Vassula's Welcome Address

2nd Ecumenical TLIG Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in March 2000

In Your great condescendance,
You have hymned to us to rejoice us;
Like a bridegroom who prepares for his bride a banquet,
You have, Lover of mankind,
prepared for all of us a royal banquet,
so that we can feast on the bounty of Your House.
You give us drink from Your river of pleasure;
For with you, my Lord, is the Fountain of Life;
Let our soul, like a doe which longs for running streams
thirst for the God of Life,
The God of Hope, The God of Consolation.
Let our soul now enjoy Your sweetness,
And school us in a most delightful way;
Amen

I am more than happy to greet in the Lord, everyone here. Thanks be to God who, in his great benevolence made us partners in His Salvific Plan. This Salvific Plan which will bring forth Unity and the Triumph of our Lord and our Blessed Mother.

Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, we are all called into this spiritual battle and raised to go out and proclaim without fear the word of God. We are all called to spread the knowledge of God like a sweet odour, everywhere in this dying world. We are called to become Christ's incense to purify this world drenched in evil. We are all called to pursue the sinners, the lofty speakers, the great and the proud, the hypocrites, the traitors of the Church, with the Cross in one hand and the Rosary in the other. We are called to shatter the heresies and build faithfulness and truth in their place. We are called to build Unity on the foundation of love and humility.

God gathered us here from different Churches, to make ourselves an example of reconciliation and that unity is not impossible but possible when we go to the Lord with a contrite heart, not having any personal interests but only the Interests of God.

We are all called to expand with the grace of God, His Kingdom on earth so that His Will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are all called to truly live a resurrected Christ daily and every minute of our life.

So let us all now open our heart and understand this fundamental truth: «The Lord God knows those who are near Him.» Let us be of those who are near God, cloistered in His Heart, seeking the understanding of the invisible God by simplicity and purity of heart. Let us seek the understanding of His exuberant love in the divine union and intimacy that His Majesty has deigned to offer us. Let us abandon ourselves to God entirely.

God always gives us opportunities through our life to approach Him and get to know Him. What is the use of reading about God, hearing about God, talking about God but not knowing and understanding God? In Jeremiah 9: 22-23 God says: «Let the sage boast no more of his wisdom, nor the valiant of his valour, nor the rich man of his riches! But if anyone wants to boast, let him boast of this: of understanding and knowing Me.» My friends, realize that failure to know and understand God, is a sin.

Jesus Christ invites everyone to His royal banquet, no matter who he is and where he comes from, He invites everyone; this is what Jesus says in a message to all of us:

"I will not neglect anyone. I will sit down with the wretched and they will not be afraid of Me. I will befriend them and tell them that from the beginning they were never fatherless; and if they had never grasped the Celestial Laws, it was because no one was near them to tell them – no one told them either that they are the Almighty's seed.

Then, around Me I shall gather them, like lambs, close to My Heart and like someone who is to reveal a secret, I will nourish them from My lips the « Our Father »... Then I will tell them that Love is before their eyes. The Living Bread is the very One who sits among them; the One who lived and died for them is now speaking to them.

I shall invite all the passers-by : «Who is wretched and disdained by your society? Let him step this way. (Near Him). I shall leave no one hungry, no one poor, for my blessings are riches and My love satisfying. My ways are delightful ways, My path leads to Eternal Life. I will instruct the wretched and the poor that their Father in heaven is their Guardian, a saving God. I will remind them that they too are ranked as His children and they could call Him: «My Father»; and if they ask: «Where is understanding to be found?» I shall say: «Understanding, My child, is avoidance of all evil."

With this wonderful invitation, let us all enter into the joy of our Lord. For He is our Hope and Consolation, our Sweetness and our Life; so what more can one ask? Let us carry our Lord in our hearts as He carries us in His Heart. Let us say like David: «May the sweetness of the Lord be on us!» Ps 90,17

God is urging us to reconcile and unite, but how are we to execute His Command? We will never be able to execute His Command so long as we do not lower our voice to hear His Voice. How are we to know His Will and recognize it and perceive it if our body is filled with darkness ? How can we in this darkness see ? You have been taught that the lamp of your body is your eye, and so it is, because a diseased eye has no vision and has only darkness, whereas a healthy eye illuminates the view.

The lamp of your body is the Holy Spirit who illumines you. Anyone who has the Holy Spirit within him, will seek the true virtues and not the vices. The Holy Spirit is the real Lamp of your body that fills your whole body with the treasures and spelendours of God's Kingdom. These treasures and splendours are the virtues; where there is Light, there is Virtue. Where there is Darkness there is Vice.

So let us humble ourselves to be able to receive these gifts. Do not be like the proud; love virtue instead; for the Holy Spirit will never make His way into a crafty soul nor stay in a body that is in debt to sin. Let us truly repent allowing thus the Holy Spirit to be in us as our Lamp so that we shine from within and without and that in this transparency we could then say: «I am walking with God». God will never cease during your lifetime to keep calling you, to share the Holy Trinity's Blessedness. He invites each one of us to enter into the True and unique Knowledge of their Triune Deity, the Knowledge of knowing Him as Thrice Holy and of living a True Life in God. Amen.