Reflection on the Message of June 25, 2003

RENEW MY MESSAGES EVEN MORE, WITH NEW ENTHUSIASM AND JOY

“Dear children! Also today, I call you with great joy to live my messages. I am with you and I thank you for putting into life what I am saying to you. I call you to renew my messages even more, with new enthusiasm and joy. May prayer be your daily practice. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of June 25, 2003

The Gospel is the Joyful News. Joy resounds in all its pages, because God has decided to visit and save his people. At the Visitation to Elizabeth, Mary cried out: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!” (Lk 1,46) At the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel greets Mary with the words: “Hail (rejoice), full of grace… Do not be afraid, Mary: for you have found favour with God.” (Lk 1,28.30)

Today, Mary, Queen of Peace, speaks to us with great joy, and she wants us also to be joyful. To live her messages means to be led to true joy. To follow the voice of the Mother means to find a home and safety. To obey to her voice means to become more joyful, liberated and redeemed; friends of God, to whom Mary guides us. Her messages are like signposts on the road, so that we do not get lost. We need these signals to find an unknown place. However, if we remain still, we will never arrive. We have to start walking and to keep on walking. The way will perhaps not always be paved or straight, but it is important to walk. On the way, we will stumble, fall, bleed… but it is the goal that counts, God, the source of life, for whom our heart languishes.

Mary knows the way better than us; she knows Jesus better than we know him. The purpose of her messages is to make us join with and meet Jesus. Mary wants us to be joyful. Our joy is also her joy, just as our sufferings are also her sufferings.

Mary thanks us, whereas it is us who should thank her for her presence, her proximity, her patience. She loves us with a disinterested love, as if she was asking us: “May I love you? Will you allow me to lead you to life, to joy?”

Mary knows well the human heart. She knows that it glows easily, and that its enthusiasm disappears even more easily. This is why she told us: ‘Renew the enthusiasm of the first days of my coming’, and today, she tells us: “Renew my messages even more, with new enthusiasm and joy”. The first days and the first years of her coming were full of enthusiasm, of joy, of readiness to suffer and to give all for Our Lady and for God. However, narrow and selfish human interests enter easily into this small corner of Heaven that Mary offers to us here; interests that darken the eyes of our hearts, which, then, cannot recognize any more the Heaven that came to us, and that continues to come here, to Medjugorje, through Mary.

What occurs here is a gift from Heaven, a visitation of grace, which can remain fruitless for us if we do not receive it with a humble and open heart. We receive Mary in so far as we love our neighbours, in so far as the strength to support daily crosses grows in us. We receive Mary in so far as we are able to forgive more easily, to raise ourselves above the earthly dirt towards which our weakness attracts us, towards which this world draws us, offering much, but finally taking away everything.

Mary does not threaten us when she says: “A time will come when I will no longer be with you in this way”. The nearness of her heart, and of her soul means time of grace. This is why Mary, Queen of Peace, today, on this 22nd anniversary of her apparitions, attracted so many hearts and such crowds, who are hungry and thirsty for God. Mary knows to whom she is coming, but all the pilgrims, who came today and who came on pilgrimage to Medjugorje during all these years, also know to whom they are coming to. In Mary, they recognized their Mother, the Mother of the Saviour (like Elisabeth did), and they were not mistaken.

Today, Mary wants to awaken all the hearts that are asleep. She can do it and she wants to do it. She is doing it today. Let us help her, so that she can help us. Let us approach her by our daily prayer; because without prayer we cannot be close to her Heart and to the Heart of her Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Let us allow her to lead us to joy and peace – to Jesus. Let us allow her that.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje 26.6.2003

Reflection on the Message of July 25, 2003

ONLY IN THIS WAY EACH OF YOU WILL DISCOVER PEACE

“Dear children! Also today I call you to prayer. Little children, pray until prayer becomes a joy for you. Only in this way each of you will discover peace in the heart and your soul will be content. You will feel the need to witness to others the love that you feel in your heart and life. I am with you and intercede before God for all of you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of July 25, 2003

Gospa, Queen of Peace and Mother of all men, is perseverant as all the mothers who want that their children walk on the right path into life. Mary, our Mother, does not want to remove from us the weight of the responsibility, of a personal and free choice of God, as she was never deprived from the free decision when she said to the angel: “Let it be done to me according to your word”. Mary, just like Jesus, treats us with much patience. While addressing herself to us, she never offends our freedom. In the Gospel, Jesus speaks in the form of parables, so that each one may freely and without any pressure decide for the Kingdom of God. Our Lady could appear without problem to all, but she wants to leave intact our freedom and our choice of God, who comes so close to us here through her. Today – as much as in the Gospels – we can despise this grace, leave it unused. God gives Himself to us completely freely and so simply. The messages of Our Lady, given during these 22 years of grace, speak precisely in favour of this simplicity.

Mary calls us also today, putting between our hands the same means: prayer. The means is always the same, but God is never the same. He never repeats himself. With Him, one is never bored. Only when we follow Him, we discover how little we know Him, how little we know ourselves. Prayer always leads to joy, more precisely to God who is the source of joy.

“Only in this way each of you will discover peace”, tells us Mary. There is no other way or other means to approach God. This is precisely the means, which appears most difficult today, and which one escapes mostly, finding thousand reasons and excuses. In front of oneself and of God, we can always recognize to oneself and to God how little we pray. We pray much less then our soul needs. As for our body, we can easily feel when it needs food. Our soul is hidden within us, and it is thus easier for us to neglect it. It arrives thus that it cries and shouts, and we forget and neglect it. Our body needs hygiene and bathing, and it is the same way with our soul. Only the One Who created it and Who knows it best can bathe it. We do not know ourselves enough, the others know us even less; God alone is the One who knows and who scrutinises the secrets of our hearts. If we neglect ourselves, we discover consequences: nervousness, dissatisfaction, restlessness, tension, incapacity to forgive and to live in joy. We ask then ourselves from where all can that may come? The reason is in the malnutrition and the negligence of our soul. Our Lady does not talk about possible negative consequences, but her words show us the way to God, all the positive, good and holy for which human heart yearns.

“You will feel the need to witness to others the love that you feel in your heart”, tells us Mary. The meaning of our seeking of God and of our coming closer to God is not to remain next to Him, which would be a spiritual selfishness. The meaning and the goal of our life is to carry God to others, to testify that He is a living God, and not a remote and hidden god. This is what Mary, our Mother, does during all these years. This is what she did after the encounter with the angel Gabriel: she carried Jesus to her cousin Elisabeth and was thus the first missionary of the love of God and of His Kingdom.

We are neither alone nor abandoned, ensures us Mary, our Mother. She is our intercessor and our advocate. No one who sought her intercession was ever forsaken. Let us entrust ourselves to her, let us entrust to her our families, in order to remain on the path of life.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, July 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of August 25, 2003

GIVE THANKS TO GOD

Dear children! Also today I call you to give thanks to God in your heart for all the graces which He gives you, also through the signs and colors that are in nature. God wants to draw you closer to Himself and moves you to give Him glory and thanks. Therefore, little children, I call you anew to pray, pray, pray and do not forget that I am with you. I intercede before God for each of you until your joy in Him is complete. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of August 25, 2003

In this message, Mary, our Mother, invites us to pray in thanksgiving for all that God has given us, and continues to give us. Whatever he has created is for us and because of us. The Book of Genesis tells us: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” (Gen 1:28b-29) God created man because of his immense love. He marked the human heart by the seal of his spirit and of his love in the most perfect way. All the other creatures are only signs of the presence of God, and a human being is the image of God. This is why the human heart does not find peace as long as it does not rest in God; this is why human beings can be pacified only by God alone. For human beings, God is a question impossible to circumvent, because He is the answer to the questions, which we ask: “To whom do I belong and to whom do I go?” Nobody and nothing can choke in us this desire, this hunger and this thirst for God. History shows us that God cannot be eliminated from the heart and the intelligence of men of all the generations. Human beings seek God in various manners and address themselves to different sources, which can be false and poisoned. With Mary, we are sure that we will find the healthy source, God Himself. She promises her intercession until our joy does not become perfect in God.

Like God looked with mercy at the humility of His maidservant Mary, He looks with mercy at each person, he loves each person. Mary invites us to look first at what surrounds us, the marvellous works of God, which themselves – without the Creator – could neither come into existence nor be. From created things and from creatures we can deduce the existence of the Creator. If the creatures can be so beautiful and so perfect, how much more is their Creator? To despise what God has created means to despise the Creator Himself. The world, which surrounds us, each person, and ourselves, are the work of the hands of the Creator and of His love. This world is God’s world and all the universe breathes the breath of life of the living God. All that we are, all that we see and what we have does not belong to us, but to God. This earth is not ours but God’s, it is his work. This is why human beings must unceasingly study this marvellous world and its laws, which he did not scrutinize yet completely. The human being, because he is a foreigner on this earth and because the earth is not his work, must examine and learn to know its laws.

A Slovak writer wrote a novel, “To Whom Belongs the Sun?”, which tells the story of a boy from a very poor family. However, he did not know that they were poor, because they lived happily. He discovered his poverty at school, when the others started to call him poor. Then, the boy asked his mother: “Why do people say that we are poor?” He received this explanation: “Because this house does not belong to us, because these things here and these things there are not ours…” The boy remained stunned. He did not know it. At the end, he raised the last, the decisive question: “And the sun, to whom does it belong?” The answer of his mother delighted him deeply: “The sun belongs to the good God.” This was the revelation of the fatherhood of God, which, thereafter, carried him during his whole life.

Let us begin to give thanks to God. Let us learn how to pray while giving thanks, not only for all that is beautiful and good in our life, but also for what is difficult, painful, and even incomprehensible, knowing that God turns everything into good for those who love Him.

Let us learn with Mary and pray with Mary.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, August 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of September 25, 2003

I DESIRE TO LEAD YOU TO THE HEART OF MY SON JESUS

“Dear children! Also today I call you to come closer to my heart. Only in this way, will you comprehend the gift of my presence here among you. I desire, little children, to lead you to the heart of my Son Jesus; but you resist and do not desire to open your hearts to prayer. Again, little children, I call you not to be deaf but to comprehend my call, which is salvation for you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of September 25, 2003

Mary, our Mother, invites also today her children who have ears to hear her call. She isn’t calling us yesterday or tomorrow, but today, at this moment, which is the most important moment of our life. We can stop neither life nor time. Time goes towards its end, or rather towards its new beginning. Our Mother wants that we start to prepare ourselves for our eternity. Our future and our eternity depend on our decision today. The “today” of God resounds in the whole Bible until our days, until our “today” here through Marie.

Our Mother draws us to her immaculate, holy and maternal Heart. It is the heart that loved Jesus, which believed in Jesus, and with this same heart she loves each one of us. How many times, as today, she already said: “I desire, little children, to lead you to the heart of my Son Jesus”. The path that leads to Jesus is the path of faith and of prayer, to which Mary invites us.

Mary knows well the desires and the aspirations of the human heart. We cannot mislead our heart while proposing to it dead things, food and drink, comfort and pleasure. We need another food, the food that God offers to us. We need God’s love and His word. Today still, human beings are hungry for God, hungry for true and pure love, seek them more than things. Nothing less than God can satisfy human beings or fill their vacuum, release them from restlessness, slavery, fear and sin.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us: “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for: The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.” (CCC 27)

It is not only man who desires God; today, in a very special way through Marie in this very place, God desires man. God wants to make man happy, content, filled, but he won’t do it by force or with a stick, but with love, to which we are invited to open our doors in full freedom.

The heart of God was pierced. The sword of pain pierced the heart and the soul of Mary. The heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary do not cease bleeding and suffering because of our sins: our blasphemy, our deafness, our blindness, our resistances and our refusal to receive them. Despite everything, God calls, because he cannot keep silent seeing his creature – human being – going astray.

God did not withdraw himself from man; let us not withdraw from God, because thus, we would withdraw from ourselves and from life.

May the desire of Mary, expressed in one of her messages: “I wish that my heart, the heart of Jesus and your heart one heart of love!” (July 25, 1999) be carried out in the world and in our families in us and through us.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, September 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of October 25, 2003

WITH MARY, ON THE WAY OF CONVERSION AND HOLINESS

“Dear children! I call you anew to consecrate yourselves to my heart and the heart of my Son Jesus. I desire, little children, to lead you all on the way of conversion and holiness. Only in this way, through you, we can lead all the more souls on the way of salvation. Do not delay, little children, but say with all your heart: “I want to help Jesus and Mary that all the more brothers and sisters may come to know the way of holiness.” In this way, you will feel the contentment of being friends of Jesus. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of October 25, 2003

Today also, in this message, Mary, our Mother, pours out her heart full of love through these simple words. It is almost impossible to express in the words all that Mary, as a Mother, feels towards us who are her children. She wants us to be holy, which means happy, normal and healthy people. Only this is worth to be, only for that to fight with all our strength.

The desire and the prayer of Jesus and Mary are addressed to us, here and now, through Our Lady’s message. I would dare to say that Our Lady implores each one of us to begin finally to believe that God wants our good, that He loves us. God does not love only the good ones and the holy ones, but also wicked people. The problem is that all do not respond to this love. Without love, human life on earth is difficult and almost impossible – not only without the love of God, but also without human love, without human warmth, comprehension and goodness. We could not live if we had not received this love from our very birth in so many ways and in so many occasions. Love is the ground, the soil on which we can lean our life. It is the fundamental condition of life for all.

Every human being asks: “Does God love me?” If it is true that He loves me, and if I allow this truth to enter into my heart, into my thoughts, into my feelings, if I allow it to overwhelm my whole life, then my life becomes different and more beautiful. Unfortunately, there are so many negative experiences, so many experiences of evil and wickedness, which tell us the opposite and put on trial our faith in the love of God, in the love that was proved to us by Jesus and His own life. Jesus himself experienced infernal wickedness, but He did not refrain from men or from His love for men. God did not spare His own Son Jesus in order to convince us that we are loved. He allowed Himself to be crucified so that we may realize what God is ready to do for us. As for us, we should answer to the truth of this event with trust. If we respond with faith to the love of Jesus, we become eternal and indestructible.

St Paul says: “The Son of God loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Ga 2,20) Jesus loved us all with a human heart, not with a plastic heart, but with a heart that feels suffering, pain and joy, that feels all that we feel. There is no human feeling that Jesus did not feel; he felt them all, except sin.

In the heart of Mary, the desire to take us on the way of conversion and holiness does not vanish. Since the moment when – through the apostle John – Jesus entrusted each one of us to her, “Woman, behold your son!”, Mary is a Mother who does not give up, who is not afraid of such a heavy and responsible task: to lead us on the way of holiness towards God, towards life, and not just any life, but life in fullness.

“Do not delay”, Mary warns us, because a waste of time is also a loss of grace. Jesus and Mary need us, they need you and me, so that the others also, all of them, may reach life, may reach God. The one who has made the experience of the love of God cannot remain passive and uninterested in all those who have not yet made this experience. The love of God cannot be kept for oneself; one cannot take pleasure in it alone. It wants to be given to all, so that all may experience it, seek it and desire it with the whole heart. Each Christian is a missionary there where he lives, for people whom he meets and who surround him. Let us not become weary and let us not stop on the way on which calls us Mary, our Mother.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, October 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of November 25, 2003

BE LOVE, JOY AND PEACE

“Dear children! I call you that this time be for you an even greater incentive to prayer. In this time, little children, pray that Jesus be born in all hearts, especially in those who do not know Him. Be love, joy and peace in this peaceless world. I am with you and intercede before God for each of you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of November 25, 2003

Once again, the Virgin Mary invites us to prayer in this time of Advent that is approaching. Advent and Lent are liturgical seasons in which the Church, as a Mother, invites us to re-examine our life, to make concrete decisions, promises, more decisive turnings on our way towards God. Today, as during all these years, Mary wants that our days do not pass in vain, that our time does not pass beside us, that we do not circumvent God in this time that we live – God who calls us, who seeks us, who stirs us up through Mary.

The greatest joy of a mother is her children. Can we imagine the joy that we are for Mary – the Queen of Peace? She is “the cause of our joy” and she invites us to become the cause of her joy. Her only desire is that Jesus may be born in our hearts. She is most saddened when we lose Jesus, when He is not with us, more precisely, when we are not with Him. It is necessary to undertake everything to return to Jesus, to find Jesus. Humanly speaking, Mary and Jesus suffer when we move away from them, when we abandon them in any way and for any reason. However, our Mother leads us to her Son; with her, it will be easiest for us to find Him and to remain with Him. She has no other more important task than this one, but she can attain it only with our co-operation. This is why she stirs us up and she puts into our hearts the means that the Church offers to her children during the centuries, by leading them to God and by engendering them to a new life in God.

The goal of Our Lady’s messages and of her apparitions is that all know God, that everyone encounters God. She wants that – through us – God may reach everyone. We are all linked to one another and we all are responsible for one another. God can come into this world only through human beings, from one to another. God wants to come into this world through you and me. If He does not pass through us, how will he come? The only full meaning of our life is to enable Him to come. If we do not allow Him, then what is the meaning of our life? And what are we on this earth without Him?

Also in this time of Advent, and in Christmas that is approaching, God wants to come. He has time. He has the whole eternity. But we have only today, the present moment. The eternity does not belong to us – it belongs to God. God needs our naturalness, our simplicity. God needs our nearness, and we need his nearness even more.

It is only through the nearness of God that we will be able, from day to day, to become love, joy and peace in this world, as Our Lady tells us. Because works of love are works of peace. And when love is shared, we feel peace that gets hold of the one who gives love and of the one who receives love. When peace is there, God is there, and thus, God touches our hearts and shows his love for us by spreading peace and joy in our hearts.

Blessed Mother Teresa was praying: “Lead me from death to life. From lie to truth. Lead me from despair to hope. From fear to trust. Lead me from hatred to love. From war to peace. May peace fill our hearts, our world and our universe, peace, peace, peace.”

We are not alone; Mary is with us, with her presence and the strength of her maternal love, desiring that peace of her heart may enter each heart. Let us allow her that.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje November 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of December 25, 2003

I LOVE YOU ALL

“Dear children! Also today, I bless you all with my Son Jesus in my arms and I carry Him, who is the King of Peace, to you, that He grant you His peace. I am with you and I love you all, little children. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of December 25, 2003

The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Queen of Peace, tells us: “Dear children! Also today…” Also today, as during all these years for Christmas, the Mother of Peace comes to us carrying in her arms her Son Jesus, King of Peace. Also today, like the first day of the apparitions when the visionaries saw her for the first time on the hill called Crnica, Our Lady comes with the Child Jesus in her arms, as if she wanted to say: I bring Jesus to you and I lead you to Jesus. What do we need more? Let us desire the utmost; let us languish for that, because God does not want to give us a little but everything, not any kind of life but a life with Him, which begins already here.

Nobody could imagine how many hearts – during all these years – would make their experience of God, of a new birth and of a rebirth here; as at the beginning so today. We also cannot measure or imagine the power and the depth of the love of God and of his patience with us. God is patient with us; he waits until we finally trust him, so that He may give us nothing else but Himself. This is why, for Christmas, it is important to look forward to somebody and not to something. Here, the Virgin Mary does not bring something to us. Peace is not something but somebody. It is a person who has a name; it is the King of Peace – Jesus Christ, the Newborn Baby. Let us not be content with mediocrity, tepidity, traditions and customs that go along with Christmas, but let us desire the essence of Christmas. When we arrive to that, then everything has a meaning: feast day garments, food and drink and all decorations that accompany Christmas, according to the proverb: “What is the use of speed if you do not have a goal?” The same applies to our faith. What is the use of all external religious customs if we do not know their foundation, the core and the meaning of all that?

Christmas is a day that belongs to Jesus, and to us too. He is the one who has given us this solemnity, this feast. He, the King of Peace, did not come only to live with us but also to die for us to remain forever with us, to remain Emmanuel – God with us. God did it for us and for our salvation.

Only the small and the humble ones discover God. So many of them discovered Jesus through Mary and through her presence here, among us. Only the humble ones see that the heart of child can see further than the heart of the adult. But the adults also can have a heart of child. The humble ones – those who have a heart of child – see that something incredible has happened among us, something that exceeds our intelligence, something majestic. Also for this Christmas, Jesus comes to tell us, that our sins are forgiven, that God has nothing against us, that He has come to lead us out of darkness, out of restlessness and out of confusion. He penetrated our tombs to lead us to life. He penetrated our hatred to introduce us to love. Jesus Christ – He is Christmas, indeed. God descended on our earth; He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Also today, He comes to us through Mary.

When we look at a child, including the Child Jesus in the manger, it seems to us so fragile, so weak and so incredible. Just like His Church: weak, too human, sinful and frail. However, under external appearances is hidden the invincible force of heaven, which wants to live in each one of us, if only we allow it to approach us. Mary, the Queen of Peace, tells us again and again: “I am with you and I love you all.” She loves us all, whether we want it or not; she loves us, whether we receive her or not. If we receive her, it will be for our salvation and for a new life for us and for our neighbor. Let us pray the Lord that it may happen.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, December 26, 2003

Reflection on the Message of January 25, 2002

Look Deeply Into Your Heart

“Dear children! At this time, while you are still looking back to the past year I call you, little children, to look deeply into your heart and to decide to be closer to God and to prayer. Little children, you are still attached to earthly things and little to spiritual life. May my call today also be an encouragement to you to decide for God and for daily conversion. You cannot be converted, little children, if you do not abandon sins and do not decide for love towards God and neighbour. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of January 25, 2002

Mary, our Mother, calls us to turn our eyes away from the past, from the past year, and to look into our own heart where God dwells. The past has passed, the future is not yet here, all that exists is today, now, this moment, which will never be repeated. It is from our “now” that depends our future. It is now that I decide or do not decide for God. It is now that I can decide for prayer, now I can open or close my heart to God. In her messages, Mary has often spoken about the heart. “Pray with the heart, fast with the heart, adore my Son with the heart, follow me with the heart…” We have physical organs: eyes to see, ears to hear, and we have a heart with which to pray. We can recite prayers without the heart; we can do so many things without the heart. Cooks can prepare meals without the heart, doctors can treat patients without heart, sellers can work in shops without the heart, employees in a bad mood can wait for their clients in their offices. All of this is like food without salt, and so everything becomes insipid and lifeless. This is why Mary, our Mother, wants to awaken our sleeping hearts.

The Little Prince tells in the tale: “Only with the heart one can see well. The essential remains hidden to our eyes.” Sometimes, it is necessary even to close our eyes to see better. It is with our heart that we can feel God, not with our intellect.

We can also approach God with our heart, not only with our intellect. When the Bible and Our Lady speak about the heart, they think neither of a bodily organ, nor of emotions, feelings of joy or sorrow, but of a spirit, which – although we do not see it with our eyes – we feel that it is at work. It is just like seeing a tree: We do not see the roots, but we know that they exist, because the tree lives from it.

Why is it so difficult to detach ourselves from the earthly things that do not satiate us, but cheat us? Saint Paul said: I do know what is good, but I do not have the strength to realise it. Poor man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body submitted to death? Praise be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! (Cf: Rm 7:14-25)

Our Lady puts the means into our hands, and it depends on us whether we will listen to her or not. We are like a drowning man to whom someone has thrown a life raft. It depends on him, if he will catch it or not. Our Lady’s hand is extended to each one of us. Let us take it today, not tomorrow! Let us clasp at least the fringe of her robe, so that she may take us from darkness, from lack of trust, doubts and disappointments into a new life with Christ.

Our Lady’s hand is outstretched to each one of us. Let us take it today, not tomorrow! Let us catch at least the fringe of her robe, so that she may save us from darkness, from distrust and deception and take us into a new life with Christ. It is therefore necessary to reject every sin: lying, egoism, hatred, pride, blaspheme, licentiousness, drunkenness, wickedness… Without this, we cannot go forward, just as we cannot navigate on the sea in a boat, which is tied to the shore. We can row in vain. It is necessary to untie the boat. We also have to untie ourselves from all that makes us captive and trapped, so that Mary, our Mother, may take us to Christ.

Peace and good to you!

Medjugorje, January 26th, 2002
Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic, OFM

Reflection on the Message of February 25, 2002

PRAYER IS A NEED

“Dear children! In this time of grace, I call you to become friends of Jesus. Pray for peace in your hearts and work for your personal conversion. Little children, only in this way will you be able to become witnesses of peace and of the love of Jesus in the world. Open yourselves to prayer so that prayer becomes a need for you. Be converted, little children, and work so that as many souls as possible may come to know Jesus and His love. I am close to you and I bless you all Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of February 25, 2002

The time of Lent we now go through is a time of grace, the Blessed Virgin Mary tells us in her message. The time of grace began with the coming of Jesus Christ. In many preceding messages, Our Lady attracted our attention to this reality within us and around us. Her presence here is a grace and a gift for those who receive Her as the Mother of their lives and the Mother of their peace. Each word of hers and each message is a call of a motherly heart addressing the heart of men.

Also through this message, Mary, our Mother, wants us to become the friends of Jesus: to be strangers no longer, but friends who come to know Him better each day. Also amongst ourselves, we can become true friends for one another only if we are the friends of Jesus. We can be considered believers and Christians, we can go for Sunday Mass, we can go for confession regularly, we can live our faith more or less exteriorly without knowing Jesus and without being His friends. We can never say that we know Jesus enough. We can only seek Him and find Him, because He went first to seek us. According to St John the Apostle: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.”(1 Jn 4:10)

A most beautiful experience of the love of God and of His closeness, obtained through prayer by Saint Monica for her son, can be found in St. Augustine’s “Confessions”:

“Late have I loved You, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you. You were in me and I was outside of myself. You were with me, and I was not with You. You called and you shouted, and You broke my deafness. You sent a lightning, you enlightened and dispersed my blindness. You spread your perfume, I breathed it in, and now I languish after You. I tasted, and I am hungry and thirsty. You touched me and I burn for Your peace. When I shall cling to You with all my being, there will be no more pain nor suffering for me, and my life shall be alive, full of You. Behold, I do not hide my wounds. You are the doctor, I am the ill one. You are merciful, I am miserable. And all my hope is only in Your great mercy, o Lord my God.” We need such experiences of the nearness of God, and Our Lady wants to lead us to these experiences, this nearness and this friendship.

It is necessary to work for conversion. But the conversion is so immense, it is not only depending on us. It is much beyond human power. Evil is stronger than man and wants to paralyse him. This is why we need God. Only Jesus Christ can save us from sin, laziness, selfishness, lies and evil. But it is expected from us to do the decisive step. We can neither change nor convert ourselves, but we can say “yes” to God. We can do a turn around in our lives, we can take the words of Jesus as Gods’ words and not human words. These words have the power to heal, to convert, to save man. Only then will we be able to say with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”(Ga 2:20).

Thank you, Mary, our Mother, for giving us the means which can lead us to Jesus. May, through your intercession, our hearts discover more and more prayer as a need. May there be more and more of those who will, out of love of God and themselves, discover prayer not as something that has to be done but as something they can do.

Medjugorje, February 26th, 2002
Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic, OFM

Reflection on the Message of March 25, 2002

UNITE WITH JESUS

“Dear children! Today I call you to unite with Jesus in prayer. Open your heart to Him and give Him everything that is in it: joys, sorrows and illnesses. May this be a time of grace for you. Pray, little children, and may every moment belong to Jesus. I am with you and I intercede for you. Thank you for having responded to my call.” Message of March 25, 2002

The Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace, calls us to unite with Jesus, and a means that She puts into our hands is prayer. Long ago, we learned in the catechism that prayer was a dialogue with God. To dialogue, you need someone, another person. You may converse with someone without grasping life itself, but remaining simply at its surface. There are conversations, which bring about movement, lift up and heal. Prayer is such a conversation, held not with just anyone, but with the God almighty. Man has the capacity to converse with God, with Jesus, because he has the spirit, as God is spirit. As God became man in Jesus, we can talk to Him humanly, because we have the Holy Spirit, because we are baptised and confirmed, because we have received these capacities, these gifts which enable us to be as close to Jesus as possible. If we ask ourselves where is Jesus, I would say: Where is He not? Wherever you look, you can meet Him. His look and His eyes watch every person with love. It is important to be conscious of this fact, in order to be able even to start our walk towards Him. He is with us always, but we have to make an effort to be with Him.

Our Mother calls us: “Open your heart to Him and give Him everything that is in it”. To share bread, property, money, even time with someone, is much easier then to receive someone under one´s roof, to introduce someone into one´s own house, to open one´s heart to someone. To allow someone to enter into the most hidden parts of one´s soul is much more difficult. Most difficult is to share the deepest depths of one´s joy, one´s sufferings, wounds and crosses of one´s life. It is possible with those who are closest to us, if it is possible at all to really do it with human beings. We are an enigma and a mystery for ourselves, we do not know ourselves until the end and completely, and other people know us even less than that. Only the One from whose hand we have come knows us and can heal us, make us well and fill the void of our soul and heart.

It is much easier to enumerate prayers then to open one´s heart. This is why it is not prayer that will help us, because prayer does not help and does not bring rest, but God in prayer. However, He cannot come into a prayer done without heart, as you cannot enter into a house whose door is locked.

The greatest suffering of man is the mistrust towards God, which provokes fear, anguish and worries about one´s own life, about the future. If I am afraid that someone will steal my property or kill me, I will try to defend myself, to protect myself, I will close and lock the door. I feel the opposite if I trust. It is the same in our relationship to God: If I trust Him, if I believe that my life with Jesus will be happy and fulfilled, if I take His words as divine and not human, if I believe that His word is truth, that He has the words of the eternal life – I will open to Him the door of my house, of my home and of my heart.

This is “a time of grace”, tells us Mary, our Mother. She motivates us not to allow our hours and days to pass without Jesus. With Jesus everything can be realised. The fundamental problem of man is that he is far away from God, that he works without Him, without contact with Him. It can often happen that we forget Him, push Him aside, or call Him maybe as an ambulance when life´s distress oppresses us. Maybe we pray five minutes or half an hour, and then we push Him aside instead of permanently being nourished with Him. Hence, God is not a fireman; He would like to become our companion on the road, our friend and saviour, yours and mine.

Let us take seriously the words conceived in the heart of our Mother, so that our days do not pass without meaning and without goal. Let us allow Jesus to rise in us also this Easter. Peace and good to you.

Medjugorje, March 26th, 2002
Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic, OFM