If you do not repent, you will die like all of them.

MESSAGE #2968 from the Blessed Mother

February 28, 2007
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My daughter, Penance and prayer are truly needed in this time of God's mercy and grace.

Please, dear children, pray and do penance for those who are furthest away from God. Pray each new day so more turn to God before it's too late. Through prayer and penance, hearts will be converted. Please understand I need your assistance, for so many are choosing to live in darkness. A great chastisement will come if man continues to live in sin. Repentance is truly needed, for evil has become widespread. Prayer and penance truly console My Son's wounded Heart.

Now, please let go of the noise of the world and pray quietly with Our Lord. Pray and trust in God as you kneel before Our Lord.

My daughter, pray with me, for many souls are in need of conversion. Many souls will suffer if they continue to live in mortal sin. Time is moving quickly, so please tell the world to join hands and pray, pray as a family. Pray, pray your Rosary every day. Amen.


Catechism of the Catholic Church
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#1492 Repentance (also called contrition) must be inspired by motives that arise from faith. If repentance arises from love of charity for God, it is called "perfect" contrition; if it is founded on other motives, it is called "imperfect."

#1490 The movement of return to God, called conversion and repentance, entails sorrow for and abhorrence of sins committed, and the firm purpose of sinning no more in the future. Conversion touches the past and the future and is nourished by hope in God's mercy.

Gospel (St. Luke 13:1-9)
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Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.

Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on themâ€"do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' " 'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.' "


Excerpts from a Homily by Fr. Robert Altier
Third Sunday of Lent - March 14, 2004
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http://www.desertvoice.excerptsofinri.com/

We are called to accept our share of the Cross. We are called to bear fruit for God, as Jesus made clear in the Gospel reading today. If we are not bearing fruit, we deserve to be cut down. It is not enough just to simply be there with nice-looking foliage; it is absolutely required that we bear fruit. And in order to bear fruit, it is made very clear what needs to happen: The gardener was going to work the soil and then he was going to put some fertilizer on it.

We are being called by God to unite ourselves with Christ, to take up the Cross, and to walk with Our Lord. But many of us think we do not need to do that. The "American Way", after all, is to make sure that we do not have to suffer anything, to make sure that everything is comfortable and easy. The Cross is a scandal to us, just as it was to the Jewish people of old; it is absurdity to us, just as it was to the Greeks of old â€" unless we can see it with faith. Not the kind of faith that shoots up out of no place because something extraordinary happened, but the kind of faith that comes only by working through the suffering and recognizing that God is faithful to everything that He has promised. We are the unfaithful one, and the only way we learn to be faithful is to go through the suffering, to continue to pray, and to be faithful in the midst of the trials.

All of us have certain habitual sins that we have been working against for many years, and we get to the point where we have made it for a week, maybe two weeks, maybe even a month or two, without falling into whatever sin it is that we struggle with; and what happens is we fall into the same pattern that we have been talking about. We stop praying about it. We start thinking thoughts like "I finally overcame this! I'm not going to fall into this anymore. I've finally mastered it. I have overcome!"

First of all, we recognize that we are not giving the credit to God but we are taking it for ourselves, and then we do not turn to God anymore. So as soon as we hear those words in our own minds, we must recognize that really what that means is we are leaning over the edge of the cliff and we are about to fall flat on our faces because we have just let the guard down. That is exactly what the devil is waiting for, and then he pounces with everything he has and down we go because we were relying on our own strength and we were no longer praying

We need to be faithful to Him. He has shown the way of fidelity and He has given to us the example to follow. We have our choice. Both examples are written down. Both are there for our learning and as a warning to us. We can be like Jesus, we can be like Our Lady, and we can be like all of the saints who were faithful to God in the midst of their trials; or we can learn from the people of old and we will be unfaithful and we will die in the desert. The choice is ours: to choose Jesus and live, or to rely on ourselves and die. This is precisely the point that Jesus makes in the Gospel: "If you do not repent, you will die like all of them."