Fr. Slavko's Reflections on the message of

OCTOBER 25, 1995: "Dear Children" Today I invite you to go out into nature because there you will meet God the Creator. Today, I invite you, little children, to thank God for all that He gives you. In thanking Him you will discover the Most High and all the goods that surround you. Little children, God is great and His love for every creature is great. Therefore, pray to be able to understand the love and goodness of God. In the goodness and love of God the Creator, I also am with you as a gift. Thank you for having responded to my call."

With this message of October, Our Lady invited us to fall in love with Jesus and then also to organize Adoration in all Parishes. Those in love with one another have time for one another. We know very well that Mary in saying this wished to remove the most often mentioned argument because many people say that they do not have the time for prayer. When we fall in love with Jesus, knowing at the same time that He is in love with us, we will all find the time. In other words, she wants us all to experience Jesus in the Eucharist and this month's message is really a logical continuation to the message of September. Namely Mary says:.

Today I invite you to go out into nature because there you will meet God the Creator

From the meetings with God at Holy Mass and at Eucharistic Adoration, the conditions are created that we meet Him as the Creator and then it only follows that we should go out into nature. Everything that God created speaks of God and then also the first word that God spoke to us is of His nature, of His Creation. In all that is created, one can discover God's love and goodness but then also His being Almighty and His wisdom. One can see this word that God speaks about God the Creator when one has a clean, a believing, a loving and also a listening heart. God speaks through every flower, through every fruit and through every color that we can come across in autumn. He speaks, but then we should also become free enough internally to hear this word. He then, of course, continued speaking in Holy Scripture and in Holy Scripture, He speaks more clearly. Still one can only understand this word when one has that clean, believing, loving and listening heart. I believe that this word is especially important for parents. They should take time to take their children out into nature and to speak to them there about God the loving and almighty Creator. And when we recognize God the Creator out in nature, the first thing that should come into our hearts is gratitude. That is why....

Today I invite you, little children, to Thank God for all that He gives you

Gratitude is the most beautiful dimension of our faith. Those who can say "thank you" are those who believe because they know that all that we have is and comes from God. But it is also sad that it happens so easily to us that our eyes can become darkened, resulting in our no longer being able to find the many reasons to say "thank you". This darkening of our eyes and then of our hearts usually comes through our sufferings and through our Cross. How often do we have distrust and bitterness toward God in our hearts because we only see the suffering and the Cross and thus accuse God? How often do we ask ourselves: "God, where are you, where do you stay and where is your love?" but even when the crosses lie on our shoulders and when we must suffer, there are always many things for which we can still express our gratitude. We must also progress far enough so that with sincerity we can also thank for our crosses and our sufferings because we afterall know that God does not want our crosses and sufferings BUT because suffering, sin and death did come into the world and we know that the crosses and sufferings will all turn into good for those who love God. For this one, we must simply pray. Gratitude opens the eyes and Mary says:

In thanking Him, you will discover the Most High and all the goods that surround you

To discover the Most High is really an enormous grace. To discover the Most High is really our important assignment throught the entire apparitions. This because in the beginning, among other things, Mary told us "I came to tell you that God exists." Many people today no longer believe and simply do not know that God exists. Many pray to and adore the false Gods. So Mary again calls us to accept the First Commandment with all our hearts. "I am your God, there is no other God other than me." How many people, including among the Christians, believe in Jesus yet at the same time practice much superstition? How many false prophets are there today and how they attract ever more followers. How many mediums, followers of Astrology and palm readers are there? How may people have actually distanced themselves in these ways from the Only, the True and the Almighty God in their practical lives? It is going so far that we know that satanic sects exist who make Satan their God by praying to him. Many, of course, only believe in science and have thereby become the faithful of science. Many only pray to money and to power. We are invited and we simply must start thanking for all that surrounds us and then start discovering the Almighty and loving and serving the Only Trud God, God who created our life. Exactly because the faith in the One Loving God the Creator is lacking, all of life has stumbled into great dangers. When one no longer has any reverence for God, one no longer has any reverence for life! This is why both the unborn as well as the born and all of nature is in great danger. Man through his knowledge of how to discover the laws of nature starts to build the new Tower of Babel. Then instead of bowing and kneeling ever deeper and more humble in front of God the Creator, he behaves ever more as though he was God. man has simply forgotten that he may not do all that he is able to do. If man forgets that, he will begin to manipulate everything, to take advantage of everything for his own ego, this can so easily lead to catastrophes in ones own life as well as in all of nature. That is why it is so very important for us to serve, to worship and to listen to the One True and Loving God. Then Mary reminds us....

Little Children, God is great and His love for every creature is great

His love is great in His creatures, He is great in every human life and His greatness is again the reason that we serve and bow in front of Him. He loves all of his creatures! Therefore this is also a call to all of humanity to love all creatures. It is good to think about Max Durkauf, an atomic physicist, who cooperated at the building of the first Atomic Bomb and who after the first explosion, like so many other atomic physicists, entered a great moral crisis. He who found his way to faith and thus experienced conversion says: "Next to every laboratory where scientists are discovering and touching the laws of life, there ought to be a Chapel for Adoration. This so that they could first kneel down before God the Creator and only then touch the laws of nature and of all of life. Then they would only be able to touch them with love because if we start touching them out of egoism or pride, we could so easily destroy ourselves." God is great and He loves every single creature. All that He created is loved by Him and most expecially, of course, man who is afterall the crown of His creation. Out of the love that God has for everything then grows the need and reason for our reverence for all that is created. The condition to discover God and his goods is once again prayer.

Therefore, pray to be able to understand the love and goodness of God

Here, I wish to repeat that we must take time for prayer and in a special way for Adoration of the God who made Himself into bread for us. We must stay there silently with Him. We must meet with Him in order to return to all that is Holy. Then we will also discover His love and all of His goods and then become witnesses of His love and of his goods. Then at the end of the message Mary reminds us....

In the goodness and love of God the Creator, I also am with you as a gift

Of course, she as mother and she as humble servant of God who said:"Yes, Thy will be done."her entire service for Jesus and for Jesus' life, her accompanying Him from beginning to end -- all this is a very great gift. She is a gift for us and especially so in these times. We must also remember what the Pope wrote in the 1987 Encyclical:Mother of the Redeemer. Then he said that Mary had become a pilgrim for this pilgrimage Church, that she is not only Jesus' mother and teacher but also our mother and teacher, that she is living her second advent and that she is preparing us for Jesus' 2,000th Birthday. Her daily apparitions here, her messages, her prayers and her blessings for us are all great gifts, but it is God who is giving her to us as companion, as teacher and as mother and this can only be discovered when one prays. So may the next month in which we celebrate All Souls, remind us of how in so many weak little people God showed us His greatness in His love and His greatness in His forgiveness. And in this month that also leads us into Advent and which in turn will begin more intimately to prepare us for the Chirstmas season, may this message assist us in discovering God the Creator, in thanking Him and adoring Him and thereby becoming witnesses to His love. Mary again is being very specific. She wished to help us not only to discover that God exists, that God is our Creator and that God is a good and loving God but also that human dignity is then founded and rooted in His love. Then out of this relationship with Him and with all that He has created for us a true peace can really come to all of us. This peace I wish for every one of you and through you to all the world. Let us pray:

God, Our Father, we thank You for all that You have given to us. We thank You for Your love that You showed toward us through Your Son, Jesus Christ. Give us the grace that we meet You in Him and that we discover You the One, the Almighty, the Loving and the Most High God in all creatures. Cleanse our hearts of all false gods and of all idols. Give us the grace and prepare our hearts so that You the Father in Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit can have the first place in our hearts. Give us the grace that we can understand Your love and Your goodness. We thank You that You have given us Mary and give us the grace that we stay on the path to You with her. Bless us through her intercession, bless our families, bless every life - both the unborn as well as the born - bless all the Creation and all creatures and protect all that is created with Your love from destruction, from all negative influences so that we along with Mary serve You in freedom. You the Most high, the most good God who with Jesus and in the Holy Spirit lives and reigns in all eternity. Amen

Fra. Slavko, Medjugorje
October 27, 1995