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

Reflection on the Message of June 25, 2005

APOSTLES OF PEACE AND LOVE

“Dear children! Today I thank you for every sacrifice that you have offered for my intentions. I call you, little children, to be my apostles of peace and love in your families and in the world. Pray that the Holy Spirit may enlighten and lead you on the way of holiness. I am with you and bless you all with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of June 25, 2005

Our Lady concludes each one of her messages by the words: “Thank you for having responded to my call.” With her gratitude, she seems to want to motivate and wake up our hearts, so that we listen to her and walk on the way of conversion and of holiness. Today, she is thanking us for every sacrifice that we have offered for her intentions. In preceding messages for the anniversary of her apparitions, she was saying: “Today I desire to thank you for all your sacrifices and for all your prayers.” (25.6.1990). “Today I am happy, even if in my heart there is still a little sadness for all those who have started on this path and then have left it.” (25.6.1992). Although she knows that all her children will not accept her motherly words, she is not giving up, she believes and she hopes. This is why she was saying: “There are many people who do not desire to understand my messages and to accept with seriousness what I am saying. But you I therefore call and ask that by your lives and by your daily living you witness my presence.” (25.6.1991).

Our Lady’s messages reveal to us the heart of Mary and they speak to us about it. It is the heart of the mother who loves her children. This heart is grateful for every sacrifice, which we offered for her intentions. We need to pray and, from day to day, to offer our hearts to the Heart of Mary, so that we also become grateful.

Only a blind man does not see that all in life is given to us, and that nothing belongs to us: neither the earth, nor people, nor our body, nor life that God gave us. Everything is a gift of God. Only a humble, pure and simple heart discovers the greatness of the love of God and of the gift of God. Only a heart filled with the Holy Spirit, like the heart of St. Elisabeth, exclaims: “And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1,43). The heart of Elisabeth is grateful because, in the Visitation of Mary, it recognizes the gift and the blessing.

God has created everything for us, and not for any reason, and not anyhow, but magnificently, marvellously, and out of love. We should relearn the alphabet of the language and of the conversation with God. We need to learn how to say thank you; and not only superficially, with our lips, our mouth, or our reason, but with our whole being and with our whole life.

God gave us more than life and all that He has created for us; he gave Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, in the fullness of life and love, gave Himself in the Church and through the Church in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist.

In these days and in this time, God sends to us also the Mother of His Son Jesus and our Mother, so that we become her apostles of peace and love in our families and in the world. Our families and the world need people who will spread peace and love, because there is too much disorder, too much fear, too much darkness and too much wickedness among us. Gospa, who dwells in the glory of Heaven, and who comes and speaks from this glory, knows that love and peace are stronger, and that it is worthwhile to love and to spread peace. Mary, our Mother, knows that we cannot do it by our own forces, and this is why she is advising us to pray to the Holy Spirit by Whom she conceived Jesus. She is encouraging us to pray to the Holy Spirit, whose force and power made it possible to the apostles to become fearless witnesses of Jesus, until shedding of blood. We cannot do it, but the Holy Spirit in us, He can do it. We are called to holiness and to sanctification of our life. Saint Paul reminds us: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification.” (1 Thess 4,3) Only on this way of sanctification and of holiness we can experience the joy and the truth of the words of the Scripture: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 Thess 5,16) We are neither alone nor abandoned. Mary, our Mother, is with us and she is giving us her motherly blessing.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, 26.6.2005

Reflection on the Message of July 25, 2005

FILL YOUR DAY WITH SHORT AND ARDENT PRAYERS

“Dear children! Also today, I call you to fill your day with short and ardent prayers. When you pray, your heart is open and God loves you with a special love and gives you special graces. Therefore, make good use of this time of grace and devote it to God more than ever up to now. Do novenas of fasting and renunciation so that Satan be far from you and grace be around you. I am near you and intercede before God for each of you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of July 25, 2005

The Virgin Mary tells us: “Fill your day with short and ardent prayers”. She wants to tell us to wrap the whole day with prayers, so that God can come, and that the evil and the wicked one cannot have access to our life. There is too much evil and wickedness, too much sinister and dark news, which fill our hearts with worries and fear. There are too many news about tragedies, terrorism, assassinations, which surround us, and about which we hear each day. There are so many malicious words, which hurt trust and love in us and in our neighbour. There is too much superficiality in our conversations, and we go away empty and burdened. Mary shows us the way, she is putting into our hands the means, so that God may find a place where to come.

Whatever we look at, listen to or read, is shaping our interior life, our heart, and then our words. Our words and our conversations reveal the contents of our heart. If our heart is anguished, in darkness and filled with negativism, then our words will be similar. Such a heart will see only what is bad and negative in others. “Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see God”, tells us Jesus. A pure heart is unable to make dirty, to wound or to burden others. A pure heart will try to wipe and wash the dirtiness of others. Who is nervous and unhappy will make all around him nervous and unhappy.

You have undoubtedly already experienced that some people radiate a certain restlessness, nervousness and darkness. There are others who radiate peace, security and trust. They are connected to God, because He is the source of peace, of security, of love and of trust. Mary wishes that all of us, her children, belong to God, that we are people who radiate peace and love. Only a heart that is praying becomes an open heart. Only to an open heart, God can grant his grace, his force and his almightiness.

It is not enough to read and to hear the Gospel and the words of Our Lady’s message. They have to be carried out, put into practice. Many have heard the Gospel and Our Lady’s message, but it is possible to distinguish those among them who have put into practice what they have heard. Only those who have tried to put into practice at least something of what they have heard, deserve heaven. There are people who pray unceasingly without ever doing anything. There are some who pray, but criticize everything and everyone. They measure all according to their theoretical prayers, which are sterile, if they are not put into practice in our life. The prayers have a meaning only if they change our life, our heart, and if we try to put them into practice. God is doing nothing without us – He is doing everything with us. He is waiting for our works in order to collaborate with us, to help us. This is why: to pray and to do nothing, means to prevent the realization of what we are praying for.

The worst of all things, it is to wait a long time before putting one’s decisions into practice. It is necessary to do immediately, and not to delay, to leave for later. More we delay our prayer, our work, an obligation, more we create a feeling of emptiness and helplessness. Then we begin to pity ourselves and we fall into depression. It is necessary to start with one small millimetre, and then you will be greater than all those who criticize. Faith without works is useless; such a faith is dead.

The words of Our Lady’s message will be a dead letter if you do not try at least a little bit to put them into practice in your life. When we begin, we will discover the infinitude and the almightiness of God in our life. May God, through our decisions and our prayers, protect us from Satan and wrap us with his grace.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje 26.7.2005