Reflection on the Message of February 25, 2005
PUT GOD IN THE FIRST PLACE IN YOUR LIFE
"Dear children! Today I call you to be my extended hands in this world that puts God in the last place. You, little children, put God in the first place in your life. God will bless you and give you strength to bear witness to Him, the God of love and peace. I am with you and intercede for all of you. Little children, do not forget that I love you with a tender love. Thank you for having responded to my call." Message of February 25, 2005
Today also, the Virgin Mary is calling us. She is inviting us to be her “extended hands in this world”. She has extended, and she continues to extend her hands and her heart to us. She desires that we take her by the hand, that we open our heart to her and that we listen to her voice. The glance that we pose on her with the heart helps us to persevere on the path, on which we have to go, on the way that God intended for us. Mary, our Mother, desires to be present in our families, in our human relations, in our conversations through our life and our deeds. She is not expecting from us to do extraordinary things. She did not do any either. She fulfilled her work through simple and ordinary domestic services, but she was doing simple and insignificant things with an extraordinary love. The real greatness is not to do something extraordinary, but to do all that we do with an extraordinary love.
Mary was offering to the Lord small and daily deeds with love. In the privacy of her life, she wanted to please only the Lord. Her will did not waver. For her, God was in the first place, and this is why her life was entirely filled. This is why she is our Mother and our Teacher. As a Mother, she wants to wake us up, and to teach us that it is not important what we do, but how we do it.
Through this message also, she is encouraging us to put God in the first place in our life. When God is in the first place, all the rest finds its right place. The worst of all, it is that human beings have forgotten God, and all the rest that happens to us in life, are only the consequences of this. It is strange that human beings do not notice the creator and author of their lives. Even stranger is than human beings are able to turn away from God, and thus destroy themselves and those who are close to them.
If we put God at the first place, we will certainly find time for prayer, for the encounter with God. If we seek God sincerely, and if we do not know where to find Him, we must begin to pray, to pray daily. It will not always be easy, but it will be salutary. We find time for what we love. If we love ourselves, we will find prayer, the encounter with God who heals, who saves and who gives the strength to live and give witness in favour of God who is love and peace. Without God, we are weak and helpless, unable to forgive, to love and to give witness in favour of God who is alive and who languishes for us, his children. To believe in God means to abandon oneself to Him, to dare to jump into the arms of God. Then, we will experience that He is carrying us and maintaining every instant of our life.
Mary leads us to God, and she is promisins us her intercession and her presence. She offers us the love of her heart, the gentle, tender and salutary love. Let us ask Mary, not to be for us a remote and unknown being, but the Mother who is present and who does not refuse anybody who asks her help and her intercession. Let us listen to her in order to experience already here on earth, in our life and in our families, the foretaste of Heaven.
Medjugorje, February 26,2005
Last Modified 03/02/2005