Vassula’s US tour (B)
29 December 1998 10:07
This is the second part of the report of phase one of Vassula’s visit to the US and Canada.
Lakeland, Florida, October 28
As in 1996, Vassula’s host was Fran Vander Poel, assisted by her husband, mother and sisters. After songs by a beautiful chorus that included Fran, her sister Maureen gave a testimony of how the messages had brought her to a deep spiritual conversion. Just before introducing Nicky, I talked about the book by a scholar of prophecy, Dr. Helen Tzima Otto. Dr. Otto’s latest book, when Heaven Broke the Seals and Opened the Scrolls, is a brilliant study of Christian prophecy that underlines the consistency of Vassula’s and Father Stefano Gobbi’s messages not only with Biblical prophecy but with all that the Lord’s prophets and saints have been telling us for more than three thousand years.*
After Nicky’s introduction, Vassula began by calling attention to some new materials that were available, such as the small, blue book of guidelines for True Life In God prayer groups. This contains guidance written by Vassula and prayers she selected from the messages, including meditations given by Jesus on each Mystery of the Rosary and each Station of the Cross. The guidelines, she said, are being used by prayer groups on every inhabited continent. The prayer groups are little “vineyards” that Jesus has been planting everywhere in the “desert” throughout the world, she told us.
Jesus tells her that this time “No
one will stop Me. I am known to overthrow
empires so that My word gets through”.
Vassula noted that as He told her early on when things were
starting slowly, His message would grow from a small rivulet into
a gushing, wide river and eventually into an ocean.
Vassula recounted with her natural sense of humor her first experience, at her angel’s prompting, of trying to bring the messages to the attention of the clergy. In Dacca, Bangladesh, she lived across the street from a Catholic seminary, where she eventually met her first spiritual advisor, Fr. “X”. She went there one evening at six o’clock and wandered around into a courtyard where she met a priest about to hang out some laundry. She told him: “I’ve been sent by my angel; here is the message.” I just said it out plain as if I would be believed.” He looked at her for a moment, knowing that anyone coming in on Saturday evening was going to be trouble. Then he asked, “Poor woman. Where is your husband?” When she told the priest he was out of the country, the priest thought he understood; this was one of those expatriates Europeans whose husbands leave them alone too much and they “just go crackers.” He asked her, “Have you heard of the disease called schizophrenia?”
“With patience,” Vassula told us, “which I was learning from Jesus, I was able to show him that I was not crazy and after three months he started to believe that this might really be something from God.”
Vassula next talked about how The Lord wants us to abandon ourselves to Him and offer Him our will every day. If we do, His Holy Spirit can transform us into “copies of Himself.” This is a message of hope, not of “gloom and doom,” she said. “Messages that tell you to store up great quantities of food and supplies are not from God. He wants us to change our hearts, not our fridge nor our storerooms.”
After Vassula’s talk she prayed over people in invidually. Many expressed deep gratitude for the evening as they left. It was especially well organized and one felt the Spirit powerfully present. One woman asked if she could please have Vassula sign her book. This is normally not possible after presentations and I told her that besides Vassula had left some time ago and had probably already gone to bed. But I took her and her friend’s book and went to where Vassula’s room was. When the elevator door opened, there was Vassula standing as if waiting to sign the books. When I returned the books the woman, Maria, told me that she bad thrown away all her True Life in God books because someone told her they were no good, condemned. “Now I have to buy them all again,” she said. When I told this to Vassula the next day she said, “Good for her; it takes guts to admit you made a mistake.”
At breakfast the next day Vassula was talking about her sister’s prayer group in Rhodes, Greece and how many graces the Lord has given them. “It’s incredible how much … incredible. I don’t know why; maybe because they were persecuted and had no priest who would give them the spiritual direction they were looking for. So the Holy Spirit was their Director.”
I thought about the many people and groups touched by the messages who have persevered like the Greek prayer group for years despite difficulties and “dry” times. Now their prayer groups or apostolates are specially blessed these days. The Lord seems especially touched by those who continue striving to please Him even in tough times and with no sign that their efforts are bearing fruit. Many who had been filled with zeal and energy seemed to lose heart when the messages came under attack and looked instead for other messages, other vineyards. But in Greece and in so many places they never wavered. Those who hosted Vassula and arranged for her presentations on this North American tour in the face of all the hardship and sacrifice these entails are examples.
Vassula also told us about the early days when small groups would gather to pray in her home. Jesus often would make His presence known in special ways to individuals in the group. One time, He had short messages for each and He asked Vassula’s son Fabian, who was a little boy then, “Do you love Me?” Fabian, kneeling at the time, was filled with such joy that that he couldn’t contain it, His face became bright red and he jumped to his feet, saying with a loud voice: “Yes!” Jesus responded: “Always love Me because that
is the way to Heaven”. Vassula said that is how Jesus speaks to children, with simplicity but great truth.
Pittsburgh, October 29-31.
Inviting Vassula to speak at the Steel City Medjugorje Conference involved special challenges and required a whole new level of perseverance. The evil one must have been furious because the frenzy of certain individuals to prevent Vassula from speaking was intense. Several speakers withdrew from the program, heeding false rumors – claimed by some to originate from the office of the Vatican Pro-Nuncio in Washington, D.C. – that Catholics were not allowed to gather where Vassula was speaking. But the organizer of the annual event, Dr. Sam Wuslich, has a great devotion to and trusts in Our Blessed Mother. He had prayed and done his homework in researching what the Vatican’s position really was. He believed Our Lady wanted him to host Vassula, and so the more strenuous the efforts to block her, the more he dug in his heels. His team of volunteers also had much to offer up and must have been a great comfort to the Lord in their faithfulness to His will as they perceived it. Each speaker who cancelled was replaced by someone who gave an inspiring presentation and who happened to be supportive of Vassula and the True Life in God messages. In the end, the attendance was larger than last year and the conference had many new speakers who were enthusiastically received.
One of them was Rev. Sverker Tronet, a Swedish Lutheran Minister who is pastor of a church outside of Stockholm. Father described the consequences of the separation from Rome by the church of Sweden in the 16th century. The audience interrupted his talk several times by energetic applause as he made the case that the only hope for the survival of the Church of Sweden today as it is being undermined by liberal theology and modernism is to return to the “fold of Peter.” In order to preserve true faith the Swedish Church must renew its allegiance to the Holy Father and recognize the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God and acknowledge her place as Mother of the Church.
This year Father Tronet prayed the rosary in his church with some of his parishioners every day in the month of August. They prayed before a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Sweden that has visited scores of churches throughout Sweden during the past year.
Rev. Tronet also described how Pope John Paul II recently acted decisively in his capacity as shepherd of the Universal Church. The Swedish laity have been powerless to have an unspeakably blasphemous art exhibit removed from the main cathedral. The archbishop of the Church of Sweden who allowed the exhibit was scheduled to have an audience with the Pope. A week before the appointment, the Pope informed the archbishop that he was not welcome at the Vatican. In Father’s words, “Swedish people who never thanked God for Pope John Paul II, did so that day,”
Father concluded his presentation by reading messages from True Life in God concerning unity. He told how he had been powerfully influenced by the messages Vassula receives. He affirmed that he has never found in them anything but complete consistency with Scripture and the Church’s teaching. In light of his faith in the messages, he is organizing retreats in Sweden to promote awareness of the True Life in God messages.
When he finished, Rev. Tronet received a standing ovation. One of the Catholic priests came up on stage to ask the audience to join him in praying over “this courageous priest” that he would be protected and strengthened to withstand whatever persecution he faces for speaking the truth so forcefully.
Vassula was scheduled to speak only once but she gave up her rest day to speak a second time and delve deeper into some of the themes of the messages. On Friday she began by discussing how Jesus has been continuing to reveal more about the Holy Spirit because we know so little about Him. The second Pentecost, she said, is a drawn-out one that has already started.
In talking about the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, The B1essed Virgin Mary, Vassula said “I wish we could all share my charism of hearing Jesus’ voice when He speaks about Our Blessed Mother. It is an exultation impossible to describe.”
“You come to hear me speak about the messages because the Holy Spirit puts that impulse there to go and listen. The Holy Spirit of grace will grasp your heart and draw you into the current. Do not resist the Holy Spirit but allow yourself to he carried away. Do not judge the Holy Spirit. Your thought will be transformed to be as of the mind of God. We will grow spiritually, learning intimacy with God, learning to understand Scripture and to love it. God is teaching us how to love, how to enter into the life of unceasing prayer in which we are desiring God, longing for God all day long.”
“This is the prayer without words, contemplative, the highest prayer. We learn to live the greatest commandment of all: to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, our whole mind and our whole soul. We are carried by the Holy Spirit to the heights of joy through knowing God, loving Him, and having Him dwell within.”
Vassula said that all she has learned is not from books but she was taught by God’s voice which she hears interiorly. She has no time to read with her constant travel and a household to tend. Her husband also must travel a lot and often when she comes back “the fridge is so empty there is an echo.” (This would be another example of being “the echo of the echo,” I was thinking.) Vassula has been living this life of prayer, taking dictation, and traveling to diffuse the message for ten years. In fact, at the end of November, 1998 her Angel Daniel came to her. She saw him interiorly as he drew with her hand a picture of himself bowing to her and offering her a big red flower in honor of the tenth anniversary of the first time she went out publicly to speak about the messages.
In her second talk at the Pittsburgh Conference on Saturday morning she explained what the Holy Spirit means when He promises to make each of us “the hymn to the Hymn; the amen to the Amen.” When He speaks, His voice and His words are so beautiful they are like music, like a hymn. Our prayer and praise then will be a hymn to the Hymn, as David’s response to hearing God speak became the Song of Songs. ‘Amen’, besides being the ending to our prayer meaning ‘it is so’ also means ‘The One Faithful and True’, so the Holy Spirit will lead us into ending our prayer with an ‘amen to the Amen’.
This promise is particularly significant for our times when, Vassula said, we have grown cold and have forgotten the sweetness, the tenderness of God’s love. “Whoever does experience it, their hearts are re-kindled and they will thirst always for more.”
Hearing this put into perspective for me what I am not always able to express about the uniqueness of the True Life in God messages. At Trinitas we often have the joy of hearing from people who have just discovered the messages. They are touched in a way they had never quite experienced before. This can he true for someone who attends Mass daily or one who has been very far from God. In either case they thirst for more and, as Vassula reminded us, that is why Jesus says “My Holy Spirit is the inner power of My Church…without My Holy Spirit even My disciples did not fully understand My teachings.”
“By the Holy Spirit, ” said Vassula, “We are made kin with the Lord and this brings peace the world cannot give. The renewal of the Holy Spirit will come by fire. When the elements begin to melt, we will know the fulfillment of the Holy Spirit’s renewal is coming: the New Heavens and the New Earth.”
The Lord tells Vassula: “This is why you must rely on Me and resource your spirit from My Spirit so that: you can go on singing and chanting My Love Hymn to the nations; this is why I invited you to have your pilgrimage and your retreat in my Body…” [NB 92:13]
We received many testimonials and thanks from people who attended the Pittsburgh Conference and heard Vassula’s powerful presentations. One of them said that it was an extraordinarily Spirit-filled gathering and that it seemed to be a great breakthrough for the Lord’s Love Hymn from Heaven, True Life in God.
Canada
The next day, November 1, Vassula and Niels Christian concluded the first phase of the tour with a presentation in London, Ontario. The Lord tells Vassula that His Holy Spirit is persecuted like never before, even to the point of frenzy. The challenging circumstances preparing for the presentation in Ontario confirmed it, as they did in New York and Pittsburgh. The host in London, Bill Onstein, had gone on blind faith and trust that he was following the Holy Spirit’s leading in inviting Vassula to an area that seemed especially cold to prophetic revelations in general and to Vassula’s messages in particular. Humanly speaking, it didn’t make sense to him, but he followed a strong impulse to plan for a large gathering anyway.
Feeling a need to guide the faithful in their discernment regarding the True Life in God messages, an announcement was made on the morning of the presentation at every Mass in every church of the area, advising Catholics not to attend. Vassula went to Sunday Mass at the Cathedral and was treated to hearing the message against her. After Mass she introduced herself to the celebrant priest who apologized for having to read such a thing in her presence. In fact, it was an extraordinary action to be taken in Canada against a Greek Orthodox from Rome invited by a lay person to speak in a public place.
Prospects for a large turnout appeared slim but as we know, with the Lord all things are possible. Buses came from near and far and the convention center was filled with nearly a thousand souls, thirsty for the sweetness and tenderness of God’s love.
Among them were several Greek Orthodox. This may have been largely due to the efforts of Jim Peters, a Greek Orthodox who hosted a presentation by Vassula in Greenville, North Carolina in August, 1997. Jim drove from Atlanta to New York to support Vassula’s presentation there. Then he drove to Canada to support her diffusion of the Messages there.
Similarly in French-speaking Canada where Vassula began the second phase of this North American tour less than three weeks later, the turnout was surprising. The French Canadians had been practically the first nationality to fervently embrace the messages in the early 1990’s but recently had seemed relatively closed to the messages after the various attacks against them. In both Ottawa and Shawinigan, Quebec, however, there were well over a thousand people who gathered at short notice to be filled with the “bread that lasts” and the “peace the world cannot give.” “I have truly
poured out on you divine graces so that people can benefit from them too. All My Works are good, and They are warmly welcomed by the pure in heart… I have, as I said, given you all enough proof by this Divine Treasure coming from My Sacred Heart’s treasury so that you do not doubt. Apart, Vassula , from having given you exterior signs of My Love, I have given you Knowledge and Instruction, constantly enriching you and others through these writings.” [NB 92:9-10]
At the bed and breakfast where we stayed for Vassula’s presentation in St. Louis on November 19, I was discussing with the innkeepers how the Word of God may have an impact far beyond what may be immediately apparent. The wife said that her husband was a botanist and he noted that seed once planted remains in the soil indefinitely. He noticed that when long-fallow gardens are tilled and watered again, plantings from years past will sprout up-flowers, herbs, vegetables, even long forgotten marijuana plants will unexpectedly appear. She observed that it is like that with the Holy Spirit; once His seeds were sown in the remotest corners of the earth they have lasted for ages and only need to be cultivated with love to bear fruit. This is what Our Lord has asked Vassula and all of us laborers throughout the world to do,
This report will be continued, later, with an account of the remainder of Vassula’s US tour which took place in November, 1998 with visits to St. Louis, Houston, Denver and San Francisco.
