Message, 25. January 2012
“Dear children! With joy, also today I call you to open your hearts and to listen to my call. Anew, I desire to draw you closer to my Immaculate Heart, where you will find refuge and peace. Open yourselves to prayer, until it becomes a joy for you. Through prayer, the Most High will give you an abundance of grace and you will become my extended hands in this restless world which longs for peace. Little children, with your lives witness faith and pray that faith may grow day by day in your hearts. I am with you. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
Dear brothers and sisters in prayer and members of the praying family – Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Elizabeth!
Here is the first message in this year of faith. Let us try to hear and to hearken to the word of the Mother at the bottom of our heart and soul. She says that She speaks to us and calls us with joy. A joyful call expects a joyful response. That is why the words “open your hearts and listen to my call” tell us a lot. Namely, an open heart can hear the vibrations of love. Mother’s love and call to listen to Her with an open heart is pure love and speech of love. It is not the information that we get in the messages, but rather an instruction of love. For this reason our responsibility is personal for an open and prepared, that is, humble and obedient heart. Our weekly meetings at which we time and again listen to the messages, and unite our hearts in the common prayer with common intentions, as well as in the Eucharist and the honouring of the Most Blessed Sacrament, in the everyday family prayer of the holy Rosary – all this is a sign of our good will and of an open heart. It is a sign that we are ready and willing to obey the Queen of Peace with an open heart. That is why She thanks for this love every time with the words: “Thank you for having responded to my call.”
What is the call in this message!? “Open yourselves to prayer... with your lives witness faith and pray that faith may grow day by day...”
What is closed that needs opening!? How does a man close and open to prayer? A man prays with the heart. It is only out of a pure and open heart that prayer pours as a gift to those who love. A heart open in humbleness and complete surrender to God comes to know the will of God; it attunes its life and work, its thoughts and wishes to what God asks. An open heart is like a properly installed antenna through which the graceful communication between God and the fragile man occurs. While a man prays to and praises the Lord in this way, faith grows in him, love and hope become stronger. By the strength of the Holy Spirit a man looks with the heart, and contemplating the Lord Jesus becomes enthusiastic about Him, about His word, decides in prayer to be as similar to Jesus as possible. Every time he abandons more and more his weaknesses and sins, and starts the journey into his own inner self. A closed heart is like a bell: it utters prayers and prayer patterns without a response to the call. Such prayer makes one tired, and becomes not only difficult but boring. A deadly sin, in which a man lives without confession, repentance and finally without conversion, closes a man’s heart. In such a traumatised condition our love and human communication with the neighbour unravel and crumble down. A man with a closed heart becomes a burden to everybody, a person whose company nobody desires, and a great pain in the family. To pray for the conversion of such a brother or sister is the first and foremost step. We unite this prayer and so support the severely tested individuals and families. Hopeful and humble prayer opens the heavens, the prophet teaches us. All our human wisdom consists in learning how to pray. To grow in the prayer with the heart is the greatest wealth of an individual and the family.
Unfortunately, many families do not pray together any more. When the common family prayer dies out, at the same time peace vanishes in the family. Disputes and idle wrangling start between parents and children. Everybody accuses everybody. Nobody can stand anyone, nor do they feel love for each other. In order to find it, children and the young in general have to flee the family and seek the company of their peers. These small gangs have leaders who impose themselves on the children, and they follow them as their idols. This is how a young man starts with the drugs and with various forms of sinful pastimes.
Therefore, as Christians and parents we must not forget: The first step on the way of unbelief was made on the day when we neglected prayer in our family. Important is the word and call of the Mother: “With your lives witness faith...” Faith is not knowledge acquired from books, or information obtained through lectures, but rather life, practical life, where faith is seen, manifested through works. Our family attends Holy Mass on Sundays and testifies to all what for us is the Lord’s day, what and how much the commandment of God and that of the Church mean to us. For us the family is a holy sacrament by which we keep the holiness of marriage through faithfulness and birthing of posterity, through Christian life and education. In order for our faith to grow, we must pray. We learn how to pray. By praying we grow and bear fruit of faith. Everything is so vitally bound with each other. The apostle James in his letter told a theoretical believer that his faith was dead because it was without works, without fruits.
This message inspires us again to clasp our hands together, that in this way they may become Our Lady’s hands, that are extended over our families and the whole world in the sign of peace and blessing, in the sign of defence and protection. Let us respond with great love by which the Queen of Peace calls us. With all means, first of all with prayer, wake up and renew prayer in yours and other families. Take this for your apostolate in this month.
This month we are going to pray for the following intentions:
1. For the parish of Međugorje and our praying community, that we may lastingly be a school, be teachers and renovators of prayer. A multitude of pilgrims come and want to hear from us and the parishioners the messages, and to see how and how much we live them. Family prayer is in the first place; then the family reading of the Bible, and Sunday Mass.
2. For priests and the religious who have taken a vow to live the values from this message: to wake up the spirit of prayer and the honouring of the Most Blessed Sacrament. For the members of the Commission and all those who come to observe and seek the fruits of Međugorje, that they may recognise the presence of the Virgin and the Church in this chosen place.
3. For all the sick who recommend themselves, who come as pilgrims to find the grace of healing, conversion and the strength necessary for a happy life.
Dear brothers and sisters, the time is serious, and the call has reached down to our heart. Let us respond with enthusiasm and devoted love.
