Oxford Girl

[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.

 

[THEME MUSIC]

[NARRATOR]

“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 splendour 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.”

 

[THEME MUSIC]

[ANNOUNCER]

This is Mejanomics with a Friend of Medjugorje.

 

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

Here we are, just a few days before Christmas, a beautiful season! Why? You know why. But do we understand it? Do we live it?

 

We had a feedback that came in, asking a question. She writes:

 

“I picked this random message last week, praying every day since for deeper understanding. Is there an article or Radio WAVE program that mentions it that could give me a further understanding?”

 

The message she picked at random is June 26, 1986:

 

“You will have as many graces as you want. That depends on you. You will have love when you want it, as long as you want it. That depends on you.”

 

How do you explain that further? It’s really not complicated. The more you invest, the more you return. The more you love, the more love comes back. Maybe that’s too simplistic for what she’s asking, wanting to go deeper into it, but Christmas is the same way. We can parallel that. The more Christmas has Christmas in it, the more Christmas we experience. And everything’s that way.

 

We know Jesus has taught us, and the Church has taught us, the Bible teaches us, that if you live the Ten Commandments, you follow that, you strive to follow it, you confess, you’ll experience more love, because the love of God descends upon those who are faithful to him. It’s a return. It’s like a boomerang. Whatever you give to God, He comes back ten times the more for you, for your good. And it could be even persecution. But if you understand that in the proper context, that’s His love, because persecution brings purification. Purification brings you closer to God and more love. He wants to purify us. Our Lady is here to purify everything, every road that we walk down was a bad step.

 

Our Lady spoke about this on September 2, 2006:

 

“You know that we have been gathering for me to help you to come to know the love of God.”

 

That’s what the question was, with the message that was picked at random.

 

“You will have as many graces as you want. That depends on you. You will have love when you want it…”

 

So, She just says, “…to know the love of God…” But then She speaks about the future to the visionary, and then She says this:

 

“…God is great. Great are His works. Do not deceive yourselves that you can do anything without Him, not even to take a single step…”

 

Pretty amazing. Why? Because we’ve taken many steps. I don’t mean small. I mean “many,” M-A-N-Y, steps without God, and the road we’re on is a bad path for everything, even Christmas.

 

So, I won’t go deep in the answer of this because this is not the context I want to answer this person about the random message that she picked says, “…That depends on you…” And it is. We’re off-course in the culture because we haven’t taken the right steps. We don’t see God as great. We see that man is great, that God’s works aren’t great, but that man’s works are great. That’s the path to take a step in the wrong direction.

 

We need to take Christmas back. We don’t have it anymore. The culture that goes with Christmas now is the culture of materialism. We’re just busy, busy, busy people. What kind of preparation are we doing? We’re in the middle of doing a 9-day Christmas novena. It’s beautiful. It’s long. It’s probably one of the only things that can be done that you prepare for nine days for Christmas. It’s beautiful. But is settles us in for a 9-day novena to Christmas day in preparation for Jesus. Are we preparing that? No. We’re getting this gift. We’re getting another gift and another and another. We’ll see all these gifts under the tree. They belong to this person and that person. You spent your whole Christmas in this preparation. And where’s Jesus? Does He have a gift under the tree? If we wanted to explain this, through words, the most powerful way to do it is through a song. Songs speak to us. They touch our heart. And it tells truth when it’s giving truth, as you’ll hear now.

 

[SONG]

Happy Birthday, Jesus. It’s that time of year. All the lights on the trees say Christmas time is near. Another year’s behind us. You helped us make it through. So, Happy Birthday Jesus. This song is just for You.

 

We all get so hung up on material things that times it seems like we forget what Christmas really means. It should be thanks we’re giving. That’s why I wrote this tune. Happy Birthday Jesus. This song is just for you.

 

There’s a gift for everyone but You underneath the tree. No, it’s not much, but I hope You like this song to You from me.

 

Happy Birthday Jesus. That’s why I wrote this tune. So, Happy Birthday Jesus. My song is just for You.

 

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

We stepped ahead without God. We’ve taken the wrong step. That’s what Our Lady was speaking about. You’re going to be walking a direction. The question is, is it the right direction? Merry Christmas is becoming more and more not merry, rather, sad and tragic. Why? We’ve taken the wrong step. Why? Because Christmas is not defined by Christians. It’s rather by the steps we go through toward consumerism, secularism, Hollywood, and the song industry. We must learn our enemy. What is the strategy? We apply that to satan. How does he work? Why does he work? How does he get us off the right path? his strategy is not to block the stream up. When he wants to win over, what he does, is he jumps in the stream. he doesn’t do anything. he flows along with it. “Hey! Christmas is here! Everybody clap! Everybody sing! Sing to Jesus! Do the Nativities!” he flows right along with it. But downstream, what he does, is he makes a little outlet and goes off to the right. Then another step downward, he diverts it to the left, and he does this all the way down the stream. And that’s how he dries the stream up. There’s no stream left. It’s dried up. Christmas has dried up the same way. That’s his tactic, to flow with the stream to do this. “We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to go buy Christmas trees. We’ve got to buy everybody gifts. We’ve got to get busy. We’ve got to open more stores.” Each one of these is an outlet. I’m not saying that as a pun. That just came out from the Holy Spirit. An outlet of a stream flows out. A store outlet is doing the same thing. It is draining Christmas and its meaning away through consumerism. How do we do that? How does he start that? He didn’t start with the stores. he starts by, in the stream, jumping in with it. “Let’s celebrate Christmas. Let’s write songs,” like “Do You Hear What I Hear?” What about “Silver Bells”? What about “The Christmas Song”? What about “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or “Holly Jolly Christmas”? We’ve all grown up with these songs, even if you were born in the 40s, because this is when it came out. And then let’s go to another phase: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “Winter Wonderland” and “It’s the Most Beautiful Time of the Year,” “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow,” “White Christmas,” all these songs, you can say, and there’s two versions, were written by Jewish people in Hollywood. And one side says they do it because they wanted to celebrate the holidays of Christmas, and the other side says that they did it on purpose to get us away from Christmas.

 

So, it doesn’t matter what position you take. The step is wrong. It doesn’t matter who’s going to win the argument of covering up what was done. It was a secularization of Christmas. This is where it began. And it began to celebrate Christmas, to change it from a holy Birth of Jesus Christ to a holiday that everybody can celebrate, Jews and Christians. That’s the positive way. And the other version, as I just said, that these men de-Christ Christmas, and also Easter. We have the same songs, the same things. It’s a de-Christianization of Christmas. De-Christ out of the picture. You can know even if they had good will or bad will. It doesn’t matter. The devil’s behind it. he’s in the stream. “Let’s celebrate!”

 

We didn’t look at God’s great works. We looked at man’s and his songs. And these are top songs you hear constantly over and over and over. That’s why, on Radio WAVE we don’t have hardly any of these songs. We’ve got a couple of them, maybe, but it still has diverted and secularized Christmas.

 

Theodore Spencer was of Harvard, and before he died, he said Jesus was just a myth. And people catch on this. And that’s why somebody who doesn’t believe in Jesus can stand up and read or put it on the radio, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, because it doesn’t mean anything anymore. There’s nothing behind it. And they make it sound real Christmasy on the Christmas radio station. But we buy into these things, because we have slowly, through the decades, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and now, headed toward 2020, another decade. When are we going to turn this around? That’s what we’re supposed to be. Our Lady is here to reverse this. You are to take back Christmas. Godless people fed us. We ate it. We swallowed it. We grew fat as Santa Claus is. And now, our culture, so secularized, is choking on it. We’re dying. Christmas has been dying. And if you can’t observe that, if you don’t see it, you’re way off on your steps.

 

We have to take Christmas back. Christmas has to go back into the heart. We need to evaluate everything. The messages of Our Lady are just about that.

 

“You will have as many graces as you want. That depends on you…”

 

Are you taking Christmas back? One of those steps is the 9-day Christmas novena. You can online on our site and find that or call Caritas. And if you haven’t started yet, and you want to, go ahead and go do it and go past Christmas because Jesus is still here after Christmas night.

 

You, yourself, can measure Christmas. Do you think it is what it’s supposed to be today? Is it really true Christmas, or has it become invisible, the real Christmas? The Church itself has become invisible. It’s inconsequential now. It’s not convicting. It’s not converting the culture. They’re convicting and converting us to their way, and we go along with it, singing “Jingle Bells” and all these stupid things that we don’t even think about. Am I against “Jingle Bells”? No. Our kids sing that. But that’s not the primary direction we need to be looking at. You might say, “Oh, no. I don’t despise Christmas or deny it.” If you’re walking around in the culture and all your preparation is gift-giving, and that’s all you’re thinking about, “Yeah, it’s about Baby Jesus.” Are the same hours you put into that the same hours in adoring Jesus? Is it? Are you honest with yourself? The graces available on Christmas depends on you, what you invest, and are you honest if you say, “I deny Christmas”? Then why do we accept all the Christmas music on the stations disappearing on December 26^th, just after, just hours after the Birth of Jesus? It’s so death. I want to challenge you, on December 26^th, on the stations that are playing a lot of Christmas music, some of them dedicated 24/7, two months before Christmas, or right after Thanksgiving or even now before Thanksgiving, you turn that station back on and listen to it, the very next morning after Christmas, and you’ll feel coldness. You will feel death. You won’t feel the warmth Joseph and Mary felt in the stable.

 

Our Lady said on December 14, 1992 the steps in what you need to do for Christmas to bring it back. It’s a profound message. It’s an amazing revelation through these private revelations She’s giving to us. Can you imagine, Our Lady came down, spoke to Ivan at the prayer group and said these words? Listen carefully. This is directly from Heaven.

 

“…[I want you to] read especially the special passages in the Bible that concern Advent. Pray, dear children, especially during this time…”

 

See, this is December 14^th, preparation for Christmas.

 

“…and amongst your prayers prepare yourselves for the great day that is coming…”

 

This is December 14, 1992. Again, I repeat that. And then She continues,

 

“…that this Christmas will be different from the other Christmases…”

 

Wow! She’s giving you instructions to back your steps up, to go back in the fork in the road, when you took it to the right when you should’ve kept going straight, and go straight down this path, back to Christmas. That’s worthy of repeating, that one sentence:

 

“…that this Christmas will be different from the other Christmases, that it will be joyous, dear children…”

 

And then here’s the bombshell. This was an incredible part of the message. Beautiful, because we never heard this before. It’s not in the Bible. It’s private revelations about the Scriptures, public revelations.

 

“…Remember, dear children, how we were happy in the stable when my Son was born!…”

 

Wow! Do you realize you, in your lifetime, in 1992, the world was spoken to, giving us a revelation about the first Nativity, the first night, that merry, merry, happy Christmas?

 

“…Remember, dear children, how we were happy in the stable when my Son was born!…”

 

We never thought that. We thought they were sad, there was tragedy. No, Christmas today is sad and tragedy with all the wealth, all the warmth, all the conveniences. They had none of those things. And they were happy in the stable. And She finished with this:

 

“…May your family be happy and all those present in the stable.”

 

What does that say to you this Christmas? It’s an investment. Experience the stable. Be part of it. No matter what your circumstances are, there’s no excuse not to be happy if you prepare for Christmas, no matter what you have or what you don’t have.

 

These are beautiful words, incredible things! You need to be preparing for Christmas, right now. Read to your children Advent. Get this 9-day novena. Even if you’re late, start it and go through Christmas as I said earlier.

 

So, this is not the culture’s fault that we’re following them. It is us who accept abortion of Baby Jesus within hours of His Birth. The celebration of Jesus’ Birth is mainly after His Birth. Everything before His Birth is anticipation. But it cannot be defined as anticipation. Rather, the period before Christmas is and must be defined for what it has become. And what is that? One: commercialism. Two: materialism. Three: consumerism. What do these three things do? It kills love, it kills values, all those things that you cherish, and we know this! We know this is a truth! Why? Because Our Lady said, March 25, 1996:

 

“…In this time, when due to the spirit of consumerism, one forgets what it means to love and to cherish true values…put God in the first place…”

 

Jesus is supposed to be in the first place. But He’s not, because these three things, commercialism, materialism, consumerism, leaves the manger empty at 12 a.m. December 26^th. And for two months and three months, they’ve been stocking the shelves for this Baby that they could care less about.

 

You could respond, “There’s vestiges of Christmas the next day.” Well, that’s true. But the peak of Christmas is crossed over at midnight, and by daylight, four fifths of it is down the other side of the mountain from the peak. The culture we’ve accepted is clearing out the stores this spring, fashions, bar-be-que grills, that quick! Do a test. You go to the stores and see what happens.

 

Yes, Christmas has died in this culture that we’ve accepted. Poor Baby Jesus in this time. He didn’t get out of the culture of the new Bethlehem that we built. And Herod has succeeded in slaughtering the Christ Child, their only hope.

 

So, how do we turn this around? There’s examples. There’s witnesses. People can do things. I’m not condemning gift-giving. It’s that Jesus has to be a part of it. You have to incorporate that.

 

We got a feedback yesterday telling of a story, out shopping what happened. Shelley from Missouri writes:

 

“There are angels watching over us all the time, and God takes care of us, even when we least expect it. The death of my father had taken a large toll on me especially since I was the caregiver the last three weeks of his life. Today, I went to Wal-Mart to see about getting a few things for the girls since I haven’t been able to Christmas shop. I wandered around for about an hour and got a few things that totaled about $75. I got in the checkout line, and a couple got in line behind me. I put my items on the belt, and the couple told me ‘Merry Christmas! We want to pay for all your items.’ They said they do this every year and have been looking for someone this year, when they saw me, and felt that they needed to pay for my stuff. I started to cry and thank them. I told them about my father passing, and each of them hugged me and said God had directed them to help me this year. Many blessings to these strangers, and may they have a blessed Christmas.”

 

These are the things you’re supposed to do. These are the things that happen. This is what makes Christmas.

 

I didn’t plan to tell this story, but this just happened. I was at the airport a few days ago. I fly a lot, so I get bumped up into a better class, comfort seats, sometimes even first class. And I was standing in line, and when you stand in the lines for Delta, you’ve got premium boarding. And then you have another line over there where a pole says, “Priority Boarding.” And then you’ve got “One,” another line, “Two” another line, “Three.” Well, I’ve been a peasant for years flying, and two and three are horrible seats. You don’t want to sit in them. It’s miserable. And as I was standing there, and I like to get on first because you get your luggage on. You don’t have to get in the crowd and wait. And then, when you’re in the back of the plane, you have to wait ten minutes to get off the plane. It’s just very stressful when you’re trying to catch another flight, etc.

 

So, I look over there, and I’m thinking, “It’s Christmas,” and I look in two and three and I said, “Those poor people.” I’ve been there so many times. My empathy was going out for them because it’s not a pleasant situation. So, I said to myself, “You know what? You need to give up your seat. You have a nice seat. You need to give it to a passenger.” So, I looked, and there was one person that I looked at, and I looked at some other people, some of the guys and the girls. But there was one girl that really I came back to.

 

So, I went over there to her, went in the back of the line, and I told the person, “I’m coming right back,” where I was lined up where we boarded. And I said, “Which seat do you have?” And she pulled up her cellphone, meaning that she didn’t have her boarding pass. And I said, “Never mind. That doesn’t work.” The reason for that is cell phones, they scan the cell phones, and of course, I couldn’t take her phone. So, I just dropped it and went back in line.

 

So, I boarded real quickly, and about 15-20 minutes after I started boarding, she comes on, and I jump up and say, “Take this seat.” She said, “What?” I said, “Take this seat. Merry Christmas. I get to fly like this all the time. Bump up. You can have the seat.”

 

So, I went on to my seat, and yes, she had the worst seat, in front of the exit seat in the very back of the plane. The seats don’t go back. It’s uncomfortable. I did this as a gift for conversion. Before I left her, I gave her a card that we pass out that just introduces you to the Virgin Mary. It’s just a front and a back, real simple. And so, I prayed a Rosary while we sat there. And we were in the seat probably a couple hours flying and sitting on the runway. I prayed a Rosary for her, gave her a Special Blessing between each decade that she go through conversion. And the reason I was drawn to her is she looked like she needed something like this. I just felt it in my heart just like this person in Wal-Mart, “We’ve been looking for somebody and praying for somebody.” And I scanned that whole crowd, that was the one person I went to. So, I forgot about that. Actually, I think I prayed two or three Rosaries for her, giving the Special Blessing, and “Mary, here it is. You take it from there.” So that was the end of it for me.

 

And the plane unloads and it unloads. It takes 15 minutes, at least 20 minutes, maybe, to get from the back of the plane to out. And it was late at night. The people in front of me were blocked so there was almost all the passengers out, and I was among the last. And when I come out, she’s standing out where you sit, about ten yards away. And she says, “What you did was a very beautiful thing for me.” So, I walked over to her, and immediately, she hugged me, and we talked a little bit. And I said, “It was nothing. I just felt like I needed to give that to you.” By the time we got to the luggage section, she had already told me she had been through a divorce, a second divorce, her mother and father were divorced, and “Are you Catholic,” because of this card I gave her about Our Lady. And I said, “Yes,” and I asked her, “What are you?” She said something to the effect of…I don’t really remember what she said. Maybe nothing. What she did says is, “The Catholic Church wouldn’t have me.”

 

So, we talked some small talk, and we arrived at the luggage section, and we parted at that point. But she was deeply moved. I didn’t think nothing of it. You never know the impact you’re going to have by sacrificing something, that really isn’t nothing in the end, that can add grace and put somebody on a trajectory of conversion. And I can tell you, this was four or five days ago, and I can tell you, I’ve not stopped praying for her. I’ve not stopped giving her the Special Blessing. I don’t go past my bed in the Bed of Apparitions without saying, giving her a Special Blessing, whatever, whether it’s in the middle of the night, whether it’s going to the Field, to bring her to conversion. She said, before I left her, she said, “I’m going to go on this site. I want to look at this. I want to learn more about this.” Where she is, is I’m confident that God’s going to do something with her.

 

She didn’t tell me her name, but she did tell me she lived in Oxford, Alabama, which is about an hour from Caritas. So, in my prayer, I call her the “Oxford girl.” So, I want to invite you to feed this conversion. This is what Christmas is about. This is giving something of yourself to somebody else. You never know the impact you will have. And that’s the song we should give to Baby Jesus.

 

[SONG]

…My song is just for you

 

[A FRIEND OF MEDJUGORJE]

You go out this Christmas. You do something special. Make it hurt. Make it be uncomfortable, whatever you can do, and feed that seed that you planted in that heart, that it will grow into a beautiful flower for Our Lady, and that’s a gift for Jesus. And you will neve regret it, nor the person you give it to.

 

We wish you Our Lady. We love you this Christmas. Merry Christmas. Goodbye.

 

[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.