(c) Mateo Ivankovic 2017
J.M.J.
February 9, 2017
Dear Family of Mary!
Dear children, You who are striving to offer every day of your life to my Son, you who are trying to live with Him, you who are praying and sacrificing – you are hope in this peaceless world. You are rays of the light of my Son, a living gospel, and you are my beloved apostles of love. My Son is with you. He is with those who think of Him – those who pray. But in the same way, He is patiently waiting for those who do not know Him. Therefore, you, apostles of my love, pray with the heart and with your works show the love of my Son. This is the only hope for you, and this is also the only way to eternal life. I, as a mother, I am here with you. Your prayers directed to me are the most beautiful roses of love for me. I cannot but be where I sense the scent of roses. There is hope. Thank you. (February 2, 2017)
“…My Son is with you. He is with those who think of Him – those who pray….”
Yesterday we heard these words from Saint John Paul II:
“The Rosary is by its nature a prayer for peace, since it consists in the contemplation of Christ, the Prince of Peace, the one who is “our peace” (Eph 2:14). Anyone who assimilates the mystery of Christ – and this is clearly the goal of the Rosary – learns the secret of peace and makes it his life’s project.”
We assimilate the mystery of Christ by praying the mysteries of the Rosary and thinking about them. The Rosary helps us be those who think of Jesus, who pray to Jesus, who love Jesus throughout their day. In this way, Jesus is with us!
But there are many who do not think of Jesus. In fact, it is easy to become one of them. Servant of God Monsignor Luigi Giussani described this forgetfulness of Christ (not thinking of Him) this way:
The last capillary of this hatred for Christ is our self, forgetful and indifferent. The most relevant, most decisive end point, is in me, in us, in our mind and heart. The refusal begins there, forgetfulness is generated and cultivated there, absence and inhospitality harden there, in us, in me. It is a hatred we do not necessarily express outwardly, but we clearly live more and more estranged from Him. Even a very Christian family can live in an unchristian way from morning till night. You don’t need to kill or to break all the Ten commandments at once to be unchristian. What makes us unchristian is the absence of Christ.
The absence of Christ is the absence of his life. This tends to produce an indifference to reality that becomes lack of responsibility for your own personal and collective existence. It becomes amorality…” (Servant of God Monsignor Luigi Giussani. Quoted in Magnificat Magazine, Feb 2017. P. 26)
These words are chilling. The absence of Christ in us can take place without much effort. We just have to forget about Him. The longer we forget Him, the more empty and lacking in truth we will become. We will just drift away from Him. How easy this is in our media saturated culture in which we are over stimulated and lose our focus.
No wonder Our Lady is with us in these days, bringing us back to prayer, back to the Rosary, back to the Mass and the Scriptures. She is mooring us to her Son, so we can’t drift away. We can’t forget Him. We won’t decline into amorality.
Thank you, dearest Mother, for giving us the Rosary. Thank you for giving us your memories of Jesus’ life, so beautifully presented in the mysteries of the Rosary. Thank you for being with us in these days so that we won’t forget your Son. Keep us close to Jesus, and never let us be parted from Him.
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2017
