December 19, 2018
Christmas Novena Day 5 – Peace
Dear Family of Mary!
Today we pray for peace. Our Lady has come as the Queen of Peace in Medjugorje. Her focus throughout these 37 years has been to establish peace.
“Dear children! Today I rejoice with you and I am praying with you for peace: peace in your hearts, peace in your families, peace in your desires, peace in the whole world. May the King of Peace bless you today and give your peace. I bless you and I carry each one of you in my heart. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (December 25, 1994)
Our Lady shows us the hierarchy of peace in this message. Peace does not start with governments and the powerful people. Peace is not a political agenda. Peace is far more personal and difficult than that.
Our Lady says that she is praying for us for peace. This is amazing! She is intimately connected to us, as our Mother and our intercessor! Her prayers are probably what is keeping us afloat.
But her list of objectives for peace teaches us so much:
Peace in your hearts: Our Lady begins here. In our hearts. There will be no peace in the world if there is not peace in our hearts. And there will be no peace in our hearts unless we take responsibility for it. No one can make us peaceful. We must choose to build peace in our hearts. With God’s forgiveness and help, and Our Lady’s prayers, we must make peace in our hearts, through forgiveness of all who have wounded us, through humility and profound repentance for our sins, through letting go of our past and embracing God’s future for us, and for choosing love, we can make peace in our hearts. Peace in our hearts is a daily process in which we surrender to God our entire self, and joyfully let Him lead us!
Peace in your families: As we build peace in our hearts, it will spread to our families. Forgiveness, generosity, repentance, humility, and love coming from us can heal many wounds in our families. And prayer for our families can change so much. We can take the first step for peace in our families, and then God can do the rest!
Peace in your desires: This is always a sure sign of our conversion, when we begin to desire what makes for peace. God knows what will make peace in our lives and in the world. He knows how we fit into the grand scheme. So if we turn to Him to give us His desires for us, we will help to build peace all around us. It is a matter of choosing the life we were destined to live!
Peace in the whole world: It seems impossible that by building peace in my small and unimportant life, I can help to change the whole world. But it is true, because we are each very important to Our Lady’s plan. Peace depends on each one of us. God loves and respects each of us so much that He would have it no other way. We are all part of His great plan for peace.
May the King of Peace bless you today and give you peace!
Let us pray:
May the Virgin Mary help us to open the doors of our hearts to Christ, Redeemer of man and of history; may she teach us to be humble, because God looks upon the lowly; may she enable us to grow in understanding the value of prayer, of inner silence, of listening to God’s Word; may she spur us to seek God’s will deeply and sincerely, even when this upsets our plans; may she encourage us while we wait for the Lord, sharing our time and energies with those in need.
Mother of God, Virgin of expectation, grant that the God-who-comes will find us ready to receive the abundance of his mercy.
May Mary Most Holy, “Woman of the Eucharist” and Virgin of Advent, prepare us all to joyfully welcome Christ’s coming and to celebrate worthily his sacramental presence in the mystery of the Eucharist.
St. John Paul II
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2018
