September 2, 2020 Reflection – Personal Conversion

(c)Mary TV

September 2, 2020

Dear Family of Mary!

“…Little children, you do not have a future or peace until your life begins with a personal conversion and a change to the good. Evil will cease and peace will begin to reign in your hearts and in the world…” (August 25, 2020)

Fr. Slavko spoke about personal conversion in a commentary on Our Lady’s messages from April 27, 1985.  It is timeless!

Fr. Slavko Barbaric:

The last message was one which will keep us hard at work all our lives: “Cultivate and change your hearts so that the new Spirit of God can dwell there.”  A job for life.  This is another word for conversion, also love, but above all conversion.

Root out every evil from our hearts.  This is what Our Lady asks.

You know how in a garden flowers and plants should be cultivated if we want the fruits; with patience and ever more patience.  If a plant is closed and does not open to the sun it cannot bear fruit.  If you don’t put your heart into working in a garden and don’t make the effort to pull out the weeds that choke the plants, you will have no fruit in Autumn.  To have fruit, a good gardener will even have to take a knife sometimes and in any case will have to do some very radical work and not leave even the smallest root of any weed that chokes the fruit-bearing plants.

And so one must not work superficially but deep down gradually changing our lives, our behavior, our prayers, everything.  This is the way to walk with Our Lady along the road to peace for all mankind.  We know that every man wants peace, wants to be loved, but those who are unwilling to take up the means of achieving peace are so many.

To want water and not want to go to the spring is illogical.

If Our lady asks us all to cultivate our hearts as we cultivate our fields; then don’t wait!  If you begin, the words of St. Paul are for everyone: “The Lord gives, after all, rain and everything needed for growth.” (CF – 1Cor3:7)

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric – April 27, 1985 – St. James, Medjugorje – from the Blue Book  entitled Abandon Yourselves Totally to Me, 1985))

Fr. Slavko is right!  Conversion is a life-time project, only completed when we enter eternal life!  The garden of our soul needs constant tending, if it is to bear fruit.  We can’t slack off.  The enemy is always sowing seeds of doubt, seeds of dissatisfaction, seeds of fear or selfishness.  Those seeds need to be plucked up and thrown out of our hearts.  In this way, peace will be preserved and will grow all around us.  It isn’t that we are preoccupied with ourselves, but that we are vigilant.  Daily prayer and examination of conscience and frequent confession will do the trick!  We want to be those who build a world of peace.  Conversion is a daily task, a necessity!!

Thank you, dearest Mother, for teaching us how to grow peace in our hearts through conversion!

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2020