Peace to All! Below are the official English translations of reflection / commentaries on Our Lady's message of 04/25/2001 as provided by the Information Center in Medjugorje.
1. Fra Ljubo Kurtovic
2.
Fr Ivan Landeka
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
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
THE PREPARATION AND THE
EFFECTS
Has Easter come or gone? Has the event of the Resurrection, to which we
prepared ourselves, marked our life or not? Perhaps are we glad it is all over
now?
The meaning of the exercises of holy times is that we, lead by the grace of
God, exercise ourselves in something, which will last, what we will keep as
our permanent good and what will become rooted in our Christian attitude. In
the life of the Apostles and of the first Church, Easter was not only a great
beginning, but the meeting with the Risen Christ. This has become a mission,
which never ends.
The call of Our Lady for us to decide totally for God is a call founded on her
personal experience in the first Church, among others. It is a call for us to
become used to the presence of the Risen Jesus in our homes, in the Church and
in society. The Easter time should be en exercise in this presence. On the
contrary, every word about conversion, prayer, a more intense Christian life,
will rather be a burden than an inspiration, and
some forms of Christian life will have a bad development.
Fr Ivan Landeka
English translations of messages and commentaries courtesy of The Information Centre in Medjugorje and gratefully acknowledged. Sign up for The Medjugorje Web e-mail information service. http://www.medjugorje.org
