leave sin and begin a new life, a life in holiness where we deeply believe that the Holy Spirit will enlighten us, help us, fill us with His Love and guide us towards a new life. F. L. Marija, do you really think that in this situation in this world that is going like it is, that  is there a danger that it will go towards a world war where the world is armed; do you think that a better future is still possible without an extraordinary miracle of grace? M. I believe in the message of Our Lady; She came here with God’s permission to be among us, to guide us and from the very beginning she manifested herself as the “Queen of Peace!” And this is very clear, she wants to guide us; where? Towards the Way of Holiness, towards conversion, towards Eternal Life! The devil who uses man wants war as Our Lady said: the devil wants war, he wants destruction, but we are there too and with us many people who pray, who work for peace. Even now in the situation in Ukraine, you have no idea how many people are trying to tell me their incredible experiences where the military man talks to another military man asking to pray together; one Russian and one Ukrainian praying together for peace. Each of us will personally answer before God. Many people are forced to enroll in the military life, but at the same time they are people of peace. I hope that at a certain moment we who do not want war, death, rise up to proclaim life, joy, God as in our songs to the Holy Virgin, God in our families, in our homeland, in our homes, we turn to God because God is freedom, not war! God is joy! F.L. Marija in the end we have extraordinary weapons such as prayer; let’s say the weapon of the Rosary is the weapon that wins all battles; we have these weapons but then we don’t use them or we don’t use them enough. M. Our Lady told us that with prayer and fasting even wars can be stopped and I have known and seen people who have not only done forty days of fasting on bread and water, but let’s say even more since this war began in the countries of the East. Every day when I have the apparition, I pray precisely for peace and I say that the Lord will listen to us and Our Lady is with us and She will knock on the door of God’s Heart constantly asking for peace for these poor people. Every day I ask Our Lady for this grace, we are few but we do it with the heart, we pray, we fast, we try to do our best. F.L. Sorry if I ask you this type of question but, in your opinion Marija since newspapers ask the same questions every day, is there a real danger that this war will spread and become a world war for which the world will be destroyed? M. I pray and I believe that it will not, because Our Lady is with us, She helps us and She is the Woman of the Future, Mother of God, who came to help and save us; for this reason I deeply believe it will not. We are awful because we no longer believe, we no longer pray, we do not respect the Laws of God, we do not live the Commandments, but Our Lady is still with us. F.L. And in any case there is an answer that we do not see and there are many people who pray, who love and who testify and therefore we must be optimistic in the sense of trusting in God and truly thinking that the world will recover. M. I remember the testimony of a man who was an abortionist. They had built a clinic for this purpose and he said he felt positive about it because instead of sending out abortions illegally he was useful in helping young mothers not ready to face the responsibilities of giving birth to their babies. He was convinced that he was really doing the right thing. This is to say how satan was deceiving him in making him believe the wrong as the good. At a certain moment he realized that he was killing a large crowd of those children that would grow up and become men like him. Once he understood this he started a “pro life” movement in his city and his testimony was very strong as at a certain moment the Holy Spirit touched his heart. His life became completely new. F.L. Well Marija now let’s turn the page and I wanted to ask you this: the fortieth year has just passed, forty-one years of apparitions, we can we say that we are still at the beginning of the apparitions? M. I didn’t understand, I did not understand well. F.L. In other words after forty years of apparitions I remember asking questions to you or to Jackov, or Vicka that in any case Our Lady’s plan is so great that after such long time we are still at the beginning before it will come to its end. Can we say the same thing now too? M. I cannot say that we are at the beginning because forty years went by, however forty years in the eyes of God are like two days for us. We could either say we are at the beginning or at the end because tomorrow could be the last one for me. It could be that Our Lady will no longer appear to me. I hope that She will stay with us longer telling us that She loves us, that She will still give us the messages, that She will guides us towards Heaven. F.L. Marija now I am going to ask you a personal question. How would you personally react if Our Lady told you that your daily apparitions are over and that you will only see Her once a year as Mirjana or Jackov; how would you react to this. M. I don’t know, I don’t really know Father Livio, I know that God’s Will is what He wants. I thank Him for this immense great gift, but we are ready because as we have received it we are aware that it will not last for our whole lives. As children now we have become adults, in fact since Our Lady appeared to us we have no longer had our own life belonging to us despite the duration of the apparitions that have gone from five minutes to ten, fifteen, sometimes an hour, when it was time for it, it all weaved together with our daily life routine, what a beautiful experience that God wanted for us since we did not seek such a grace. The Lord gave it to us and we thank God for everything He does. F.L. It is therefore a gift to be lived with gratitude that you have dedicated your life to this gift. M. We have dedicated our life to it because we have received the Life, the new Life. When I talk to my sisters they tell me that they do not understand how we cope with a life so full of sacrifices and that they could never understand when people stop us in the street, who want to talk to us in the least appropriate moments, for example while are tasting an ice cream, they come closer, they tell us their things, they ask us if they can to take a picture, to pray for and with them. I have never been afraid of people, to testify, I am not afraid of having received this gift. I receive more good than bad even though we had also had negative experiences, many of them. They took us to the doctors, they told us that we were sick, many non-believers think of us as fanatics, they accuse us of having enriched ourselves, they look at us with a “certain distance”, and nobody really knows us while I consider everyone as my friends and brothers in God and this is an awesome thing. This is our visual perspective and we know that we are a gift to you and to others and we are aware that this gift is not just for us, but through us for the whole world. For this we are witnessing more and more. F.L. However you are also mature but in a few years you will begin to grow older. M. We are already getting there Father Livio because I am beginning to feel some pain here and there (laughter) but we are young at heart. F.L. And surely what counts is the one there. In short, Marija, let’s say that you are very happy with your mission even though Our Lady gives and asks properly. M. But I mean since we are past fifty now we are getting younger and younger for Heaven. We no longer count how old we are, but how much we have left for Heaven. When you look with this perspective I assure you that our life is much better. F.L. Marija sorry but you can say this because by seeing Our Lady you see Heaven, but we don’t see it, maybe we can feel it though. M. Let’s believe it, let’s believe it deeply. This is why we say: Lord, increase our faith and when we are aware of this and especially in these times of war it comes naturally to me to say the prayer of St. Francis: “Lord, make me an instrument of your Peace”, in the context of my family, of my work, let us become these instruments of God’s love, instruments of the joy of God of the Risen Jesus. Truly Jesus is risen, it is not a story, but Jesus is risen and He brought us from death to Life – each one of us. It takes just this one thought to fill me with joy these days! Our Lady is calling us to make us more and more attached to Heavenly things. Heaven becomes much closer, it will no longer be a thousand kilometers away but it will be here among us because Our Lady once said: “I want you to start to experience Heaven already here on this Earth”. F. L. Yes but also in Her last message She told us that we can live well here on Earth. If one lives the life of God here, he is already happy here on Earth in practice. M. But unfortunately we see many times people who no longer pray and then have mental problems, are insecure, they do not have a future, whereas Our Lady says: “Return to prayer” because then we will be aware that we are loved by God and when we are loved by Him at that point we take the strength of God, His positivity by becoming new men and women and this is an awesome thing. F.L. Marija, this evening was great again. In the end, however, Our Lady said the things we should already know and that she told us many times: “Return to God, return to prayer“, this is something we can do and if we do it, it really changes our life. M. Exactly, Father Livio, it is exactly like this, let us all return together helping each other with prayer. In a special way I would like to say to all the listeners of Radio Maria, those who are sick, bedridden, those who are suffering: “Pray, trust in the Lord, in His Mercy that He will help you. Truly your prayers, your sacrifices, your illnesses can have a meaning if we offer them also for the souls in Purgatory, especially for those who need them most; the Lord hears our prayers.” F.L. Marija while you are there as we are in connection with Radio Maria Ukraine, if you want you can do a little greeting. In this wartime their listeners have tripled. M. Thank Heaven! At this moment let us cling to God because as I said before this earthquake was enough to realize that our life is truly temporary and also for you in Ukraine who are in any kind of difficulties, you who cannot be in your homes, when you are not at peace, when the future is difficult I want to tell you with all my heart that you are not alone, we are with you, we pray together for each other and for each one of you. We trust in God’s mercy also to put an end to this and let’s keep in mind what Our Lady told us: “with prayer and fasting even wars can be removed” and “those who pray are not afraid of the future” so let us pray together for a better futureF. F.L. thanks Marija let’s finish with a prayer In the name of the Father… (and they recite the Magnificat together) F.L. Our help is in the name of the Lord M. Who made Heaven and Earth. And Father Livio gives the blessing.Amen F.L. May Jesus and Mary be praised M. May Jesus and Mary always be praised F.L. Queen of Peace M. Pray for us and for the whole world!    

April 27, 2022 Reflection – A Conversation between Marija and Fr. Livio on the April 25, 2022 Message

Return to God, return to prayer… April 27, 2022 Dear Family of Mary! Here again is the April 25, 2022 Message from Our Lady of Medjugorje, Queen of Peace: “Dear children! I am looking at you and I see that you are lost. That is why I am calling all of you: return to God, return to prayer – and the Holy Spirit will fill you with His love which gives joy to the heart. Hope will grow in you, also for a better future, and you will become joyful witnesses of God’s mercy in you and around you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (April 25, 2022) Again this month, our shipmate Marina has transcribed and translated the lengthy conversation between Fr. Livio and Marija about the April 25, 2022 Message!! It is always so wonderful to listen in on their conversation. We learn so much!!  Click on the link below: A conversation between Marija and Fr. Livio on the April 25, 2022 Message In Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c)Mary TV 2022