Reflection on the Message of January 25, 2003

PRAY FOR PEACE

“Dear children! With this message I call you anew to pray for peace. Particularly now when peace is in crisis, you be those who pray and bear witness to peace. Little children, be peace in this peaceless world. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of January 25, 2003

The Blessed Virgin Mary calls her children again; she calls all those who want to hear her motherly voice and respond to the voice of peace. The call is given in love and leaves us freedom to accept it. In Our Lady’s motherly voice there is no intimidation, no threatening, no pessimism, no fear and no panic. Her voice and her words come from a heart that is pacified in God. She sees well the situation of the world, but she is not in despair because of it. She also sees well the crisis of the world, of men, of the family, of youth and of old people, but she also sees well the possibility of these same men to reach peace and to witness the peace that she gives us, and to which she invites us. Mary, our Mother, wishes to lead us to the experience of a heart full of peace that we can obtain through abandonment to God, without effort and without tension. This is what the psalmist speaks about: “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.” (Ps 131)

We have to develop trust and exercise ourselves in trust in the Almighty who wants to give us this experience. Such an experience of trust and peacefulness is a treasure from which one can live and which can be given to others. I believe that each one of us has had the experience of an encounter with an aggressive person, but also with a person whose heart is pacified. We run away from those who are aggressive, we avoid them because they bring trouble and threaten our peace. On the contrary, we are ennobled by an encounter with a person whose heart is pacified, a person who makes no offence, utters no calumny, does not attack, has no hatred in the heart. We can feel that such an encounter make us take part in the peace of that person. The most frequent cause of peacelessness and tension is mistrust, which engenders a feeling of being threatened. Ladislaus Boros says in connection to this: “True Christianity knows the power of meekness, knows holiness of character, and the power of abandonment. A new strength enters into the world where those, who bear witness in their blood tremble in pain and still persevere without being revolted and without perverting their suffering by hatred, desire of vengeance or vanity. It is a great delight to encounter a truly meek person. She can set her seal on the entire life of another.”

These are fruits of faith and of trust that the Holy Spirit produces in us. Faith bestows on our life relaxation and peace. To believe in someone means to have the possibility to come to know this person. If I do not trust someone, I cannot come to know this person, because I am closed. It is the same with our relationship to God. If I do not believe what Jesus tells me in the Gospel, I will never be able to make the experience of what He promises me by his word.

Words of Our Lady’s message, just as the Gospel, may seem distant, idealistic and impossible to be put into practice in our lives. Our Lady’s message reminds me of Jesus’ words: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Mt 5,48) At first sight, it is an almost impossible demand. The Gospel really demands from humans what is impossible for human strength. This impossible demand of the Gospel would like to lead us not to rely on ourselves but on God. Only then shall we have peace. If we try to put these demands into practice by our own strength, we shall be defeated and frustrated. Women in Africa usually carry loads on their head, and if they keep them in a good balance, they can walk many kilometres with them. If loads are not in a good balance, they will hurt their back after only a few meters. In the same way, we have to understand well the Gospel, which does not support loads, according to the words of St. John: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” (1 Jn 5,3). Let us rely on God. May He become more important for us then we are important for ourselves. Let us allow Him to take initiative in our lives, because it is more important what He does in us then what we do ourselves. Let us allow His love to touch us, so that His peace may come into our lives, our words, our encounters and our deeds.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, January 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of February 25, 2003

PEACE IS A PRECIOUS GIFT FROM GOD

“Dear children! Also today I call you to pray and fast for peace. As I have already said and now repeat to you, little children, only with prayer and fasting can wars also be stopped. Peace is a precious gift from God. Seek, pray and you will receive it. Speak about peace and carry peace in your hearts. Nurture it like a flower which is in need of water, tenderness and light. Be those who carry peace to others. I am with you and intercede for all of you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of February 25, 2003

Our Lady’s words, just as her love for us, her children, remain unchanged. As in the last message, she calls us also today to prayer and fasting for peace. She presented herself here as Queen of Peace who brings and gives us peace. Many have experienced it in their hearts. They took this peace into their daily life. Although in her messages she addresses herself to everyone, saying “dear children”, as a mother she speaks to each one individually, to each heart. Starting with the individual, peace spreads into the family and from the family into the people and into the whole society. It is important to answer to this call personally. Everything starts with the individual. We should not expect and wait for others to be converted, to become better, to believe, but it is important to turn ma heart personally to the Mother who leads us to Jesus – the King of Peace. She sees well how much men are threatened, how much peace is threatened in human hearts. She knows well that peacelessness and hatred come from a troubled heart. She offers us a remedy for this and such heart.

Our Lady has neither revealed something new here, nor has she brought something unknown. Our Lady addresses us the same invitation as the Prophets in the Old Testament: conversion of hearts, faith, fasting and prayer. According to the witness of the visionaries, Our Lady has invited us all to peace, to fasting and prayer, to conversion and a strong faith. From the beginning of the apparitions to August 14, 1984, people were fasting one day a week. On the vigil of the Assumption 1984, through the visionary Ivan, she gave us this message: “I would like the people to pray along with me these days. And to pray as much as possible! And to fast strictly on Wednesdays and Fridays, and every day to pray at least one Rosary: the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries.”

There are many other messages in which Our Lady invited us to fast: On September 20, 1984, Our Lady invited us: “Dear children! Today I call on you to begin fasting with the heart. There are many people who are fasting, but only because everyone else is fasting. It has become a custom which no one wants to stop.” On September 26, 1985: “Dear children! … Especially live the fast, because by fasting you will achieve and cause me the joy of the whole plan, which God is planning here in Medjugorje, being fulfilled.” On September 4, 1986: “Dear children! Today again I am calling you to prayer and fasting. You know, dear children, that with your help I am able to accomplish everything and force Satan not to be seducing to evil and to remove himself from this place. … Therefore, dear children, my call to you is that your day would be only prayer and complete surrender to God…”

In the message of July 25, 1991, Our Lady said: “Dear Children! … At this time peace is being threatened in a special way, and I am seeking from you to renew fasting and prayer in your families. Dear children, I desire you to grasp the seriousness of the situation and that much of what will happen depends on your prayers and you are praying a little bit. Dear children, I am with you and I am inviting you to begin to pray and fast seriously as in the first days of my coming…”

In the message of April 25, 1992, she told us: “Dear children! Today also I invite you to prayer. Only by prayer and fasting can war be stopped…”

We need to recall Our Lady’s words, but even more to take them to our heart and put them into practice in our lives. It happens that we forget the words, but if we take them seriously, they will lead us to the source, to Jesus, from whom Mary takes and brings the desired peace of heart and soul.

The Blessed Virgin Mary invites us often to fasting, but even more often to prayer. Fasting is a prayer of the body. Fasting cannot go by itself. It is always linked to prayer, to almsgiving and works of charity. Jesus himself speaks about the power of fasting (cf. Mk 9,29). In her messages, Our Lady says that through prayer and fasting war also can be stopped. Our Holy Father John-Paul II also invited and keeps inviting all Christians to prayer and fasting for peace in the world. This is the only way for overcoming difficult and deep crisis in the world: through fasting to obtain the conversion of hearts, and to stop the wars that are begotten in human hearts. Thos who pray are more useful for the world then those who fight, and if things are bad in the world or become worse and worse, it is because there are more warriors than those who pray. Let us become warriors in Our Lady’s school of prayer and of love, so that – from day to day – we may come closer to God, belong more to God, and with us also this world.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje February 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of March 25, 2003

DO NOT LOSE HOPE

“Dear children! Also today I call you to pray for peace. Pray with the heart, little children, and do not lose hope because God loves His creatures. He desires to save you, one by one, through my coming here. I call you to the way of holiness. Pray, and in prayer you are open to God’s will; in this way, in everything you do, you realize God’s plan in you and through you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of March 25, 2003

Also in this message, the Blessed Virgin Mary tells us: “Pray with the heart and do not lose hope”. It may happen that we lose hope, that we have the impression that God does not hear, as if he withdrew from this world and from his creatures. But can God forget what he has created?

In Our Lady’s words, we can feel an indestructible hope in spite of all the menaces of war, catastrophes and dark prognostics that fill the newspapers. Mary tells us that we are also responsible for peace. Peace does not come without our implication. Surely it is more easy to remember God when we are struck by a hardship or a calamity. War threat and threat against life itself awaken us from spiritual sleep and we remember that there is someone who is absolute, almighty and not threatened as we are. This is why we have to find again the foundations and the source of our life, the rock on which we shall build our life and this world, and on which we shall lean.

In Holy Father’s Apostolic Letter “At the beginning of the new millennium”, we can also feel hope in spite of all that does not awaken any hope in a better future.

In Jesus Christ, our God lived on this earth and had the body, just as us, walked on the paths of our life. Jesus and Mary were not spared from suffering, cross, sorrows and joys of life. We can either give in to despair or cling to faith. Discouragement or faith. We can lean on God, on the world of God, without any other support, just like St. Peter when he jumped into the water counting on the world of Jesus, who said, “Come!” (cf. Mt 14,29) He believed in Jesus. Faith and hope are vary close, almost identical.

This is what Peguy writes: “I am not surprised, says God, that people believe in me. It is enough for them to look at my creatures and they will believe. Love also does not surprise me, because it is a gain for them if they love one another, it us useful for them. But hope, hope amazes me.”

Great saints were not tempted directly against faith or against charity. Jesus himself in the garden of Gethsemane was tempted against hope. Little Teresa from Lisieux, on her deathbed, was also tempted against hope when the devil told her: “My dear, do you really think that there is something after death?” The Cure of Ars, who packed several times his luggage to run away from Ars, has not done it because he was losing faith or love, but because he saw no hope at all.

There is one means to make us learn to hope, the same that Jesus used when he was tempted against hope or provoked to be unfaithful from the will of the Father, which was often so rigid: he spent night in prayer. The source of hope is prayer, and prayer demands from us to be awake. In order to practice hope, we have to become permanently available as Mary, who expressed it through her YES to the will of God. Through her yes, God has done great things. A human yes open the door to God so that he may enter into this world and save it. Today also, Mary pronounces this yes through her coming here, inviting us on the path of holiness.

Our Holy Father invites us on the path of holiness. In his letter “Novo Millennio Ineunte” (31), he says: “It would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity.” In his Speech on the Mountain, Jesus says: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5,48). As if he wanted to tell us: be happy as your heavenly Father is happy. In the words of Mary, our Mother, let us hear the echo of the words of Jesus, and let us allow her to lead us to him.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, March 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of April 25, 2003

DECIDE ALSO TODAY FOR GOD

“Dear children! I call you also today to open yourselves to prayer. In the foregone time of Lent you have realized how small you are and how small your faith is. Little children, decide also today for God, that in you and through you He may change the hearts of people, and also your hearts. Be joyful carriers of the risen Jesus in this peaceless world, which yearns for God and for everything that is from God. I am with you, little children, and I love you with a special love. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of April 25, 2003

In her messages, the Blessed Virgin Mary often mentions the word “today”, now, the present moment. She wants to say to us that yesterday is gone, that tomorrow has not arrived yet, that there is only today, now. Now I can decide for God and for prayer, now I can become believer or unbeliever. How many people live split up between yesterday and tomorrow, without living today, never being present to themselves in this time that God gives us. The majority of the messages of Our Lady start with: ” I call you also today”. Nothing has changed in the force, the love, the challenge of her calls and her messages. She remains the same, because she does not need any change. Let us ask ourselves how much we have changed or how much we remained unchanged. Because, the one does not advance on the way of faith moves back undoubtedly. The spiritual life is neither ease, nor comfort, but a permanent combat on the paths of faith, according to the words of Job: “Isn’t human life on earth a combat?” (Cf. Jb 7,1a) How much combat to ensure the material existence, how much more of it than on the spiritual way of faith in God! Jesus himself invites us and says: ” Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation” (Mt 26,41)

The time of Lent was a gift and an occasion to see ourselves in truth in front of God. In this message, Our Lady calls us to this same truth. In front of God, we are always small and only creatures, dependent in everything on our Creator. It is a grace to recognize and realise how much we are small and how much our faith is small. Nobody can say: “I believe in God hundred percent, I cannot believe more”, “I love God so much that I cannot love him more”. We always discover spaces within us where we did not allow yet God to enter.

Our Lady invites us to make a decision: “Decide Also Today for God”. Each one of us is responsible for his life and decisions. Mary can call us maternally, but she cannot do it in our place. She did all that she could. She can love us, but cannot live our life in our place, nor die in our place. She does not take away from us the freedom of our decision, just like God the Father did not take away from her the freedom of her decision when he sent the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation. In her freedom, Marie could say: “It is too difficult for me, it is beyond my forces and my capacities” Freely, she pronounced her “yes” to God. Today, she speaks and gives witness that she was not mistaken, and this is why she knows that we will not make a mistake if we decide for God. According to words of Sainte Therese of Avila, “God awaits our decision for to do then everything himself in us”. Without our decision, he cannot, he does not want to act against our free will. If we allow it, God can change our hearts and the hearts of the others in us and through us. We cannot do it. We cannot convert anybody by our efforts to convince, our preaching and our fine words, intelligent and human. It is the work of God. What we can do, it is to prepare the ground in our heart for him, it is to create space for God within us. Then only, the Risen One will have place to enter into this peaceless world, which yearns for God and for everything that is from God. In his Confessions, St. Augustin confirms it: “You encourage it to seek joy by praising you, because you created us for you and our heart is without peace as long as it does not rest in you”. (Confessions I,1)

Mary gives us the promise to be and remain with us. She came to us and she continues to come with a heart full of a motherly love, to give it to all those who wish to open and receive her love. Let us allow her to lead us. Let us not be afraid, like she was not afraid to give her life to God.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje April 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of January 25, 2004

TO COME TO KNOW GOD’S LOVE

“Dear children! Also today I call you to pray. Pray, little children, in a special way for all those who have not come to know God’s love. Pray that their hearts may open and draw closer to my heart and the Heart of my Son Jesus, so that we can transform them into people of peace and love. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of January 25, 2004

Our Heavenly Mother, the Queen of Peace, addresses her maternal word to us all, tirelessly, patiently, and with a challenging love. The love of Mary, our Mother, does not leave us passive, but wants to move us to do something beautiful and good for God in our neighbour. We can be moved only if we allow God to touch us and to bring us in motion. Only the one who has met God, and who has made the experience of how much God loves him, will be able to give to the others what he himself has received. We cannot give what we do not have, and we cannot have if we do not ask from God who is not giving in a stingy way, but abundantly.

Nobody can say: “I love God so much that I cannot love Him more”. We can always love more and in as stronger way.

Mary, our Mother, wants that we understand how much God loves us. The love of God is so tender that it never imposes itself. God never brings confusion to the soul; He prefers to attract it and to fill it with His love. However, God cannot fill what is already filled by something. We must empty ourselves so that He may fill us. Jesus teaches us: “Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see God”. (Mt 5,8) Only a pure heart can see God and can recognize in his neighbour somebody for whom he is himself responsible. We are all responsible for one another and we are linked to one another by invisible spiritual bonds. We radiate around us the good or the evil. The good of the other is also my good.

Today still, through Mary, God needs our hands, our voice, our feet, to love this world through us. God does not expect from us great and magnificent deeds, He rather asks us to put love in all that we do. We cannot and we should not keep the love of God for ourselves. The goal of our efforts, of our prayers and of our deeds is not to come to God and to remain near Him, but to attract to Him all humanity – all those whom He has put on our way; or rather to allow that He attracts them to Himself through us, and that He grants them health, peace, and freedom.

Blessed Mother Teresa said: “True love always brings suffering. It is always a suffering”. Love and suffering always go together. This is also what Christ showed us. He loved us even in pain. He loved us, but not because it would be pleasant for Him. He went until the death on the cross. Jesus teaches us when He tells us: “There is no greater love than to give one’s life for those whom one loves. You are my friends if you do what I command you”. (Jn 15,13-14)

Today, the world is not hungry of things or money, but of love. We are created for love. If we do not have love, we will seek to fill this emptiness with things and with fleeting pleasures, but we cannot cheat our heart and our soul, because they claim the source that has created them. The greatest hunger of human beings is to love and to be loved. We become sick because we do not love and because we do not make the experience of the love of God. This is why – also in this message – Mary, our Mother, calls us: “Pray”. However, prayer is not a psychological need, but a request of the love of God. Love is prayer. If we do not pray, we will not be able to love, and if we do not love, we will not have the strength to die to ourselves and to our selfishness, which hurts us as well as the others around us.

Let us not become weary to walk on the way to which our Mother calls us, and on which She goes with us, in order to lead us to the source of life – to God.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, January 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of February 25, 2004

BE THOSE WHO DRAW SOULS TO GOD

“Dear children! Also today, as never up to now, I call you to open your hearts to my messages. Little children, be those who draw souls to God and not those who distance them. I am with you and love you all with a special love. This is a time of penance and conversion. From the bottom of my heart, I call you to be mine with all your heart and then you will see that your God is great, because He will give you an abundance of blessings and peace. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of February 25, 2004

At the beginning of this time of Lent, Mary – our Heavenly Mother – invites us and requests from us: Open your hearts to my messages , to my words, to my heart. As a Mother, the Virgin Mary cannot cease calling, cannot cease loving her children. The desire of the encounter with God and with his love must be born within us. Our duty is to desire this encounter more, and it will take place if we desire it seriously, because God takes seriously our desires and our prayers. Without this desire of our heart, all the maternal cries and calls are useless. A mother cannot do otherwise but call, direct, advise what is best for her children.

In one of her messages, she told us: You, dear children, are not able by yourselves, therefore I am here to help you. (Message of December 4, 1986) By ourselves, we are not able; by ourselves, we do not know how to open our heart nor do we know why it became closed. She opened her heart to God and gave it to him; this is why she knows best which are the means that can help us. She can teach us best, because she also crossed the ways on which we are still walking. She comes to us because she wants us to be where she is.

Through Mary, Jesus knocks today at the door of our heart: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me. (Ap 3,20)

It is necessary to listen to the voice of God and to pray with Saint Augustin, who asked to hear the Lord knocking on the door of his heart. In this time of grace of Lent, it is necessary in particular to listen to the voice of God who speaks to us through his Word in the Scriptures, through people, events and situations of our life, through small and simple things that happen to us daily. It is important to open the eyes of our heart and of our spirit, to ask the Lord to open them. This is why – in this time – it is necessary to decide to read the Scriptures, to go more often to Mass, to make a concrete decision, to cut the bonds that attach us to evil, to hatred, to idleness, to grumbling and any other iniquity.

Through Mary, God calls us and leads us to fasting, to renouncement, to brotherly love, to prayer, in order to break in us the tendency to count on human power, and in order to attach us to himself. As long as we are governed by vice, sin, covetousness, idleness, human attachments, lack of dignity, it is a sign that we are not yet free, but under the power of the sin.

Penance always implies a renouncement. The renouncement means not to take always what we like, to leave what hurts us, not to offend the other, not to allow to each small desire of our body to be satisfied, not to procure to oneself every comfort. To give up means to become free. The Fathers of the Church teach us: Do what is contrary to your corrupted human nature , so that God can make in us his works of peace, of love and of freedom.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, February 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of March 25, 2004

EXPRESS YOUR LOVE TO THE CRUCIFIED

“Dear children! Also today, I call you to open yourselves to prayer. Especially now, in this time of grace, open your hearts, little children, and express your love to the Crucified. Only in this way, will you discover peace, and prayer will begin to flow from your heart into the world. Be an example, little children, and an incentive for the good. I am close to you and I love you all. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of March 25, 2004

The Blessed Virgin Mary begins her message, also today, with a call: Dear children, open yourselves to prayer. Throughout the years of her apparitions, Mary taught us and she still teaches us to put the prayer at the first place and to pray, until prayer becomes a joy for us. There is no other way towards God but the way of prayer. This way can appear difficult and not very attractive, and yet: whatever has value, whatever is precious in our life is difficult and require an effort. By nature, human beings do not decide so easily for prayer. Our nature is wounded and we tend towards idleness, pleasures and the choice of what is rather easy. This is why we must make a decision and an effort, for prayer and for all that is good and positive.

This is why we need prayer and all the means that our Mother is giving us, in order not to become sick. If the doctor tells us to take a bitter but useful remedy, we obey to him. How much more should we obey to Mary, our Mother, who knows best what we need in our life.

Together with the Church, she calls us and tells us that this time is a time of grace. It is a time when God is in a particular way favorable to his people. This is why she tells us: Open your hearts. Pray with the heart. Express your love to the Crucified.

The heart is the place of prayer. Our prayer must go down from our head to our heart. The heart is the place into which we want to invite Jesus through prayer. The prayer with the heart gets hold of the entire person and the entire person is in prayer. The heart is the symbol of life, of love, of all that is noble in us. Inside of us, we are not poor but rich, because God dwells in us. The more we know God, the more we can believe in Him and more we can love Him.

This is why Mary, our Mother, untiringly invites us to make the experience of the love of God in which she believed and of which she is living. This desire makes her come to us, so that we also may desire and experience what she possesses by the grace of God.

It is only through love that we can know Jesus who was crucified for us and because of us. Let us learn how to know his heart with which he loved us. The heart of Jesus is meek and humble. He is not forcing us, but he wants that we came to him freely. All that God is asking from us is trust and faith. Jesus wants to give his heart only to those who come to him with trust. He comes towards us first. He said it clearly: “It is not you who have chosen me, it is I who have chosen you”. (Cf.: Jn 15,16) Jesus believes that our heart – wounded and marked by sin – has the capacity to come closer his heart. He has done everything to show us his love and the love of his Father. The apparitions of Our Lady, her calls, her simple and maternal messages, are an expression of the love of Jesus towards us, his love that is not forgetting us. This is why, in this message, Mary our Mother invites us to look at the Crucified with the heart. This is the heart that knew neither hatred nor greed nor envy, but only love which embraces all the humanity, and which wants to touch your heart and my heart. God became vulnerable in order to be able to touch all our wounds, to be able to receive the love of vulnerable men and women. God wants to be loved by those that he came to save. His heart is completely open to give and to receive love.

Today still, God is crucified with all those who are abandoned, scorned and rejected in this world. He has identified himself with the smallest person of this world in order to rise it and make it enter into his glory.

As Mary is with us, let us be with her – and through her with her Son Jesus and with one another.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, March 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of April 25, 2004

LIVE MY MESSAGES IN HUMILITY AND LOVE

“Dear children! Also today, I call you to live my messages even more strongly in humility and love so that the Holy Spirit may fill you with His grace and strength. Only in this way will you be witnesses of peace and forgiveness. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of April 25, 2004

The Virgin Mary is coming to us for 22 years and 10 months now. With a motherly heart, she is addressing her messages to us. Through her messages, she wants to lead us on the way of conversion and of holiness. Throughout these years, many children of Mary began to believe and encountered the vivifying force of her presence here, among us. The treasure of Heaven that is coming to us can remain undiscovered. This precious pearl can remain hidden and not found. Those who find it are able to give everything: their time, their love and their life. The Gospel is teaching us: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Mt 6,21) Mary wants that our treasure is in God, in spiritual values, and not in things and corruptible treasures of this world “that moth or rust corrupt”. (Cf.: Mt 6,20) Those who discover this treasure will not remain at the edge of the shore, attached to the banks of this world that is imprisoning us, but will dare to row to the open sea, where Jesus is calling us.

In the simplicity of the words of Our Lady is hidden the power of Heaven, the power of the Mother who is able to give a new beginning to our lives. In this message, she is calling us: “Live my messages even more strongly”. Our God is a God of humility and of simplicity. Simple motherly words that she is addressing to us are able to create in us a new mentality, the mentality of the Gospel, of the life of God that wants to blossom in us.

It is only in humility and in love that we can know God and recognize the messages of Our Lady as messages of the Gospel, as messages of the Kingdom of God that wants to begin to live in us, and through us in this world. In Jesus, God has humbled himself, he stooped down to us so that we can understand him and listen to him. During the Last Supper, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. He – who is God – stoops down to his disciples to wash their feet. The washing of the feet is a task of a servant or of a slave. It is possible to wash somebody’s feet only if one bends down or goes on one’s knees in front of somebody. One must be at the feet of somebody. This is precisely what Jesus is doing. He is on his knees in front of his disciples, he is looking at them from down upwards, like a little child that – since it is small – is looking at the adults from down upwards, as if it wanted to ask: Do you accept me? God speaks to man from down upwards, his Word resounds in humility. However, one would expect to hear the Word of God coming from another direction – and this is why God is not heard.

One could say that, in this place, Gospa also is speaking to us from down upwards. She is using the words of a child that each one can understand, and she is asking us: Will you accept me, will you listen to me, so that the life according to the Holy Spirit can flower in you, so that you can become the witness of what we need most: peace and forgiveness.

Let us listen to the Mother who is speaking to us and we will be happy in this world already.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, April 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of May 25, 2004

LET US CONSECRATE OURSELVES TO THE HEART OF JESUS AND TO THE HEART OF MARY

“Dear children! Also today, I urge you to consecrate yourselves to my Heart and to the Heart of my Son Jesus. Only in this way will you be mine more each day and you will inspire each other all the more to holiness. In this way joy will rule your hearts and you will be carriers of peace and love. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of May 25, 2004

Also today, Gospa, our Mother and Queen of Peace, opens her motherly heart to us. Through these simple words, she is leading us towards the source of life and she is showing us the way towards this source.

Mary urges us to consecrate ourselves to her Heart and to the Heart of Jesus. As a Mother, she invites us to enter into these two Hearts that are united, in order to be able to feel at which point they care for us, and what they are ready to do for us. In one of her messages, Mary told us: “Dear children, I desire that the Heart of Jesus, my Heart and your heart are one heart of love and of peace. I desire that this place is not only a place of prayer but a place of meeting of the hearts”. It is only in the encounter with the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary that our hearts can be healed and set free.

Mary, our Mother, knows well, which is the greatest, and the most serious illness of the contemporary world. It is not cancer or AIDS, but the feeling of being undesired, useless, unloved, without somebody who cares for you. Physical diseases can be cured with medications, but the only medication against loneliness, despair and hopelessness is the love of God. Many are starving for bread, but many more are starving for love and finally for God Himself. People are poor today, not because they have no money, but because they don’t have God. People are poor because they have no love, and God is love. This hunger of God can be felt at each step. Human beings seek to satisfy their hunger with food and drink, things, possessions, pleasures, and they fall more and more into addiction and slavery, from which Jesus alone can deliver us. Jesus does not only call us free, He alone makes us free.

We can give to the others only what we have. We must first feel the love of God, and only after, we can give this love to the others. Throughout all these years, God invites us through Mary to holiness, i.e. to health, to freedom and to peace. When we feel all that, and when we make the experience of it, we cannot enjoy it egoistically, but we are pushed towards the others, so that all can feel and experience what God wants to give to each one in his infinite love. When we start to love God deeply, we can love all that he has created. It is only then that we become missionaries in our surroundings, in our families, wherever God put to us to live.

It is only through total abandonment to God that we can feel secure. This abandonment can be a form of death, death to oneself, according to the example of Mary who died to herself and to her own will, Mary who emptied herself so that God can live in her and through her. Jesus teaches us this abandonment when he prays: “Father, may your will be done, not mine!” (Lc 22,42) Let us renounce to our own desires so that God can do according to his will and his good pleasure, because the will of God is our peace.

Let us allow Mary, our Mother, to lead us and to guide us on the path of joy, so that we can carry God, his peace and his joy around us!

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, May 26, 2004

Reflection on the Message of June 25, 2004

EACH ONE OF YOU IS IMPORTANT

“Dear children! Also today, joy is in my heart. I desire to thank you for making my plan realizable. Each of you is important, therefore, little children, pray and rejoice with me for every heart that has converted and become an instrument of peace in the world. Prayer groups are powerful, and through them I can see, little children, that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of June 25, 2004

Twenty-three years of love and presence of Mary passed, but Mary is still with us and in front of us. Also today, heart filled with love, she is addressing her maternal word to us. Also today, she is opening to us her heart, which is delighted for each heart that has been converted. Although each message begins with words “dear children”, she is speaking to you personally, she is thinking of you, of your heart; she cares for your life and your future.

Today, she is thanking us for all that we are doing so that her plan may be carried out. In the message of 25.08.1991, she told us: “I invite you to the renouncement during nine days, so that with your assistance, all that I wanted to carry out through the secrets that I began in Fatima may be accomplished”.

Mary has not become our mother 23 years ago. She is our Mother since Jesus gave her to us on the cross through his words: “Behold your Mother!” At this moment, the disciple took her to himself. (Jn 19,27) Mary wants us to take her to ourselves, into our house, as John did.

Today, it is her anniversary and our anniversary, her day and our day. Today, we are proud and joyful with her, for all the graces of heaven, which came into this world through her. We are joyful and we give thanks to God for each heart that has been awakened, which has been healed and released from evil that is destroying life.

This world needs God, it needs his grace, and these needs are enormous. Medjugorje may appear as a drop in the ocean of all these needs. It is an oasis in the desert of this world. Many have found it, but many more must still recognize that it exists, that God exists, and that He is waiting for them. It is important that people know that this oasis exists, and that they believe in the possibility of being refreshed there, of quenching their thirst for peace, for love and for God.

The Virgin Mary knows well that there are many who still must become instruments of peace in this world. Today, she is speaking principally to those who were converted: those who carry in them the love of God, and who have become carriers of healing of human relations, wounded by envy, selfishness, hatred and wickedness. Mary our Mother knows that it is better to light a small light than to become exhausted while cursing darkness. She is not pointing at our wounds and our sins, but she is encouraging what is good, holy and divine in us.

In the eyes of our heavenly Mother, we all are necessary and important. We do not need to boast or to claim to be what we are not. We do not need to carry a mask, as Adam and Eve did after the fall. In front of Mary, we can be like children: in front of her, we can expose our nudity, knowing that she will cover us with purity and strength of her maternal love, which can heal what the sin has wounded.

Neither God nor Mary expect from us the impossible. They do not expect from us great and magnificent deeds, but small things with much love and kindness.

We came into this world thanks to kindness and love of others. We cannot grow in faith and arrive to God without others. We have received so much from others. This is why Mary speaks about prayer groups, through which the power of the Holy Spirit is working, and in which we can grow as children of Mary.

Mary, our Mother, Queen of Peace, Queen of Heaven and earth, do not become weary of us; do not become weary to call us and to guide us on the way of Salvation.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje June 26, 2004