What Should I Do Now?

After my post yesterday, some may be asking that question:  What should I do?  Today’s Pentecost sermon on EWTN’s televised mass game me thoughts about a possible answer.

On Pentecost Day, the apostles, Mary, and many followers of Christ were gathered together, hidden, afraid.  They did not go out, in fear, much as we today are staying home in fear.  Then Jesus came to them.  He breathed on them the Holy Spirit.  And the Spirit gave them strength to go out and do what the Lord had shown them.  They went out preaching, loving others, as led by the Spirit within them.  They did what Jesus had taught them to do.

Christians are Baptized, committed followers of Jesus.  Catholics, as they approach adulthood, are also Confirmed in the Holy Spirit, the sacrament of Confirmation calling down the Holy Spirit upon them and charging them with going out and living their faith.  In Confirmation, they are traditionally given a new name, mine was John.  I thought about that this morning.

These past weeks I, and the Catholic Church, have been reading the Last Supper Discourse, from the Gospel of John.  The words are often pointed to as the ultimate summary of Jesus’ teaching.  There are repeated exclamations of the two Great Commandments, and their call to live in love.  And there are also words which say The Spirit will lead you.

I think John did and wrote as the Spirit led him.  What’s in a name, and the one I was given at Confirmation?  I know mine was derived from my grandfather’s name, but should I have been looking deeper?  I sometimes worried about my name, Thomas, and its pointing to Thomas, the Doubter apostle, but I never thought of my Confirmation name, and as perhaps blessed by the Spirit as John, the great follower of the Spirit’s lead.

Is your name a hint to how the Spirit is calling you?  Does it have unconsidered meaning?  Or are your circumstances today, beyond your control, a hint of the Spirit’s call to you?  Or are the people He puts in your life’s path opportunities for you to live the life as He would have you do.  Certainly, we are paused right now, and have time to consider and pray on these things.

What should I do?  I don’t know, but I am done making plans, but am praying He send His Spirit upon me as He did those at Pentecost.  We don’t even know the names of many who were huddled together that day, scared in that room, but I am sure each one accepted the call of the Spirit, and went out, unafraid, trusting in Jesus and His words.  They went out to do His will, not theirs.  And the world began to change.  We are here, alive, today for a reason.  We can try to make plans (or worry) --- as if we were in charge of things --- or try to hear His plans.  My posting yesterday mentioned some of the results of MY plans; I think I will try His now.

My Jesus, I trust in You.

Review: The Warning

Because of the topic, I hesitated writing this review.  End Times talk scares people (see my post titled The End Times, in 2011).  Then I heard Christine Watkins’ talk about her book here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzz1Plypj3k

She felt God was telling her to write this book, which she was hesitant to do, then very quickly God put a number of people in her path, who experienced a warning from God.  “I knew people would laugh at me and call me a religious nut, but I knew God was telling me to do this, so I just did it.”  It is a top-seller on Amazon.

About ten years ago, I experienced what Watkins did, a calling to write a book, and strangers also appeared in my life who had experienced the topic --- how God called them to do a strange thing, and in doing so they changed hundreds of lives for the better.  They wrote their stories for me, but then I interjected MY plans, seeking to get a couple of more stories and to publish under a false name.  When God called me, I didn’t “just do it,” and so I failed.  I am writing this review (as you will see later) because I again feel called to “just do it.”

The Warning begins with an excellent note to non-Christians: “Before you put this book down …”.  The introduction explains what The Warning, an illumination of conscience, is, “It’s little different from what meets us at the end of life”.  We will see our life, our souls, as God does.  God the Father revealed this mini-judgement to Matthew Kelly (a very popular author): It will be painful, very painful, but short.  You will see your sins; you will see how much you offend Me every day … You will see your own personal darkness contrasted against the pure light of My Love.  And you’ll know your eternal destiny, if you do not repent and change.

The book includes stories of a number of people who personally experienced an illumination of their conscience, some as a near death experience.  They saw it as a great blessing, and changed their lives, focused on what God would have them do with the talents He gave them (like those people who I was to write about).  The book also includes stories of mystics and prophets, a number alive today, saying in detail that The Warning is coming VERY soon, even this year.  I know, this is scary to hear, but look at this world:  could Sodom have been worse?  I wrote a blog post last year on If I Could Change the World, but I got stuck wondering: How could I ever get the world’s attention, to tell it to change?  The Warning prophets say there will be darkness over the whole world, then a cosmic collision will light the night sky, and Jesus will appear in the sky, and everyone in the world will see Him.  All will know with no doubt that God does exist, and then they will see their soul (an event not unlike that described in Mt 24:29-31).

If this warning comes soon, I pray or God’s Mercy on our country, my friends, and that I (who am alive for some reason in this time) will be in some way useful to help confused souls, who now want to change their lives, to better understand Jesus and His call to Love, before the world re-captures their attention.

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One more thing.  A week after I read the book The Warning, I was looking through my bookshelves and discovered materials from my 1987 visit to Medjugorje, another site where Mary appeared and said the world needs to change, AND where she warned of coming Punishment, if it did not.  And among my bookshelf materials, I found this:

It was written in 1982, by a priest who was told by God that The Warning was imminent, and wrote what to do afterwards.  The entire 90-page booklet (I was surprised to see) can be read online here: 

https://maryourlady.com/short-book-the-warning-by-father-philip-bebie/

It is well worth your time to read.

In Mary’s appearances in Garabandal and Medjugorje, Mary says she has obtained God’s Mercy for us, and The Warning.  She also says there will then appear at those two sites a visible miracle, for all the world to see, which will last until the end of the world.  The visible miracles will exist as reminders. 

The Warning will be an act of God’s Mercy, to protect us from The Punishment of God’s Justice. But, Mary and the prophets say, that The Punishment will come if the world does not change.  Some visionaries were shown what that punishment would look like, and they screamed and cried in horror.

Two books titled The Warning, written 37 years apart, were put into my hands in a single week.  And so I had to write this review.  And so I just did.

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I’ve taken to say a rosary each day, the intention being God’s Mercy on this country.  And at the finish of the rosary, I sing: God bless America.  Only, with the above thoughts, one line has entirely new meaning:

God bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above
From the mountains to the prairies,
to the oceans white with foam,
God bless America, my home sweet home,
God bless America, my home, sweet, home.

Finding Joy in the Sorrow

It struck me the other night that all the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary I usually pray are about Jesus’ conception, birth, and childhood.  Is there no joy in adulthood?  But I DO recall that He said unless you have the heart of a child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.  You need that level of complete trust, as a child does, and that is living in joy.

My Jesus, I trust in You.

When Mary appeared to some children in Rwanda Africa in the 1990’s, she taught them to pray a different rosary with her, a rosary which meditates on HER seven sorrowful mysteries.  Of course, most of Mary’s sorrows mirrored those of Jesus’ Passion, His sorrows caused deep sorrow in her, but three of her sorrowful mysteries centered on Jesus’ childhood.  Two of them, the Presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple, and the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple are also listed among the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary we have prayed so often.  From one point of view, those childhood events were great joyful events we pray about and celebrate, but from another, they were deep sorrows for Mary.  The Presentation had the baby taken to the Temple, His Father’s house, a great joy, but there Simeon prophesized His later sufferings, which gave Mary great sorrows.

When the 12-year old Jesus stayed at the Temple to speak to the elders after the feast day, when she discovered Him missing, Mary thought He was lost; she thought she had failed in caring for Him, and was deeply disturbed until He was found, and even then she heard echoes of future sorrows.

As these Joyful and Sorrowful events show, sometimes joys and sorrows intermix, depending on the viewer, but often those sorrows are a focusing on the unknowns of the future, as Mary did.  Jesus Passion came soon enough, THEN Mary’s sorrows were truly united with His.

Perhaps that is how things are meant to be in these times, the scary, sorrowful times of today.  Look for the joys, remember the blessings we have and give thanks to God.  And if deep, unavoidable sorrows are to come, unite those sorrows with His, that these great sorrows may lead to great joys, even as His death did.  God’s mercy is endless.  If greater sorrows are to come, I will be sad, even as I pray for His Mercy, and trust in Him to bring great joys out of these sorrows.

Blessed be God Who comforts us in all our trials.  2Cor 1:3

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I said a few posts back that I’d likely be further quoting from Stinissen’s book, This is The Day the Lord Has Made, and today’s meditation from there (May 24) is worth sharing:

Step by Step

God didn’t create the world and humankind complete, once and for all.  God creates the universe in an evolution.  He creates humankind so that our insight grows and deepens little by little.  Only by and by do we find out what is right and true.

This evolution is part of creation itself; it is contemplated by God and part of his plan.

God doesn’t wish for a child to act and think as an adult.  The child has a right to be a child.  There are phases in the evolution of both the individual as well as humankind as a whole, and each phase holds its own truth.  God doesn’t require you to be now what he may want you to become later.  But in each phase of this evolution you are given a certain measure of light and insight in order to keep growing.  You must take the necessary steps from where you are to where God calls you.  The old is never wasted if you proceed according to what you now know is right.

It is not fair to judge your past from what you know now, but didn’t know earlier.  And even if you should have acted earlier against your own better judgement – not following your conscience and insight – you can put everything right by doing what you now know to be right.

The possibility of living according to God’s will is always open.  From time to time, it may even be God’s will that you don’t know what to do to move on.  In that case, surrender your uncertainty to him, accept being temporarily in the dark.  If you are completely honest with God and yourself, you will know what to do, when the time comes.