Authority of Experience

April 4, 2016 A.D.

Our Lady Queen of Peace of Medjugorje’s April 2, 2016 Message
Given through Mirjana on the Day for Non-Believers

“Dear children, do not have hearts that are hard, closed and filled with fear. Permit my motherly love to illuminate them and fill them with love and hope; so that, as a mother, I may soothe your pains because I know them, I experienced them. Pain elevates and is the greatest prayer. My Son, in a special way, loves those who suffer pains. He sent me to soothe them for you and bring hope. Trust in Him. I know that it is difficult for you because you see more and more darkness around you. My children, it is necessary to break it by prayer and love. The one who prays and loves is not afraid, he has hope and a merciful love, he sees the light and sees my Son. As my apostles, I call you to keep trying to be an example of merciful love and hope. Always pray anew for all the more love because merciful love brings light which breaks every darkness – it brings my Son. Do not be afraid, you are not alone, I am with you. I implore you to pray for your shepherds that at every moment they may have love, that they may work for my Son with love – through Him and in memory of Him. Thank you.”

Authority of Experience

by a Friend of Medjugorje

Our Lady today confirms the growth of evil. All can see, more and more, this darkness, but many think we can legislate it away, fight it by laws, protest, talk and/or program it away. The problem is those influenced by the spirit of the world who see it, believe they can solve the problem by human solutions. Yet, they do not want God in the equation of solving the problem of darkness. They, therefore, miss identify the cause of the problem, which is their rearrangement of “everything” holy. From marriage, to the life of the unborn, to materialism—they are making these “everythings” the opposite of what God intended. Their human solutions are offered to “fix” consequences of darkness, while at the same time they want to legitimize illicit behaviors which is the petri dish that is growing more and more the deadly bacteria of darkness.

Recently, three first graders in Anchorage, Alaska, plotted to poison and kill one of their classmates. They planned to put what they thought was poison (silica gel) on a sandwich to kill a 6-year-old child from their class. It would not have done so, yet they believed it would. Another classmate, hearing their plans, turned them in. The school is a high-end charter school where 400 students are on a waiting list for several years to be admitted into the school. All the school did, in the end, was suspend the three first graders. The question must be posed, “Where did this darkness come from?” It is obvious it did not originate from the three children, but rather it came from bad, very bad parenting and/or from broken family. The concept by these three children to take such action is learned behavior, ideas that came to them through the T.V., cell phones, the internet, atrocious video games, bad parental examples, and more. It is clearly within the parent’s responsibility and capability to shield and censor, yes, censor, their children at that age from these things that teach such darkness. Families, with little or no church, do not teach the commandments to their children, do not pray with them, or read the Bible. This leaves the children in today’s society at the mercy of society’s influences—darkness can then easily fill hearts. Their minds are formed by the church of the godless culture and the bible of humanism. Why is it that another first grader had the conscience to know it was wrong and the courage to turn the three in? What formed his conscience? Many have hard, closed hearts. Those who do so will teach the same to their children. Our Lady wants to fill your heart and illuminate them with love and hope. When a heart is filled with fear, it means its tank is empty of God, closed to Him.

Everyone has had the experience of being somewhere when your automobile tank is running on empty and you don’t know if you can make it to a service station. You begin to feel anxiety. If you are on a trip with no gas station in sight, you become more and more filled with fear. An empty heart tank without God is a heart filled with fear, yet empty. In regards to your car, when you get to the service station you become filled with hope, your worries are dashed away and you even feel joy. The painful worry is gone. This is what Our Lady wishes to illuminate in you so as to fill and soothe your heart, driving away the anxiety of past self-inflicted wounds from sins that haunt you, as well as the pains that have come, not from self-inflicted wounds, but from difficulties and experiences of living for God. Our Lady relayed today, April 2, 2016:

“…Pain makes prayer great…”

Our Lady speaks with authority today, not by God’s elevation of Her, but by the authority of Her own experiences and cognition—life on earth experiences that after 2,000 years, She has not lost memory of. Rather, She reflects and recalls them for us today relaying, “You must go through what I went through because as I tell you and I guide you with my authority of experience, you also, as my apostles, will be able to reflect and recall your trials to help others. Your cognition will give you authority of experience to help others as now ‘I’ help you because ‘I’ experienced them.” Our Lady, with authority of experience can say “pain elevates and is the greatest prayer.” Why? Because She knows pain and how it made Her all the more elevated toward God.

We cannot break darkness in our own selves, much less in the culture, with closed hearts. A closed heart is not repentant. An open heart may be no different in the sins it commits, but can be a saint, not because the one with the open heart is better or holier in what they do. A closed heart vs. an open heart can commit the same sins. But one with an open heart can be a saint, not because he is better or holier in what he does but because the former heart (closed) is unrepentant, whereas the latter heart (open) is repentant. If the pain you suffer from is self-inflicted by your sins, do two things: First, accept your pain saying, “I deserve it,” and second, “Repent.” Pope Benedict XVI said at the canonization of St. Josemaria Escriva that this saint shows us that we can be a saint despite many mistakes. This by no means should cause anyone to be content in sin or rationalize that sin is okay. Rather, it shows that striving for God and opening your heart to be filled with love and hope, sanctifies and helps cure one from sin and darkness, and leads to holiness.

What happens when we have a closed heart and what happens when we have an open heart? In the following, you will see Our Lady’s inspiration of today’s message echoed in the following homily Pope Francis gave during a Mass at Casa Santa Marta several months ago. He pointed out, using the life of King David, that in the lives of the saints there are temptations and sins.

“The Lord—Pope Francis said—rejected Saul ‘because his heart was closed,’ he had not obeyed Him, and He decided to choose another king.”

The Pope pointed out that the choice God made was far from human standards since David was the youngest son of Jesse, he was only a boy. But—the Pope continued—the Lord made it clear to the prophet Samuel that he looks beyond appearances:

“The Lord looks into the heart.”

“We are often the slaves of appearances and allow ourselves to pursue appearances: ‘But God knows the truth.’ And that is so in this story…Jesse’s seven sons are presented and the Lord does not choose any of them, he lets them pass by. Samuel is in a bit of difficulty and says to Jesse: ‘The Lord has not chosen any of them, are these all the sons you have? And Jesse replied that there was still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.’ To the eyes of man this boy did not count.”

He did not matter to men, but the Lord chose him and ordered Samuel to anoint him and, the Pope said,

“the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David” and from that day on “the whole of David’s life was the life of a man anointed by the Lord, chosen by the Lord.”

So—Pope Francis asked,“Did the Lord make him a saint?” No, is the answer—he said:

“King David is saint King David, this is true, but he became a saint after living a long life, a life during which he sinned:

“A saint and a sinner. A man who managed to unite the Kingdom, he was able to lead the people of Israel. But he fell into temptation…he committed sins: he was also a murderer. To cover up his lust, the sin of adultery…he commissioned a murder. He did! Did saint King David commit murder? When God sent the prophet Nathan to point this reality out to him, because he was not aware of the barbarity he had ordered, he acknowledged his sin and asked for forgiveness.” King David’s “…life went on. He suffered personally following the betrayal of his son, but he never, he never used God for his own purpose.”

Pope Francis recalled that when David was forced to flee from Jerusalem, he sent back the ark and declared that he would not use the Lord in his defense. And when he was insulted, David would say to himself:

“It is what I deserve.”

And then, Francis noted, “He was magnanimous (merciful).” He could have killed Saul,“but he did not do so.” Saint King David, a great sinner, but a repentant one. The Pope said,

“The life of this man moves me. It makes us think of our own lives…We have all been chosen by the Lord to be Baptized, to be part of His people, to be saints; we have been consecrated by the Lord on the path towards sainthood. Reading about this life, the life of a child—no…not a child, he was a boy—from boyhood to old age, during which he did many good things and others that were not so good. It makes me think that during the Christian journey, the journey the Lord has invited us to undertake, there is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future.”

Both of these messages—Our Lady’s and Pope Francis’—are for all of us. They confirm each other in declaring that an open heart filled with love and hope will become more and more necessary as darkness grows. We are all sinners but the difference between the darkness taking over the good, and the good overcoming darkness is that the good are always ready to repent, while the closed hearted will be enveloped more and more in darkness.

Live Holy,

Who is a Friend of Medjugorje?

Be sure to listen to the April 2, 2016 Radio WAVE, with A Friend of Medjugorje, a powerful broadcast discussing Our Lady’s April 2 message.To listen to the April 2, 2016 broadcast titled, Our Lady’s Bypass Surgery for the Church, visit here…