TOTUS TUUS MARIA !

CONVERT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND

Twenty centuries ago Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was sent into the world as the Messiah in order to announce the Good News of the Coming of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, and to seal this News (which we know as the Gospel) in the Blood of His Sufferings and His Death on the Cross. At the beginning of His Public Life Jesus said: "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel". Through the Fall of man (see the teaching Why did Jesus incarnate?) mankind had broken its bond of sanctity with God. Because of this, the human souls were denied access to Heaven. Eternal heavenly bliss, however, had from the beginning been foreseen by God as the final goal, the crowning, of life for every human soul on earth. Man was intended to be a creature living in sanctity.

Sanctity means living a life during which sin is avoided, so a life in harmony with God’s intentions. In order to restore this situation Jesus, Son of God Himself, was sent into the world as a Man. In his very essence, man is spirit (the soul), yet on earth he lives in a physical body subjected to sufferings, pains, diseases and troubles. That is why man’s body becomes an instrument of expiation. The fall of man (the original sin) and the ever growing burden of sins afterwards, gave rise to a tremendous necessity of expiation in order to compensate the guilt of mankind. This is why Jesus Himself was sent into the world in a physical body. His mission had two goals: preaching God’s Law (directives as to the way man ought to live in order to avoid incurring further debts towards God), and an immense suffering in a physical body for the expiation of the debt of all mankind from past centuries onward. By accomplishing this mission Jesus signed the New Covenant between God and mankind: the old guilt was redeemed and the path to a life without further guilt was laid. The New Covenant is a contract of Love: God’s Messiah preaches God’s Law of Love and subjects Himself to the greatest possible sufferings in a physical body and a human mind (persecution, ridicule, heartache because of all lack of love and because of sin, sorrows, loneliness, cold, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, being beaten, being spat on, being crucified …). In exchange for this, God expects us to lead a life in sanctity, and to continuously convert.

What does this mean, to 'convert ourselves'? Conversion means: to live more according to God’s expectations, and to refrain from doing anything deviating from God’s intentions.

What does God expect from you? That you should lead a holy life. The foundation on which holiness is built, consists first and foremost of Love and purity.

Love means: putting oneself behind one’s fellow creatures, cancelling oneself out for the benefit of one’s fellow creatures, giving oneself completely so that one’s fellow creatures may be better off for it, that the latter’s burden may be relieved, and in order to help bear one’s fellow creatures cross. Let us never forget that Jesus is present in every human being. By helping our fellow man bear his burden, in a spiritual sense we help carry Jesus’ Cross.

Purity means: acting, thinking, speaking, feelings and wishing the way God expects you to, and thus avoiding anything that is likely to contaminate the soul and to make you drift away from sanctity. The 'state of sanctity' is also called 'living in a state of grace'. Grace is everything God gives us to enable our soul to come as close to His ideal as possible. In your daily life purity means, for example, refraining from gossiping, from slandering, from committing acts which may harm other people or lead them towards impurity (in other words: which make them drift away from God), not harbouring any thoughts or feelings which promote evil (e.g. curses, bitterness, resentments, grudges, wishing people ill), etc…

What is 'evil'? Doing evil is the opposite of Love. Evil is everything which is inspired by Satan, the evil one, the devil. Satan is God’s eternal enemy. He inspires people to do, say, feel and want things which make people drift away from God, in order that he may fall into disgrace, repudiate his own sanctity, decrease his chances of gaining eternal bliss in Heaven, and contribute to the disruption of the balance of God’s creation. God has geared all elements of His creation to one another in perfect harmony. All the good things a man does, says and thinks, however minor they might seem to be, benefit the whole, but all the bad things he does, says and thinks disrupt the whole and burdens mankind as a whole with a new debt. Never forget this: you never act, think, feel and speak for yourself alone; everything has got repercussions for mankind as a whole. That is why, prior to the Coming of Jesus on earth as the Messiah, mankind as a whole was precluded from attaining eternal bliss in Heaven. That is also why, in the Creed, we speak of 'the Communion of Saints': all souls constitute one whole, as if we were all connected among ourselves by little threads, all living people with all souls in purgatory and all saints in Heaven. That is why the saints’ prayers can be useful to us, why we may be able to help liberate souls from purgatory etc. Your personal Love and purity, so the extent to which you live a holy life or not, help determine the fate of the whole world.

You will not notice a great deal of this with your human eyes, but it is a solid truth at the level of invisible reality: considered from God’s eyes the world’s fate is like a gigantic flower basket. Every act, every word, every thought, every emotion, every wish can either lay a flower into the basket, or take a flower out of it, and the outcome of all this laying in and taking out, by billions of people, day after day, determines the state of grace the world is in, considered from God’s point of view. In these dark times this state has become very critical. Merely God’s Love and the infinitely powerful and loving, unremitting intercession of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary maintain the world in a 'viable' state. In fact, having regard to the terrible burden of sins gathered by mankind over the centuries, man should not even be entitled to a continued existence any longer.

So much is said about Divine Mercy. Mercy is the attribute through which God continues to bestow the grace of forgiveness upon human souls, in spite of the fact mankind as a whole no longer deserves this, especially because, having regard to the New Covenant, we no longer have any excuse for living in blind sinfulness: God’s Son, Jesus Christ the Messiah, has suffered to the utmost for us, in a physical body, and died a terrible death for the expiation of the burden of sins gathered by mankind prior to His Coming. We, who have come after Him, bear the fruits of His sacrifice, and on top of it we have received His Teachings enabling us to avoid new sins: the Gospel. Therefore we can no longer claim new excuses, and yet we are indeed being excused, and excessively so. Therefore, let us answer God’s Love by penance and conversion, and by gratitude for His infinite Mercy and for Mary’s intercession which saves innumerable souls every day.

When, at the beginning of His Public Life, Jesus said: "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel", He meant that, through His Coming on earth, the gates of Heaven would again be opened for every soul that would be willing to faithfully follow His Teachings (the Gospel of Christianity). Through His Life, His Teachings, His Sufferings and His Death He gave us the key to the Kingdom. The actual and complete founding of God’s Kingdom on earth we must accomplish ourselves, by converting to the Way of Light, that is, by becoming like Christ Himself was. He set us the example (unconditional and total charity, self-denial and unlimited willingness to make sacrifices), and He said: "Be perfect like your Father in Heaven is perfect", in other words: live a holy life, as has been expected from man ever since the foundation of the world. So it is up to us what we do with this holy key to the Kingdom of Heaven.

How can you help bring the foundation of God’s Kingdom on earth forward?

1. by leading a holy life by trying to exercise uncompromising Love for God and your fellow creature, utter purity in acts, words, thoughts, feelings and aspirations, keeping the Ten Commandments, living according to the spirit of the beatitudes, avoiding all sins. Sin is everything through which man diverges from God’s Will: not only murder, theft, adultery etc., but also gossip, negative thoughts about one’s fellow man, and everything which deviates from Love towards one’s fellow creature (intolerance, jealousy etc…). The holier a soul, the more powerful is the intercession through her prayers, because a prayer is heard by God to the extent to which a soul lives in accordance with His Plans. One of the keys to a holy life is the following: With any of your actions, words, thoughts and aspirations ask yourself the question: "Is this at all likely to yield fruits for the coming of God’s Kingdom?" The more often you are able to answer the question in the affirmative, the more rapidly you will grow in sanctity, the bigger will be your contribution to the accomplishment of your mission on earth, and the more valuable will be your help with the deliverance of souls.

2. by a great willingness to make sacrifices. Making a sacrifice means: Doing something one would actually prefer not to do (provided it is something God would not disapprove of), or not doing something one would actually prefer to do (e.g.: not to smoke if you are used to doing it, renouncing something one would feel like doing or having, etc.). A very valuable form of making sacrifices is fasting (eating nothing or little for a day or longer). This is detachment: letting go of something of which one has the feeling one can hardly do without. This detaches you from the material world, so that your mind acquires more power over your body. This is a big victory over the forces of evil, which are constantly trying to make man become addicted to material things so that he may drift away from God. He who gets attached to material things, looks for his salvation from them – so to speak – and tends ever less to turn to God. This easily leads to aberrations on a large scale, such as trusting exclusively in technology and science, and thinking the latter are able to replace God. This harbours one of the major reasons why our modern world has drifted so far away from God. This form of veneration for the material world is an awesome weapon in Satan’s hands, for the destruction of countless sins.

3. by a great deal of prayer. Only ardent prayer from a heart which truly loves God and one’s fellow creatures has got real value of redemption and salvation. The greatest prayer is the Rosary complemented with a line of meditation for each 'Hail Mary', because these lines of meditation call to mind the lives of Jesus and Mary. Also meditating upon the Way of the Cross is very powerful. I also remind you of the many prayers fighting evil, such as they have been inspired by the Most Blessed Virgin to Myriam van Nazareth. When you are praying, do not always ask for things for yourself. What you may – even must – certainly ask for yourself, is the grace of sanctity and the gift to guide others to sanctity. Thus you will contribute to the foundation of God’s Kingdom on earth.

4. by attending Holy Mass, as often as possible and as ardently as possible. Holy Mass is the remembrance of the redeeming Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, the victory of the incarnated Messiah over evil. This remembrance turns into a co-redeeming participation in this Sacrifice of the Cross if you attend it with a repenting and loving heart. In your mind, lay everything which comes on your path, all your burdens, griefs and sufferings, in the Cup on the altar, in order for it to be consecrated onto the Cross by Mary, the Coredemptrix. Thus She will make you one with the suffering and redeeming Christ. Do not consider Holy Mass to be a duty, but rather to be the invaluably graceful joy of being united with the Sacrifice of the Crucified Christ.

5. by consecration to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. Repeat to Mary every day: "I am Yours, and everything I own is Yours". Be Her servant to the utmost. Be like She was. Lead a life of self-sacrifice and sanctity, and surrender to Mary completely. She will guide you in every detail of your life, She will sanctify you and use your entire life for the benefit of the accomplishment of God’s Plan with the souls. This is the ultimate accomplishment of your goal in life, as a Christian. He who belongs to Mary, is thereby united with Christ.

6. by fighting against evil in all its forms. Evil is the work of Satan, who tries to separate man from God. Through evil one either tries to put oneself in front of one’s fellow man, or one inflicts harm upon one’s fellow man with the intention that the latter should not be better off than oneself. We must wholeheartedly and with all our mind turn away from Satan’s pitfalls. Keep in mind that these pitfalls also include everything which chains us to the material world (see point 2), as well as everything which is not in harmony with God’s intentions, e.g. use of drugs, excessive use of alcohol, smoking, and even the use of classic medicines that are likely to promote addiction, such as antidepressants and others. These substances are pitfalls from Satan, because they constitute a severe threat to the purity of our physical body, our mental and our emotional life, as they are able to result in behaviour disorders, sensations of anxiety etc., and in the long run may destroy man altogether. Do not let yourself be deceived into believing that Satan, the devil, is a figment of the imagination. In our days evil is more active than it has ever been before, and it expresses itself in countless ways. Satan wants to destroy mankind, and he is trying to do so by exploiting all and any human weaknesses. The principal human weaknesses are the lust for money, profit seeking, immorality, need for admiration, and the need of physical joy in many forms (drugs, smoking, alcohol, food...). Be alert, recognize the signs of evil in your own surroundings, and pray and fast so that they who are blinded by the seeming pleasures of worldly life may receive the grace of understanding and awareness, in order to convert.

7. by regularly and thoroughly confessing sins, with due remorse and the undeviating intention not to make the same mistakes again. The Sacrament of Confession yields purification of your own soul, but also gives reparation to God, and thereby benefits mankind as a whole. Reparation is an act through which one 'restores or repairs the honour' of God, who has been insulted by sin, so it is tantamount to a settlement of guilt. By a thorough confession extending to one’s entire life, the remorse which goes with it, and by carrying out the penance imposed, one relieves a bit of the burden of guilt gathered by mankind as a whole. In so doing, the soul makes a contribution to the acquisition of a higher state of grace by mankind as a whole. A thorough confession is a grace in itself, which you may obtain by examining your conscience every day (for instance, at night before going to bed). When doing so, you ask the Holy Spirit that He may give you an insight into the depths of your own soul, so that you may be able to see more clearly what mistakes, weaknesses, shortcomings and sins you may have or may have committed. As such a desire means that you are willing to improve yourself, God will not deny you this grace. Keep in mind very carefully that a good confession subsequent upon an examination of one’s conscience yields a very valuable grace: it may give you eternal Life.

Twenty centuries ago Jesus sent His disciples on a mission to bring the Good News to all people: "The Kingdom of God is at hand". This is also your mission. Live every day keeping this goal in mind: to bring forward the foundation of God’s Kingdom on earth. Believe in it, persevere, set the right example in every situation, and be optimistic. Every form of doubt and pessimism is a lack of Love towards God and a lack of faith in His Providence. God keeps all His promises, because His Love is perfect. Now it is your turn to keep the promise which was made to God in the hour of your baptism: that you would renounce evil, fully keep the Commandments, and live according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As soon as every one of us is ready to persevere in a holy life and to keep his promises to God, the New Covenant can be accomplished (remember Jesus’ word: "The time is fulfilled") and we can obtain the grace of Jesus truly establishing God’s Kingdom among us.

The Kingdom of God will be established on earth sooner in proportion as every one of us will spread around themselves an atmosphere of unrelenting charity, detachment, self-denial and ardent prayer for the world and for the salvation of souls. Encourage in all souls the longing to consecrate themselves to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary. By voluntarily and explicitly sacrificing your entire life, all joyful things and all sufferings, to Mary, every day again, you participate in Jesus’ Sacrifice on the Cross in the most intense way, because Mary Herself has united Her entire life with Her Son’s Sacrifice on the Cross. By uniting yourself with Her you sacrifice your entire life to the longing for God’s Kingdom to be established on earth. Surrender to Mary completely, and remain faithful to Her.

Myriam, November 2002