Everyone Needs to Experience Poverty

[ANNOUNCER]

The subject matter contained in this presentation is based on Biblical principles and designed to give you accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that neither the presenter nor the broadcaster is engaged to render legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Since your situation is fact-dependent, you may wish to additionally seek the services of an appropriately licensed legal, accounting, real estate, or investment professional.

“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life– what you shall eat or drink– or about your body– what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

“Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap. They gather nothing into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you, by worrying, add a single moment to your life span?

“Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will He not much more provide for you, oh you of little faith?

“So do not worry and say, what are we to eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what are we to wear? All these things the pagans seek. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

“But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”

This is Mejanomics with a Friend of Medjugorje.

[COC – REYES]

Welcome to Mejanomics with a Friend of Medjugorje. What is the value of being poor?  A Friend of Medjugorje is going to talk about that tonight in the broadcast. This broadcast originally aired on December 31, 2009 and it was titled, “Everyone Needs to Experience Poverty.” Now we shared this broadcast with you in 2022 during the Woman of Revelation series which you can go back and listen to on Mej.com. Tonight’s broadcast is Mejanomics at its finest. And what a Friend of Mejanomics talks about tonight are the things which many have forgotten about. Tonight’s broadcast is about 20 minutes long. Here is a Friend of Medjugorje, December 31, 2009.

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Well, Happy New Year’s Eve and I hope everybody is making their resolutions. Resolutions are something that always has to be done in the present because we get so busy scurrying about and doing this and how the world has enslaved us, that we actually quickly lose those resolutions and think, I’ll make them tomorrow.

So the present is always the time to be making the resolution and then the resolve is just to stay with that. And today, this day and age, the way things sail us along in the winds of society blowing through these sails and the rudder is society. And the only way to hold onto that is to have a prayer life, a quiet time where we can stay committed to what we are called to do.

Exciting times, always, for the second of the month message coming up the day after tomorrow. And also, Marija is in Medjugorje.

Sometimes she goes to the mountain and of course, we have the famous message that She said, I say famous, all of them are famous, but this is particularly of interest because Our Lady says,

“Now is when satan is unchained, consecrate yourself to my Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

That is what we were to do with him [satan] being unchained. That was a stunning message and one we’ve often have promoted because we think it is very important.

We thought he [satan] was released in the 80’s and the 90’s. Actually, I discussed this with Marija in what I understood at that point, the way she explained it was he had long chains in the 90’s.

But now he [satan] has no chains. And we see that with the wreckage and the murder and the divorce, everything.

And of course, a lot of things are tied to economics and a lot of the woes today are tied to the economics, particularly in the way it causes stress, causes people to be greedy, causes people to sin.

And so, the purpose of Mejanomics is to bring people more stable, to be more independent of the society in a way that you can be more free to serve God.

Often we’ve heard, oh I wish I could do this but I can’t, I’ve got to work or you know, often people are living on two incomes.

In whatever means people have where they are at the bottom of the society in their income or at the top, people on all those levels can live beyond their means.

Very wealthy live beyond their means. We often hear about professional sports players. Suddenly they come into all this money, and they have five houses, and then they are bankruptcy, making eight figures, not six figures. They can’t do this. They don’t know how to manage money.

So, it doesn’t matter where you are, you’ve got to live beneath your means and that brings peace and security. And not only security, it brings that ability to be connected more to God rather than the worries of the world, as we quoted last week about going week to week, pay check to pay check, never resting, because people just won’t do a little sacrifice, cut back and radically change your situation.

The peace that would come from that would be tremendous. Your pay back on sacrifice is much better than 30 years or the next 50 years of just going from check to check.

So, that’s what this show is about. J.G. Holland said,

“Of all the advantages which come to any young man, I believe it to be demonstratably true that poverty is the greatest.”

That’s what motivated me to do what I did. Poverty is a great motivator. You know, now we’ve got things that alleviate poverty, and so many people do nothing.

And their god is the government and money. We say, why Depressions, like 1929 we were talking about this church, this beautiful church being built in the heart of poverty.

And Goethe said, philosopher Goethe said,

“Everything in the world can be endured accept continual prosperity.”

It can’t stay. That’s just the facts. I know I read years ago that there is a 70-year financial cycle, all the way back before the Roman Empire, through the world trade routes, everything, had global depression. It’s every 70 years.

They say we had a depression or economic collapse in ’89. We had it now. We had it, what, in the 70’s. But these were not total corrections. What we are talking about is coming to a point of total correction.

And I think you have to root this to the message, June 25, 1989, that

“satan has special plans to enslave you through materialism. he is active in this plan.”

And so we armor ourselves with so many things, just like David.

David, they wanted to give him armor, and this was too much baggage. It weighed him down. He said get rid of this stuff. He needed to be free. He just needed to throw the sling and kill Goliath.

And now we have a Goliath before us. We have so many things that don’t mean anything to us.

Churches, they fail to win allegiances many times because they are just going to material equipment. Our value here in the mission, as a mission is our life, our prayer life, what we live.

All we have to be successful at is our prayer. Everything else is just a tool to spread that. But it’s not the equipment and then our prayer life.

So, you have churches failing. Colleges, you know they want the best dormitories, they want all these things, and in that, they forget learning.

And you’ve got these kids running around with parents, with huge sums of money, dressing them up. What value is that? Nobody has been taught.

Saturdays are such a wasted labor day when people could be securing their future. The whole football scene, all this stuff is garbage.

And I’m going to offend people by saying that, but I’m telling you, you’re going regret this folly that you are so following when you should be poising yourself, not poisoning yourself with football and these sports and the excessive love for them. Sports is okay but the excessive love for them, Our Lady said that, excessive love, do not have excessive love for sports. Its poisoning, instead, poisoning your future.

Instead, you should be poising your future on Saturdays. Saturdays are our big workday here for the community. Its where we do a lot of our stuff to make it for the next week.

We have a saying here, five on one. Five days for God we work, one day for us, that’s Saturday, and one day for rest. And people have forgot this whole method.

And it’s a great thing and a great gift to be able to devote most of your week just to be working for God.

And people say, oh yeah, that’s you. No. We were in society just like you. So, it’s what we were talking about earlier. The circumstances are this.

And what are you going to make with those circumstances is 90% attitude. What does one person prosper.

There were 150 Medjugorje centers when we started this mission, when I was in Boston. And what made this break loose, compared to the others? Not that they’re not doing work, not that they’re not good, and we’re for everybody.

But what was the difference? A lot of it was the approach, the financial structure, the way, we didn’t want to be tied to that. We wanted first the spiritual life.

We wanted to live it. We didn’t want to be a Medjugorje center. Our Lady liked it enough when She came here, She says,

‘I want to establish a community here.”

I was shocked by this, when Marija told me this after an apparition. And so, we just ran it the same way.

You know, “The value of money lies in its control by spiritual purposes.”

That’s a French proverb. So, to desire it for its own sake is to destroy all human values. And that’s where we are as a society.

We are destroying ourselves, valuing the money, equating it to something that is going to increase in value, but it decreases. Its purpose or silver or gold is strictly to be managed by spiritual purposes and for spiritual intents.

You know, God gave us silver, God gave us gold. It’s also a French proverb where,

“The golden age is the age in which gold does not rule.”

So, it’s our attitude towards it. And then you prosper, and I mean prosper. I don’t mean you are wealthy, and you’ve got a yacht. I mean you prosper in that you are able to live underneath your means.

The happiest people, and maybe this is the moment to read it, is those who are people who don’t have a lot. We’ve been in areas and different countries where the happiest people were those who had the least.

And so, God knows what we need and so depressions come to correct things and one thing we need to be corrected from is posterity. We take it for granted. We believe it’s our due, like I wrote in Prayer to Heal Our Land.

“The purple mountain majesty is no longer held as our blessing, but as our due.”

We’re owed that for ski lifts and enjoyment. All this, we just have really shunned God in looking at Who gifted us with these things. And we’re going to lose them. We’re in danger of losing it. Everybody feels it now.

So, the whole thing is, how do you poise yourself?

Do you want to keep wasting your Saturdays running around because some football coach told your kids to be here?

I tell you, it’s stupid. And one day, you’re going to say the same thing. You may call me that now. But you’ll regret it. I’m telling you, it’s going to come. Joan.

[COC – JOAN]

This is entitled, “Wealth that Can’t Be Tallied.”

“Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America. Approximately half the population lives on the equivalent of less than one dollar a day.

“The scene is familiar to anyone who has traveled the backroads of Latin America. There are miles of ramshackle homes with dirt floors, no electricity, and no running water. Women use rocks to pound the laundry clean in streams that run alongside their homes. Half-dressed children without shoes run through scattered livestock. Men fish with lines attached to pieces of wood since they don’t have rods or reels.

“To Western eyes, unaccustomed to travelling here, it looks desperately bleak.

“Yet, there is something else here you can’t escape noticing.

“Most of the people seem genuinely happy.

“Kids play with no less abandon than kids anywhere else. Men and women greet you with a nod, a toothy grin, and a pleasant, “Buenos Dias.” Their eyes smile. They laugh a lot.

“Larry, an attorney from La Jolla who married a local told about the first time he invited his wife’s family over for dinner. There was a terrific rainstorm, and since the river was high, and her family had no transportation, he was afraid they wouldn’t make it. He needn’t have worried, he said. He could hear them approaching two blocks away, laughing and singing, covered with mud.

“Most Americans have difficult imaging the daily struggle of these people. Yet, they aren’t miserable, far from it.

“‘It’s true, the poor are genuinely happy here,’ says Hiroshio, an Argentine who has lived and travelled throughout Latin America.

“To us, it looks like they have nothing. But they draw tremendous strength from their families, their Catholic Faith, and their community.

“It’s a sad irony that so many in the land of material comfort suffer from discontent, anxiety, and neurosis, while the folks here, earning a subsistence living off the land and the sea seem relaxed and cheerful.

“Some will argue that you can’t miss what you never had, what you wouldn’t even dare to dream. But something more is going on here.

“One stoic philosopher said, ‘Learn to wish that everything should come to pass exactly as it does.’

“His student also agreed. The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

“This is not just a practical mindset. For Nicaraguans, it is a way of life.

“When you can’t make the world conform to your desires, your best option is to moderate those desires and see contentment within. Happiness, it turns out, is an inside-out job. Satisfaction from fulfilling material wants on the other hand is always short-lived.

“This idea was widespread in the ancient world. Buddha in India, and the stoic philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome counseled people to break their emotional attachments to status and material wealth and cultivate an attitude of acceptance instead.

“To some, this sounds defeatist. What’s the point in railing against circumstances that can’t be altered? More often than not, changing your mind is a more effective strategy than changing the world.

“I don’t mean to romanticize the living conditions of these Nicaraguans incidentally. This is tough living. Literacy rates are low. The infant mortality rate is high. Many Nicaraguans lack access to basic education and essential health care. Still, you can’t help but admire the dignity and spirit here.

“As the British essayist, Eric Heller, observed, ‘Be careful how you interpret the world. It is like that.’”

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

And I believe you have the same thing when people say, “If I had a different birth or born in different circumstances or better training and different employment or not these hardships…”

What you have before you is what God placed you in. And this speaks a Biblical truth, what you just said. The principle is that, you know, what’s in the present is God’s will.

Now, you may mess that up, and you may put yourself in some dire situations, but the fruit of those bad decisions is God’s will because, you know, it serves as chastisement in some ways or shape, form or fashion.

So, the best thing to do is just start taking those hardships and say, instead of saying, “Take this obstacle away,” what do you do in circumstances that make it better?

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

And you have been listening to a Friend of Medjugorje from December 31, 2009. More to come after this short break.

[COMMERCIAL]

Our Lady in Medjugorje said on January 25, 1997,

“…I invite you to reflect about your future…”

Do we live Her words and reflect about our future and where we, as a culture, are moving?

Do we keep our trust in our jobs, homes, money, life necessities, investments, stock markets?

Do we believe that our 401(k)s or other retirements will always be there, and that the current economic order will recover?

Does Our Lady give us insight to the future and what we should expect?

Is the economy going to recover and life return to normal?

It Ain’t Gonna Happen, by a Friend of Medjugorje, takes Our Lady’s messages and places them where they belong, which is over the issues of your housing, the economy, everyday necessities, stock markets and your investments, to help you see what you must do to make changes in your life, whether you are poor, middle-class, or rich.

It Ain’t Gonna Happen, a book of astounding revelations about the present economic order and where we are heading.

It Ain’t Gonna Happen, by a Friend of Medjugorje. To order, visit mej.com, spelled M-E-J.com, or call Caritas in the U.S., 205-672-2000. 205-672-2000.

It Ain’t Gonna Happen, by a Friend of Medjugorje, available through Caritas of Birmingham.

[END COMMERCIAL]

[THEME MUSIC]

[COC – REYES]

We’ve been listening to a Friend of Medjugorje on December 31, 2009.

Now, at this point in the broadcast, a Friend of Medjugorje takes a very hard right and goes headlong into how what he’s been talking about should manifest. And this is where we will pick up.

Here is a Friend of Medjugorje.

[FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

I mean, you’re settlers. You’re settling…People don’t have this concept. In fact, people’s concept is to live in a subdivision. You’re nomads! These are nomadic people.

“How long are you going to be in this house?”

“Well, I can move up to another place,” or, “I’m stuck here.”

It’s not even home!

What do you call home? It’s a house. Home is someplace that your kids play in the creeks that their grandkids play in the same creeks. You know, you have your own cemetery. And nobody thinks this way anymore. Nobody thinks “village” mentality. And to build a culture…

We keep going to Hollywood. “Give us different movies!” People say, because they want them to create the culture.

You take charge. That’s what Our Lady’s messages are simply saying.

You take the charge of your spiritual life.

You take the value of the money and let it be in control spiritually. That’s spiritual management.

The silver, in and of itself, the attachment to that, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s a transitional thing.

So, if you can divest and get your equity, do whatever you have to do. Get your savings, put it in that in an interim until you can find you someplace or to restructure your life, however God calls you.

Yes, there’s cities, and there’ll always be cities. But the City of David had animals in it! The cities today are sanitized of everything! And people are starting to think different, new mentalities, coming through the messages, even though they don’t have any idea, even if they’re pagan. The messages are affecting things, and people are starting to say…

Right now in Manhattan, they’re making ordinances where you can have chickens! And it should be that way. And we’ve talked about that before, hogs and everything else. We need to go back to a closer agrarian way of life, even in the city.

And so, can you imagine…Let’s just go back to the 1900s in the cities. The city of New York. You know how many horses was there? You know what that smelled like going down the streets? And you can look on any old pictures, and you see the women walk on Sundays with their parasols and the gentlemen with their top hats like Lincoln always wore? And they were refined. They had nice houses in the little city streets, one after another, in the immigrant neighborhoods. Everything had their flowers out there.

And it stunk! It stunk! Okay? Well, that wasn’t a problem for the people because that was part of life.

Give me the stench of that or let me say it another way, give me the smell of that instead of the stench of crime and the greed and the brutality and unfriendliness of the cities.

So, cities even need to be transformed. Actually, they need to be broken up. Small neighborhoods, four or five blocks, oughta just take charge and say, “We want out.” Make your own little village. You know, go to the city councils. There’s a lot can be done.

I haven’t thought about these things for years. But the point is, is stop…

What’s that old 60s song? Stop. Look. Look what’s happening.

Y’all are too young to know. [LAUGHTER]

But, stop! Just stop. Our Lady’s message is that. “…today…” That’s every…“Dear children, today…” Look at it. She’s saying, “Stop, digest what’s happening, and what are you going to do about it?”

And so, there’s a lot you can do. People are hand-wringing and thinking, “Okay, I’ve just got to pray.” Well, prayer leads to action. Prayer leads to change, conversion, and then that conversion leads to action. You need to change…What? “…the direction of your life…” She says. (March 25, 1990) “You’re going one way. I want you to go another way.”

And people, I’ve had one guy from New York once said, “It’s easy for you. You’ve got a community.”

No! I was doing what I was doing for years, 10-15 years before the Community. I was changing my direction in life. Thank God I was ahead of the curve, and thank God I’m able to do what I’m doing now in promoting the message, because we fell in a pattern.

And everybody should be in tune with the messages even before they hear it. And it’s often here, we’ll speak here. We’ll say the prayer at the apparition time of the 25^th message, and what we say is exactly what Our Lady talked about, or we’ll be giving a talk the day before, and then the message comes out the next day with it. Or we pick a message the next day, and exactly what we were talking about was the message.

You start living the simple life, you become in tune with the Holy Spirit and what Our Lady wants to tell you, and then, it’s confirmed, later, from a priest at the pulpit or somebody on the street, whatever.

So, there’s a lot you can do, and remember, your circumstance, no matter what it is, 90% of that to changing those circumstances is your attitude. And that’s all got to be based on the message.

[END CLIP]

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

The subject matter contained in this presentation is based on Biblical principles and designed to give you accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that neither the presenter nor the broadcaster is engaged to render legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Since your situation is fact-dependent, you may wish to additionally seek the services of an appropriately licensed legal, accounting, real estate, or investment professional.

This ends the Mejanomics broadcast with a Friend of Medjugorje. These broadcasts are available as CDs which are sent directly to your doorstep on a monthly subscription. For information, contact Caritas in the U.S. at 205-672-2000.