Scripture – Why Won’t You Listen?

 

IT is a haunting and serious message to the Church from both Our Lord and Our Lady being repeated around the world in recent months: You are not listening. And today, we hear it echoed in the Mass readings.

The People of God complained to the Lord that they did not want to hear His voice because it frightened them.

Let us not again hear the voice of the LORD, our God, nor see this great fire any more, lest we die. 

So they asked, instead, that God would give them prophets to convey His message. But the Lord warned:

Anyone who will not listen to My words which the prophet speaks in My name, I Myself will hold accountable for it. Today’s first Mass reading

Sure enough, when the prophets told them what they did not want to hear, they rejected them too, to the point that they put the Lord to the test:

Oh, that today you would hear His voice:
    “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
    as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted Me;
    they tested me though they had seen My works.” Today’s Psalm

And so the Lord swore after forty years of their rebellion in the desert, that the unfaithful would not enter His rest in the promised land.[1]Heb 3:8-11

So too, the Church has entered a particular “desert” of testing and trial since Our Lady appeared in Medjugorje forty years ago, as of this June 24th, 2021. No apparition in modern times, and perhaps the last 2000 years, has drawn more attention and borne more fruits in the universal Church: hundreds upon hundreds of priestly vocations and documented miracles, millions of conversions, thousands of apostolates…. The fruits have been so extraordinary that the Church has essentially declared Medjugorje a Marian shrine to which the clergy can now take official pilgrimages there with their flocks (see On Medjugorjeand Mother Calls).

But as the 40th anniversary approaches, the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart nears, and thus also the “period” or “era of peace” promised at Fatima — what the Church Fathers called the “sabbath rest” for the Church — we are hearing the same warnings that God addressed to the Israelites:

Oh! My wandering children who do not find the light – many of them still do not listen to my word, they do not appreciate my help, going as far as to mock these messages for the salvation of humanity. Children, you have had time for your choice, and if I look at the hearts of many of my children, I cry with pain and my Son’s heart bleeds. Children, now you will see what I never wanted your eyes to see: very strong earthquakes and all sorts of calamities such as tempests, storms, tidal waves and wars, because you did not listen to my words! You are being reduced to slavery, you are persecuted for your faith, yet everything goes on as if it were normal.  —Our Lady to Gisella Cardia, January 19th, 2021; countdowntothekingdom.com

But many read even these words, including some clergy, and still mock rather than discern them; they quickly label them as “conspiracy” rather than actually considering them in the light of the “signs of the times,” much less St. Paul’s admonition to never “despise the words of prophets, but test everything.[2]1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 How did we come to such a place that we deride the “office” of the prophets?  How did we go from a Church with such a rich mystical heritage… to either an out-of-hand dismissal of most anything supernatural… to an intellectual snobbery that scoffs at the gifts and charisms of the Holy Spirit? The answer is that this, too, is part of the apostasy — another error of the Enlightenment period, in this case,”rationalism”, which has led to the “death of mystery.” 

On the contrary, St. Paul, one of the great Jewish scholars of his time, lists the office of the prophet as only second to the Apostles (cf. Eph 4:11).

Christ… fulfills this prophetic office, not only by the hierarchy… but also by the laity. He accordingly both establishes them as witnesses and provides them with the sense of the faith [sensus fidei] and the grace of the word. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 904

By no means does this mean embracing every claim to prophecy as true. I can tell you that our team has some healthy discussions behind the scenes before posting any of the messages on this website. Healthy skepticism, yes, not cynicism; caution, but not sarcasm; discernment, but not despising. But clearly, these have become the general attitude of a great portion of the present day Body of Christ.

Please, why are you not listening to the most important messenger in the universe, My Mother, She who with Her love does everything to protect her children in this world of confusion? Please be in silence, prayer and contemplation: do not talk. Did you want to see the signs of the end times? The signs have arrived and you still do not believe; you have been told that apostasy would enter the Church because of proud, selfish theologians, and this has happened, overturning the words of my Gospel. I told you about famines, plague and diseases that would come, and you still do not believe. I told you that the noise of war would be heard: here it is, everything has already been revealed in the Bible — state against state, governments against governments, men against men, you are afraid of each other, they have taken away your freedom and still you do not believe. Oh, how much faith will I find on My return? —Our Lord Jesus to Gisella, November 10th, 2020; countdowntothekingdom.com

My children, there is no more time: the times are short and not all of you are ready. Please listen to me and stop worrying about unnecessary things, but do what is needed. I need your help and you must not wait any longer. —Our Lady to Angela, July 26th, 2020; countdowntothekingdom.com

Children, I have been coming among you for some time now, but many of you still do not listen to me and do not open your hearts to the Lord. My children, the Lord has an immense heart and there is room for each one of you; you only have to want it, you have to want to be part of God’s heart and make room for Him in yours. —Our Lady to Simona, January 26th, 2021; countdowntothekingdom.com

The times predicted from Fatima onwards have arrived — no one will be able to say that I had not given warnings. Many have been the prophets and seers chosen to announce the truth and the dangers of this world, yet many have not listened and still do not listen. I weep over these children who are being lost; the apostasy of the Church is increasingly clear — my favored sons (priests) have refused my protection.  —Our Lady to Gisella Cardia, January 26th, 2021; countdowntothekingdom.com

As a wise priest once said to me:

In closing, we want to share with you a video below by a British woman now living in Ireland. We don’t know anything about her beyond her social media name “Cas Sunshine.” Here, we feel, is an example of a “prophetic word” for the Church that should be carefully discerned. Spoken in charity and raw sincerity, this is an example of how God often speaks through the “little ones” — not necessarily those with a Ph.D. behind their names. Indeed, any one of us can exercise the gift of prophecy, which is our baptismal duty. 

The Christian faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through Baptism, have been constituted as the people of God; for this reason, since they have become sharers in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal office in their own manner, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each one.Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 871

Instead of ignoring this prophetic reality and treating it as an inconvenience, annoyance or some kind of affront to our modern theological sensibilities… wouldn’t it be more prudent to guide, root, and nourish these voices — in a word, listen?  According to Heaven, we’re already too late. 

Mark Mallett

 

 

He to whom that private revelation is proposed and announced,
ought to believe and obey the command or message of God,
if it be proposed to him on sufficient evidence…
For God speaks to him, at least by means of another,
and therefore requires him to believe;
hence it is, that he is bound to believe God,
Who requires him to do so.
 
—POPE BENEDICT XIV, Heroic Virtue, Vol III, p. 394


It’s our very sleepiness to the presence of God
that renders us insensitive to evil:
we don’t hear God because we don’t want to be disturbed,
and so we remain indifferent to evil…
t
hose of us who do not want to see
the full force of evil and
do not want to enter into His Passion

—POPE BENEDICT XVI, Catholic News Agency, Vatican City,
Apr 20, 2011, General Audience

 

 

RELATED READING

Can You Ignore Private Revelation?

Prophecy Properly Understood

Turn on the Headlights

Silencing the Prophets

Why the World Remains in Pain

When They Listened

When the Stones Cry out

Medjugorje… What You May Not Know

Medjugorje, and the Smoking Guns

On Private Revelation

On Seers and Visionaries

Sleeping While the House Burns

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Footnotes

Footnotes

1 Heb 3:8-11
2 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21
Posted in From Our Contributors, Messages, Scripture.