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

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