Svjedočanstvo Marije Pavlović Lunetti

Our Lady of Medjugorje's September 25, 2017 monthly message for the world:

“Dear children! I am calling you to be generous in renunciation, fasting and prayer for all those who are in temptation, and are your brothers and sisters. In a special way I am imploring you to pray for priests and for all the consecrated, that they may love Jesus still more fervently; that the Holy Spirit may fill their hearts with joy; that they may witness Heaven and Heavenly mysteries. Many souls are in sin, because there are not those who sacrifice themselves and pray for their conversion. I am with you and am praying that your hearts may be filled with joy. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

Do not be afraid of suffering, 

for I am with you! (Diary, 15)

“Do not be afraid of suffering, for 
I am with you” (Diary, 15). 

Jesus assures us that in every instance of suffering, He is first to bear the burden and suffers along with us. Whatever the suffering that touches us, if it is entrusted to Jesus in prayer, it becomes a wellspring of the greatest graces. In her Diary St. Faustina tells us: “Suffering is the greatest treasure on earth. It purifies the soul. In suffering, we learn who our true friend is. True love is measured by the thermometer of suffering” (Diary, 342-343).

Jesus informed St. Faustina, “I have been waiting to share my suffering with you, for who can understand my suffering better than my spouse? (Diary, 348). 

Faustina begged forgiveness for her coldness and asked to be granted a single thorn from Our Lord’s crown of thorns. Jesus granted her this grace: “In the morning, during meditation, I felt a painful thorn in the left side of my head. The suffering continued all day. I meditated constantly on how Jesus had been able to endure the pain of so many thorns that made up His crown. I joined my sufferings to the sufferings of Jesus and offered it for sinners. At four o’clock when I came for adoration, I saw one of our wards offending God greatly by sins of impure thoughts. I also saw a certain person who was the cause of her sin. My soul was pierced with fear, and I asked God, for the sake of Jesus’ pain, to snatch her from this terrible misery. Jesus answered that He would grant her that favor, not for her sake, but for the sake of my request. Now I understood how much we ought to pray for sinners” (Diary, 349-350). 

Jesus informed Faustina and thereby each and every one of us: “When I was dying on the cross, I was not thinking of myself, but of poor sinners, and I prayed for them to my Father. I want your last moments to be altogether like mine on the cross. There is but one price at which souls are bought, and that is suffering united to my suffering on the cross. Pure love understands these words; carnal love will never understand them” (Diary, 324).

Upon her profession of her first vows, Faustina’s state of health began to worsen steadily, causing her to suffer terribly. On top of this, some sisters of her congregation suspected her of dissembling. “One day―she writes―I complained to Jesus that I was being a burden to the sisters. Jesus answered me: “You are not living for yourself but for souls, and other souls will profit from your sufferings. Your prolonged suffering will give them the light and strength to accept my will” (Diary, 67).

Jesus enlightened Faustina as to the essence of authentic love and how it was to be shown to God. Thus Faustina writes: “True love of God consists in carrying out God’s will. To show God our love in what we do, all our actions, even the least, must spring from our love of God. And the Lord said to me: ‘My child, you please me most by suffering. In your physical as well as your mental sufferings. My daughter, do not seek sympathy from creatures. I want the fragrance of your suffering to be pure and unadulterated. I want you to detach yourself, not only from creatures, but also from yourself. My daughter, 
I want to delight in the love of your heart, a pure love, virginal, unblemished, untarnished. The more you will come to love suffering, my daughter, the purer will be your love for me’” (Diary, 279).

In another place in her Diary, we read: “Great love can change small things into great ones, and it is only love that lends value to our actions. And the purer our love becomes, the less there will be within us for the flames of suffering to feed upon, and the suffering will cease to be a suffering for us; it will become a delight! By the grace of God, I have received such a disposition of heart that I am never so happy as when I suffer for Jesus, whom I love with every beat of my heart. Once when 
I was suffering greatly, I left my work and escaped to Jesus and asked Him to give me His strength. After a very short prayer, I returned to my work, filled with enthusiasm and joy. Then, one of the sisters said to me: ‘You must have many consolations today, Sister; you look so radiant. Surely, God is giving you no suffering, but only consolations.’ ‘You are greatly mistaken, Sister,’ I answered, “for it is precisely when I suffer much that my joy is greater; and when I suffer less, my joy also is less.’ However, that soul let me know that she did not understand what I was saying. 
I tried to explain to her that when we suffer much we have a great chance to show God that we love Him; but when we suffer little we have less occasion to show God our love; and when we do not suffer at all, our love is then neither great nor pure. By the grace of God, we can attain a point where suffering will become a delight to us, for love can work such things in pure souls” (Diary, 303).

Let us then pray in the words of St. Faustina: “Thank you, Jesus, for interior sufferings, for dryness of spirit, for terrors, fears, and incertitudes, for the darkness and the deep interior night, for temptations and various ordeals for torments to great for words, especially for those which no one will understand, for the hour of death with its fierce struggle and all its bitterness.

“I thank you, Jesus, you who first drank the cup of bitterness before you gave it to me, in a much milder form. I put my lips to this cup of your holy will. Let all be done according to your good pleasure; let that which your wisdom ordained before the ages be done to me. I want to drink the cup to its last drop, and not seek to know the reason why. In bitterness is my joy, in hopelessness is my trust. In you, O Lord, all is good; all is a gift of your paternal Heart. I do not prefer consolations to bitterness or bitterness over consolations, but thank you, O Jesus, for everything! It is my delight to fix my gaze upon you, O incomprehensible God! My spirit abides in these mysterious dwelling places, and there I am at home. I know very well the dwelling lace of my Spouse. I feel there is not a single drop of blood in me that does not burn with love for you.

“O Uncreated Beauty, whoever comes to know your once cannot love anything else. I can feel the bottomless abyss of my soul, and nothing will fill it but God Himself. I fell that I am drowned in Him like a single grain of sand in a bottomless ocean” (Diary, 343).

“It is my greatest desire that souls should recognize you as their eternal happiness, that they should come to believe in your goodness and glorify your infinite mercy” (Diary, 305).