(c)Mateo Ivankovic 2016
JMJ
August 23, 2016
St. Rose de Lima
Dear Family of Mary!
“Dear children! As a mother, I desire to be of help to you. With my motherly love, I desire to help you to open your heart and to put my Son in the first place in it. Through your love for my Son and through your prayer, I desire for God’s light to illuminate you and God’s mercy to fill you. In this way, I desire for the darkness, and the shadow of death which wants to encompass and mislead you, to be driven away. I desire for you to feel the joy of the blessing of God’s promise. You, children of man, you are God’s children – you are my children. Therefore, my children, set out on the ways on which my love leads you, teaches you humility and wisdom, and finds the way to the Heavenly Father. Pray with me for those who do not accept me and do not follow me – those who, because of hardness of their hearts, cannot feel the joy of humility, devotion, peace and love – the joy of my Son. Pray that your shepherds, with their blessed hands, may always give you the joy of God’s blessing. Thank you.” March 18, 2014
Our Lady is calling us to embrace the mercy of God, to be filled with His light and joy. She wants the shadow of death to be driven away from us. She wants our eternal salvation.
St. Faustina was given the task of praying for souls, that they would choose eternal salvation, found in the great mercy of God. She was told by Jesus that even at the very last moment, souls could be saved through His mercy. She prayed for dying souls, and witnessed many such rescues by Divine Mercy.
Here is her account of such situations:
1698 l often attend upon the dying and through entreaties obtain for them trust in God’s mercy, and I implore God for an abundance of divine grace, which is always victorious. God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way.
Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy!
But-horror!- there are also souls who voluntarily and consciously reject and scorn this grace! Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment, so that if the soul is willing, it has the possibility of returning to God. But sometimes, the obduracy in souls is so great that consciously they choose hell; they [thus] make useless all the prayers that other souls offer to God for them and even the efforts of God Himself…(Diary 1698)
St. Faustina’s words are comforting, but also alarming. There are souls that will not accept God’s love, even at the cost of eternal damnation. “Pray with me for those who do not accept me and do not follow me – those who, because of hardness of their hearts, cannot feel the joy of humility, devotion, peace and love – the joy of my Son.” These souls are at great risk. May we join St. Faustina and Our Lady in rescuing these souls through our own prayer and sacrifice. Time is short. Many are perishing. But we can help them up to the very end!
Let us stand with Our Lady. “You, children of man, you are God’s children – you are my children. Therefore, my children, set out on the ways on which my love leads you, teaches you humility and wisdom, and finds the way to the Heavenly Father!”
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2016
