September 23, 2023 Reflection – You MUST pray with the heart!

You MUST pray with the heart!

September 23, 2023
Feast of Padre Pio

Dear Family of Mary!

In Chapter 5, Father Shamon tells us “Prayer is a dialogue with God!”

Fr. Shamon wrote:
Chapter 5:

Prayer is a dialogue with God.

Perhaps the most constant urging of Our Lady at Medjugorje is for prayer. “Pray, pray, pray,” She repeatedly says to the visionaries.

On September 10, 1984, Our Lady said to Jelena: “Dear children, You must understand that you have to pray. Prayer is not a trifle. Prayer is a dialogue with God. You must hear the voice of God in every prayer. It is not possible to live without prayer. Prayer is life.”

Mary said: You have to pray– no choice. If you want to be saved, you have to pray — period! That is why to pray or not to pray is not trifling matter. Eternal salvation hinges on it.

Mary defined prayer as “a dialogue with God.” How simple, how beautiful! We all know what dialogue is. How human it is.

To have a dialogue demands two persons.

A dialogue is not a monologue, but a two-way street: one party does not do all the talking. There is give and take. you talk, the other listens. The other talks and you listen. The “other” in prayer is God. He talks to us in our hearts and through Scripture. St. Augustine said: “When you pray, you talk to God; when you read Scripture, God talks to you.”

One of the great helps to prayer is the reading of Scripture. Such reading helps one especially in meditating on the mysteries of the rosary. Thus Our Lady asks us to read the Bible at home every day. And she said for us to put the Bible in a prominent place in our homes so that it will remind us to read it (10/18/84).

Sometimes you can have a dialogue without saying a word. In The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio went to the merchant, Antonio, to borrow 3000 ducats so that he could woo and wed Portia. Antonio asked: “How do you know Portia loves you?” Bassanio answered: “…sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages.” Just as the heavens speak in silence of the glory of God, so in prayer heart can speak to heart. When a simple workman made long visits to the Blessed Sacrament, a priest asked what he said to the Lord. The man replied; “I say nothing. I just look at Him and He looks at me.” Isn’t that the way two people deeply in love relate?

Again, on October 20, 1984, Our Lady said to Jelena and her prayer group: “…you must pray more. Prayer is a dialogue with God. Prayer means understanding God. Prayer is necessary, because after it everything will become clear…Prayer is not a trifle. Prayer really is a dialogue with God.”

Fr. Albert Shamon. “Our Lady teaches about Prayer at Medjugorje.”

Our Lady told us:

April 2, 2011 “Dear children; With motherly love I desire to open the heart of each of you and to teach you personal unity with the Father. To accept this, you must comprehend that you are important to God and that He is calling you individually. You must comprehend that your prayer is a conversation of a child with the Father; that love is the way by which you must set out love for God and for your neighbor. That is, my children, the love that has no boundaries. That is the love that emanates from truth and goes to the end. Follow me, my children, so that also others, in recognizing the truth and love in you, may follow you. Thank you.”

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
(c) Mary TV 2023