Reflection on the Message of April 25, 2001

LET US FOLLOW THE WORDS OF OUR LADY

"Dear children! Also today, I call you to prayer. Little children, prayer works miracles. When you are tired and sick and you do not know the meaning of your life, take the Rosary and pray; pray until prayer becomes for you a joyful meeting with your Saviour. I am with you, little children, and I intercede and pray for you. Thank you for having responded to my call." Message of April 25, 2001

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Our Lady, our Mother, is not tired of us. A true mother never ceases to love her child, no matter how disobedient, troublesome, ill or obstinate it may be. Our Lady is full of love, and – with the strength of that love which is in her, she speaks to us, she calls us, she invites us. The matter of Her words is almost the same since twenty years, but it is new and fresh, because she speaks to us now, today, at this moment. Let us not stop at words, but let us go towards the source of Her maternal Heart, where these words come from. Let us not stop at the sign, but let us go in the direction the sign indicates, where it orients us. Let us approach Her, Who is in the glory, which awaits us all. She desires us to go, to walk, and not to stand, waiting for a miracle, which should happen outside of us. The miracle can and has to happen within us. Our Lady wants to talk to us, even when we do not want to listen to Her, when we do not want to follow Her word. God is not somewhere in an inaccessible light but He dwells – so alive – within us: we only have to break through to Him. We have to overcome so many resistances within us and around us. We are chained by our anguish, our fears, our worries about tomorrow, we are afraid of what the others will think or say about us, and we do not ask ourselves what God thinks about us, what He wants and desires from us. The words of Our Lady are not sensational, but motherly simple, just as God is simple, and we are so complicated and closed. Let us not allow anything to be in front of God, not even our own life. When God is at the first place, all the rest takes naturally its right place.

It can happen in our lives that everything becomes void, meaningless, that we do not find any pleasure in anything, that we do not really rejoice in anything anymore. This is a sign that we do not know and do not see the meaning of our life. These are signs that our soul has been neglected, that it is hungry and thirsty for God and His love. This is the sign that we have lost or forgotten our roots and the source of our life.

We live only once on this earth. One day we will have to leave it, maybe without knowing why we have lived. We’ll have to go on the journey, part from our friends, disappear from here without knowing where we go and what is waiting for us there. This is why we need Holy Mass, confession and prayer to which Our Lady calls us. All these are means and not the goal. Prayer is not the goal, but the way towards the goal. The goal, as Our Lady said, is the joyful meeting with the Saviour. We know how easily we neglect prayer, with how much difficulty we choose prayer, how easily thousands of obligations, duties, meetings, things apparently more important, replace prayer; but when we do pray, we always have the same experience: how good we feel when we are with God, and that time spent with God is the only time really well used in our life. I believe that, at the end of our life, we shall regret all the lost time, and only the time spent in prayer will be the treasure we shall take with us. This treasure, we gain it here, on the earth; it is here that the decision about our life and our eternity is made. After death, nothing essential will happen; here on earth we pronounce our Yes or No to God, our Yes to life or to death.

Our Mother calls us to the road of life. This road is not attractive or wide or easy. Our conversion has a price, our faith is not cheep, it demands the investment of our physical and mental forces, but we know that it leads to life – already on this earth, and not only in eternity.

Let us allow Our Lady to lead us to the source of life. Let us follow Her words.

Fra Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, April 26th 2001