Vassula’s Opening Speech for the Retreat in Rhodes

September 20-25, 2012

Prayer for healing:

Lord look upon me with eyes of mercy,
May Your healing Spirit rest upon me.
It is through Your power that I was created since
You created me from nothing
Fill me with healing power of Your Spirit
May Your life-giving powers flow into every cell of my body
and into the depths of my soul.

Mend what is broken.

Cast out anything that should not be within me.
Rebuild my brokenness; restore my strength
for service in Your Kingdom.
Touch my mind with Your Wisdom
that my mouth will always proclaim Your praise.
Teach me to lead others to You in my poverty and
help me to lead others to You by my example.

Most loving Heart of Jesus
Bring me health in my body and spirit that I may serve
You with all my strength.
Amen

OUR FREE WILL SHOULD BE USED FOR GOOD THINGS

Part of what it means to be human is that God has given us our freedom. Free will to choose what is ultimately good or what is not good. We can use this correctly this gift or misuse it. God gives this gift of free will to us so that we can love God with all our hearts with all our minds with all our being. This is the true and right use of the gift of free will that God has given us: To love God and to love our neighbor. But this noble image of God in us can be lost through our sins and the lures of this world using our free will in the wrong way. For He said in a message, I have created you, giving you the freedom to make your own decisions (December 7, 1989) The world will have to reap still what it has harvested; I cannot forgive their guilt unless the world repents! (May 25, 1993)

If we were not free we would be like robots like slaves and we won’t be what God wants us to be, ‘the adoptive children of God.’ To be adoptive children of God one grows closer to God through grace it is not that our freedom decreases, but our freedom increases, because loving what God loves we can do so much more. We would have the desire in us to do great things, noble things, and holy things for we are created to have the capacity to love.

God has created us to the likeness of His Image, to the likeness of what He represents and that is Love and Goodness. But few go in this direction, because usually the excess importance that we give to materialism, economic comfort, worldly tributes, the glory of the world and sinful passions, creates in us indifference for others, a selfishness that draws us away from God’s embrace. Today’s society does not accept the truth of the spiritual world. They take all these things as a middle-ages concept. Today’s modern world believes only on what they can see with their own eyes.

The Sacred Heart said:

Can a man put his hopes on the riches of the world that captivate so many hearts, and do not bring you in touch with God, and still feel happy? When He knows that these do not last forever and will not give you eternal life and glory either? no, no one could be happy, when his soul is captive only to the riches of the world; the outcome will be bitter as wormwood; but happy is the man who turns to Me; I can make him rich through his poverty; I can enrich him through all the Riches that My Heart contains; (March/April 2001)

We descend, as He said in one of His Messages, from nobility, sovereignty and Majesty. God imprinted His Image in us at birth and nobody can take it away from us. In a message He said: I have created you to be immortal and holy; I have created you to rule with Me even while you are still on earth; I can deify your image if you receive the treasure of the Path of Virtues; blessed is he who receives this treasure and uses it;

By grace we are all meant to walk in God’s glory and share His Kingdom, this is what is meant for us, to walk in the Path of Virtues. This is what Jesus said on April 3, 2001):

“The Path of Virtues is laid out by My Father; it is a Path covered by sapphires, a delightful entry to Heaven; to be able to enter Heaven and in My Royal Courts where you can walk in and out among My Angels and Saints since you will be counted as one of them, your heart should be found faultless towards My Divine Will;

This Path is laid out at everyone's reach and it is up to you to enter this Path that leads to Life; if you decide for Me, and you enter the Path of Virtues, immediately it will light up your face, and at the end of this Path I will be waiting for you to crown you with rosebuds that never wither while you would be praising My Holy Name thrice holy;

While we are here still on earth we can make choices and choose to be united with God or separate ourselves from God. God never ceases to give us opportunities to learn to do good and grow in His grace and be spiritually productive in many ways by the power of the Holy Spirit, but when our time comes at an end and we are called by God, then are we ready to face God? In death all options of changing are gone. All options have ended. Has not Jesus Christ said to us in the messages: ‘live as though it is your last day here on earth.’ So, everything we do in this life has an eternal significance.

Our eternal destiny for which we are made is non-negotiable. God offers his Kingdom and His glory but the devil wants us to go to hell and forever, for eternity! Hell is real and I have seen it, I have seen how the damned suffer. Heaven is real and I had a glimpse of it as much as eternity is real. So we need to understand that the stakes are very high. We are not meant for hell but to be in the presence of God and in Heaven, in Paradise for eternity.

Feb.-April 2003

What is Eternal Life? Eternal Life is to know Us in Our Triune Glory; therefore, if you are wavering, not knowing what I mean, I offer you My Hand and once you take it I will offer you through Grace Life in Us;

I am not moved by eloquence of words or affected by their utterance, but I delight in a contrite heart.

I know from my experiences and from Scriptures and the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is giving us to understand, that there is something beyond this short life on earth. Many of us feel right in our gut that life does not end just here on earth but that out there, there is for us an immensity that is beyond us to which we were made for.

So what sort of seeds are we sowing here on earth? What sort of harvest are we going to collect at the end? We are going to collect whatever we sow. There are various seeds, seeds of virtue and seeds of corruption and sin.

October 24, 1991

I tell you solemnly, he who sows the seeds of self-indulgence will reap a harvest of corruption and when he faces Me in the Day of Judgment I will tell him:"go! away from Me;go to the Corrupt one who corrupted you!" unless I hear a cry of repentance.

On the August 19, 1996 Saint Michael the Archangel gave this message:

Do you know what "fear of the Lord" means? it means hatred of all that is evil and opposite to God; God is good, meek, gentle, merciful, love and the Truth;

St. Michael reminds us to be free from malice. Children have no malice…yet if we misuse our freedom this will be at our own cost. God has given all of us to know what’s good and what’s evil and we cannot say we are unaware of it. We are also aware that we have the ability to do good things that are according to the mind of God.

But if one decides to separate oneself from God, and rebel against Him, then one risks being in the influence of evil spirits or whatever is most dreaded and powerful out there. We cannot blame God then that He exposes us to evil. He does not desire us to be drawn in the dark regions of evil and to be influenced by those forces, no, He wants us to be free of that, but He also respects our freedom and He will never violate our liberty as He once said.

So it depends how we want to use our freedom. Do we want to open our hearts and minds to the influence of evil, turning away from the goodness of God and in a kind of pervert manner be attracted to evil and diabolical acts? Or do we want to follow the Path of Virtues as He once said in the messages?

THE SPIRITUAL BATTLE

There is a real spiritual Battle going on right now in which we are all participants. Every one must understand that there are important elements at stake in this Battle for every man and woman. Everyone is engaged into this spiritual Battle, and it is not a Battle of flesh and blood, but of spirit. Our Battle is with spiritual powers, spiritual beings, that influence us and tempt us to do evil. They infest our minds to do the wrong thing.

We have learned that these evil forces want the destruction of both our body and more importantly, the destruction of our soul. They would love to see us spend eternity in hell with them, and suffer as they suffer. They would do everything they can to damage God’s creation. The wars, the crimes, the hatred of one nation against the other, all these things are in some way manipulations of the devil.

The demons are angry with God and jealous that God loves us. They fume with rage at everything God loves. They get infuriated with despair when they realize that they are going to lose in the end, but in the meantime they continue ranting with rage and do everything possible to destroy all that God loves and values.

So what really matters in this life is that we get to Heaven. That is our destiny that is our goal that is what God wants. He has created us for glory to live with Him. He could have made us like machines, robots, but He has created us free so that we can choose to love.

The meaning of our lives is to love God and to be like God to be with Him forever. God is beautiful beyond all human imagination. How do we know this? Consider the beauty God creates, the beauty of nature as well with all its different colors, doesn’t that signify to you that God delights in what He creates? We notice too that He does not hide His satisfaction either on what He creates but even says to Himself: ‘This is good.’ Above all He delights to give us all these beautiful things that He creates to enjoy them and share with us the magnificence of His creation.

June 18, 1994

- in the morning sow your seed of love;
- at noon sow your seed of peace;
- in the evening sow your seed of reconciliation;
then go and collect your harvest and offer it to Me, your Father in Heaven, and I will tell you:

"in your graciousness, My child, you have obtained your reward in heaven;"

From above I call to you all: "come! come and make peace with Me, your God and you will have My Blessings; return to Me and you will live forever";