You must pray for God’s plans to come about!
September 27, 2023
Dear Family of Mary!
Here is the message from Our Lady, Queen of Peace of Medjugorje, for September 25, 2023:
“Dear Children! I am calling you to strong prayer. Modernism wants to enter into your thoughts and steal from you the joy of prayer and of meeting with Jesus. That is why, my dear little children, renew prayer in your families, so that my motherly heart may be joyful as in the first days, when I had chosen you, and day and night prayer resounded – and Heaven was not silent but abundantly bestowed peace and blessing on this place of grace. Thank you for having responded to my call.” (September 25, 2023)
Our Lady’s call this month is for “strong prayer”! Strong prayer!!! What is strong prayer? Well, I think that Fr. Shamon got is right in his book on prayer. The next little chapter is on “You must pray for God’s plans to come about!” Strong prayer is prayer prayed for God’s intentions, His plans, His program of grace. It is prayer that sets aside our own needs in order to join in the battle for souls that the Lord is leading! He needs us to be firmly committed to His program!
Here is what Fr. Shamon wrote:
Chapter 6 – Teaching 6:
You must pray for God’s plans to come about!
If your prayer is from your heart, you’ll not only experience God in you, but you’ll begin to think like God and want like God.
One mistake we can make is to pray only for our own needs. Jesus never taught us to pray that way. Some people have even reduced the Madonna of Medjugorje to a personal piety. They go there only to see what they can get from it. They are thinking only of themselves and not of anyone else. Whenever we let our own plans and projects crowd out God’s, then atheism sets in.
At Medjugorje Our Lady told us to widen our horizons in prayer. She said: “Dear children…continue to pray so that all my plans may be carried out…” (9/27/84) Her plans! Again, on January 25, 1987, she said to the visionaries “I want you to understand that God has chosen each one of you in order to use you for the great plan of salvation of mankind…” God’s plan is for the salvation of all mankind, not just you and me.
The same was true of Fatima. There, Our Lady asked prayers and sacrifices for the conversion of Russia and to save sous from hell. God’s plans, her plans–these should be the object of our prayers.
At the Annunciation and in the Agony in the Garden, both Mary and Jesus prayed that the will of God be done in them.
We must pray for what God wants. And He wants the salvation of the world and the conversion of poor sinners. That was why Our Lady spent weeks teaching the prayer group at Medjugorje how to pray the Our Father. The Our Father is really the blueprint of what we ought to pray for in prayer.
Jesus taught us to pray big: to pray first for God’s glory, for His kingdom to come to earth, for His will to be done as in Heaven.
Between His cosmic plans and our spiritual needs, He sandwiched in only one petition for temporalities; and then it was a prayer for everybody: “Give US this day our daily bread.”
Our spiritual needs followed. He taught us to be forgiving. To pray that no one of us fall into temptation–the temptation of an affluent society; namely, of thinking that we do not need prayer, that we can go it on our own. Finally, to pray for deliverance from our common enemy: the evil on, the devil; he does exist.
Jesus wanted us to pray for everybody, to share His concern for the whole wide world. That is why the priest, another Christ, assumes the obligation of praying the Liturgy of the Hours each day. He not only sanctifies time, but he is praying for the whole Church.
What a misuse of prayer to use it only for ourselves. We can get some idea of how wrapped up we could be with praying just for ourselves if we were to say: I don’t need the message of Medjugorje. I don’t need to pray the rosary daily or to go to confession monthly or to fast. I’m o.k. as I am.” And that’s the trouble; we’re not o.k. if all we think about is ourselves.
Our Lady pleads with us to widen our vision in prayer, to try and put on the mind of Jesus in prayer. At Fatima she asked us to pray for the world. I think most of us missed the point. Here again at Medjugorje she asks us to widen our vision and pray for the salvation of the world, for she knows that the salvation we seek for others will be given to us.
“Dear children,” she asked, “please pray, as Satan wants to impede my plans again…” (8/9/84). “My plans!” You see, she asks that we pray not just for ourselves but for her plans.
From: Rev. Albert J.M. Shamon; “Our Lady teaches about prayer at Medjugorje”. p. 26-28
Strong prayer is heart-felt prayer for what God and Mother Mary are doing in the world today. It is putting the plans of Our Lady before our own plans, wholeheartedly!!
Our Lady, in the message above, asked us to pray against Modernism!! This is a worldwide catastrophe! The enemy is destroying the faith in every country through the lies of modernism. She needs our strong prayer, our determined prayer, our selfless prayer, for all those duped by modernism in the world and in the Church. Our prayers can make a difference!!We can do it, if we love enough! Strong prayer!!!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
(c) Mary TV 2023
