Be A Thinking People

A special reflection from A Friend of Medjugorje, addressing the pilgrims gathered for the re-consecration of the Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages. We share this with you.
 

December 9, 2011 A.D.

A special reflection from A Friend of Medjugorje, addressing the pilgrims gathered for the re-consecration of the Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages. We share this with you.

While singing litanies of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, litanies of Our Lady, St. Joseph, and the Holy Saints, all those who attended the first of the Five Days of Prayer processed through the Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages to re-consecrate the mission building to God. We were blessed to have Our Lady with us this past March to do this with Her presence here in a particular way. However, it is a grace for us to bless Our Lady’s building every December while we sing and pray throughout its hallways, stairwells, and work areas. We know this action is meaningful to Our Lady and as A Friend of Medjugorje mentions in his greeting, it holds a significance to all the work that will take place within its walls for the coming year.

Be a Thinking People

A Friend of Medjugorje

While standing outside the Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages, A Friend of Medjugorje gave a brief reflection to prepare all who were gathered for the 5 Days of Prayer, December 8-12, for the Reconciling of Ourselves, Our Families and Our Nation back to God, to consider the significance and meaning of the annual dedication and re-consecration of the Tabernacle. They are about to begin to pray.

We want to greet you again this year and thank you for coming. We know that what we do here today is more like when Rachel, Jacob’s wife died when she gave birth to Benjamin, and lost her life; and it ended up that a stone monument was built on the side of the road to Jerusalem. It’s just right outside of Bethlehem, and it’s still there to this day. And it was an insignificant afternoon. They were travelling in their caravan, she got ready to give birth, she died in that child birth, and her tomb was there when Jesus passed there on the journey of the presentation from Bethlehem back to Jerusalem with Joseph and Mary. Rachel’s burial had significance for Jacob and the caravan but they could not comprehend this event would be referred to throughout history. Even scripture written centuries ago stated “to this day Rachel’s tomb is there.” It was ancient when Christ passed it, and now, two thousand years after Christ’ birth, you can go there and pray at this place just off the side of the road. It’s still there, it’s just a white-washed tomb. For history, so often is being made with what is insignificant in the moment. And we live those kind of moments here.

This stone building, the Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages, is a special building. Its purpose is for the preservation of Our Lady’s messages and this way of life based in Our Lady’s messages. It is already becoming history, a major part of an event that for now is insignificant to the world. Even for us who partake in this event of re-consecration, it seems an insignificant afternoon and we do not comprehend the significance all this will have throughout history. The Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages has gone beyond the breadth and scope of what we planned it to be, and our re-consecration each year might be seen as insignificant. But, it’s all about peace for the Queen of Peace. Peace is something difficult to attain in this moment in history. But even Jesus Christ, the King of Peace, lost peace. You’d never think it, but when He carried the sins of the world in the crucifixion, there was no peace. God abandoned Him. “Why has Thou forsaken Me?” He said. And, of course God abandons that where sin is. He carried the sins of the world and lost peace. It’s hard to imagine that Jesus Himself, God, had lost peace. So, when man loses God, man loses peace. We know we’re in un-peaceful times. So today, the re-consecration of the Tabernacle is significant for the next year, for all of history, for all that will be produced. The re-consecration affects what takes place for the year to come, for what’s output here, through the Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages, for the materials, that come through here that affect people to have peace across the whole world. It doesn’t take large numbers to gather here for this re-consecration, no more than what Rachel’s dying meant for her family, as nobody heard outside their gathering, Rachel’s wailing. But history is made sometimes indiscreetly. History was made this way in Iwo Jima, five or six men holding up the flag. They never knew they were doing something significant. They were just putting the flag up. So, it’s these moments that we live in that we don’t really understand how big they can be.

We’ve read about the Secret Service men with the President. They’re with the new President of the United States after he’s elected. They see each new president go in the White House with a spring in their step. The presidents run up steps to the White House, sometimes two at a time, maybe three at a time. They’re running up, but by the end of eight years, they’re going step by step real slowly. I know some of you have been here year after year, some of you had a conversion maybe twenty years ago, some of you two years ago. And with that freshness of conversion, comes that freshness of peace. But, with that and your Consecration, always comes the attack of satan. Our Lady has relayed to us that while we consecrate ourselves to Her, satan can no longer have us, but he sure is not going to make our life easy. So, we’ve learned this. We have the freshness of the honeymoon of a new conversion, everything’s going our way, then everything starts falling apart. If you listened to Mejanomics earlier today about this ‘crisis in faith’ in God when Our Lady came in 1981; that She spoke of that crisis of faith, but now it has shifted. What was once a crisis of faith in God is now a growing faith in God, and the crisis of faith is transferring towards our system, the economy, the civilization, society as it travels along, people are losing faith in it. So the faith of many is being transferred right now back to God and being lost more and more toward the world! The more we transfer people to where the correct faith should be, which is in God, which is in following Our Lady’s messages, the sooner the world will know peace. But it’s gotta go through its crucifixion, it’s gotta go through its purification, it’s gotta go through its trial.

There is an archbishop. He is Italian, Catholic, he became a priest, he went to Rome, he was well liked there, he became a bishop, and is now an archbishop. I saw him when he first started coming home for Christmas visits several years ago, the spring in his step. But somehow now, I see in his countenance, the burden of authority. You have authority that you’ve been given by Our Lady for the conversion of the entire world. It doesn’t come without difficulty; it’s not going to come without pain. But it will always lead to peace. And you can never have peace without pain.

Listen Here to Mejanomics Referenced in this talk

And so, as we begin the re-consecration, let’s reflect on these thoughts. It’s easy to really think of what to say. You don’t have to prepare for things, like what I’m saying now, preparing what you’re going to say. It’s always in you. If you pray unceasingly, you’re always thinking about these things; and that thought creates another thought, a more profound thought. And so, while you’re here at Caritas these five days, be thinking; be a thinking people, thoughtful people, contemplating God. Who are you? What has He called you for and where are you going? So, with that said, take with seriousness what you’re doing. While seemingly insignificant, you’re consecrating all the work, all the millions of booklets and pages waiting to be printed this next year until the next consecration. That this has some value or worth for the salvation of the world.

The Sacred Heart statue in front of the Tabernacle of Our Lady’s Messages. Our Lady is always pointing us to Her Son, Jesus, but in this time of grace, He is pointing us to His Mother. It is His joy that we follow His Mother. The message we picked as a group this morning, December 9, 2011, during our Morning Prayer follows:

May 2, 2005

“Dear children, I am with you to take you all to my Son. I wish to bring you all to salvation. Follow me, because only in this way will you be able to find true peace and happiness. My little children, come with me.”