I'm really of fan of this daily forward, this one especially caught my eye because of the mention of the Intercessors and Mother Nadine. February 18, 2009 Dear Family of Mary! "Dear children! Today I am with you in a special way and I bring you my motherly blessing of peace. I pray for you and I intercede for you before God, so that you may comprehend that each of you is a carrier of peace. You cannot have peace if your heart is not at peace with God. That is why, little children, pray, pray, pray, because prayer is the foundation of your peace. Open your heart and give time to God so that He will be your friend. When true friendship with God is realized, no storm can destroy it. Thank you for having responded to my call." (June 25, 1997) What a wonderful message! We need Our Lady's motherly blessing of peace! Indeed, by virtue of Her presence with us, we are blessed with peace. She makes us feel at peace because She is our Mother and we can rely upon Her. But She knows that what we really need is a deep friendship with God if we are going to truly carry peace in this world. Friendship with God! I am sure some of us never thought of such a thing. God is God. How can He be my friend? Over the past few years what has become clear to me through Our Lady's messages and the formation teachings of Mother Nadine Brown of the Intercessors of the Lamb is that God wants to become our best and truest friend. And the way to build that friendship is through contemplative prayer. Mother Nadine teaches that we can launch out into the deep of contemplative prayer if we choose to spend time with the Lord, faithfully every day. Choosing to give God time is the first step to making Him our best friend. She advises that we practice four things during that time with God: silence, solitude, penance and prayer. Through inner silence, the kind of silence that entails actively listening for the voice of God and tuning out our own thoughts and all other voices, we can make contact with our Lord. Through solitude, we can experience God's presence because He comes to us when we are alone and waiting for Him. Through penance we make room in our hearts for God to dwell, stripping away all that is unnecessary. And with these three things in place, prayer becomes a reality, the kind of prayer that is a conversation with God. Recently I heard a sharing by a brother in the Intercessor Community, in which he described his struggle to make time for God, to be like Mary at the feet of Jesus. He shared how being busy for him was a way to hide from God and keep God at a distance. He worked all the time. Finally he realized that his busy-ness was the plan of the devil for him. If the devil could keep him busy, he would never develop a friendship with God. He shared this acronym for busy: B-being, U- under, S- Satan's, Y-yoke. Satan's yoke is a single yoke and he makes us carry it alone. It is hopeless and terrible. In that state we are outside of God's plan for our lives and we experience no peace whatsoever. Being yoked to Jesus is being in a double yoke, so that Jesus carries the burden with us, and it gets lighter and lighter. Jesus leads us to freedom. He is the perfect friend. So, this Lent, maybe we can resolve to give up the BUSY-ness and become deeper friends with Jesus. It is just a matter of giving Him more time. "Open your heart and give time to God so that He will be your friend. When true friendship with God is realized, no storm can destroy it. Thank you for having responded to my call." In Jesus and Mary! Cathy Nolan © 2009 Mary TV Check out the website of the Intercessors of the Lamb. It is full of incredible teaching resources for prayer. www.bellwetheromaha.org
My mother had ten children and seemed always to have been busy. Though she was naturally a paterful woman. I think she would hafve liked much more time to pray. I think if we are kept busy at the duties of our station God will never let us be the looser. I have heard often from priests hearing confession how older catholics very often accede into contemplative prayer later on in life as a result of just following the Catholic vocation of being parents. On the other hand if folks understood how many great benefits Contemplative Prayer brings, even material benefits their would be mile long lines at every Church in the world fighting to get in. In any case there always seems time for the TV. I tell you one secret about time and prayer, the more you give to God the more time left for doing other things multiplies like the loaves and the fishes.
Between you and me, from watching folks at work..a lot of people like to be busy for being busy's sake, rushing even running about . Heaven knows why. :lol: I even notice folks giving up their tea breaks and loudly telling everyone they've no time to take one and really there's no need for it and no one asks them to..... :shock: At work this morning morning there was much excited bustling and shouting and hammering about all over the place, it was like a big bee hive. I sat at my phones and computer, it was quiet the ringing and emails had not started to put my blood pressure up. I fely guilty and went over to my boss and asked if she wanted a hand. She waved her arms at me frantically with a pleased frzzled look at me and told me she hadn't time, hadn't time, So I went back to my seat watching them all twiddling my thumbs watching them all flying about. Then it occured to me how very,very much they were enjoying it all, enjoying it all enormously. So I sat watching them all, enjoying myself doing nothing enjoying watching them enjoying themselves being so very,very busy.... I am rambling again.... :lol: :lol:
