On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service. December 1, 2008 Jesus My dear little apostles, there is so much to be done. You see the need to bring Me to others. You see your brothers and sisters struggling in darkness without Me. If the light is to be brought to them, it will be brought by you. When I say there is much to be done, I am telling you that the world needs your service, it is true. But I am also telling you that there are many things to be done in your soul. You must be committed to changing. Are you prepared to allow Me to make you holy? If you are not prepared to let go of those things that prevent you from progressing in holiness, then you will not advance. If you do not advance, you will move away from me. You will begin to resent Me for the crosses I send to you. You will begin to persuade yourself that perhaps there is an easier way for you, a way that calls for less sacrifice and less commitment. This will not be My plan but your plan. This will be your version of holiness, not Mine. I know that some of the services I ask from you are repugnant to you. I know this and yet I call you into these things anyway. If you reject parts of the work, you will be executing an incomplete plan. I have a big plan. I build on it each day. You are part of that. I need you to listen carefully for My directions and then serve exactly as I am asking. My dear friends, if I cannot instruct and direct you, then who will listen to Me? Who will trust Me to protect humanity? Where is the joy that comes from God's children when they trust their Father in heaven? I tell you that where joy is absent, trust is absent. When a person is humble, he will see that he needs greater trust and he will try to become smaller so that I can become bigger in his life and in his work. I am asking you to do that. Be humble. Allow Me, Jesus, to be your King. My kingdom was not of this world. Your Kingdom is not of this world. You will be rewarded in heaven, My beloved. For now, serve Me, your King, in the way I am asking. This will be the best plan for you and for the world.
Lee, The priceless value of each cross, which Jesus the Carpenter has personally prepared for me, cannot be measured. But my flesh is so weak! Remember how Jesus caresses the Cross in The Passion. I desire to be more like that and I suppose it is as good a starting point as any! God be praised! Safe in the Father's Arms!
here is the home page , Sean. Lee knows all about her. http://www.directionforourtimes.com/index.html This call to holiness reminds me of something I read from another mystic recently, the Foundress I think of an Order of nuns. From memory the Lord said, 'I can carpet the ground with the paving stones of good nuns. But what I wish for is the obedience of fervent, holy and saintly souls.' This call to holiness always causes me to stop and think, for the Good Lord in this is asking for nothing less than everything. It reminds me of the saying, 'The only failure in life is not to have been a saint'.
This will not be My plan but your plan. This will be your version of holiness, not Mine. I keep returning to this line. I never thought that I might have an agenda to holiness and that it wouldn't be God's. This has caused me really go to Him in prayer to see where I'm leading the band and He's not. Immediately, I found a spot that I'm struggling with in our Parish, after deep prayer He brought another idea to my mind which made me laugh in it's simplicity and I easily released my position. Amazing stuff, this prayer life!
Lee I always recall in this a talk given by Dom Ambrose the saintly Abbot General of the Cistercians. He said we are all like people erecting a House of Cards, then the Holy Spirit comes and blows it over. For its our little house..a House of Cards, not Gods. Its only when we let the Holy Spirit do the building that a House Eternal, a House of Holiness is built: Psalm 127:1 A Song of Ascents, of Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain.
I think becoming more like Christ means becoming more like ourselves, as we were meant to be. Hell is the most boring place because they are all the same down there, heaven is interesting because everyone is themselves. The great lie Satan tells us is that sin is interesting , Rebellion an expression of our true selves. Not true. Our hearts our restless till we rest in Him. One of the greatest joys I have encountered in following God in prayer is that He is a God of Surprises, I am again and again astonished at the things He shows me about myself. Its never ever been a path I would have chosen for myself, but God leads us in the most glorious and unexpected ways. At the start of the journey we have an idea in our minds of what it means to be holy and so we copy this idea like clones. But God shows us our ways are not His. Its a startling and delightful discovery, over and over again. I would say a person who is truly holy has this quality, that they will constantly startle and delight us. At the end of life's day I think the first thing we will say, when we meet the face of God is, 'I never knew...I never ever knew!!' In delight and amazement. I found this in meeting Our Lady, this joyous amazement. Something of this is always with us when we meet the Holy, the other. On the other hand an encounter with evil is an encounter with the bland, the boringly same and prediictable. For, after all what can Staan do, but, like a spoilt child kick the knees of God, over and over and over and........
Lee, have a look at this old clip of, 'The nun's Story'..see how perfect the nuns were like bright shinning sailing ships of prayer!! in those days in most Religious Orders things were very, very ordered, especially for the Novices. The nuns should keep their hands folded beneath their wimples, they should always smile, their clothes draped just so, they should move at a sedate pace, no unseemly laughter and so on and on...One old priest told me that before Vatican 2 he could count 60 ways to commit serious mortal sin by breaking the rules just as he was getting ready for mass!! The difficulty that produced this situation was that people thought holiness was something that they arrived at by DIY means, that really they could 'earn' or 'work' their way into heaven. That is not to say that rules and regulations are not important , they are as kind of railroad trtacks that help our little locomotive steam its way to heaven. But the problem is when we start to think the railroad tracks are everything, because as Saint Augustine said, 'Love and do as you will' . So if we are a praying people we will naturally obey the Church's rule about going to mass on Sunday..not because we have to but because we want to, not because we're made to but because we have a hunger to. But in the SPiritual Life part of us all will always be Saduccees and Pharisees, part of us will always want to be building inner towers of babel. We know in our hearts we should be lifting our hands and begging God to lift us, but instead of this we are always building inner Towers of Babel. Thats why God is constantly sending in the wrecking crews to knock down the wonderful things we are building. If you recall the story of the film, 'The Nun's Story' this is exactly what happened to Deborah Kerr, she was taught a human way of Perfection, how to build a Tower of Babel. but the whole thing came crashing right down.The poor nun had to leave her order and so she could have said with Isaiah, Their going looked like a disaster, Their leaving us, like annihilation; Whereas this falling house of cards may well have been the best thing for her... But as I say this crashing down is a constant in the Spirutal life. Its a bit like the waves of the sea constantly beating against the shore. In just such a way does the Holy Spirit constantly crash against our hard hearts, wearing them down with His love, teaching us that a Do It Yourself spiritualiity is not the way to go.
