IN
SEARCH OF APPARITIONS OR APPROVAL?
Many people chase after visionaries and want to be the
first to have new information to distribute to friends. In re-cent
times this has become a very big problem in the Catholic Church. More
people each day are willing to buy into the teachings of would-be
visionaries than the teachings of the Church. We must understand that
Pope John Paul II is the visionary of our day and he is leading us
to a great Jubilee celebration. This is in contrast to the doom and
gloom of people claiming to have visits from the Father, Son, Holy
Spirit, Mary and any number of saints.
We have had several apparitions approved in our gen-eration:
Akita, Japan, Betania, Venezuela and Amsterdam, Holland, to name a
few. Akita and Amsterdam receive almost no visitors. Ida, the Church
approved visionary (May 31, 1996) from Amsterdam, enlightened the
world to many beautiful bits of hope, but hope doesn't seem to sell
these days. The books that fly off the shelf are the ones that tell
us to be ready to go to caves or worry about some government scheme
in-volving magnets that are changing our weather. The conferences
that draw the most participants are the ones that have unapproved
visionaries speaking.
Get a grip on yourself. Don't buy into every wacko that
comes down the pike claiming to be from God. Wait for the Church.
Your first question should be, does this event, visionary, message,
whatever, have the support of the Church? Is it going through the
official approval process? Scripture says that people will tell us
that Jesus is here or over there.
Don't listen to them! That should be lesson enough.
If you really want to have your eyes opened, look at
the facts. We have a possible authentic apparition in Medjugorje.
The Church has taken it seriously for seventeen years, but still has
not put a stamp of approval on it. That is good. It is called discernment.
The Blessed Mother who reportedly appears there, after delivering
daily messages to the world for years, said, "You are not listening
to my messages so I will no longer give you a message every day."
Now she gives a message only once a month. If Medjugorje is true,
then people who claim to receive a messages from Mary, for the world,
more often than monthly would have to be false or vice versa. The
Blessed Mother would be contradicting herself if this scenario was
not true.
Gospa Missions is producing and sponsoring a series
of national conferences dealing with the teachings of the Catholic
Church and Pope John Paul II. If you really care about your Church,
come and listen to what the authentic teaching is. This Church is
being steered and docked between two great pillars: Mary the Mother
of God and her Son, Jesus, alive in Eucharist. Learn in this year
of the Holy Spirit how to deal with that and not be so concerned with
all the would-be visionaries and their diversions. It is not possible
that all of the visionaries are truly from God, but all of the doctrine
of the Church is. Think about it!
- by Thomas Rutkoski
