Reflection on the Message of August 25, 2004

I CALL YOU ALL TO CONVERSION OF HEART

"Dear children! I call you all to conversion of heart. Decide, as in the first days of my coming here, for a complete change of your life. In this way, little children, you will have the strength to kneel and to open your hearts before God. God will hear your prayers and answer them. Before God, I intercede for each of you. Thank you for having responded to my call." Message of August 25, 2004

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Mary, our Mother, invites her children to the conversion of heart. Each one of us is important for her; each one of us is her child. As our Mother, she cares for us and for our heart. She is calling to conversion, just like John the Baptist did it at his time. Matthew the Evangelist is writing: "In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”." (Mt 3,1-2) It is not accidental that Mary came here, to us, precisely on the feast day of St John the Baptist, on June 24, 1981. Like him, she is calling and preparing the ways of the Lord in human hearts, at our time, during all these years. It is the voice of from Heaven that, through Mary, is resounding today through our world. It is the voice of the Mother who calls her children. This voice is resounding and renewing the lives of all those who are far from God, living in the desert and in the desolation of this world. This voice does not want to intimidate us. This is a voice that does not threaten, but says to us what God wants of us today.

The messages of Mary are neither comfortable nor light, but demanding. This voice can appear hard to the ears of this world. Mary, our Mother, is perseverant and patient with us. Her love is pressing her on to speak to us and to return us from evil and from sin. Our Mother wants to give us a new freshness, a new fervor and the breath of Heaven.

To convert one’s heart to God means to turn to Him Who alone can satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst for what is more necessary to us than bread and things of this world, which can neither fill nor set free. To convert one’s heart means to believe in God and to decide for Him. God made himself helpless in front of our freedom. Without our decision, He is almost unable to do anything in our heart, this heart that He Himself has created. This shows us at which point He loves us, without ever forcing us to love Him in return.

Our heavenly Mother knows well the enthusiasm of the first days of her apparitions, the enthusiasm that lived in the hearts because of her presence. The Virgin Mary and her maternal heart have not changed since the first days of the apparitions. It is not she who needs to change; we need it. We are filled with enthusiasm very easily, but this enthusiasm can also very easily be lost. We always need food to live. We also always need the contact with God in the prayer of the heart, in trust.

The Virgin Mary calls us to a life of integrity, to a radical change of our life. God does not want from us shallow words of our prayers, or a bit of our time. God asks us all, because He has given to us everything; He has given Himself to us, and He wants that we give Him all. We need a radical decision, which will make us fall on our knees. On our knees in front of God, we will know the heart of God. Then, God won’t be any more a foreigner for us, but a friend. He will become somebody for whom languish our heart and our soul, because in Him alone our heart can find peace, this peace that nobody and nothing can give us. Only on our knees, our heart can open to the Creator our lives. In front of Him, we are just creatures, but creatures that He loves. I believe that we are not conscious of this gift of Heaven which is offered to us today through Mary, our Mother, who is speaking to us and opening to us her maternal heart full of love, a heart that wants us to consecrate ourselves to Her. It reveals to us the immensity of the love of God and His perseverance, in spite of our blindness and our deafness. Only on our knees and in prayer, we will be able to know the heart of the Mother, this heart full of love for each one of us, but also the pain that lives in it because of each heart that is blind and deaf.

Mary, our Mother, we thank you for your intercession, for the prayer that you are addressing to God for each one of us. Thank you, because you are not abandoning me, you are not abandoning us.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medjugorje, August 26, 2004