2/27/13

Let’s Do Something Beautiful for God

 

Mass at St. James in Medjugorje
 


Let’s Do Something Beautiful for God
By June Klins
 
      One Sunday in January, one of our subscribers gave me an envelope that sounded like it had some loose change in it, which seemed odd to me.  When I opened the envelope I found a check made out to “The Spirit of Medjugorje” and another one made out to “The Spirit of Adoration.”  Also in the envelope was a note card with a quote from Mother Teresa that said, “Let’s do something beautiful for God,” along with $333.33 in cash. The note said, “June, it was laid on my heart to give you this exact amount of money ($333.33)…I trust it will be revealed to you why and how it is to be used.”
   Awesome as He is, God knows that I like a good mystery and that, as a retired math teacher, am very attuned to numbers. So, I took the envelope with me to the Adoration chapel for several days and prayed about it. It was not long before it came to me that the $333.33 was to be used to have Masses said for Our Lady’s intentions. This idea was inspired from a homily given by a priest at my parish the first week of January. Father said that his Marian order allows him to have one “free” Mass per month, and he always offers the Mass for Our Lady’s intentions. He then suggested that it would be a good New Year’s resolution for each of us to have a Mass said this year for Our Lady’s intentions. As I reflected on his words, and the fact that the number 3 can denote the Trinity –  Whom we meet in a very special way during Mass – it seemed like a good plan. Our Lady has asked for us to pray for Her intentions many times, and there is no higher form of prayer than the Mass. I left the chapel feeling excited about it. When I signed out, the clock read 11:11. Duplicate numbers jump out at me, and I wondered if this was a confirmation. On the way home, the temperature sign at a business near my home read 33 degrees. It seemed to be another confirmation.
   I continued to pray. Within a week, I received a check for $222 to help Fr. Fredrick in Uganda. I wondered if this odd amount could be another confirmation.
   Two days later, I went to visit my friend and took my bag of saints with me so she could pick her saint for the year (as described in the January issue). In the bag are over a hundred little slips of paper with the names of saints on them. When my friend asked me to mix up all the saints’ names, I felt something odd in the bag. I pulled out a little card which said, “Psalm 33:22” on it. I could not believe it! I had no idea where that came from or how it got in my bag of saints. I related to my friend about the $333.33, the $222 and the idea about the Masses, and she agreed this was another confirmation.
   The following day, I planned to request the Masses, and then it came to me that if I added the $222 to it, which was going to Fr. Fredrick anyway, that would make $555.33, which would allow for 111 Masses. I was really getting excited because 111 has been a significant number to me since January 11 (1/11), 1998. That was when my healing (of a strange condition that left me in chronic pain) began through Our Lady of Medjugorje. As I suspected, Fr. Fredrick was honored to be able to celebrate the 111 Masses for Our Lady’s intentions.
   Soon it came to me during Adoration to expand upon this idea and invite everyone to have Masses said for Our Lady’s intentions. There is no better gift that we could give to Our Lady. Perhaps we could present them to Her as a spiritual bouquet for the 33rd anniversary of the apparitions on June 25, 2014. Why the 33rd anniversary?  Besides the fact that the number 33 kept surfacing, the number 33 is often associated with Jesus because this is the number of years He spent on earth. Our Lady gave the Medjugorje locutionist, Jelena, the “Jesus Rosary” which is made up of 33 Our Father’s. (See below.) I can only imagine that if Our Lady had a favorite number it would be 33! It seems that the number 33 was significant to the village of Medjugorje also, since they constructed the Cross on Mt. Krizevac in 1933, to commemorate the 1900th anniversary of Jesus’ death on the Cross. And according to Draga Vidovic, author of Salvation of Mankind, there was a tradition in Medjugorje of offering 33 Holy Masses for the deceased immediately after funerals.
   On September 25, 1991, Our Lady said, “… dear children, help my Immaculate Heart to triumph in the sinful world. I beseech all of you to offer prayers and sacrifices for my intentions so I can present them to God for what is most necessary. Forget your desires, dear children, and pray for what God desires, and not for what you desire. Thank you for having responded to my call." 
      A friend of mine suggested that it would be nice to present Our Lady with a thousand Masses for the 33rd anniversary. I was aiming higher – if every person who ever went to Medjugorje and every person who follows Our Lady’s messages would have just one Mass said for Our Lady’s intentions, think of how many that would be! That would certainly help Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart to triumph as She said in the message above.
   Can you help to spread this idea? The Masses can be said wherever you want. Some local parishes are begging for Mass intentions. Or you can have the Masses said by a missionary priest. The stipend for Masses said by missionary priests is usually only $5. That helps them, Our Lady, and also ourselves, as we act in charity. It is a win-win-win situation.
   My thought is to keep a tally of the number of Masses offered for Our Lady’s intentions on our website ( http://www.spiritofmedjugorje.org/masses.htm ) and update it monthly as an encouragement and a reminder to continue to have the Masses said.  Of course, it is not necessary to do this because Our Lady will know, but if you want, you can contact me when you have a Mass offered for Our Lady’s intentions. The initial goal was for the 33rd anniversary, but why stop there?  We could continue this indefinitely…. 
   Let’s do something beautiful for God!
Editor’s note: To report Masses, email info@spiritofmedjugorje.org.                                                        
  "Dear children! With great joy in my heart I thank you for all the prayers that, in these days, you offered for my intentions. Know, little children, that you will not regret it, neither you nor your children. God will reward you with great graces and you will merit eternal life…” (message of the 25th anniversary, June 25, 2006).
Source of this article http://www.spiritofmedjugorje.org/

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