Vassula in Holland, March 2002
Vassula returned to Amsterdam for the first time since her last visit 25th January 1997, making it the 4th visit to Holland. Anthippie Dimozantos had made a fine work of preparing the conference during the past three months. Around 2000 people had come to fill most chairs in the hall that normally makes up 10 indoor tennis courts.
Niels Christian Hvidt introduced Vassula, using a Video projector to show some PowerPoint slides of the various sides of Vassula's life prior to her conversion and after - pictures that many, even friends of TLIG, did not know.
Vassula then greeted the gathering, expressing her joy of being back in Holland. From there she went straight into the messages. What follows is a transcript of her talk.
To people such as myself who have been resurrected, Jesus says: "My rays of divine light have lifted you up, and like a beam of light I shone even in those hearts. What shall I say today? Have I failed to feed the flock? Have I not leveled your path for you so that when you walk you will not stumble? Have I not shown to all of you the depths of my mercy? When I saw so many of you going down the alley of death, and being so far from the path of life, have I not intervened? But ah, so many of you are still rebelling against me."
What does God mean by rebellion? It is when people are at war with God. How can one stop rebelling and make peace with God? What is it to make peace with God? It is when one returns to God's favor and intimacy. After a period of estrangement and rebellion through sin and transgression and when one accepts to live God's law, which is the law of love putting God first in his life, then he can be saying: I am not rebelling against God. He continues in this message: "I make my Voice be heard from above. I shout aloud so that everyone hears, good or bad, indeed my voice has reached the ends of the world. The good alike the bad need to repent. The good for not doing exactly my will, and for not praying in the right way (many of them approach me with only words), the bad for committing mortal sins without ceasing, because of their hardness of heart and especially their indifference towards me."
I had noticed through these years that I have been traveling around the world how God is offended by the indifference of people. You tell them: God is speaking! He is alive! He is not just stuck in an icon! He speaks. He is with us. He manifests himself with signs with wonders with portents, with prodigies and then there is no reaction. All they can say: Oh how wonderful and then they turn around and go. It means in other words: What's the big deal? This is serious. Because indifference in no way is what is good, and it becomes a sin, ultimately it becomes the rejection of God. The Lord says: "I have showed to you all my splendour, but after having showered upon you as well all these graces, still many are far away from me. When I make known my messages to this generation, they trumpet aloud: Come and hear the word of God! People rush, they flock all around my envoy to listen to my words. They listened but never understood fully my words, and these same ones still listen. They read, but the Word does not penetrate their heart, and they still read, but their hearts are far away from me. They do not act on my words. They look for signs in the sky, because their hearts are still not set for me. Yes, they listen to my words with indifference, and this is why they do not put them into practice."
The messages are now spread in 60 countries that I visited. They are translated in 40 languages. This work is not a housewife's work! I am a housewife. I have two children. I have a house to run, but somehow, when Jesus calls me, as I would say that God is a God of order, he does not disturb in the family. He does not disturb the house work, but I can make myself available to God to receive the message. I can be with him eight hours with dictations, I can be five minutes with dictation, but I can be available to God. Then he sends me out to pass on what I have received, because this was not done for me. I am the pen, but when the pen is going to be empty, what has been written will remain. God has blessed this work.
I received a call. I believed, and I answered. Then, the work because very vast. Laborers where needed to help in this field of divine love. One person will not be enough to do the work, so God sent the people to preach this message. They too had a call. There are other messages also and other laborours are needed for the other vineyards. God does not make a mixture. He calls for certain people to go to this people. For this field, which is True Life in God, God called various people and through grace and through the power of the Holy Spirit they were raised to come and participate in this work and have become laborours as well.
Everything then was done on its own. A housewife cannot do that, unless God has a finger in this work. In the beginning when God said that this message will reach the ends of the world, I could never imagine this. I could never imagine something like this. What is God telling me? He was only calling me to write. Actually we are standing right now on a tennis court, but I do not play anymore. All of a sudden I became disinterested in this, because I discovered a pearl, the eternal life, and so I was called to write, and in stead of running in the tennis court I was called to taking down this message.
But one day, I complained to God: No-one will ever read this. They will ridicule me. Who has heard that God has been speaking today? They will think I am mad and rip the message into confetti and throw it. They will put it in a drawer to collect dust. And God very calmly said: "No Vassula, I have blessed this message and I will se that it will be accomplished. You will accomplish your mission with me."
After a few days, God the father came and asked: "Do you want wisdom?", Now, wisdom is a big gift, but in my ignorance in the beginning, I could never imagine what God was offering me, and I simply said: Yes! As if it was nothing special. I did not react. But God said: "To gain wisdom you will have to acquire wisdom, but I will help you acquire wisdom," and then he left. The whole day I was reflecting upon the words, God had spoken: But God has offered me something very big! Wasn't it Solomon who had wisdom? It is the very knowledge of God! Later on I have learnt that the knowledge of God is the biggest gift you can ever have: To understand and know God is the biggest gift! Because only then you can say: I have met God, and I know God, and I understand God. And then you can say too: I am walking with God. In scriptures there are many passages about certain holy people prophets that say: This so and so was walking with God. This does not mean that he was walking in the normal, natural sense. It means that his mind was in God and he is doing the divine will of God. All what he undertakes will be divine because it will be under God's light. So when I considered about this wisdom, I came back to God and I said: "You have offered me Wisdom! This is big," and he was amused, almost, and said: "Yes, but you will have to acquire it, but I will help you."
So what we have in our hands in True Life in God are teachings, so profound! They are not just offered to me. He was offering it for the benefit of the Church. He was offering it for the benefit of the people. Not for me! And if you read but also live the messages, your life will be perfected in such a way that you can be ruling with God while you are still here on earth. So I will say: How can we rule with God, while we are still here on Earth? What you will be thinking will be according to the mind of Christ! You can be perfected because you will be vested with Christ, and so whatever you will suggest to God will be divine and that is why you can rule with your father. We forget where we come from, because there is so much technology around us! It is not bad to have technology, it is good, but you will have to realize from where you come! Who is your father, before your father on earth? Your father is a king! And that you should always remember. Your father is a king. He is sovereign. He is majesty. He is splendor. And we come from him, because he has given us his image. So as he said in the messages, you are of royal descent, and not from the evil one. You come from above. You are the bone of his bone. You are the flesh of his flesh. So that is why we have to transform our lives and keep that noble image that he has imprinted on us.
How to change? When I ask the question: How will you change to be able to do God's will? Today we are here, perhaps tomorrow we are not here any more. How many of you are ready to go to heaven? If you embrace Jesus, you embrace the Cross. You cannot separate the Cross from Jesus. When I ask this people: What is the first step to do God's will, can anybody answer me? (someone from the audience:) "Love your neighbor as yourself!" (Answer of Vassula:) Yes, that is God's will, but how will we do that? There are many who cannot do that. How do we obtain that? Repent! To repent is the first thing. Repentance will bring forth the fruit of love. Some people call upon the Holy Spirit so that he can do God's will, but he cannot come upon you, if you are in dept to sin. If you have sin in you, how do you expect the Holy Spirit to fill you? So one has to empty oneself and give space to the Holy Spirit to fill you. The more you repent the more you get purified and leave space for the Holy Spirit to fill you and transform you. And then you can do God's will. This is all taught in the True Life in God. Repentance is the gate that leads souls from darkness into light. It is also a sign of humility. "The humbler you get to be, the easier my spirit will find its way in you," the Lord says. Our Lord here was speaking of space, because all these impurities are blocks, and he wants to shatter all these so that he can have a free passage in you. This shattering of rocks is called purification, because the Holy Spirit can transfigure your soul completely.
We have many messages on the Holy Spirit, because Jesus says: "You know me like this: The Father like this, because of the Old Testament, but you do not know so well the Holy Spirit," and so he is giving many teachings on the powers and the action of the Holy Spirit. He is the giver of love, he is the source of Christian Unity, he is your brother, your banquet, the pearl, the eternal life and he is the gate to heaven. In a message, Jesus says like this: "Even if you are a dry desert, my Holy Spirit can transfigure your soul, where I can have my rest in you. My Holy Spirit can transfigure your soul into a palace, where I can be king and reign over you. My Holy Spirit can transfigure your soul into a heaven. In this heaven you will be able to glorify me." Since God dwells within us, he wants to transform us into a heaven. Only then will we be able to glorify God. The Holy Spirit can never make his way into crafty souls, and he is not able to remain with sin. There is a message here that God says: "Generation, Do not say that you still have time to progress. Come now, and repent. The fruit of repentance is love."
I would like to take a short message here that reminds of the scriptures when Jesus was speaking of the lamp of God. What is the lamp of the body? Jesus says in this message: "You have been taught that the lamp of your body is your eye. And so it is. Because a diseased eye has no vision. It has no vision and only darkness, whereas a healthy eye sees clear. Anyone who has the Holy Spirit will seek the true virtues and be filled with the treasures of God's kingdom. These treasures and splendors are the virtues."
When God invades a soul, he elevates it in the state of grace because he wants to transform that soul to a perfect image of himself. In a message he says about this: "Expand your hearts to receive more of this so that you give yourself more to us so that we give ourselves more to you. This is my triumph in you," he says.
It is not he who says: "Lord, Lord", who goes into heaven but the one who is doing the will of God. The will of the father is that you learn to love God, with all you heart and mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says in the message that faith is not enough. Faith without acts of love is not enough. But how to progress in love? When Jesus came and asked one day: "I want you to pray without ceasing:" I had said: "This is not possible. To pray without ceasing. To leave my duties of the house! It is impossible." And he said: To pray without ceasing does not mean that I want you on your knees 24 hours per day. To pray without ceasing is a prayer without words. It is called a silent prayer. It is a contemplative prayer. It is when your heart desires God all day long. It is when your heart thirsts for God all day long. It is when you live perpetually in God and God lives perpetually in you. This is the prayer without ceasing. And at the same time it is the greatest desire of God, it means that you have God first. The greatest commandment is the root of all the other commandments, because you live perpetually in God and God lives perpetually in you, because God has poured himself in you and wants you to pour yourself in him, it is a cycle. God gives his love to you but he wants you to give your own love perfected back to him. The word is kenosis: To empty yourself. The more space, the more God, and in another message, God says: "I delight to see myself in you, I enjoy to gaze myself on you, so you reflect God's image." And God loves it. He likes to see himself, and you become one, one heart, and one mind, and this is to live a True Life in God. But then, what more joy than to posses God and allow yourselves to be possessed by God, to allow God to invade you, to possess you and you will be possessed by God. And he wants this. He wants to possess you. He is your father. What more do you want? He makes us understand so much just how much he is father.
When God the father spoke to me the first time, it was God the father, not just any person, because there is a clear difference, because when he talks with you, you are touched. There are no doubts. The soul cannot be deceived. God said: "Take away Vassula's name and put your own." Whatever he says to me, he says to you. So when he said: "I am your father," I felt like I knew him before, it was like I had met him before. It was a familiar voice, very simple and so meek. And he said: "You come from me, you belong to me, you are my seed, you are mine." Every word he said were like that and it was like someone who had had amnesia, and it was as if you did not remember who you were, and all of a sudden, you get your memory back, because when God says: "I am your father," it comes back, and it was exactly like that: I realized, that he is truly my father - the bone of his bone and the flesh of his flesh. When Jesus describes the father, he says these words. "My Father is a King, yet so motherly, he is the Judge, yet so tender and loving, he is the Alfa and Omega, yet so meek." That is the father!
I want to speak to you of the importance of prayer, but before I go into that passage, I want to share with you a message. If you have patience, you have love, if you have generosity you have love, without the gift of love, you cannot have the other virtues. The bigger love you have in you, the bigger virtues you will have. This is the message I would like to share with you: "Tell me, of what is the fruit tree that will never produce its fruit? Or of what use is a harp without its strings? In other words: Of what use are the praises that are said without love? Your goal then should be love, for it is on love in the end that you will be judged, and not on your eloquence of speech or on your knowledge or on any of your gifts that I in my benevolence have offered you, you will be judged upon the measure of your love." Everyone who loves knows God. You want to enjoy heaven? You want to rejoice in my presence? Then come to me as a child. You want to meet me and see me? Then come to me with innocence of heart. Come to me with a pure heart, and the scales covering your eyes will fall so that you will see my glory. Remember in scripture, that Jesus said: "Happy the pure of heart, they shall see God." And here there is an amazing passage that refers to that: "In order to see God and acknowledge him as your Father, you have to be born of me by grace. How else would you see God? A child before being born, has never seen his father. Not until he is born will he see his father. And so it is with your spiritual birth, your spiritual birth of Me. Flesh is flesh and has the vision of flesh, but who is born of the Spirit is given a vision of God, enabling him to seize him acknowledge him and penetrate in his depths. When you pray, it is not just speaking to God. It is also an act of love, and it is also an act of reparation.
In the messages, Jesus is calling all of us for acts of reparation. The apostasy is so great that anyone who is a little bit close to God is being asked for acts of reparation. Our Lady says in a message that prayers may change the world. Many people blame God. It is easy to blame God for all the evils in the world. If there are earth quakes, natural disasters, innocent children dying, the majority of people blame God. When the question was put to me by someone who was not a churchgoer and said to me: If God exists, why does he leave this world in harm like a brothel? Why? I asked Jesus. The answer was given very short, but later on in the messages he explains it all in detail, but even that message can make you reflect. He said to me: "If you die, it is because of your apostasy!" Evil draws evil. The world is selfdestroying itself. Our Lady says that we are drawing this upon ourselves through our wickedness and through our apostasy. Because today, people are afraid of saying that they believe in God, especially the young people. Religion is not wanted. It is a past thing. It is as I heard someone I heard say: "When I grow old, I will sit in my garden and think about it, but only when I grow old." This is the attitude of today, but prayers are very powerful.
If you are here today, it is because you are called today and you can do a lot. Our Lady says you can change the world. Your prayers can change the world. Your prayers can obtain the graces for the conversion of sinners, and the more conversions, the more prayers will be made and heard for other conversions. Prayers are powerful. This is why I insist of you not to abandon your prayers. The prayers of the faithful are needed more today than ever. God needs your sacrifices. In a message, God said once that the biggest service one can do to God is to bring one soul back to him. That is the biggest service you can ever bring. You can do it either by your life, either by your prayers, either by your sacrifices, and I would say also by your acts of love. This can bring people back to God - to conversion! When you pray for other people and not for yourself, when you pray for others, it is like you shed your own blood for them, because your blood then is without self interest. So praying and spending your time for other people is like sharing your blood, and it resembles Christ's love. It is to serve our Lord, because Jesus says: There are many people who go to Church. They obtain spiritual nourishment for themselves, they read the message and they progress, and they sit home and that's all. They don't serve others, and God is asking us to serve others to pass on the knowledge. Jesus said to me in a message: "I was sent in the world to serve and not to be served. Althoug my state was divine I had emptied myself to assume the condition of a slave. No king has ever been known to have served his subordinates as I who am the king of kings served." And that is true. This is a passage that one can mediate. There is no king ever who served his subordinates and here we have the King of Kings serving his subordinates. There is much to say about prayer, but the time has faded out. We are going to have no break. You will have no rest. This is what Jesus told me. Do your best, and I will do the rest. What you lack, he will fill. I am sure. He says: That is why I don't worry. Learn to be patient. Learn to be patient as I was patient. Then I said: Yes, let me learn to be patient, like Job, and Jesus said: "Take mine!" So, we have to learn to be patient, and tolerant, especially when you come to ecumenism. When we want to unite the church. We must not be intolerant.
God will tell you all your mistakes and all you have not done, but he will always end with a tone of hope. He will never crush you down, he will always lift you and give you hope. And today the hope is the Holy Spirit. Scriptures are being accomplished, because The Holy Bible is a book that is alive for eternity. There are passages in Scripture that we are living today, especially the book of Daniel. When Daniel saw the visions, he was curious and asked: "When are these things going to happen?" And the Angel said: "You go away now - it is not for you to know, but at the end of time, I shall raise you again." What does that me? Jesus is describing this passage. Raising Daniel at the end of times means that his prophecy will be relevant at the end of times. Our times are the end of times, not the end of the world, not the end of the world, but the end of an epoch, an epoch that Daniel spoke about, a time of apostasy, a time of the Antichrist that plays God, apes God. Jesus is speaking and he teaches the scripture to us in the manner of Lectio Divina. If you want to understand Scriptures you cannot take out a passage and understand its full meaning. One example is Daniel and apostasy. You recognize the end of times through the apostasy. The same accounts for Ezekiel, and also 2 Thess. 2, speaks about the issue.
When the Father sees apostasy, the Father takes of his crown to run to us to save us. He sends us his Holy Spirit like never before in history. He says it, that never before in history has the Holy Spirit been poured out on humanity like today. From the top to the least. "The second Pentecost", he calls it. It has started already. It is the renewal of the Church. He renews us constantly. It is individual: You have somebody, who is totally indifferent, a spiritual zero. It is a resurrection breath within us. God in this way lifts the soul and puts it aflame with his fire and zeal. This person becomes an apostle and has received a second Pentecost. The second Pentecost is connected to Apocalypse 21: the soul that is called "city of God". And after this renewal we can say that the old Jerusalem is no more, because it is spoken about New Jerusalem and New Heaven and New Earth. In other words, the old self is no more. He transforms this city into a New Jerusalem. The soul then will be like a beautiful bride, because she will be dressed with Christ. The bridegroom who is no-one else than God the Trinity himself will be bearing his bride into the nuptial chamber of his heart. So the New Heavens are within us. When there is darkness as the night, as soon as we receive the Holy Spirit, his light shines like a thousand constellations put together and the soul becomes a New Heavens. The earth within us that was like a desert, after the Holy Spirit has put his celestial seeds in us, from there will become the Paradise, from a desert into an Eden. And that is the New Heavens and the New Earth. It is the renewal of Creation, the Second Pentecost. It is happening today, from some time ago, already. This is the hope we have today: The word from Christ: "Therefore, say to your soul, my beloved ones, rest in God alone, for he is the only source of your hope. Let your heart exult and you soul be renewed, for in these times I am pouring my graces upon humanity like never before in history."
This is all for today, but it is like one drop of all these messages that are: 16 years of messages! It is impossible for me to cover all the subjects, but I gave you here the fundamental themes that we have to have in our spiritual life, which is how to love God through repentance, how to pray, what is prayer, and how to live these times which are the apostatized times, but also times of hope. There are many prophecies about Russia and the church of Russia and Romania. There was a prophecy for the 11th of September, exactly ten years before it happened: 11th September, 1991. There Jesus warned us. He called out with a loud voice: "Creation, he was calling, repent, and turn your lives holy. Come back to me, change your lives, leave your apathy, leave your lethargy, the sins of the world will bring disasters on you, your wickedness will bring disasters," and he said the towers would come down in a heap of dust, and then he spoke about sin. God called them "Towers of Babel".
God is giving us other prophecies. The world does not want to be converted. Some want it, but after some time they go back to their former life. This is why Jesus is saying: "Stay awake, read my messages, but live my messages." |