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Reflections
on the Year 2005 Messages |
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| January 2005 |
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It is very significant that Our Lady gave her message on Christian unity on the last day of the Octave of prayer for Christian Unity. Our Lady is urging us to pray for Christian unity at a time when the Christian churches, especially the Catholic Church, are facing a hostile attitude by the secular world backed by blasphemous comments and programmes in the media, especially television. The tragic consequences of this very disturbing situation include the breakdown of family life and the shortage of priestly vocations which have a very adverse effect on the Church as a whole. Young people today are exposed to a materialistic, pleasure-seeking, hedonistic godlessness, which is invading our society more and more with all its unnatural and evil practices, creating conflicts in both the small and large communities. Our Lady speaks of ‘a time of graces’ but it is also a time of great trials, as she mentioned in an earlier message:
Peace, which is the fruit of love, is missing from the hearts of many people and communities, causing conflicts, disunity, even hatred, as Our Lady told us in a Thursday message in 1986:]
Love is the secret of Christian unity, loves which forgives, shares, breaks down the barriers; and once Christians are united, their example and prayers for the unbelievers and all those who have not yet come to know God’s love will draw all people to the hearts of Jesus and Mary, as Our Lady told us a year ago:
The reign of God’s peace and love, uniting the churches and the people of the world, however, begins in our own hearts. In her school of prayer and love, Our Lady has been training us all these years to become the reflection of Jesus who will enlighten this unfaithful world walking in darkness (5 June 1986) followed by the transformation of our family to become the cradle of holiness (24 July 1986). Then our local Christian community, our parish must become united and one in heart as Our Lady told the parishioners of Medjugorje:
Holiness of life, Christian unity, peace in the world are the work of the Holy Spirit. We must deepen our devotion to the Holy Spirit, as Our Lady urged us some years ago:
I conclude with the heart-rending words of Our Lady, addressed to us
through Mirjana on 2 December 2005, when they prayed as usual for the
unbelievers: |
| February 2005 |
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In reading the latest message of Our Lady, her heart-rending words, addressed to us through Mirjana on 2nd December, 2004, come to my mind: I need you! I am calling you! I need your help! Reconcile with God, with yourself, with your neighbours. In this way you will help me. Convert the non-believers. Wipe the tears from my face! We can sense the urgency of Our Lady’s call to help her; to become her extended hands in our materialistic and pleasure-seeking world which turns against God and against all moral values, thus threatening the security and peace of our world with more and more dire consequences. The first task which we, as extended hands of Our Lady, have to do is to pray for her intentions as she has asked us a few months ago:
During Lent we have great opportunities to deepen our life of prayer as we are contemplating the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ in union with our sorrowful Mother. This special time of grace will help us to put God in the first place in our life to become effective witnesses as Our Lady asked us a few years ago:
Through our prayerful union with the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we become the extended hands of God himself, fully conscious of our Christian vocation as Our Lady told us on 25th November, 1997:
Our Christian vocation means a life of prayer and love, expressed in humble service and through works of mercy, witnessing to the love of God as Our Lady told us eight years ago:
Prayer of the heart will help us to experience God’s work in our lives through the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, fidelity, humility, self-control and purity of heart (cf. Galatians 5:22), to share them with others to the glory of God. Once again Our Lady assures us of her intercession and of her motherly love for all of us to encourage us to be her extended hands, thus to be the joyful extended hands of God for the salvation of the world. |
| March 2005 |
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Last month Our Lady called us to be her extended hands and we have reflected on what it means to be the extended hands of God and of Our Lady in our materialistic and pleasure-seeking world which turns more and more against God. In her present message Our Lady puts before us the most effective aspect of being her and God's extended hands: love; love for God; love for each other; love for everybody, not with our imperfect human love, but with God's love operating in our hearts. This Holy Week has provided the best background for Our Lady's most important message for our time. She gave her message on Good Friday when we were contemplating the mystery of divine love through the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for the salvation of mankind. We call to mind the words of Jesus spoken to Nicodemus: 'God loved the world so much that He gave his Son so that everybody that believes in Him shall not be lost but may have eternal life.' (John 3:16) At the last Supper, before Jesus died for us, He said: 'A man can have no great love than to lay down his life for his friends.' (John 15:13) He also said: 'I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.' ((John 13:14) In the Eucharistic Mystery Jesus gave Himself to us to be with us always, and he sent the Holy Spirit to change and transform us, to become the reflection of Jesus, so that we may be able to say with St Paul: 'I have been crucified with Christ, and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I but Christ living in me.' (Galatians, 2:20) It is also significant that Our Lady gave her message on 25th March, which usually would have been the Feast of the Annunciation (celebrated this year on 4th April). The last time the Feast of the Annunciation fell on Good Friday was 500 years ago. Our Blessed Mother's surrender to God's holy will on Good Friday on Calvary Hill will give us further inspiration for how to allow God's love to operate in us. Only the humble and prayerful heart can open itself to receive God's gift of love, like flowers in the spring open to the sun, using Our Lady's analogy. Our Lady has often asked us to open our hearts through prayer, prayer of the heart, to receive God's gifts of love, joy and peace, in order to share them with others. She told us about this ten years ago:
Through living a life of love we can transform the world around us as the early Christians did by moving the hearts of the pagan people living around them: 'Look how they love each other!' To be truly effective in our life of love we must be united with Our Blessed Mother, as she told us on 25th February 1993:
This way, helped and protected by Our Blessed Mother, we shall be effective witnesses to the Risen Lord who has conquered the power of the evil one. |
| April 2005 |
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Last month Our Lady called us to love with God’s love so that love may reign in our hearts and, the risen Jesus being with us through love, we may become his witnesses. In her present message Our Lady reminds us that our witnessing through a life of prayer and love must become effective first of all in our families, since the family is the basic unit of society and of nations, and the example of a family renewed in holiness of life through prayer and love will be the best instrument in the new evangelisation of our world which is more and more losing sight of God and of his love. In her message last October Our Lady urged us to renew prayer and love in the family so that the family may become a witness of love in this world which is without prayer and peace:
Prayer in the family can become very powerful if it is enriched by the Word of God through reading the Holy Scriptures as Our Lady told us on 25th September 1999:
Our Lady encourages us to read the Bible in our homes every day, as she said in a Thursday message:
In another Thursday message Our Lady asked the families of Medjugorje to encourage even very young children to pray and to go to Holy Mass:
At Baptism, the priest blesses the parents, asking God to help them to be the first teachers of their children in the way of faith, and also that they may be the best of teachers, bearing witness to faith in Christ Jesus our Lord by what they say and do. In this way the family becomes the ‘cradle of holiness’ indeed, and this is what Our Lady has asked in her message on 24th July1986:
However, renewing family life through holienss is not possible without the help of the Holy Spirit, and Our Lady repeatedly urged us to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, as flowers in the spring open to the sun:
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| May 2005 |
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As we are approaching the 24th anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions at Medjugorje, we are urged again, as so many times in the past, to live by Our Lady's messages. She is asking us to live them in humility, because only through humility will our hearts be open to the working of the Holy Spirit as She told us over a year ago:
The special fruits of the Holy Spirit working in our hearts are love, joy, and peace which are absent in our world and we are called to share these gifts with people around us. To live by Our Lady's messages means to live by the Gospel of Jesus, because Our Lady's messages are the messages of the Gospel, and by living Her messages we bear witness to the Gospel, as Our Lady told us fourteen years ago:
Bearing witness to the Gospel of Jesus should be centred on the Holy Eucharist in this Year of the Eucharist, so that the love of Jesus may be reflected by our way of living and it may draw people to God and His Love, as Our Lady told us in an earlier message:
Our Lady has asked us so many times to live Her messages and one wonders why we are so lukewarm and slow in responding to Her entreaties. She wants us to be instruments in God's hands and in Her hands, to be their extended hands as She told us several times, to save the world which is turning away from God and from His love, more and more. Her sadness comes to my mind when during the terrible war in former Yugoslavia, She reproached Her children for not living by Her messages:
In spite of us being so lukewarm Our Lady loves us and is blessing us with Her motherly blessing, hoping, I am sure, that this time we shall have a very firm resolve to live by Her messages.
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| June 2005 |
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As we are celebrating the 24th anniversary of Our Lady’s first apparition at Medjugorje,Our Lady's message fills us with joy because of her thanking us for every sacrifice we have offered for her intentions, for the salvation of souls and for the peace in the world. During Our Lady's twenty-four years of visitations to us she has often asked us to offer prayers and sacrifices which are helping her mission to our world and at the same time helping our holiness of life. In an earlier message Our Lady has connected the two aspects of offering sacrifices for her intention:
At the beginning of the terrible war in former Yugoslavia, Our Lady - referring to her mission she began in Fatima - urged us to help her Immaculate Heart to triumph by more prayers and sacrifices.
Our Lady wants us to become apostles of love and peace in our families, in our communities and in our world. During her apparitions at La Salette (1846), Our Lady had already indicated her plan to call all her children to become apostles of the dark days as children of light to enlighten the whole earth. In her message given on 25 November 1999, Our Lady has urged us to become apostles of peace through prayer and love:
All this transformation of our hearts in becoming apostles of love and peace in our time is the working of the Holy Spirit. In a beautiful message Our Lady told us about this important work of the Holy Spirit in our life:
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| July 2005 |
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In her message Our Lady renews her frequent and urgent message to us to have a life of prayer which, through God’s grace, transforms our life so that we can become effective instruments in the hands of God and Our Lady to save souls and to bring peace to our troubled world. In an earlier message Our Lady called us to a life of prayer so that God may rule in our hearts and in the hearts of all people:
In her present message Our Lady emphasises the importance of frequent, short and ardent prayer during the day. Such prayer may be like the following one, a prayer of the heart, favoured in the Eastern Church: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ Our Lady said also before that when we pray our heart is open to God’s graces like flowers in the spring open to the sun, to receive especially the gifts of the Holy Spirit through which, with Our Lady’s mediation, we are transformed into the reflection of Jesus. These gifts are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11: 1-3) Through the working of the Holy Spirit in us and through Jesus living in us the fruits of holiness are produced in us which may inspire other people to turn to God, for the glory of God the Father. These fruits are: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, fidelity, humility, self-control and purity of heart. (Gal 5:22) Our Lady refers to our time as a time of grace for conversion, change and transformation, as she told us before: Dear Children, I call you also today to conversion. Open your heart to God, little children, through Holy Confession, and prepare your soul so that little Jesus can be born anew in your heart. Permit Him to transform you and lead you on the way of peace and joy. Little children, decide for prayer. Especially now, in this time of grace, may your heart yearn for prayer. I am close to you and intercede before God for all of you. Thank you for having responded to my call. (25 Nov 2002) Finally, in view of the very sinful and troubled world we live in, Our Lady urges us to do novenas of fasting and renunciation, offering our sacrifices for Our Lady’s intention to conquer the power of Satan and in reparation for the sins of the world (Cf. message of 25 August 1991). Once again, Our Lady assures us of her presence with us and of her prayers for us. |
| August 2005 |
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Our Lady is renewing her basic messages with a sense of urgency that we must take very seriously. Our Lady has often used the term ‘this time of grace’, which is not restricted to a particular liturgical period like Christmas or Easter, but means the whole period of her visitation through Medjugorje, preparing us for the victory of her Immaculate Heart as she promised in Fatima. Whether her victory will be preceded by another kind of period of time remains a question. Our Lady calls the present period of time a time of grace as a time of God’s grace and mercy for the world inviting all people to conversion. Her call may indicate another kind of time, the time of God’s justice if the world remains in its present sinful state. Our Lady, Mother of Mercy, is anxious to involve all her faithful children to help her to achieve her victory over the evil one, Satan, who seemingly increases his power in the world more and more. She is calling us to live by her messages, that is, to live the gospel of Jesus with her, to lead a life of holiness, prayer and love. This is the way she wants to prepare us for the new period of time, which God gives us as a special grace, as Our Lady told us on 25th January 1993:
Only through the witnessing of God’s children through a holy life can the unbelievers and evildoers be helped to conversion, to receive God’s forgiveness and thus to save the world from the justice of God. For this immensely important task Our Lady calls us to conversion, change of heart, transformation of our life, so that we may become effective instruments in her great plan to save the world, as she called us on 25th February 1996:
Living by the messages of Our Lady by living the gospel of Jesus, in the present period of time, reflecting Jesus in his saving work, means we must share the redeeming work of Jesus through prayer, love and sacrifice, in other words, doing reparation and atonement for all sinners, for their conversion, reconciling God with all people to save the world. This was the call of Our Lady in Fatima to the three little visionaries, and now, since Medjugorje is a continuation of Fatima, Our Lady is calling us anew to help her Immaculate Heart to triumph:
As in every message, Our Lady assures us again that she is with us and intercedes before God for each one of us. |
| September 2005 |
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In Our Lady's present message one may feel the cry of a loving mother who is deeply saddened by some of her children because they have moved away from her heart through their sins or through not responding to her loving call. However she does not give up hope and strongly believes that these her children will turn away from sin too and will decide for holiness of life. During the pas twenty four years Our Lady has called us many times to conversion, to change of heart, so that by living her messages we may become effective instruments in her great plan to save our world which is moving away from God more and more. Her call to conversion is the most important message as she told us on 25th February 1996:
In fact Our Lady's very first message to the people of Medjugorje, and through them to all of us, was on conversion which will lead to peace and reconciliation for the whole world.
One wonders why does Our Lady urge us again to conversion. We may talk about her messages, we may eagerly look for her next message, but we may fail to live by them. Many pilgrims at Medjugorje may be inspired by what they see and hear there, but when they return to their daily routine their life may go on as before. What kind of conversion does Our Lady speak of? It is not just turning away from sin, but above all it is living a life of prayer and love, a life of holiness. Such a conversion is not a single event like when someone becomes a Catholic, but it is an ongoing transformation which brings us closer to God and to each other, thus making us effective witnesses to unbelievers. Such a conversion is a daily conversion as Our Lady told us on 25th February 1993:
This leads us to the most important aspect of conversion, the grace of God, because it is a gift of the Holy Spirit for which we have top pray as the Apostles did with Our lady before the first Pentecost. As the Year of the Eucharist is coming to its close, we must realise that the Holy Eucharist is the most powerful means for our change of heart and transformation, thorough the working of the Holy Spirit, as we pray in the Third Eucharistic Prayer: Father, 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. |
| October 2005 |
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Our Lady's latest message ends with her often repeated call to us: ‘be witnesses of my presence’. To be a witness of any cause does not mean giving testimony by words only, but by the example of our life. That is what Our Lady has been teaching us all these years, but one feels that we are still not living by her messages and, therefore, we are not good witnesses of her presence with us. Our Lady’s messages are not centred on herself, but on God to whom Our Lady wants us to come closer and closer, so that He may be able to give us His love and all the graces we need in order to become effective instruments in Our Lady’s great mission to our sinful world. In our Lady’s school of prayer and love we have been taught about the importance of humble prayer which enables us to respond joyfully to her messages and thus to become witnesses of her presence, as she told us on 25th June 1999:
When we are experiencing the sense of belonging to Our Lady, the Mediatrix of all graces, then we will realise how much Our Lady loves us and how much she wants our hearts to be open, like flowers in the spring to the sun, to receive all the graces of God through Mary’s hands. Witnessing to Our Lady’s presence through our life means that we should make Our Lady’s spirituality our own by a life of prayer, faith, love, humility and purity. This wonderful spirituality enabled Mary to become the Mother of our Saviour and in the dying hour of Jesus to become our Mother too. Her humble faith and trust in God was what her cousin Elizabeth has praised: ‘Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made to her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ (Luke 1:45) Following the example of Our Lady through humble faith, child-like prayer and trust in God, our hearts will be open to receive God’s love and all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit to enable us to become a reflection of Jesus, in order to participate in His saving work for the salvation of the world. All this implies a complete change and transformation of our hearts, that is, conversion and total surrender of our life to God, as Our Lady has indicated in a previous message:
God’s special gift to us is Our Lady herself who is teaching and training us in a loving way to become ‘helping hands’ in her mission to the world. Filled with God’s love, we will be able to radiate love to others, helping other people to turn to God, so that God’s peace may fill our world more and more. Such a way of living is our participation in the saving work of our Redeemer with Mary’s help. Our Lady’s immeasurable love for us should be for us a great inspiration to live by her messages and to help her Immaculate Heart to triumph. |
| November 2005 |
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In this message Our Lady gives us a deeper explanation on the theme of her last monthly message: Dear Children, believe, pray and love, and God will be near you. In our world faith in God is under tremendous attack with the result that more and more people are seeking in a selfish way the pleasures of this world and causing a lack of peace, joy, love and harmony in families, in communities and in the whole world. Our Lady wants to lead all her children to the realisation that life is God’s gift culminating in the happiness of eternal life. In order to guide us to heaven, Our Lady is teaching us the deeper meaning and the power of prayer. When Our Lady uses the expression ‘Pray, pray, pray’ it has a special meaning as she explained to Jelena Vasilj on 26th 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. By our closeness to God through humble and child-like prayerfulness we open our hearts to God’s gifts of faith, joy, love and peace which we can share with others to make a happier world around us. By her frequent calls to conversion Our Lady, in her school of prayer and love through Medjugorje, teaches us to live a life of prayer with all its beautiful fruits as she told us on 25th March 1995:
How can we pray as Our Lady wishes us to pray? Our Lady gives us the answer by calling us to pray the Holy Rosary with living faith.
The Holy Rosary is one of the best and simplest forms of contemplative prayer, prayer of the heart, and the best way of growing in our relationship to the Persons of the Holy Trinity with Our Lady’s help. As we are contemplating the life of Jesus with our Blessed Mother, especially through the recently added Mysteries of Light, we come closer and closer to Jesus, and through Jesus to the Father (John 14:6) and to the Holy Spirit who is working in Jesus and through Jesus (John 14: 13-14). Pope John Paul has written beautifully on the Trinitarian aspect of the Rosary in his Apostolic Letter on the Holy Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae (no. 9): In contemplating Christ’s face we become open to receiving the mystery of Trinitarian life, experiencing ever anew the love of the Father and delighting in the joy of the Holy Spirit. St Paul’s words can then be applied to us: ‘All of us, with unveiled faces like mirrors reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory; this is the work of the Spirit of the Lord’. (2 Cor 3:18) |
| December 2005 |
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During the Christmas celebration we have often recalled the message of the angels at the time of the birth of Jesus. Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will. (Luke 2.14) Sadly, in our world there are still many people with bad will, causing wars, conflicts, hate and fear. No wonder Heaven's message is renewed in our time with a sense of urgency through Our Lady, the Queen of Peace. As we approach the 25th anniversary of Our Lady's first apparition at Medjugorje on 24th June 1981, we recall the scene as she was offering little Jesus, the King of Peace, to the visionaries and, through them, to the whole world that He may be accepted and peace may come to our troubled world. Is the world willing to accept Jesus? One feels that just the opposite is happening; our world becomes more and more secular and godless. However, the Queen of Peace in her immense motherly love for all her children is continuing her mission for the peace of the world by calling her willing children to listen to her messages and to become carriers of peace, God's peace. In her first message at Medjugorje, Our Lady stated the purpose of her coming: I have come because there are many true believers here. I wish to be with you to convert and reconcile the whole world (26th June 1981). Ever since her first message, during all these years Our Lady has been calling us many times through her 'school of prayer and love' to change, to convert, to be holy, to become instruments in her great plan to help all people to accept Christ, the King of Peace, so that peace may come to our troubled world. During the war in the former Yugoslavia thirteen years ago - a war which Our Lady wanted to avoid with the help of her children, but it did not happen because of our slowness in living by her messages - she has renewed her call to us to become instruments of peace to build with her a new world of peace.
During this past year, Our Lady has often urged us to come closer to God by humble faith, prayer of the heart, especially by praying the Holy Rosary with living faith, and above all by love, so that through holiness of life we may become indeed the carriers of God's peace to our troubled world. Her previous Christmas message called us to have courage to become witnesses to the Gospel of peace, assuring us of her great love for us as in her present message:
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