What a concept it is: “secret things.”
Secret predictions were made famous at Fátima, and are being made famous again at Medjugorje, which Pope John Paul II called “the fulfillment of Fátima.”
And yet, in the famous book of daily inspirational “words,” Jesus Calling, Sarah Young, who did seem to draw from authentic wisdom, quotes the Lord as saying:
“I am leading you, step by step, through your life. Hold My Hand in trusting dependence, letting Me guide you through this day. Your future looks uncertain and feels flimsy — even precarious. That is how it should be. Secret things belong to the Lord, and future things are secret things. When you try to figure out the future, you are grasping at things that are Mine. This, like all forms of worry, is an act of rebellion: doubting My promises to care for you.
“Whenever you find yourself worrying about the future, repent and return to Me. I will show you the next step forward, and the one after that, and the one after that. Relax and enjoy the journey in My Presence, trusting Me to open up the way for you as you go.”
When we first hear that (“secret things belong to the Lord… you are grasping at things that are Mine”) we are excused for feeling confused: Didn’t Christ and His disciples talk about future events? And is not prophecy — future things — throughout the Old Testament, not to mention Revelation in the New?
And has not Mary spoken of future happenings at precisely such places as Fátima and Medjugorje, to name just two?
The answer is a qualified yes, “qualified” because at Medurgorje only bits and pieces of future events have been released and the famous Fátima third secret was not revealed until the year 2000 (eighty-three years after it was given).
“I don’t want to go into detail about the Secrets, but Father Livio, did you feel me nervous?” seer Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti of Medjugorje said two years ago, after Russia attacked Ukraine. “No! We are not agitated because we believe that the Madonna is with us, we believe that the Madonna, as she herself says, listens to our cry and our prayers.
“I believe that Our Lady is with us, God has allowed her, as she has said countless times, to be among us to help us. I believe that the forty years of the Madonna’s presence among us are precisely this. Humanity is at the crossroads, Our Lady is with us, she is on our side. Satan is strong, Our Lady said it in several messages. Satan is unleashed, you said so at the opening of this new millennium.”
At the same time, it’s hard to forget the urgency in the voice of Sister Lucia dos Santos, who on December 26, 1957, said to a priest named Augustin Fuentes, “Father, please tell everyone what Our Lady had repeatedly told me: ‘Many nations are going to disappear from the face of the earth, Godless nations will be picked up by God as His scourge to punish the human race, if we through prayers and the sacraments, will not bring about their conversion.’”
“Be not afraid,” said Pope John Paul II himself.
And so it is a matter of faith, balance, and trust, as well as a realistic look at what is transpiring in the world.
But Young’s words are well-taken, and if nothing else, pertain perhaps mainly to personal lives; the future when it comes to each of us as individuals.
For think of your own life and how many things, in your life, would have been crushing — too demoralizing, or even brutal — had you known, in advance, they were going to occur (and all that you had to endure).
If we knew we faced months or years of this or that problem, or this or that illness, or sorrow, it might be overwhelming, where the call of Jesus is simple: rely on Him each day and concentrate on the present instead of spending too much energy on the future.
When it comes to the world: a glimpse of its future is critical and must lead us to prayer. We ignore the future at the risk of jeopardizing our world.
But overarching all of this: “Jesus, I trust in You.”
That was conveyed by another seer, now a saint, from Poland, who also had sobering words about the future but whose strongest message was Divine Mercy.
[Michael Brown to resume in-person retreats; locations to be announced shortly]
[resources: books about Divine Mercy]
