Daily Reflections
by Cathy

The September 28, 2020 Reflection – Two Sons!

 

September 28, 2020
St. Wenceslaus, St. Lawrence Ruiz

Dear Family of Mary!

Father Leon will not be celebrating Mass in Medjugorje this week because he is ill.  But he did write this beautiful homily for the Mass of Sunday, September 27, 2020.  He gave us permission to share it with you all.  As usual, Fr. Leon does not pull any punches, but speaks the truth plainly.  He is always so helpful!  Let’s pray for Fr. Leon to recover quickly, as we miss his pastoral guidance!

Twenty-sixth Sunday of the Year. Fr Leon Pereira OP preaches on the parable of the man with two sons.

Running through the Scriptures is the recurring theme of two sons, rivals before their father. Ishmael and Isaac are pitted against each other for their father Abraham’s legacy. Esau and Jacob squabble for the same from Isaac. Ephraim and Manasseh are not favored in the order desired by Joseph. The twin sons of Judah, Perez and Zerah, struggle in the womb with each other. Adonijah and Solomon compete for their father David’s throne. The prodigal son and his brother are rivals for their father’s property and love. This theme is the struggle to be acceptable to the Father. In the beginning, Abel’s offering was accepted by God, but Cain’s was not. It ended with murder, the first murder. The slain brother’s blood cries out to God for vengeance. All this because both struggled to be the Father’s accepted son.

How often in our own families is one child accepted, while the other spends a lifetime trying to win favor? How often is the one who never visits the golden child, and the long-suffering child who does everything for her parents is taken for granted, and endures the endless praises of their selfish sibling?

The need to be the accepted child runs deep within us. Our modern obsession with celebrity, the pressure to be young, fresh, strong, beautiful—what else is it than the unquenchable yearning to be accepted by the Father they do not know yet yearn for? Why else are Christians so frightened of admitting their sins? The fear of being the unacceptable child remains.

When the parent in question is the perfect Heavenly Father, how can anyone hope to be the accepted and loved child? One solution is to shift the goalposts. Modern Evangelicals dispute a teaching they call ‘hyper-grace’—an exaggeration which denies the necessity of repentance and confession of sins and considers the moral law as pharisaical legalism. By shifting the parameters of what it means to be the acceptable child of the Father, whose only-begotten Son tells us to ‘Be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt 5:48), we make ourselves perfect and acceptable.

The Catholic equivalent (‘mercy-plus’) is the travesty of divine mercy without repentance. The heresy of Jansenism believed man was totally depraved, and unable to be made anew even by God’s grace. It sinned against hope by giving in to despair. The new Jansenism of mercy-plus sins against hope by giving in to presumption.

At first glance it looks positive. Heaven is for everyone, only because there is no Hell. One does not need to be in a state of grace to receive Communion, because it is not even possible. No Christian is called, by God’s grace, to heroism—because the moral life is impossible. This is not raising the prodigals from their grime and muck but rebranding their pigsties ‘palaces’. The new pharisees misuse words like ‘accompaniment’ while stranding people exactly where they’ve been, with their vices christened ‘virtues’. Their presumption is a childish rebellion, and deep down it blames God—it’s His fault for asking us to be perfect, creatures He made imperfect!

The fear of honestly and contritely confessing our sins, common to Evangelical hyper-grace and Catholic mercy-plus, is the fear lurking within us all of being the unacceptable child. But since this is somehow God’s fault, we can shift the goal-posts and call evil good, or at least tolerable. To be acceptable, we can’t afford to confess anything substantial or true; certainly nothing which corresponds to actual sins.

In the Gospel the son who is truly accepted is the one who is bad. The son who has a superficial perfection is the one who actually resists the Father’s will. But the one who kicked, screamed, and fought—he is the acceptable child, the one who in the end proves his love for the Father.

The perfect child does not exist. We cannot be the perfect, acceptable son or daughter we would like to be. Becoming the acceptable child is a matter of repentance: of letting go of the past in the face of the future we are offered, of accepting that we cannot—by our own efforts—do the Father’s will. Only in the only-begotten perfect Son, by His wounds and His grace, are we made anew. You see, the Gospel tells us the favored ones are not the pharisees who have rebranded perfection, while themselves remaining white-washed sepulchers, but the whores and crooks who desire Jesus not on their own terms, but His.

This Homily was first published by Fr. Leon here:
https://www.torch.op.org/torch/a-man-had-two-sons

Our Lady once said to us:

August 25, 2001 “Dear children! Today I call all of you to decide for holiness. May for you, little children, always in your thoughts and in each situation, holiness be in the first place, in work and in speech. In this way, you will also put it into practice; little by little, step by step, prayer and a decision for holiness will enter into your family. Be real with yourselves and do not bind yourselves to material things but to God. And do not forget, little children, that your life is as passing as a flower. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

We can become the son who says no at first but eventually does the will of his father…Our Lady will help us get there.

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

 

Mission Statement

Mary TV is a lay apostolate founded to put at the Gospa’s service (Our Lady’s service) modern communication technologies to bring her presence in Medjugorje – and her school in Medjugorje – to the world.

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“Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world!”

Pope St. John Paul II – February 24, 1990

“Dear children, my real, living presence among you should make you happy because this is the great love of my Son. He is sending me among you so that, with a motherly love, I may grant you safety!”

Our Lady of Medjugorje – July 2, 2016

“Rejoice, little children, because God is merciful and loves you all with His immeasurable love and leads you to the way of salvation through my coming here!”

Our Lady of Medjugorje – June 25, 2018

“My Son promised me that evil will never win, because you, the souls of the just, are here!”

Our Lady of Medjugorje – November 2, 2014

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Our Lady Speaks

Vicka's Note MaryTV

Vicka, one of the visionaries in Medjugorje, wrote the note (above) after Our Lady spoke with her during an apparition in Medjugorje in April, 1999, about Mary TV’s  plan to build a television facility in Medjugorje.

Vicka wrote to Denis: “Our Lady says that the plan is good – but you need to wait a little.  Now you can get prepared little by little, until Our Lady tells when the right moment is.  You don’t need to hurry, make haste, but to be patient.”

When Our Lady said this to Vicka, the technical genius in Medjugorje that she had her eyes upon, who would begin Mary TV’s live streaming from Medjugorje, was seven years old.

Totus Tuus (Totally Yours)

Immaculate Conception, Mary my Mother, Live in me, Act in me, Speak in me and through me, Think your thoughts in my mind, Love through my heart, Give me your dispositions and feelings, Teach, lead me and guide me to Jesus, Correct, enlighten and expand my thoughts and behavior, Possess my soul, Take over my entire personality and life, replace it with Yourself, Incline me to constant adoration, Pray in me and through me, Let me live in you and keep me in this union always.

Our Lady gave this prayer 25 years before She started appearing in Medjugorje. This prayer is being answered through Our Lady’s presence in Medjugorje and through Her messages. Mother Immaculata writes: “This is Mary’s hour and She is about to crush Satan’s head. Her very being is like incandescent heat in the center of the Trinity and the manifestation of Her power is growing daily. The Immaculate Conception prayer (which is what Our Lady called the prayer she gave me for union with Her) has been used by exorcists who have told me that the devil reacts violently to it and is subdued by it. We are praying daily for the success of Mary TV!“

Our Lady Gives A Sign…

Mary_with_Sun

MARY TV was LIVE STREAMING Ivan’s May 24, 2013 apparition on Mt. Podbrdo (Apparition Hill) in Medjugorje. My wife, Cathy, was praying in front of her computer in the US, connected through the Internet, welcoming Our Lady along with everyone gathered on the mountain. She couldn’t see anything on her computer screen because it was late at night and Ivan had said, “No lights.” She found herself asking Our Lady for a sign – a little light – as a sign that MARY TV was on the right track and really serving her. Just after the apparition, when she went to give an account on Mary TV’s Facebook page, the page opened with this picture that she had never seen before, captioned: “MARY APPEARS OVER BUILDING IN MEDJUGORJE, PHOTO TAKEN BY PILGRIM.” Our Lady is standing directly over MARY TV’s studios, her feet right where we have two POV cameras STREAMING 24/7 LIVE TO THE WORLD Apparition Hill & Cross Mountain!

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Our Lady spoke to Vicka during an apparition in Medjugorje in April, 1999, about the importance of Mary TV’s mission. At that time she told Vicka that she herself (Our Lady) would begin Mary TV! She did! But she didn’t do it alone. The generosity of her children made Mary TV a reality for her. Your generosity is needed now for it to continue!