I am a gift to you

“Little children, believe, pray and love, and God will be near you. He will give you the gift of all the graces you seek from Him. I am a gift to you, because, from day to day, God permits me to be with you and to love each of you with immeasurable love. Therefore, little children, in prayer and humility, open your hearts and be witnesses of my presence. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

Message of October 25, 2005

            The Virgin Mary came to lead us to Jesus, the Saviour. Only in His Name is our salvation and our life. For 24 years and 4 months now, she is showing us the way, she is inspiring us and calling us. God is with us. Jesus promised to us: "I am with you every day until the end of the world". God is with us at every moment. The problem is that we are not always with Him. God remains always faithful. He has never misled or disappointed somebody who trusted in Him.

The Virgin Mary teaches us that – in order to be with God - it is necessary to believe, to pray, and to love. To be a Christian means to be on the way and to seek God unceasingly. Every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened - Jesus has promised this.

God awaits only one thing: that we address ourselves to Him. He awaits our prayer and our trust. Our prayer should not be petty and selfish, but great as God is great. The most important in prayer is to seek God. When we find Him and encounter Him, we have everything. When we put God at the first place, all the rest finds its place.

God is close to us. It is in Him that “we live, and move, and have our being” (Ac 17,28) and this is why we can make the experience of God. God is a person, and this is why we can know Him by our person, by our heart. We can know God because He revealed to us and He continues to reveal to us the incommensurability of His love. Through her apparitions, Our Lady is revealing to us her inner heart, which loves infinitely. She grants us her trust, and this is a gift, this is a grace. In trust, she is speaking to us and she is making herself known to us. When we grant our trust to her as a Mother, we know her. The depth, the beauty, and the purity of her heart attract us then more and more towards her.

The Virgin Mary desires so much that we are close to God. This is why she is telling us: "believe, pray and love". If we speak to God, if we kneel down in front of Him and if we pray, He reveals Himself to us, He grants us His richness.

A woman tells that, during Adoration in the church, in one moment, she made the experience of the simplicity of God; she understood that, only in simplicity, we can know Him. She felt sweetness and tenderness, and she was seized by clarity, beauty, and truth, which were revealed to her at that moment. She was transformed; and ever since, she is not the same any more. She says that, ever since, her problems aren’t an insurmountable barrier any more. The experience gives the certainty that God exists, and that He is with us.

Similar experiences were made many people here in Medjugorje. Mary, our Mother, is with us; we can encounter Her, we can make the experience. After an encounter with her, our life is not the same any more; it changes, it becomes new, transformed. We need experiences in life in order to become wise, prudent, and sober people. Youthful enthusiasm, as noble as it is, disappears quickly. Gospa does not want to lead us towards a superficial optimism, but towards true wisdom of life, wisdom that we also obtain through suffering and pains, which beget a new life in us. May Gospa, our Mother, guide us always on the ways that lead to God. May Mary, our Mother, lead us towards a new life with God.

Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic

Medjugorje, 26.10.2005