June 23, 2022 Reflection – Anniversary Novena Day 9
Parishioners and Pilgrims processing from Apparition Hill to St. James Church on the Anniversary last year! Anniversary Novena, Day 9 June 23, 2022 Dear Family of Mary! Well, we made it to the last day of the Novena before the 41st Anniversary of Our Lady’s Apparitions in Medjugorje!! Here we are at Day 9!!! On this day we meditate on Our Lady’s message of May 25, 2022. “Dear children! I am looking at you and thanking God for each of you, because He permits me to still be with you, to encourage you to holiness. Little children, peace is disturbed and Satan wants peacelessness. That is why, may your prayer be even stronger so that every unclean spirit of division and war may be stilled. Be builders of peace and carriers of joy of the Risen One in you and around you, for the good to win in every man. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (May 25, 2022) Dearest Mother! We want to become builders of peace and carrier of the joy of the Risen One. We want the good to win! Help our prayer to grow stronger so that every unclean spirit of division and war may be stilled. We commit ourselves to your guidance anew, dearest Mother. In the words of Fr. Slavko we pray: Heavenly Father, I thank You for Mary’s presence among us during these 41 years. I thank You for all that You have given me through Her. I thank you for every word that She expressed in Your Name. I thank you for all the graces, for every blessing, for every inner and outer healing that You, in the name of Your Son and through Mary’s intercession, have given me. I adore and praise You along with Mary who calls upon us to convert. Send me Your Holy Spirit so that I can, through Him, open myself to prayer and that He then can help me to grow in prayer. Take, O Father, my heart of stone from my chest and cleanse it so that it may become a new heart. Free me, O Father, of everything that makes my heart a heart of stone. Free me from every hatred, from every jealousy, from every greed, from every obsession and dependency and from every distrust and fear. Free my heart from all wounds, from all stresses and traumas, so that my heart may be formed according to that of Your Son, humble and mild, and formed according to that of Your servant Mary… so that I may live with others in love and peace, and so that I may stay, along with Mary, on the path of holiness, in order that someday I may become holy as You are holy, Our Father, who lives and reigns in all eternity. Amen (Adapted from “Be Similar to My Heart” by Fr. Slavko Barbaric.) In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c)Mary TV 2022 P.S. Here is the schedule for June 24 and 25, the 41st Anniversary (Streamed live by Mary TV) June 24, 2022: The Peace Walk on June 24 will take place early in the morning, starting from Humac at 6 am, praying for peace. (It started exactly 30 years ago, in 1992.) We pray for peace in the world, in Ukraine and in the hearts of all people that are in need so much. (Mary TV will stream the end of this march) The Evening Holy Mass will be celebrated at 7 p.m. And after the evening Holy Mass there will be Adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar and it will last the whole night until 6 o’clock in the morning. June 25, 2022: We will gather on Apparition Hill, where it all began 41 years ago, around the Statue of Our Lady at 4:30 pm and then walk to St. James Church. We will pray the Rosary until we come to the Parish Church of St. James, where we will all celebrate the 41st Anniversary of the Apparitions of the Queen of Peace”. The solemn Holy Mass of the 41st Anniversary of the Apparition is at 7 pm on June 25, 2022.