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Friday

Homily of Fr. Ivan Filipovic  | 

Friday, July 13, 2006   

                                       Mother Elvira: the Morning Session
Here we are once again to smile at life!  But there is still someone who has not smiled yet. Let’s give this joy to our lives and put a big smile on our face. Even those of you who have a wounded heart, smile at your life!
We have said that the “Festival of Life” is not just any general celebration, but it is for your life. Take your life in your hands and realize that it is a precious and important gift. We must live our lives to the fullest inside of us. There is something so great in us that we cannot even imagine it. We can start by being thankful and not being angry with our lives. For example, resentment,  anxiety, and fear are not good for our lives.
Just like we do with our guys and girls in Community, let’s learn to make a simple analysis so that we can recognize what tree we are by its fruit.  A girl came to tell me that she was very agitated, and I asked her, “What were you thinking about an hour ago? What did you see? What has disturbed you such that it changed your mood?”  Sometimes we are like the weather, because we are immersed in nature.  We are fragile nature. We don’t need to be astonished if every once in a while we have changes in mood.  Let’s not blame ourselves or somebody else right away. There’s no reason to blame anybody.  It is your moment of fragility that you need to embrace and overcome.  But we need to reflect upon it, because this can help us to know ourselves and accept ourselves, and ultimately love ourselves as we are. We must always aim for a life of freedom, because true freedom is derived from truth. This is our objective: to discover that it is in the truth that you are able to feel free and live in freedom. This is what we teach the guys and girls who have always hidden, who have always lied. They told lies before they ever took drugs, and you parents never realized it because you were just like them. You spoke very loosely, even on the telephone, or you made negative comments about other people.  Then when that person would come to your house, you would smile at him and give him a hug, but you had just criticized him!  Your children heard everything, and they judged you. These things are a bad influence on young people.  They disturb the minds and the hearts of the youth, who are much more sensitive than we are, much more attentive to the interior life, to the truth.  After a while they get used to all of this and adapt to it by beginning to lie to their parents.  I am saying these things now to you, guys and girls, and I am saying them to you in front of your parents, because tomorrow you will all be parents, too. What you suffered when you were little, you should not repeat and make your children suffer all over again, continuing the cycle
Parents, your children need to see, must see, that you are different than you were when they left you. We do not want your money, because your children don’t need your money.  They need your life to be transparent, loyal, clean, and good.  When they visit you at home, they will understand that the Community has not deceived them. The ultimate trust of your sons and daughters lies with you, in you parents, and not in us.  The Community tells you parents to pray, to take the Rosary in your hands again, to read the Bible, to become closer to the sacraments.  As parents, we  never did this before, and for this motive our youth didn’t believed anymore in us.   As parents, we focused on taking good care of our son’s and daughter’s body.   We eat three times a day, so how is it we are afraid to pray at least one time a day?  This is an injustice that you do to your life. I thank the Holy Spirit for advising me not to accept money from the government, precisely because life is more valuable than all the millions of dollars that exist.
Dear parents, you must commit yourselves to do what we advise.  It’s not enough to just go to the family meetings.  You must obey our Blessed Mother who asks us to pray, as we have done in Community. By doing this, we will learn not just to talk to our children, but to live ourselves that which we are telling them to do. First we must live it, and they will learn to live by watching us.
If you have deep wounds that will not permit you to welcome what the Community is living in these days, please go to confession, because we all need to free our conscience.  The complete story of our lives develops within us, not the outside appearance, the image, or the front. These things have deceived all of us, and there are still those that continue to allow themselves to be deceived. Some of you here have wounded hearts and are sad.  Maybe you feel forced to be here because your wife has made you come at all costs, but this father needs to know that he is here, like each and every one of us, because he was invited by our Blessed Mother who is here in our midst and wants to heal our hearts during these days.

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