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

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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.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic, OFM