As usual you can hear the audio here.
Three
times our Lord says to us WATCH! We
are to open our spiritual eyes and see!
we are to stay awake like security guards at night or soldiers on
watch. He will return and it will
be sudden and without warning.
Will we be awake and ready?
How does one stay spiritually awake and alert? He will return.
How are we to prepare for this?
How are we to stay awake in our faith?
We
can, indeed, we must pray. The
Church defines prayer as lifting up the heart and mind to God. For years I thought that mean and
pathetic. Now I see that the
Church is saying that prayer is a broad and profound experience. Whatever enables us to lift up our
heart and mind to God is prayer.
No two people pray the same but everyone should pray. Without prayer we fall asleep
spiritually. We also need to
listen though, to listen to God's word in the scriptures, the Bible. The Bible contains His message for us,
His mind that we are to put on and if we are not giving attention to His word
then we are not listening and our soul starves. We need to put that word found in scripture into practice in
our lives by how we treat others and how we care for those in need. We need to live the life of the Church
not just by attending Mass on Sunday but by examining our conscience everyday
and going to Confession regularly.
While
our Lady is not a tourist visiting visionaries on demand she is a mother and
she cares for her children whom she has received from her Son on the
Cross. In 1879 she came to us here
in Ireland. She did not say a word
but the whole vision at Knock pointed us to the centrality of the Sacrifice of
the Mass and our duty of prayer, worship and belief in the teaching of Christ
and His Church. It is that Faith
that we received from St Patrick that has made Ireland the relatively civilized
place it still is. It has been a
gift to us from God.
In
1917 our Lady came to us at Fatima.
This time she did speak. She
called for conversion and amendment of life, that we take the Gospel and the
teaching of her Son seriously and put it into practice. She called for a life of penance and
reparation, that is, making acts of faith and love to show our sorrow at our
own sins and those of others, sins against God, against her, and against one
another. She called for prayer and
devotion to her Son and to herself.
In
calling for penance and reparation she asked that we offer up everything in our
life and every sacrifice, every suffering however small, to be offered to God
in a spirit of submission to His will.
To do this we consciously unite our sufferings and sacrifices with our
Lord's Sacrifice on Calvary. On
their own our sacrifices and sufferings are of no value but united to His they
take on the infinite value of His Sacrifice. We can do this by His power made available to us in baptism
fro in baptism we were immersed into Christ and became one flesh, one Spirit
with Him. In His mercy and love
God the Father accepts these sacrifices united to His Son's in reparation for
all the sins of the world and above all those against His Presence in the
Blessed Sacrament and those against His Son's Most Pure Mother, for to fail to
honour the Mother is to fail to honour the Son.
Our
Lady also asked that we pray especially that we pray the Rosary. She did not mean that we rattle through
it as quickly as possible. She
clearly asked that we spend time with her in the rosary while meditating on the
Mysteries and that we do this daily in a spirit of reparation to her and her
Son. When we pray the rosary
properly we left our Lady take us by the hand and walk us through the mysteries
of her Son's life.
She
also asked that we give five first Saturdays, that means the first Saturday of
five consecutive months in reparation to her and her Son. We do this by going to confession and
confessing all our sins, in number and kind, with sincere purpose of amendment,
and then going to Holy Communion, again, with the intention of making
reparation to her. She also asked
that we wear the blessed Brown Scapular as a sign of our consecration to her
and that we live that consecration to the best of our ability. Finally she asked that we spread the
word. We are to tell others about
her requests and encourage them to respond to the Mother of God.
None
of this is difficult. None of it
is too time consuming. It may mean
we have less time for other things but when you stand before the Lord He will
not ask you the sports results or what was on the telly! He will ask you about whether and how
you listened to Him and to His Mother.
If we have listened and obeyed we will have nothing to fear and nothing
to lose. If we have not we will
only have ourselves to blame.
While we are then let us stay awake in the spirit. Let us live our lives as faithful
Catholics and stand ready for His return.
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