Reflection on the Message of July 25, 2004

I DESIRE, LITTLE CHILDREN, TO DRAW YOU ALL CLOSER TO MY SON JESUS

“Dear children! I call you anew: be open to my messages. I desire, little children, to draw you all closer to my Son Jesus; therefore, you pray and fast. Especially I call you to pray for my intentions, so that I can present you to my Son Jesus; for Him to transform and open your hearts to love. When you will have love in the heart, peace will rule in you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of July 25, 2004

Behind the simple words of this message, there is Mary, our Mother, who loves her children. The heart of Mary feels our suffering and suffers when we suffer. She has compassion with us and she regrets when we are locked up and when we do not make any case of what she wants to say to us. Mary suffers with her children as a mother suffers with hers. The purer the heart is, and the more the love is great, the greater is sorrow because of evil, sin and all that destroys life.

Mary, our Mother, invites us to prepare the space in which Jesus will be able to come. Without our preparation, without our opening, Jesus remains powerless in his action. In the Gospels, we see that Jesus knew failures, that he could not help those who did not want to listen to him, to believe in him and to draw et the treasure of his life. Only the simple ones and the humble ones discover the force of the simplicity of Mary and of God. The words of the message of Our Lady are so simple. Seen from outside, they are ordinary, human words, just as Jesus, our God was wrapped in simplicity, smallness and humanity. We see Jesus each day on our altars, in Holy Masses, wrapped in ordinary simplicity of the bread, and it can happen that we do not recognize him and do not even meet him! It can happen to us to receive Holy Communion, the consecrated host, without meeting the living risen Christ, who – in the simplicity of the bread – gave to us the force of his resurrection and of his love. All that we need: love, peace, meaning of life, joy, Jesus gave to us in Holy Mass.

In a certain manner, the presence of Mary, our Mother, is hidden in simple, ordinary, human words in which – through faith and abandonment – we discover the force which attracts us and which leads us to Jesus and the encounter with him. Just like Jesus, who became man in a simple way and who thus approached us, Mary speaks to us in a comprehensible and simple way. Let us recognize with faith and the heart that, behind this simplicity, is to be fund the Holy One and the Pure One, for whom our hearts are longing. We are children of Mary, and each child needs a Mother, cannot live without her.

The desire of Mary is to bring us closer Jesus. She wishes that the desire to know and to meet Jesus might be born in our heart also. Without this desire, she cannot help us. It is necessary that our heart come into movement in order to encounter and to know Jesus. Mary knows her Son better than anyone else, but she knows also the way to reach him. We are in sure hands if we go to her to receive council and assistance.

To pray for Mary’s intentions means to pray that her maternal desires are carried out, and not our own desires. She knows what is for our good; she knows it better than us, because she loves us more than we are able to love ourselves. Her desire is to present us, to offer us to Jesus. As she presented Jesus in the Temple to the Heavenly Father, she wants to present us to her Son Jesus. He is the source of love and of peace. We need him, so that peace reigns in our families and in our human relations – not the peace of this world, but the peace that comes from his Heart pierced on the cross.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, July 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of August 25, 2004

I CALL YOU ALL TO CONVERSION OF HEART

“Dear children! I call you all to conversion of heart. Decide, as in the first days of my coming here, for a complete change of your life. In this way, little children, you will have the strength to kneel and to open your hearts before God. God will hear your prayers and answer them. Before God, I intercede for each of you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of August 25, 2004

Mary, our Mother, invites her children to the conversion of heart. Each one of us is important for her; each one of us is her child. As our Mother, she cares for us and for our heart. She is calling to conversion, just like John the Baptist did it at his time. Matthew the Evangelist is writing: “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”.” (Mt 3,1-2) It is not accidental that Mary came here, to us, precisely on the feast day of St John the Baptist, on June 24, 1981. Like him, she is calling and preparing the ways of the Lord in human hearts, at our time, during all these years. It is the voice of from Heaven that, through Mary, is resounding today through our world. It is the voice of the Mother who calls her children. This voice is resounding and renewing the lives of all those who are far from God, living in the desert and in the desolation of this world. This voice does not want to intimidate us. This is a voice that does not threaten, but says to us what God wants of us today.

The messages of Mary are neither comfortable nor light, but demanding. This voice can appear hard to the ears of this world. Mary, our Mother, is perseverant and patient with us. Her love is pressing her on to speak to us and to return us from evil and from sin. Our Mother wants to give us a new freshness, a new fervor and the breath of Heaven.

To convert one’s heart to God means to turn to Him Who alone can satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst for what is more necessary to us than bread and things of this world, which can neither fill nor set free. To convert one’s heart means to believe in God and to decide for Him. God made himself helpless in front of our freedom. Without our decision, He is almost unable to do anything in our heart, this heart that He Himself has created. This shows us at which point He loves us, without ever forcing us to love Him in return.

Our heavenly Mother knows well the enthusiasm of the first days of her apparitions, the enthusiasm that lived in the hearts because of her presence. The Virgin Mary and her maternal heart have not changed since the first days of the apparitions. It is not she who needs to change; we need it. We are filled with enthusiasm very easily, but this enthusiasm can also very easily be lost. We always need food to live. We also always need the contact with God in the prayer of the heart, in trust.

The Virgin Mary calls us to a life of integrity, to a radical change of our life. God does not want from us shallow words of our prayers, or a bit of our time. God asks us all, because He has given to us everything; He has given Himself to us, and He wants that we give Him all. We need a radical decision, which will make us fall on our knees. On our knees in front of God, we will know the heart of God. Then, God won’t be any more a foreigner for us, but a friend. He will become somebody for whom languish our heart and our soul, because in Him alone our heart can find peace, this peace that nobody and nothing can give us. Only on our knees, our heart can open to the Creator our lives. In front of Him, we are just creatures, but creatures that He loves. I believe that we are not conscious of this gift of Heaven which is offered to us today through Mary, our Mother, who is speaking to us and opening to us her maternal heart full of love, a heart that wants us to consecrate ourselves to Her. It reveals to us the immensity of the love of God and His perseverance, in spite of our blindness and our deafness. Only on our knees and in prayer, we will be able to know the heart of the Mother, this heart full of love for each one of us, but also the pain that lives in it because of each heart that is blind and deaf.

Mary, our Mother, we thank you for your intercession, for the prayer that you are addressing to God for each one of us. Thank you, because you are not abandoning me, you are not abandoning us.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, August 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of September 25, 2004

OPEN YOUR HEART TO GOD’S LOVE

“Dear children! Also today, I call you to be love where there is hatred and food where there is hunger. Open your hearts, little children, and let your hands be extended and generous so that, through you, every creature may thank God the Creator. Pray, little children, and open your heart to God’s love, but you cannot if you do not pray. Therefore, pray, pray, pray. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of September 25, 2004

As our Mother, Mary can only call us, speak to us, love us and suffer with us, for us and because of us. She is coming to us and she is speaking to our hearts in a motherly way. She wants us to feel that God exists, and to make the experience of God in spite of evil, hatred, wounds, doubts and sufferings that we know in our human life. The Mother is coming to tell us that God has the last word. She is telling us that it is worthwhile to believe, to love, to forgive and to be honest in spite of passing sufferings that we experience because of our choice of what is good, honest, just and true. Mary knows well who we are and how we are. She knows our seeking and our falls. She lived in the body, she lived in our world, but she was clothed in grace in which she wants also to clothe us, by inviting us to walk on the path that she took. She is the best mistress because she kept in her heart the words of Jesus, she contemplated these words and all the events that she lived with him in this world. She did all that, while believing and trusting in God, and hoping against any hope in the most difficult moments.

Saint Bernard compares Mary with a channel, which leads the spring water in all the directions, the channel, which “receiving from the heart of the Father the fullness of the source, offers this water to us”. This water is clear and pure, because it is coming from the Heart of Jesus Christ, her Son, our Lord and our Brother.

Mary, our Mother, is inviting us to be love, to spread love, especially where there is hatred. In his book “In the school of love”, Fr. Slavko Barbaric reports the testimony of the visionary Marija who asked Our Lady: “Do you have anything concrete to tell me?” The answer was: “I give you my love so that you give it to the others.” According to Marija, it was for her the most beautiful and the most difficult message. The most beautiful thing that can arrive to a human heart is to make the experience of the love of a mother who loves you. It is always difficult to transmit and to offer to others this experience of love. It is not easy to love the others as Mary loves us. We feel our own powerlessness. According to the teaching of the Virgin Mary, we can obtain the daily victory over our powerlessness through prayer. It is the way, which enables us to make the experience of what is most beautiful, and to realize what is most difficult.

The love that Mary, our Mother, is giving us, the love to which she is leading us, is the remedy against our tiredness, our impatience and our despair. Those ho know that they are loved cannot be threatened by crosses or illnesses, not even by death. Success does not make them haughty, failure does not lead them to despair.

Let us listen to Mary, our Mother, in order to learn wisdom and maturity. Let us follow the words of the Mother, in order to learn that it is worth to spend our time with God, to “lose” something in order to receive much more from God. Today still, we need courage to believe in the words of the Mother. Only thus will we be able to enter into the mentality of the Gospel, this Gospel that – through her apparitions – the Virgin Mary is making alive here in the hearts that open themselves and that believe in the love of God.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, September 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of October 25, 2004

MAY JESUS BE IN THE HEART OF YOUR FAMILY

“Dear children! This is a time of grace for the family and, therefore, I call you to renew prayer. May Jesus be in the heart of your family. In prayer, learn to love everything that is holy. Imitate the lives of saints so that they may be an incentive and teachers on the way of holiness. May every family become a witness of love in this world without prayer and peace. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of October 25, 2004

In this message, our Heavenly Mother is addressing the families. Nobody else has such an experience and such virtues of the family life. Mary was a girl, promised in marriage and married to Joseph, virgin and mother, Mother of the Son of God and widow after the death of Joseph. She knew and experienced all the joys and all the sorrows of family life, exaltations and anguishes, fears and death, until the most painful tragedy of her crucified Son. She experienced the glory of Easter with her risen Son and finally the heavenly crown. She began as a humble servant and she finished as Queen of Heaven.

For her, this celestial glory is not a title of honour: she is coming, she is appearing, she is taking care of us, her children, who are still on the way towards the final goal and the glorification. She is speaking to us, she is inviting us, she is advising us and teaching us. The words of Mary are clear and simple and they relate to our everyday life, our relations in the family, where human life is generated and educated. Mary, our Mother, is concerned about families, parents and children. No one is closer to their children than the parents. Their love of the children urges them to accomplish their first and most important duty: the education of the children. This duty takes precedence over all the professional and official occupations, over any career and social advancement. Saint Paul says: “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” (Tim 5,8) Mary is our model of education and of the family life. In her heart, she is carrying the treasure, which she wants to transmit to us. The Gospel says to us: “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” (Lk 2,19) The same Gospel repeats that she “kept all these sayings in her heart.” (Lk 2,51) In Mary, we find the splendid treasure of the wisdom of God which wants to be given to us and to our families. Seen from outside, the human education that Mary gave was so ordinary that nobody in Nazareth could expect that her Son was the Messiah, that he was God. From outside, Mary was as ordinary as her messages, which contain the divine life that is offered to us. Seen from inside, the education that Mary gave was extraordinary in what is ordinary, perfect in every way and behaviour, because she was aware of the fact that she was humanly educating the Most Holy One. For such an education, it was necessary to have a perfect heart and a harmonious soul, which did not lack to the Immaculate full of grace.

Mary calls us to holiness. Holiness is what is extraordinary in the ordinary human life. It is well known that it is not so much the specialized teaching and knowledge, but the exemplary behaviour of the parents that educate the children. We find specialists in pedagogy who failed to educate their own offspring, as well as illiterate mothers who offered a splendid education to their children. A mother educates more through her being and her goodness than through her specialized knowledge.

Mary invites us to renew the prayer; the prayer will renew our hearts and our families. Jesus is standing at the door and he wishes to enter and eat with us. The family, which prays, will be able to hear when he is knocking. Let us not allow to anything else but Jesus to be at the centre of our families.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje 26.10.2004

Reflection on the Message of November 25, 2004

PRAY FOR MY INTENTIONS

“Dear children! At this time, I call you all to pray for my intentions. Especially, little children, pray for those who have not yet come to know the love of God and do not seek God the Savior. You, little children, be my extended hands and by your example draw them closer to my Heart and the Heart of my Son. God will reward you with graces and every blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of November 25, 2004

Mary, Mother of the Church and our mother, is walking with us. She is awakening us and she is calling us. In this time of Advent, which is approaching, she is inviting us to pray for her intentions. The Mother knows better than us, because she has already made the way, which we must still cross. She has lived on this earth and she entered into the glory of the heavenly fatherland, which is our goal, the goal that she also desires for us. We will not make a mistake if we put our prayers, our desires and our intentions into her heart and into her hands, because she knows better than us what we need, what is necessary for our families and for the world in which we live. “God created us without us, but he will not save us without us”, said Saint Augustine. We have the responsibility for our lives and the lives of others. God desires that we are co-creators of a new and a better world.

This is why Mary calls us to pray and to feel the responsibility for all those who did not yet know the love of God, and who do not seek God, the Savior. Human freedom is wounded, but the desire remains in the heart, the desire of God, that nobody and nothing can fill, except God alone. Mary calls us to prayer, and prayer is to come in touch with the desire that is in us, the desire of God.

If the human heart is not filled with the desire and the love of God, it will seek elsewhere, and it will fill its vacuum by other things, by idols. We see that human beings are capable of uplifting themselves towards an ideal and of falling down towards an idol. We are created in the image and likeness of God, and this is why God is our unique ideal. All the rest are idols. God alone can fill the soul with the light of meaning, and give the strength for life in hi footsteps. Through Mary, God is bending towards us, eager to attract us to himself, not by force but by love. However, love, so to speak, cannot remain quiet as long as it does not see the happiness of the beloved creature. Love is the power, which attracted Mary to us, her children. Love is giving her strength during all these years. Love is the source on which she is drawing strength, and obtaining the victory in so many hearts. We can help her, and this is what Mary desires.

To be able to help Mary, we must approach her and her heart. We should obtain in ourselves the transformation, which we want to obtain and see in others. There is no other means or another way. We know, that it is impossible to change the others by our councils, our admonitions, our words of wisdom or our criticism. We can change them only by love, by transformation and conversion that they will see in us. Our Lady almost implores us to be her hands. She does not have other hands but ours. She wants that our hands, our feet, our words and our hearts belong to her and to her son Jesus.

Love tends towards resemblance. Day after day, we will become what is in front of us, what we have taken as the ideal of our life. In this way, our thoughts, our feelings, our words and our hearts will become similar to the thoughts, the feelings, the words and the heart of Mary and of Jesus. Then only will we be able to bring the others closer to the heart of Mary and of Jesus, or rather, through us, they will be able to attract them to their hearts.

Let us pray with blessed Mother Teresa: “Do you want my hands, my God, to assist all the day those who need assistance? My God, I give you my hands. Do you want my feet to go all the day, each day, towards those who need a friend? Today, my God, I give you my feet. Do you want my voice, my God, so that it speaks all the day to those who need your words of love? My God, I give you my voice today. Do you want my heart, my God, from dawn to the evening, to love without exception? My God, I give you my heart today.”

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje 26.11.2004

Reflection on the Message of January 25, 2005

PRAY FOR UNITY OF CHRISTIANS

“Dear children! In this time of grace again I call you to prayer. Pray, little children, for unity of Christians, that all may be one heart. Unity will really be among you inasmuch as you will pray and forgive. Do not forget: love will conquer only if you pray, and your heart will open. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of January 25, 2005

Today also, the compassionate heart of our Heavenly Mother is speaking to us. We are her children, and she knows well that we are still on the way towards our celestial fatherland. This is why she is coming to help us, so that we choose the way, which she took, to arrive where she is now.

Mary calls us to prayer. Prayer is the precondition of realisation of all that God can wish for us, of all that He wants to give us. There is not another way towards God and the gifts of God except prayer. This is why Saint Theresa of Avila said: “If somebody tells you that there is another way towards God except prayer, do not believe in it.” Mary repeats assiduously and unceasingly this first lesson of faith and walking towards God. Through her messages and her apparitions, she is showing that she is walking with us. She is our Mother and the Mother of the Church, and this is why she invites us to pray for the unity of Christians, so that all may be one heart. The Mother knows that this unity is possible and that we can and must implore it from God. This unity is a gift of God, a gift which He wants to grant to his children.

Today, on the feast of the conversion of Saint Paul, is ending the week of prayer for the unity of Christians. Our obligation, our prayer and our desire of unity of those who confess the faith in Christ should not however stop.

January 19, 2005, at the general audience of Wednesday, our Pope said: “Since the reconciliation of Christians exceeds human forces and possibilities, the prayer expresses the hope which does not disappoint, trust in God who makes all things new. Prayer must be accompanied by the purification of the intelligence, of feelings and of memories. The unity is a gift of God, and must be beseeched unceasingly in humility and in truth.”

Only Jesus Christ, the only foundation of the Church, can unite us. Saint Paul says this to us in his epistle to the Corinthians: “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.” (1 Co 3,11-14).

The Holy Spirit, which guides the Church, also inspires it to pray for the unity of Christians in Christ, because it is in Him that we are one.

Our Mother tells us that unity is possible, and that it will take place among us, insofar as we are ready to pray and to forgive. Mary also invites us to open our hearts, because God can come and bring his gifts only to an open heart. Prayer opens the human heart and makes it merciful and filled with compassion for all men, for each creature. Even in the midst of sufferings, prayer floods from such a heart, including for those who do evil. The world of today needs such hearts, opened and sympathizing, such prayers, which rise even in the midst of moaning.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, January 26,2005

Reflection on the Message of February 25, 2005

PUT GOD IN THE FIRST PLACE IN YOUR LIFE

“Dear children! Today I call you to be my extended hands in this world that puts God in the last place. You, little children, put God in the first place in your life. God will bless you and give you strength to bear witness to Him, the God of love and peace. I am with you and intercede for all of you. Little children, do not forget that I love you with a tender love. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of February 25, 2005

Today also, the Virgin Mary is calling us. She is inviting us to be her “extended hands in this world”. She has extended, and she continues to extend her hands and her heart to us. She desires that we take her by the hand, that we open our heart to her and that we listen to her voice. The glance that we pose on her with the heart helps us to persevere on the path, on which we have to go, on the way that God intended for us. Mary, our Mother, desires to be present in our families, in our human relations, in our conversations through our life and our deeds. She is not expecting from us to do extraordinary things. She did not do any either. She fulfilled her work through simple and ordinary domestic services, but she was doing simple and insignificant things with an extraordinary love. The real greatness is not to do something extraordinary, but to do all that we do with an extraordinary love.

Mary was offering to the Lord small and daily deeds with love. In the privacy of her life, she wanted to please only the Lord. Her will did not waver. For her, God was in the first place, and this is why her life was entirely filled. This is why she is our Mother and our Teacher. As a Mother, she wants to wake us up, and to teach us that it is not important what we do, but how we do it.

Through this message also, she is encouraging us to put God in the first place in our life. When God is in the first place, all the rest finds its right place. The worst of all, it is that human beings have forgotten God, and all the rest that happens to us in life, are only the consequences of this. It is strange that human beings do not notice the creator and author of their lives. Even stranger is than human beings are able to turn away from God, and thus destroy themselves and those who are close to them.

If we put God at the first place, we will certainly find time for prayer, for the encounter with God. If we seek God sincerely, and if we do not know where to find Him, we must begin to pray, to pray daily. It will not always be easy, but it will be salutary. We find time for what we love. If we love ourselves, we will find prayer, the encounter with God who heals, who saves and who gives the strength to live and give witness in favour of God who is love and peace. Without God, we are weak and helpless, unable to forgive, to love and to give witness in favour of God who is alive and who languishes for us, his children. To believe in God means to abandon oneself to Him, to dare to jump into the arms of God. Then, we will experience that He is carrying us and maintaining every instant of our life.

Mary leads us to God, and she is promisins us her intercession and her presence. She offers us the love of her heart, the gentle, tender and salutary love. Let us ask Mary, not to be for us a remote and unknown being, but the Mother who is present and who does not refuse anybody who asks her help and her intercession. Let us listen to her in order to experience already here on earth, in our life and in our families, the foretaste of Heaven.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, February 26,2005

Reflection on the Message of March 25, 2005

OUR LADY IS INVITING US TO LOVE

“Dear children! Today I call you to love. Little children, love each other with God’s love. At every moment, in joy and in sorrow, may love prevail and, in this way, love will begin to reign in your hearts. The risen Jesus will be with you and you will be His witnesses. I will rejoice with you and protect you with my motherly mantle. Especially, little children, I will watch your daily conversion with love. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of March 25, 2005

Gospa, our Mother with a heart full of love, begins her message with a call: “Dear children, today I call you to love.” This is what is most necessary and most important that she has to say today, in this estranged world, in which people are more and more locked within themselves. Nobody has time for others. To each one is sufficient his own evil. In this world characterised by individualism and selfishness, Mary calls us to love. She knows it well, and each one of experiences it, that life without love is empty, despairing and meaningless. To be loved and able to love means to find meaning and joy for life. The life of the one who feels loved is filled with meaning. The one who loves fulfils his life to the fullness. The deep experience to know oneself loved and to love is related to all that we experience, and to the way in which we experience it. People of our time are often tired – not only physically, but are often tired of life. This tiredness is deeply related to the lack of love for others and to the lack of security, which comes from the love of the others towards us. People are sick because they do not love and because they do not make the experience of the love of God. The one who loves and who feels loved can be threatened neither by illness nor by health. Those, who feel loved, do not become proud because of success nor discouraged and despaired because of failure. Love is the only home in which human being can dwell. Without a home, human beings are foreigners everywhere. Happy the man who finds his home! We are born to feel protected and to offer protection. We are born to be loved and to love. Remember that you are loved, and your tiredness will disappear. The love with which you are loved is given unconditionally. It does not ask anything from you but to allow it to love you. This love does not wait to love you until you become better, but it loves you so that you can become better and grow until the fullness, towards which your heart aspires. People generally wait until you become such as they want you to be, in order to love you. Our Heavenly Mother is not thus. She is full of grace, she is all in the love of God, and she tells us: “Dear children, if you knew how much I love you, you would cry of joy”.

We can give to others only what we have. The same applies to love. Only the one who feels the love of God, and who knows that God loves him, can give this love to others. Often, when we have to show our love and give our love to others, we have the impression to have failed the exam. We are still far from mutual love, and it is the sign that we are also far from the love of God. The more we approach the love of God, the more easily will we be able to live and to give witness to others. This is the way of the prayer: to make the experience of what is most beautiful and to realize in our life what is most difficult.

The one who knows oneself loved wants to become similar to the one who loves him, and wants to answer to love. Blessed Mother Teresa used to say: “I know how much God loves me, and this is urging me towards the others, so that all can make the experience of it”.

Let us pray for the power of love and for daily conversion, according to the prayer of John Henry Cardinal Newman: “Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine; it will be You shining on others through me.”

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, March 26,2005

Reflection on the Message of April 25, 2005

RENEW PRAYER IN YOUR FAMILIES

“Dear children! Also today, I call you to renew prayer in your families. By prayer and the reading of Sacred Scripture, may the Holy Spirit, who will renew you, enter into your families. In this way, you will become teachers of the faith in your family. By prayer and your love, the world will set out on a better way and love will begin to rule in the world. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of April 25, 2005

In her message, the Virgin Mary speaks to the families. With a maternal heart, she is inviting to the revival of prayer in our families. Mary, our Mother, knows well that family is threatened in a special way. The family is the sanctuary of each person, in which it grows, is educated, and receives in the heart all the values that parents should transmit to their children.

Nowadays, much is spoken about so many crises, and in a very special way of the crisis of the family. The family is attacked on all sides by evil, which wants to discourage and destroy communion, harmony and peace of the family. The families are in crisis in a particular way, because family prayer disappeared in so many families. Gospa does not make a diagnostic of a disease of the contemporary family, but in this message, she is giving the therapy, how to heal, how to renew and revive our families. She brings us back to the source of life, she is putting in our hands the means: prayer and reading of the Scriptures, of the Word of God. By these means, the Holy Spirit – in the place of the spirit of the world – will enter into our families and will bring blessing, peace and communion.

As a Mother, Gospa does not invent new means but gives to her children the simplest and healthiest verified food. This spiritual food and these means were tested in the Christian tradition of the Church. Generations ate of it and lived their faith of it, were inspired and have remained on the way of God, the one that leads to life, not just any life.

Gospa says: By prayer and reading of Sacred Scripture, may the Holy Spirit, who will renew you, enter into your families. To pray with the Bible means that we are on the best way, on the surest base, on the best source of prayer. Here, I meet the Word of God through which He wants to say something to me. The Word of God in the Scriptures is not the text of a novel or of just any book. It is not pronounced or written by just anyone. It is the language of God who, by this text, can be heard and which resounds through all times. Today still, the Lord wants to say something to me through his word. His word is not a dead letter but a living word, if I allow it to be alive in me. We should ask: “Lord, what do you want to tell me?” It is important to adopt the attitude of a humble heart that is listening and saying: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening”.

When I listen to what the Lord is telling me, I will be able to speak, to give witness and to live my faith. Then, we will be able also to lead others and to teach them in faith, especially those which the Lord put on our way.

By this message, the parents in particular are invited to become not only those who put the children into the world, but most of all those who unceasingly give to them birth for faith and in faith.

Let us pray with Gospa and in particular for the parents – in order that they do not give up witnessing and giving birth to their children in faith.

According to the words of saint Francis de Sales: “When your children do not want to hear any more speaking about God, then you must speak to God about your children. ”

God will hear you. He takes seriously each one of your prayers made seriously. The prayer in which we believe can be taken seriously by God, and it can the answered.

Fra Ljubo Kurtovic
Medugorje 26.4.2005

Reflection on the Message of May 25, 2005

WITNESS MY MESSAGES

“Dear children! Anew I call you to live my messages in humility. Especially witness them now when we are approaching the anniversary of my apparitions. Little children, be a sign to those who are far from God and His love. I am with you and bless you all with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of May 25, 2005

The Virgin Mary invites us to live in humility the messages that she is giving us here for 24 years now. She is the humble servant of the Lord, and she knows well that the word of God can be understood only in humility. Mary found grace in God, God looked at his humble servant, and this is why all the generations call her blessed. This is why so many people come to the places of her apparitions, in the desire to be closer to her maternal heart. We are all her children. In the words of Mary, when she says: “Dear children”, they see and recognize her love and her maternal care. With Mary, our Mother, we are sure that we will be neither misled nor disappointed.

The simple ones and the humble ones confirm here in Medjugorje the truth of the words of Jesus pronounced in the Holy Spirit: “I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hid these things from the wise and intelligent, and have revealed them to little ones.” (Lk 10,21)

Mary shows us Jesus and she guides us towards Jesus, but it is Jesus who sends his Mother to us, so that we may humbly listen to her and follow her words.

She is coming to us from the glory of the heavenly Father, and she is speaking simply, so that all can understand her. As a Mother, Mary is bending over towards us so that we, her children, can understand. She is doing just as the parents do, when they go down on their knees in front of their little children, so that the child can see them and understand what they want to say.

The word humility comes from the Latin word humilitas, which is close to the humus, the clay, the earth. This is why it is normal, as the Bible is saying, that we – who are made out of clay – are humble in order to be able to understand God and Our Lady. The Virgin Mary does not come to condemn or to accuse us. Those who accuse and condemn are not able to hear the others, they only hear themselves. When Mary, our Mother, speaks to us, she wants also to hear us; she wants to hear our calls and our prayer. Each one of our prayers, which come from the heart, she takes them seriously.

In one of her messages, Gospa is saying: “Dear children, I bow down in front of your freedom.” She, who is the all-pure, full of grace, is bowing down in front of man, his freedom. How great is the dignity of each person that even God respects his freedom!

The apparitions of Our Lady in Medjugorje are a grace and a gift of heaven. They do not belong to anybody, they are not the property of anyone, but a free gift for me, for you, for the Church and for the world. Our property, which belongs to us, we defend it, so that nobody takes it from us. With a gift, it is different. The gift obliges us to fidelity to Our Lady and to her love. The gift obliges us to give witness to the fact that heaven has opened up, and that rivers of grace started to flow through such an amount of hearts, waking them up from the spiritual torpor. This is why Gospa is calling us: “Especially witness them now when we are approaching the anniversary of my apparitions.” Mary, our Mother, told us often: “Dear children, this is a time of grace.”

Each humble, pure and simple heart can recognize the voice of the mother. Let us not allow this time of grace to be a time of our ruin, but a time of conversion and a new life with God.

Today also, the Virgin Mary tells us: “I am with you.” Let us also be and remain with her.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje 26.5.2005