Reflections on the Year 2001 Messages of OUR LADY OF MEDJUGORJE by Monsignor George Tüttö

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During the past twenty years war and peace have often been the subject in the messages of our Lady, the Queen of Peace, beginning with her very first message on 26 June 1981, telling us the very purpose of her coming to Medjugorje.

I have come because there are many true believers here. I wish to be with you to convert and reconcile the whole world.

Our world is not at peace; it is full of conflicts and local wars, tensions, hatred and fears on all levels of the communities of people, in great need of forgiveness and reconciliation. Our Lady wants to enroll our participation in saving the world and she asks us to use the most powerful spiritual weapons to overcome the power of the evil one, prayer and fasting, helping her to bring about the victory of her Immaculate Heart as she promised at Fatima.

On 21 July 1982, Our Lady talked about the power of prayer with fasting. Through fasting and prayer, one can stop wars; one can suspend the laws of nature. Charity cannot replace fasting. Those who are not able to fast can sometimes replace it with prayer, charity, and confession, but everyone, except the sick, must fast.

In the course of her Thursday messages Our Lady gave further explanation about fasting and the way to pray. I would like to ask all the people top pray more and more with me these days. I would like them to fast strictly on Wednesdays and Fridays! Pray the whole Rosary every day, the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries (14 August 1984).

Ten years ago exactly, a the time of the Gulf War, Our Lady gave a warning about a new kind of war threatening the world of nature, not only through the burning oil wells of Kuwait, through the stockpiling of chemical weapons in Iraq, but also through the introduction of poisonous weapon systems by the Western Powers. The victims of the so-called Gulf war syndrome and now of the Balkan war syndrome seem to confirm the validity of Our Ladys warning as she expressed it in her message on 25 January 1991.

My dear children, today as never before I am calling you to pray. Let your prayer be a prayer for peace. Satan is powerful and wants to destroy not only human life but also nature and the planet on which you live. Therefore, dear children, pray that  through prayer  you may be protected with the blessing of Gods peace. God has sent me among you to help you provided that
you are willing to take the Rosary in your hands. Already the Rosary alone seems to be doing wonders in the world and in your life. I bless you and I will stay with you as long as God so wills.

In the same year, at the time of the war against Croatia, Our Lady urged us again to fervent prayer and fasting.

Dear Children, today I am calling you to pray for peace. This time peace is threatened in a special way and I am seeking from you to renew fasting and praying in your families. Dear children, I want you to understand the gravity of the situation and that much of what will happen depends on your prayers, and you are not praying enough. Dear children, I am with you and I am calling you to begin to pray and fast seriously, as in the first days of my coming. (25 July 1991)

Now, in her present message, Our Lady speaks of another kind of warfare, a spiritual warfare, against faith and moral values, causing fear for the future because of all the various evils surrounding us. This kind of war is more dangerous because it attacks the heart and soul of humanity and that is why Our Lady urges us again to take up the arms of pray and fasting to confront the enemy of man, Satan. When the disciples of Jesus were unable to cure the epileptic demoniac, Jesus said to them: This is the kind of evil spirit that can be driven our only by prayer and fasting. (Mk 9:29).

Our Lady assures us that by taking up the arms of prayer and fasting with enthusiasm, we shall experience joy in prayer, and in God we shall find our peace and hope for the future.

One feels that in this message Our Lady is preparing us for the final battle against the evil one, bringing about the victory of her Immaculate Heart and the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in all hearts. I hope and pray that the reader of this reflection will respond to Our Ladys call with a joyful heart.

It is not for the first time that Our Lady gave us a very short message. But when she does, she wants to tell us something very urgent and important. In a few words Our Lady is able to pour out her heart’s deepest desire for us and I am trying to share with you my thoughts, as I understand Our Lady’s message.

To start with, I have a strong feeling that Our Lady, in giving this message, was mindful of the Holy Father’s latest Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (6 January, 2001) in which – addressing himself to all the bishops, priests and deacons, male and female religious and all the lay faithful – he outlined a programme of pastoral action for the renewal of the Church at the beginning of the Third Millennium.

His central message urges us to focus our attention on the face of Jesus Christ which we recognise by contemplating the word of God in Holy Scripture. This leads us to become a reflection of Jesus through our renewed Christian living in accordance with the Gospel and through witnessing to the Gospel by a deeper communion in all structures of the Church, by holiness of life, by a life of prayer and Eucharistic spirituality, by an ardent love of God and our neighbour.

On this missionary journey the Holy Father puts before us Our Blessed Lady as the "Star of the New Evangelisation, the radiant dawn and sure guide for our steps." (no. 58)

The Holy Father seems to summarise everything that Our Lady has been teaching us for nearly twenty years through her messages at Medjugorje, and no wonder, Our Lady is calling this time a time of grace if we and the whole Church respond to the wishes of the Holy Father through Our Lady’s guidance.

The Holy Father is emphasising the primacy of grace and that is why Our Lady urges us so many times and now again to ‘pray, pray, pray’, that is, to pray unceasingly, to pray with the heart, to pray her way so that we may receive the gift of love, as she said to us in a beautiful message on 15^th November, 1984.

Before we are able to receive God’s gift of love, Our Lady reminds us that first we must try to understand through prayer the tremendous grace of God’s infinite love for us as St John tells us too: "Love consists in this: it is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins." (1 Jn 4:10) When we realise that our sins are forgiven by the infinitely merciful God, then we begin to comprehend how much we are loved by God. Then we will be eager to respond to God’s love by loving as he wants us to love, as Jesus told his apostles at the Last Supper: "I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you." (Jn 3:34)

In our world of conflicts, communal atrocities, hate and violence, Heaven’s call to us to live a life of love will provide a great weapon to overcome the evil and destructive power of Satan. I am pleased to tell you that Heaven’s revelation through a Hungarian mystic, Elizabeth Szanto (Kindelmann by marriage, a mother of six children) about the Flame of Love is spreading throughout the world. The first International Conference of the representatives of five Spanish-speaking countries on the Flame of Love Movement, chaired by Cardinal Bernardino Echeverria Ruiz, representing the Holy See, took place in July 1999 in Mexico. It is hoped that more and more people will open their hearts to the Flame of Love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary which is Jesus Christ himself, light of the world who will blind Satan through the Flame of Love, operating through all of us who respond to Our Lady’s call to unceasing prayer, prayer of the heart.

[May I add my own personal joy about Our Lady’s message? Shortly, my book, ‘Mary and Renewal – ‘Our Lady’s School of Love’ will be published and will provide a practical aid through daily spiritual exercises to put into practice Our Lady’s message and the programme for renewal as given by the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.]

Our Lady gave her message on the day which calls to our mind her encounter with God’s messenger, Angel Gabriel, at the annunciation. In that very important moment for our salvation she gave her ‘yes’ to God. Her ‘yes’ changed the course of history. Holy Scripture does not tell us, but we can assume that Our Lady must have been at deep prayer, totally open to God’s grace which enabled her to discern God’s holy will and to give her consent.

In this message, Our Lady is God’s messenger to all of us, calling us to open our hearts to God’s grace so that Jesus may be born in us in a special way, enabling us to become instruments in God’s hands for the salvation of the world.

Her message reveals a certain disappointment about our slowness in responding to God’s many graces offered to us in this special time of grace as Our Lady often called the present period of time. We also can sense the urgency in her message as she renews her earlier basic calls with the solicitude of a loving mother who feels very concerned about her children’s future.

Our wholehearted ‘yes’ to God is possible only if we firmly resolve to do all those things that that Our Lady is asking of us in her message.

Our first and most important commitment should be the opening of our hearts to prayer and through prayer. Not just saying prayers, but being prayerful through unceasing prayer, the prayer of the heart, as she has asked us so many times. Such a prayerful attitude is the attitude of a child who in his or her helplessness turns with confidence to God our loving Father who wants to bestow on his children many graces indeed. In such prayer we shall receive the grace to discern how to accept God’s gifts and how to use them.

Our second and very important commitment should be the making of the welfare of our soul and spiritual life our priority, as St Paul tells us too:

‘Since you have been raised up to be with Christ, you must look for the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand. Let your thoughts be on things above, not on the things that are on the earth....’(Col 3:1-4)

Such a resolve is possible only if we are willing to awake from the state of ‘tired sleep of your soul’, that is from lukewarmness, indifference and lethargy which gradually destroy the sense of the spiritual in us. In our troubled world we are tempted to be preoccupied with worries about the future, about health, employment and many other things and we can easily give way to despondency and lack of trust in God’s goodness. The season of Lent can help us to renew our spiritual life as we contemplate the sufferings of our Redeemer who loved us so much that he was prepared to die for us. Repentance, reparation and reconciliation will give a new life to our soul and we shall be ready to say our joyful ‘yes’ to God.

By making this important step, we shall recognise the great importance of Our Lady’s repeated call to us for conversion and holiness of life, allowing God’s grace to operate in us, changing and transforming us into the likeness of Jesus, to ‘be a reflection of Jesus which will enlighten this unfaithful world walking in darkness’ (5 June 1986). Such change and transformation is an ongoing, daily conversion as Our Lady reminded us in an earlier message (25 February 1993).

Finally, once we have experienced God’s many graces through this commitment, we realise that Our Blessed Mother is with us on our journey of faith, helping and leading us on the path of perfection, responding to the Gospel call of Jesus: ‘You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ (Matt:5:48) Then Our Lady’s Fatima promise will be realised with our help as she told us over ten years ago: ‘Dear Children, help my Immaculate Heart to triumph in a sinful world. I beseech all of you to offer prayers and sacrifices for my intentions, so that I can present them to God for what is most necessary. Forget your own desires, dear children, and pray for what God desires instead.’ (25 September 1991)

Once again Our Lady is urging us to take prayer very seriously. Ultimately, every important aspect of our life depends on how we are able to open our hearts to God through prayer, deep prayer, prayer of the heart to which Our Lady is always calling us. Such prayer can establish a loving relationship between God, our Father, and us, his children. In that relationship wonderful things can happen, as Our lady is telling us: 'prayer works miracles'.

There are many situations in our life when only God's grace can effect the outcome we hope and pray for, like in sickness, depression, family conflicts, even in despair when we have lost the meaning and purpose of our life. When the disciples in the Gospel were unable to cure the young epileptic demoniac, Jesus told them: 'This is the kind of unclean spirit that can be driven out only by prayer and fasting.' (Mark 9:29) Fasting increases the power of prayer, and Our Lady often mentioned prayer and fasting together as a powerful weapon against the forces of the Evil One. In an early message (21 July 1982) Our Lady told the visionaries: 'through prayer and fasting one can stop wars, one can suspend the laws of nature.' 

However, to believe that such miracles can happen, one must have great faith, faith that can move mountains as Jesus told his disciples: 'In truth I tell you, if your faith is the size of a mustard see you will say to this mountain, "Move from here to there", and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you.' (Matt 17:19-20)

This is the most difficult aspect of our spiritual life, to have a deep faith in the power of God's grace. During the past three years in my ill-health, I have been experiencing the weakness of my faith, and I have often thought of the father of the epileptic child, crying out to Jesus: 'I believe; help my unbelief.' (Mark 9:24) For this reason, I take Our Lady's message rather personally.

In order to help us, Our Lady urges us again to take the Rosary in our hands  and pray it with the heart, until we joyfully encounter the Lord Jesus, our Saviour. Such experience will be greatly helped if we pray the Holy Rosary in union with our Blessed Mother, sharing her joys and sorrows as we reflect on the mysteries of the life of Jesus and Mary.

In this message Our Lady is calling us to deep waters indeed, and we must realise that great things can happen, if we let God's grace operate powerfully in our lives.

Our Lady knows that we live in a world where the power of prayer and the power of childlike faith, trust and confidence are handicapped by worldly and hostile attitudes around us. She wants to help us break through these barriers, and that is why she often assures us of her intercession and prayer for us, so that with her help we may become effective witnesses to the power of God's grace through prayer, deep prayer, prayer of the heart.

I am sure that through this and many other similar messages Our Lady wants to lead us to become more and more aware of our true identity as God sees us, his children, brothers and sisters of his Son Jesus. During the past twenty years, Our Lady has been training us to become the 'reflection of Jesus which will enlighten this unfaithful world walking in darkness' (6 June 1986), and so to become instruments in God's plan for the salvation of the world (25 January 1987).

May, the month of Our Lady, gives us a good opportunity to respond with all our heart to Our Lady's loving request.

Our Lady gave her message on the first day of the Novena to the Holy Spirit, a special time of grace indeed. Actually the whole time, nearly twenty years, of Our Lady’s presence with us through Medjugorje can be regarded as a time of grace because she is with us on our journey of faith in a special way, guiding us, teaching us and interceding for us. This time Our Lady wants to tell us something very important as we are preparing for the Feast of Pentecost. She wants us to appreciate this period of time, as she did during the first Novena to the Holy Spirit, after the Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven.

She urges us again to prayer, as she has done every month of this year, expanding on the power of prayer, which is the most important instrument in our striving for holiness of life to obtain God’s grace and favours. Our Lady gently reminds us that we are putting too much importance on our own work and efforts instead of relying upon God’s blessing for which we must pray unceasingly. She wants us to appreciate the power of prayer; that is why she is calling us to prayer so many times. She is teaching us her way of praying, so that we can praise and magnify God for all his graces as she did. In one of her Thursday messages Our Lady poured out her heart about the great importance of unceasing prayer:

‘Dear children, you are a chosen people. God grants you many graces, but you do not realise the importance of every message I am giving you. Now I only wish to say: Pray! Pray! Pray! I do not know what else to tell you because I love you and wish that in prayer you may come to know my love and the love of God.’ (15 November 1984)

During this Novena to the Holy Spirit we should indeed praise God’s goodness in giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit and pray especially for the gift of wisdom in order to seek the things of Heaven instead of earthly interests. With the guidance of the Holy Spirit we will be able to understand the special grace of this time and to live in that grace.

To become fully open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit we must be converted and changed, that is, turning away from sin and from the perishable things of this world, and seeking the values that are eternal. This will be possible if we learn to ‘kneel in the silence of our heart’, encountering God through deep prayer, prayer of the heart. For this to happen, we must put God in the centre of our life, as Our Lady has asked us to do so many times. Then we may say with St Paul: ‘I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is not I, but Christ living in me. The life that I am now living, subject to the limitations of human nature, I am living in faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ (Galatians 2:20)

This will enable us to witness in joy to all the gifts of God with which he continually endows us in our striving for holiness of life. Our Lady is preparing us to become effective witnesses and instruments in God’s plan to renew the face of the earth through the power of the Holy Spirit. We will be able to help the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady to triumph in this sinful world and to establish the reign of Jesus Christ in every heart.

Note: Very few people have expressed interest in my new handbook of spiritual exercises, based on the messages of Our Lady on the theme of love: ‘Mary and Renewal - Our Lady’s School of Love’ (see Publications page on this website). It is a great disappointment for me, of course, but I hope that the devotees of Our Lady of Medjugorje read and comprehend her messages every day one way or another, as she has asked us so many times.

On the 20^th anniversary of her apparitions at Medjugorje Our Lady, in simple words but with great love, is urging us to come closer to her heart, so that she may lead us to her son Jesus. She has been urging us to do so for the last 20 years, and it seems that we are not close enough yet to the Immaculate Heart of our Blessed Mother in order to enable her to fulfil her mission through Medjugorje. That mission was expressed in Our Lady’s first message given 20 years ago: ‘I want to be with you to convert and reconcile the whole world.’ (26/6/81) When we consider the tragic events, wars and conflicts of the past 20 years and when we realise that peace and reconciliation are still far from our world, then we can understand our Blessed Mother’s concern and solicitude for her children, for all of us, and our heart’s desire to involve all of us in the tirumph of her Immaculate Heart in our sinful world.

She reassures us again and again that she is with us, and to mark the special day of the anniversary, Our Lady is blessing us with her motherly blessing. Our Lady’s motherly blessing reflects God’s fatherly blessing, his tender love for his children. It is like rain on the soil helping the seed to bring forth plenty of fruit. God’s word is our seed for the holiness of life. Our Lady has been urging us many times to read and prayerfully reflect on the word of God in holy Scripture, so that God’s blessing through her may produce in our hearts much fruit. Her messages are the messages of the Gospel, expressed in the language of a loving mother so that even children can understand her messages. My two handbooks of spiritual exercises, ‘Living the Gospel with Our Lady’ and ‘Mary and Renewal: Our Lady's School of Love’, present Our Lady's messages with corresponding scripture texts, helping us to grow in holiness of life. The way to make ourselves into a fertile ground for God’s seed is deep prayer, prayer of the heart, to which Our Lady is calling us again in this special time of grace.

As I mentioned before, I regard the whole period of Our Lady’s presence with us through Medjugorje as a time of grace. Through her presence and messages, Our Lady has shown to us that she is our mother, teacher and model, she is the mediatrix of all graces. She is teaching and guiding us through her ‘school of prayer and love’ at Medjugorje, her ‘spiritual Nazareth’, on the way to holiness of life, calling us to complete change and transformation of our hearts, so that we may become open to the Holy Spirit to receive the gifts of peace, love, joy and holiness and so to become the reflection of Jesus which will enlighten this unfaithful world walking in darkness, as she said to us on 6^th June 1986.

Our Lady wants to fulfil her God-given role as Mediatrix of all graces, and that is why she is urging us to open our hearts to God’s many graces and favours through her.

On the 20th Anniversary of Our Lady’s coming to us through Medjugorje we realise the uniqueness of Our Lady's visitation in these special times full of fears, but also full of hopes and expectations, through God’s infinite goodness and mercy, communicated to us by a most loving mother, the Mother of God and our mother.

Through Our Lady’s presence with us through the past 20 years we realise the wonderful opportunity offered to us to participate in God’s saving work. Our Lady wants to prepare us to become instruments in God’s plan through her hands for the salvation of the world, to become effective witnesses for God in this world which estranged itself from God. This is the reason for her staying with us so long that, by becoming the reflection of her son Jesus, we may help our blessed Mother to bring about the triumph of her Immaculate Heart and to establish the reign of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, in every heart.

So far in this year, a special time of grace at the beginning of the new millennium, Our Lady has urged us in every monthly message to concentrate on the power of prayer, prayer of the heart, or personal prayer as she calls it in this message. The main purpose of such prayer is to deepen our relationship with God, a child-father relationship, so that we may become more open to receive the Father’s gifts to his children, especially the gifts of joy, peace and love.

It is noteworthy that Our Lady devotes her monthly message in this holiday season to the ideals of true rest which we find only in God, as St Augustine remarked: "Restless is our soul until it finds its rest in God". Our Lady wants us to make good use of our holidays, benefiting not only our body, but above all our spiritual life. Even our eyes can be instrumental in helping our soul by looking at the beauty of nature, thus finding rest and peace in God.

It is not for the first time that Our Lady draws our attention to the wonders of nature, using the analogy of nature for the good of the soul: "Dear Children, today I want to ask you to open your hearts to God, just like flowers in the spring yearning for the sun. I am your mother and I would like you to be ever closer to the Father, and that he will always bestow abundant gifts on your hearts." (31 January 1985)

By discovering God the Creator in the beauty of his creation we are moved to be thankful for all his creatures which he gave for the benefit of all mankind. Our Lady made this point in another of her beautiful messages: "Dear Children, rejoice in everything that you have, and give thanks to God because everything is God’s gift to you. That way you will be able to give thanks for everything in your life and discover God in everything, even in the smallest flower." (25 April 1989)

Our Lady is also mindful of the abuse of nature which is threatening the world, voiced in the present worldwide discussion on the destructive climatic changes caused by human greed:

"Dear Children, today as never before I am calling you to prayer. Let your prayer be a prayer for peace. Satan is powerful and wants to destroy not only human life but also nature and the planet on which you live..." (25 January 1991)

In the course of the past twenty years Our Lady has often called us to holiness of life. In fact, the call to holiness is her central message, urging us to listen to her messages and to live by them, following her guidelines in her school of prayer and love, in the school of holiness. By living her messages – which are the messages of the Gospel, expressed in the language of a mother – we shall become effective instruments in God’s plan, with Our Lady’s help, for the salvation of the world (cf. message on 25 March 1994).

By renewing her call to holiness at this moment in time, Our Lady is urging us to take her call very seriously. She is asking us to make striving for holiness a priority in our thinking and in our everyday situations, in work and in word, in order to put her call to holiness of life into practice.

It is significant that the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter ‘Novo Millennio Ineunte’ (‘At the beginning of the new Millennium’), of 6 January 2001, puts holiness of life as the central objective of his pastoral programme for the renewal of the Church at the beginning of the third millennium of the Christian Church:

‘I wish to indicate certain pastoral priorities which the experience of the Great Jubilee has, in my view, brought to light. First of all, I have no hesitation in saying that all pastoral initiatives must be set in relation to holiness... Once the Jubilee is over, we resume our normal path, but knowing that stressing holiness remains more than ever an urgent pastoral task. It is necessary therefore to rediscover the full practical significance of Chapter 5 of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, ‘Lumen Gentium’, dedicated to the "universal call to holiness" (no.30).’

In the subsequent paragraphs the Holy Father lists various ways and means (as Our Lady did during the past twenty years) in our striving for holiness: e.g. life of prayer, the Sunday Eucharist, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the primacy of grace, reading and praying the Bible. We must realise that through the above means we are opening our hearts to God’s gift of holiness, as Our Lady said: ‘God gave you the gift of holiness. Pray that you may be able to understand it more and more, and in that way you will be able by your life to witness to God. (25 September 1988)

As we progress on the way to holiness by following Our Lady’s guidance, by our example, little by little, step by step, the life of prayer and holiness will touch the hearts of those around us, especially the members of our family. Our Lady regards the Christian family as the cradle of holiness, as she said in a message on 24 July 1986:

In our world, however, there are many forces militating against holiness in the family, like television, videos, internet, worldly attractions created by consumerism, etc. It is, therefore, very important that the children of Mary, the devotees of Our Lady of Medjugorje, make a firm resolve to live a holy life to be able to witness to the demands of the Gospel. It is the very word of God calling us to holiness: ‘Be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:15-16), or, as Jesus said: ‘You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)

In her present message, Our Lady explicitly warns us against the temptations afforded by the materialistic world all around us, and she calls us to put God in the first place in our life. She gives the reason for this: our earthly life is a very short one, transient as a flower, in comparison to eternal life.

I conclude my reflection with the words of Our Lady: ‘May your conversion and decision for holiness begin today and not tomorrow.’ (25 November 1998)

During this year so far Our Lady has emphasised in her monthly messages the power of prayer: prayer with fasting, prayer of the heart. The present message was given by Our Lady, the Queen of Peace, in the midst of worldwide tension and anxiety as to how to respond to the most evil terrorist attack claiming over six thousand innocent lives in New York and Washington. The world is facing the threat of a new kind of war, based on hatred, the war of terrorism, especially suicidal terrorism which knows no limits. There are many voices in the world crying for revenge and war, and at the time of writing this reflection we can see on our television screens how the war-machine is on the move to make that strike against the Taliban regime of Afghanistan. It may lead to more wars, to more terrorism and hatred and that is precisely what Satan wants in the present situation, as Our Lady said in her message.

Is there any other option to overcome the power of evil caused by terrorism? It seems that the Gospel gives us a better option through the mandate of Jesus: Do good to those who hate you. (Luke 6:27) What could this mean in the present situation? Suppose the USA were to offer the Taliban regime immediate aid to save the starving five and a half million people of Afghanistan in exchange for handing over the terrorists to face justice in the courts and destroying the terrorist training camps, under United Nations supervision. Such an offer could put the fundamentalist regimes harbouring terrorists on the spot and it may lead to a peaceful solution to the terrible problem of terrorism facing the world today. How can we be sure that this option would work? This is where the use of another weapon would be effective: prayer and fasting, and that is why Our Lady is turning to all of us to take up this powerful spiritual weapon to overcome the evils of war and hatred. In an early message Our Lady has clearly stated the power of prayer with fasting:

‘The best fast is on bread and water. Through fasting and prayer one can stop wars, one can suspend the laws of nature. Works of charity cannot replace fasting. Those who are not able to fast can sometimes replace it with prayer, charity and confession (penance); but everyone, except the sick, must fast.’ (21 July 1982)

In the light of Our Lady’s words the power of prayer with fasting can overcome every evil, even the driving out of the Evil One, as Jesus said to his disciples: ‘This kind of evil spirit can be driven out only by prayer and fasting.’ (Mark 9:29)

There is no doubt that the evil of terrorism is the work of Satan, and Our Lady shows us the way to overcome it. By offering our prayer with fasting for the leaders of nations to make the right decision in the present critical situation, and for the overcoming the evil of terrorism, we become peace-makers, carriers of peace in this world without true peace, we become witnesses to the peace of Christ, the Prince of Peace.

It is important, therefore, that the devotees of Our Lady of Medjugorje take Our Lady’s call very seriously and act accordingly without delay. We should not have any fear of evil, because the power of prayer with fasting is greater than the power of evil. Our Lady assures us that she is with us and intercedes before God for each one of us. So we are not alone in this great battle. Our prayer and fasting have heavenly support, assuring us of the victory of good over evil.

As I have mentioned in my previous reflections, in all her messages this year Our Lady has been emphasizing the power of prayer, the power of prayer with fasting, the power of prayer with the heart and with love. In her present message Our Lady renews her call to pray with the heart, with our whole heart and with love for each other, in order to become evangelisers for our time, and to be effective witnesses for peace and joy which are absent especially in the present world situation.

Peace, love and joy are the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf. Galatians 5:22) which we can receive only if we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit through deep prayer, prayer of the heart, unceasing prayer. Such gifts enable us to create a loving atmosphere in our families, in our prayer groups or communities, and such a witnessing has the power to touch and draw the hearts of others as the early Christians experienced when the pagans around them observed: ‘Look how they love each other!’ That way the Christian faith was spreading and that is what Our Lady has in mind when she says: ‘through you and your prayer peace will begin to flow through the world.’

Her words may imply that perhaps up to now we have not made enough impact on the world around us to change it for the better. If we are honest with ourselves, perhaps many of us have not yet experienced the power of prayer of the heart which can ‘work miracles in human hearts and in the world.’

When we consider what a state our world is in today, full of tension and fear as we follow the reports of a senseless war in Afghanistan and the growing hatred in certain parts of the world threatening with more frightful terrorist weapons, we may feel that only miracles can save the world from the unthinkable evils which could happen. Only God’s grace can change the hearts of the terrorists and of people who are motivated by hatred and revenge. That is why Our Lady is urging us to help to achieve this change through our love and prayer of the heart. Our Lady is gracious in thanking God for those who have accepted prayer and are living it with total seriousness.

Perhaps it is helpful to keep in mind Our Lady’s understanding of prayer, especially when she says: ‘pray, pray, pray!’ She explained it to Jelena on 26 June 1984: ‘when I say: "pray, pray, pray!" I don’t mean only increase the hours of prayer, but increase the desire to pray and to be in contact with God, to be in a continuous prayerful state of mind.’

In another message we see other important aspects of prayer as Our Lady wishes us to pray: ‘I would like to ask all the people to pray more and more with me these days. I would like them to fast strictly on Wednesdays and Fridays! Pray the whole Rosary every day, the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries. (14 August 1984)

In order to understand the power of prayer and how to pray with the heart so that miracles may happen to change the face of the earth, here are some messages of Our Lady for deeper reflection:

‘Dear Children, Today as never before I am calling you to pray. Let your prayer be a prayer for peace. Satan is powerful, and wants to destroy not only human life but also nature and the planet on which you live. Therefore, dear children, pray that – through prayer – you may be protected with the blessing of God’s peace. God has sent me among you to help you, provided you are willing to take the rosary in your hands. Already the rosary alone seems to be doing wonders in the world and in your life....’ (25 January 1991)

‘Dear Children, Today I am calling you to open yourselves to God through prayer so that the Holy Spirit may begin to work miracles in you and through you. I am with you and I intercede before God for each one of you, because, dear children, each one of you is important in my plan to save. I call you to be bearers of peace and of all that is good. God can give you peace only if you change and if you pray. For this reason, my dear children, pray, pray, pray, and do that which the Holy Spirit inspires you to do.’ (25 May 1993)

‘Dear Children, I am your Mother and I ask you to come closer to God through prayer, because He is your peace, your Saviour. For that reason, my dear children, do not look for material comfort, but seek God... I urge you to pray so that you accept me and accept my messages as in the first days of the apparitions. And only then, when you open your hearts and pray, will miracles happen.’ (25 September 1993)

The ultimate objective of Our Lady through her messages is to mould us into the reflection of Jesus (cf. 5 June 1986), so that we may be able to say with St Paul: ‘It is no longer I but Christ living in me. The life that I am now living, subject to the limitation of human nature, I am living in faith, faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.’ (Galatians 2:20)

If Christ lives in us and works through us, with Mary’s help, then miracles will happen!

Our Lady gave her message on the Feast of Christ the King with the most appropriate implication for us all: we are called to prepare our hearts for the coming of the King of Peace so that peace may come to our troubled world. Only Jesus, the Prince of Peace, can give true and, lasting peace to the world as he said at the Last Supper and as we hear his words in every Mass before Holy Communion: ‘Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give you, a peace the world cannot give, this is my gift to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.’ (John 14:27) In our Holy Communion, therefore, we should pay special attention to welcoming Jesus, the King of Peace, coming into our hearts with his gift of Peace. The important point for us is the great privilege of being called to become instruments in taking Christ’s peace to the world through our life of prayer and love, in other words, by earnestly living the messages of Our Lady.

Prayer, deep prayer, prayer of the heart, is the secret of it all, and that is why Our Lady renews her call to prayer which can change the world around us. In her October message Our Lady said: ‘My dear children, you are chosen to bear witness to peace and joy...Through you and your prayer peace will begin to flow through the world. For this reason, my dear children, pray, pray, pray, because your prayer works miracles in human hearts and in the world.’

We can sense that only divine power and miracles can change the hearts of so may people in our world who have turned against God, against Jesus, against his Church, and have given themselves over to the power of Satan through hatred, violence and terrorism, causing conflicts among people and nations. Add to this all kinds of evil against life and the moral order causing confusion and distress in the life of families, communities and society in general. Our Lady summed up well the present-day situation in our world: anxiety and fear in all hearts and the reign of hatred in the world. If this situation continues, how will it end? No wonder, there is a great fear in the hearts of many people about the frightful possibilities terrorism may inflict upon the world. That is why Our Lady is urging us to surrender ourselves totally to her by living her messages which are the messages of the Gospel, and thus to become instruments in God’s plan for peace.

When Our Lady speaks of the ‘coming of the King of peace’, we should not think of the second or final coming of Christ at the end of the world, but of another kind of coming. It may mean the 'coming’ of Christ at Christmas in a special way. Christ is always with us who believe in him and love him. But for those who do not know Christ, his love and peace, the discovery of his presence and love may appear to them as a new coming of Christ into their world. We are called to become instrumental in helping our brothers and sisters to open their hearts to the God of love. We are to become light and ‘extended hands’ to them through our love, a reflection of Jesus, as Our Lady said on 5 June 1986:

‘Dear children, I want you to be active in living and spreading my messages. Dear children, I especially desire that you all be the reflection of Jesus which will enlighten this unfaithful world walking in darkness. I want you to be a light for everyone and to bear witness to the Light.’

We live in a time of grace indeed. And what is most encouraging, we are not alone. Our Blessed Mother is with us and with her prayers and blessing she is obtaining for us all the graces we need to commit ourselves completely to her crusade of peace.

In her November message Our Lady asked us to prepare our hearts through prayer for the coming of the King of Peace so that He with His blessing may give peace to the whole world. Peace and reconciliation in the whole world is the desire of Our Lady’s heart and that is why she is urging us again in her Christmas message to pray for peace. The best way to make our prayer for peace effective is to unite ourselves with the newborn Jesus, held by Our Lady in her arms as she usually appears to the visionary, Marija, on Christmas Day.

The birth of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was heralded by the angels to the shepherds, proclaiming: Glory to God in highest heaven, and on earth peace to men of good will. (Lk 2:14).

Jesus Himself is our peace and reconciliation, as Saint Paul writes to the Ephesians (2:14-18), and Our Lady encourages us to take this truth very seriously, so that we may become a sign to the world and in the world that is without peace. The daily news bulletins give us enough evidence about the frightful state of the world far and near, and we must recognise Heaven’s call to all of us in Our Lady’s message to become instruments of God’s peace to the world.

Once we have experienced the peace of Christ through our union with Him, Our Lady wants us to encourage others to prayer and love, because that is the only way to spread the peace of Christ into the world, that is, through being ‘light and extended hands’ to others as Our Lady said in her November message. Such a living faith can be an inspiration and encouragement to others to learn to believe and to love.

How can we obtain such a living faith, that may draw other people to Jesus? In my understanding of Our Lady’s teaching about holiness of life, she wants us to come closer and closer to her Immaculate Heart so that we may come closer to the Heart of Jesus. For this it is important to realise that Jesus is always near to us. He is with us in a special way through His presence in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Through frequent Holy Communion and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament we learn to experience the presence of Jesus in our lives. We shall be transformed into His likeness through the power of the Holy Spirit as we pray in the Third Eucharistic Prayer: Grant that we, who are nourished by his body and blood, may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ. We shall be filled with His love which we can share with others. Our Lady puts this great mystery before us in one of her most beautiful messages:

Dear Children, Today I am asking you to fall in love with the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Adore Him, my little ones, in your parishes, and in this way you will be united with the whole world. Jesus will become your friend, and you will not talk of Him as someone you hardly know. Union with Him will be a joy for you and you will become witnesses to the love of Jesus that He has for every creature. My dear children, when you are adoring Jesus you are near to me. Thank you for responding to my call. (25 September 1995)

In a Thursday message Our Lady assured us that she is always with us when we adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament: Dear Children, adore the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar continually. I am always present when the faithful are in adoration. At such times special graces are given to them. (15 March 1984)

I am convinced that the peace of Christ will begin to flow into the world (cf. October message) through our deeper Eucharistic devotion, as we experience the peace, love and joy of Jesus in our hearts, and this way we shall become powerful witnesses to the Incarnate Love of God, the little Jesus, the Saviour of the world.

The motherly blessing of Our Lady and her love for us will greatly help us to become apostles of peace and love for our time, at the beginning of the Third Millennium of the Christian Church.