Mary has requested that the daily message be given each day to the world. It is read nightly at the prayer service from her Image Building in Clearwater, Florida, U.S.A. This is according to her request. All attempts will be made to publish this daily message to the world at 11 p.m. Eastern time, U.S.A.We acknowledge that the final authority regarding these messages rests with the Holy See of Rome. |
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August 5, 2002
| August 6th Holy
Spirit Novena Scripture selection is Day 8 Period II. |
The Novena Rosary
Mystery for August 6th is Sorrowful. |
A Prayer for Intimacy with the Lamb,
the Bridegroom of the SoulOh Lamb of God, Who take away the sins of the world, come and act on my soul most intimately. I surrender myself, as I ask for the grace to let go, to just be as I exist in You and You act most intimately on my soul. You are the Initiator. I am the soul waiting Your favors as You act in me. I love You. I adore You. I worship You. Come and possess my soul with Your Divine Grace, as I experience You most intimately.
Pray for the leaders of our country
so they do God's will.
Our Lady of Clearwater
help the unborn babies.
Pray for 6 very urgent intentions.
Pray for a particular bishop and cardinal.
Pray for the pope.
Pray for all the bishops of the world.
August 5, 2002
Colossians 1: 15-23
Christ is the head of all creation
He is the image of the unseen God,
the first–born of all
creation,
for in him were created all things
in heaven and on
earth:
everything visible and everything invisible,
thrones, ruling forces,
sovereignties, powers—
all things were created through him and for him.
He
exists before all things
and in him all things hold together,
and
he is the Head of the Body,
that is, the Church.
He is the Beginning,
the
first–born from the dead,
so that he should be supreme in every way;
because
God wanted all fullness to be found in him
and through him to
reconcile all things to him,
everything in heaven and everything on earth,
by
making peace through his death on the cross.
The Colossians have their share in salvation
You were once estranged and of hostile intent through your evil behaviour; now he has reconciled you, by his death and in that mortal body, to bring you before himself holy, faultless and irreproachable—as long as you persevere and stand firm on the solid base of the faith, never letting yourselves drift away from the hope promised by the gospel, which you have heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become the servant.
Excerpt from Response to God's Love,
by Father Edward J. Carter, S.J.
5
The Christian Virtues
Hope
Christian hope is a virtue that allows us to tend toward God in Christ as our absolute fulfillment, our absolute future. Hope allows us to trust that God will grant us the graces necessary to achieve this goal.
The necessity of hope in our lives is obvious. Without a sustained desire for God as our absolute future, we would not be able to live as we should. If God is not our goal, then our lives will be miserably shaped by something infinitely less, whether it be money, sex, social status, or anything else that can grip the human heart as an unauthentic end rather than a legitimate means to God.
The necessity of hope is also realized as we examine the nature of the supernatural life. Without God's grace we cannot initially attain this life, we cannot maintain ourselves in it, and we cannot grow in it. At times God allows us to strikingly and intensely experience how helpless we are without him. Such episodes in the spiritual journey can be very painful, but they can also be opportunities for great growth, for we are meant to emerge from these experiences with an increase of trust in God; we realize, in short, how weak we are in ourselves, but how strong we are if we rely on him.
Let us also remember that as we trust in God so shall we receive. There are certainly exceptions to this role—God can, for example, give great graces to a person at a time when trust is feeble—but the general principle stands. In our Christian hope, let us expect great things from God—remembering what truly great things are in the sight of God—not only for ourselves, but also for others. That we should direct our hope toward the needs of others as well as our own leads us to another dimension of hope, namely, the fact that it possesses, as do all the virtues, an ecclesial and cosmic dimension.
Hope is ecclesial. We are members of the Body of Christ, the People of God, and we go to the Father in Christ and by the Spirit not as isolated individuals but as members of a community. Consequently, our hope should be concerned with the total progress of the Church. The Church is meant to assimilate Christ more and more, for she is a pilgrim Church; she will not arrive at her final maturation in Christ until the end of time. Meanwhile, our Christian hope should inspire us to realize that we can and should labor a diminution of the Church's imperfections and sinfulness, and a greater participation in the Church's realized eschatology, that is, a greater sharing, here and now, in that life which will be fully possessed only in eternity.
Christian hope, which is both personal and ecclesial, is also cosmic. We hope not only that we ourselves as well as the entire Christian community will be assimilated to Christ more intimately now, but also that we will finally possess him perfectly in eternity. What is more, we also hope that all mankind as well as the whole of creation will evolve closer to the Omega Point—Christ himself. St. Paul reminds us of this cosmic dimension of Christian hope: "Creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but by him who once subjected it; yet not without hope, because the world itself will be freed from its slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. Yes, we know that all creation groans and is in agony even until now. Not only that, but we ourselves, although we have the Spirit as first fruits, groan inwardly while we await the redemption of our bodies. In hope we were saved. But hope is not hope if its object is seen; how is it possible for one to hope for what he sees? And hoping for what we cannot see means awaiting it with patient endurance" (Rom 8:20-25).
end of excerpt from Response to God's Love
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: Christ is the New Adam
Here is a quote in the Priestly
Newsletter Book II,
Father Carter quoted from
one of my writings
Here are words from a spiritual journal: "For there is but one thing I seek-it is the desire of my soul to live in truth. As I live in Him, His truth lives in me, and I act in His truth. There is but one truth and it is His truth. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is alive in us and we live in His truth.
"I see the martyrs, those that were willing to give their lives for Him, for this truth. Many went to a brutal death in total isolation, wanting only their God. Within the soul is this intense craving for God that cannot be satisfied by any earthly person, place, or thing. Within the soul is this driving thirst for this intense union with God. It is a driving force that leads a soul, such as a martyr, to choose Him rather than one's own life on earth. It may not be that God will call us to martyrdom, but living in today's world which is permeated to such a great degree with secularism, we have many occasions each day to suffer little martyrdoms as we strive always to live in His truth. These little encounters with death, as I will call them, bring us closer to Him Who is the Truth. For every time we choose to die to that part of the world which is untruth and live for Him, we experience a new sharing in His resurrection.
"So many today think that suffering is something to steer clear of. True, we may take those means of alleviating suffering which are according to God's will. But in this life, suffering is inevitable. A study of the life of our Savior shows us this. In His truth He teaches us that suffering encountered according to the Father's will truly leads to greater life.
"I must speak further of the truth, for it is that I wish to address. There is but one truth, it is found in Jesus. That center of truth is found within all of us. But this place is affected by our surroundings and the information we allow ourselves to take in. In the purity of our reading material, in the proper screening of all we watch and things we engage in, we can keep this center of truth most optimally connected to Him Who is the absolute Truth.
"The truth is found in living in God's will. At every moment the Father wishes us to live according to His plan with Christ, in the Holy Spirit, aided by the maternal intercession of Mary. Living in this way, we help to bring about the reign of Jesus' Heart and the triumph of Mary's Heart."
end of excerpt from Newsletter 1998 - issue 5
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: I said clearly
"I must speak further of the truth,
for it is that I wish to address.
THERE IS BUT ONE TRUTH,
IT IS FOUND IN JESUS."
John 14: 6
Jesus said: I am the Way; I am Truth and Life...
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: We see Adam and Eve.
We see that Eve ate the apple.
We see Cain killed Abel.
Men can think defectively.
Jesus is our model.
We must center our life in
Jesus.
Jesus is the way, the truth
and the life.
Excerpt from April 18, 1999
Very carefully discerned by Fr Carter
Jesus speaks: There is but one truth and it is found in Me.
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: The Word of God is our truth.
God is.
There are 3 Persons in one God
I believe Jesus is God-made-man.
Father Carter's library had lots of
books.
His books were centered
in Christ.
Excerpt from Response to God's Love,
by Father Edward Carter, S.J.
| 1
The Mystery of Christ and |
|
... Radically, God is completely other and transcendent, hidden from man in his inner life, unless he chooses to reveal himself. Let us briefly look at this inner life of God. The Father, in a perfect act of
self-expression, in a perfect act of knowing, generates his son. The
Son, the Word, is, then, the immanent expression of God's fullness, the
reflection of the Father. Likewise, from all eternity, the Father and
the Son bring forth the Holy Spirit in a perfect act of loving. |
|
end of excerpt from Response to God's Love
Excerpt from Response to God's Love
2
The Christian's Personal
Uniqueness
Obviously, we all assimilate the mystery of Christ in basically the same way. There are, however, significant differences in how each person puts on Christ that result from the uniqueness of each individual. Each person is a unique expression of God's creative love. Each person can truthfully say that there has never before been anyone like himself or herself, there is now no one like him or her, and there never will be.
The personal uniqueness of each human being increases in proportion to one's assimilation to Jesus. That is to say, the more I put on Christ, the more I lose myself in Christ, the more I become myself. This is true because grace perfects nature, and, consequently, the more I grow in grace, the more perfect all dimensions of my person become—and this includes uniqueness. We see, then, how fallacious is the reasoning of those who think that the more they give themselves to the practice of religion, the more their personalities will be subdued. Actually, the opposite is true—the more one grows in Christ, the more his or her unique personality emerges in all its attractiveness.
As I grow in the realization of my own uniqueness, I should also grow in developing a sense of self-identity and self-acceptance. If God in his tremendous love for me has created the uniqueness that I am, should I not rejoice in who I am and avoid morbidly comparing myself to others? Should I not have a healthy self-image? Of course, self-acceptance does not mean self-complacency. Honest self-reflection will always reveal to me that there are weaknesses that must be further curbed and strengths that must be further developed.
As God gives each person his or her uniqueness, he attaches to it a unique mission or role that is to be accomplished. Cardinal Newman tells us: "Everyone who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random. . . . God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, He lodges it in a body, one by one, for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to need, every one of us" (Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations, pp. 111-112).
Because of the uniqueness of each Christian's existence, he or she presents Christ with a unique opportunity. Each Christian has the vocation to offer Christ his or her humanity so that Jesus can re-incarnate himself in a new way. Jesus wants to continue his redemptive work through the not-to-be-repeated newness that is each Christian's uniqueness. To the extent that an individual Christian offers his or her humanity to Jesus, he or she has a unique opportunity to continue the redemption—an opportunity that no one else can offer him or her. Likewise, to the extent that an individual Christian fails to offer his or her humanity to Christ, Jesus loses the opportunity that is this Christian's uniqueness.
Each of us, consequently, no matter what his or her occupation or status in life might be, has both the great privilege and the great responsibility to properly utilize his or her life according to God's Christic design. No one else can fulfill your unique mission, and, in turn, you cannot accomplish the unique mission of another. At times we can become somewhat fearful or anxious about the task that God has entrusted to us as we more deeply realize what it demands. We can feel the same reluctance that Jeremiah the prophet voiced when Yahweh called him:
The word of the LORD came to me thus:
"Before I formed you in the womb I
knew you,
before you were born I dedicated
you,
a prophet to the nations I appointed
you."
"Ah, LORD GOD!" I said,
"I know not how to speak; I am too
young."
But the LORD answered me,
"Say not, 'I am too young.'
To whomever I send you, you shall
go;
Whatever I command you, you shall
speak.
Have no fear before them,
because I am with you to deliver
you, says the LORD."
—Jer 1:4-8end of excerpt from Response to God's Love
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: I wanted depth.
I experience things more
deeply all the time.
My life is lived in Him.
Galatians 2: 19-20
...I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me...
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: We are in the garden.
We are to be pure.
We model our lives after the
New Adam and New Eve.
What is right?
What is wrong?
Sing: Be Not Afraid
Luke 1: 30-31
but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Look! You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus.
John 14: 6
Jesus said: I am the Way; I am Truth and Life...
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: We must be Christ-centered.
God is the creator.
We are the creatures.
God is our All.
God is All Mighty.
God is All Mighty.
See Jesus on the cross.
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger:
Mary stands beneath
the cross
Here is the vision of Lucia
June 13, 1929
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger: It is 12 years after Mary
appeared to the 3
visionaries of Fatima.
This was 12 years after
Fatima apparitions
to the children.
The Rosary tells the story
of the New Adam and
New Eve.
August 5, 2002 message continues
Messenger:
Meditating on the rosary
helps us to have
deeper insight into
the mysteries of the rosary.
Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary
| The Annunciation
|
The Visitation
|
The Nativity
|
The Presentation
|
Finding in the Temple
|
Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary
| Agony in the garden
|
Scouring at the pillar
|
Crowning with thorns
|
Carrying of Cross
|
The Crucifixion
|
Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary
| The Resurrection
|
The Ascension
|
Descent of the Holy Spirit
|
The Assumption
|
The Coronation
|
Excerpt from April 18, 1999
Very carefully discerned by Fr Carter
Jesus speaks: There is but one truth and it is found in Me.
We
desperately need funds.
Please
pray for this.
Copyright
© 2002 Shepherds of Christ.Shepherds of Christ Ministries
PO Box 193
Morrow, Ohio 45152-0193
Telephone: (toll free) 1-888-211-3041 or (513) 932-4451
FAX: (513) 932-6791
