Reflection on Our Lady's Message By Fr. Jozo Zovko, O.F.M.

June 2008

“Dear children! Also today, I call all of you to grow in God’s love as a flower which feels the warm rays of spring. In this way, also you, little children, grow in God’s love and carry it to all those who are far from God. Seek God’s will and do good to those whom God has put on your way, and be light and joy. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

The joy in the heart of the Mother is the fruit of obedience and filial response to Her call. If we look at the Novena we have been praying in appreciation of the twenty-seven years of Her apparitions and immeasurable favours bestowed upon our generation, we can see that this Novena was a thanksgiving from the heart. Think of all those large numbers of pilgrims who with prayers and fasting had been preparing for the meeting at Međugorje. It was rivers of barefoot pilgrims who had but one goal: to respond to the call of the Queen of Peace and to pray for her intentions, and for the needs of the Church and every single pilgrim. Our Lady's heart is glad because strong and gracious responses to Her call are occurring. There is a multitude of prayer groups today that meet and build their apostolate on the messages. There are various magazines that carry out their apostolate with word and picture. Our Lady calls with joy everybody, especially us who had taken the vow and repeated it at our Assembly: To live the messages of the Queen of Peace and to testify to them with our life.

Out of Our Lady's joyous heart did the call issue: Follow me! But how?!
What does it mean to follow?! What else if not to imitate, to persevere on the road with the Mother?!
I remember the visionaries when they were children, I remember how, like lambs, they were trembling before the police, numberless spies, open hostilities. The visionaries have grown up but persecutions persist. The Satan is constantly, especially before the great days of grace, engaged in waking up his followers to destroy, to blur with ignorance and slanders. Our Lady simply covers it with the cloak of her motherly goodness and protects her sincere and open admirers and followers. This was the case this year, too.

Our Assembly was a gathering before which the force of the Evil one trembles. It was the power and the grace that brought us into the Novena of the apparitions, and inspired us with new zeal and apostolate.

But how is it possible to follow Our Lady if we forget the events of Bethlehem?! All doors and all families were closed. There was no place. She could have easily stayed overnight under a tree, by the roadside, but how – what was She to do with the Son to be born?! She was not disappointed or despondent. St. Joseph found what was the most necessary – a stable. They had hardly left the stable when Herod started searching for the Child to kill Him.  The flight was necessary, a flight to the Arab world, to Egypt. What a lot of humiliations, what a lot of trials, what a lot of denials!

Golgotha and the cross. The words: "Behold, your son", and then "Behold, your mother". From that hour the disciple took her into his own household. Are Her apparitions not a repetition of this well known way of the human heart? Denial, contempt, statements of priests and others who made bold, not seeing the fruits and what we see, to pronounce and write a judgement.  

When looking at the destiny of the Mother and Queen of Peace, I feel and realise that Her life was difficult and despised by many. That's how it was yesterday; that's how it is today. I wonder with a humble heart: "Am I ready to follow the Mother and Her way?" Have I maybe superficially understood the call: "Follow me", that is, "Come after me"? In the response to this call lies the whole wisdom and greatness of Međugorje. Not in the number of pilgrims and buses, the number of hotels and visiting notables, but in the number of those who are ready to follow Her, our Mother and Queen of Peace. For many this way was not narrow and thorny at the beginning, but in the first place rather popular. Such is not the case today. Today we are aware that this way – to follow Our Lady in Međugorje – means to take upon oneself all mockeries, chastisements, derisions and denials. It means to include into our prayers and sacrifices all pilgrims and their needs, their vows, and protect them with the hope and prayer before the Lord and the Mother.

We are called not only to follow Our Lady, but also to listen to Her messages. Yes, this is very demanding: to listen to the messages, not as to some sort of information, but rather to spread them as a way of life. Međugorje asks for sacrifice and self-denial in every respect even today: giving up one's will, one's ambitions, career and the like. To hear the messages today means to be a living sign of Our Lady. Like an orchard: once planted, it grows and bears fruit. This is no more a theory or wishful thinking but reality. A planted orchard needs labourers and the sacrifice of maintenance, nursing and keeping. In that case the crop will not fail.

My dear brothers and sisters! There, we have followed the Mother and decided to listen to, that is, to live the messages of the Queen of Peace. That is why I feel more strongly our pressing need for an authentic response and unselfish and dedicated living of the messages. The fruits are great. These days priests from Moscow and from Korea have come and full of enthusiasm ask: What are we to do?! 

To listen to the messages for me and for my heart means to live and persevere on this road, without my arbitrary interpretations and wishes, but humbly and with dedication. Many hear or read but do not undertake anything in their lives and work, their families or the Church. This is the point where the man Pharisee comes in: he comes, he is a sympathiser, he loves Međugorje and the like. We have to come to terms with the fact that man is weak and that we have to pray even more fervently for conversions and miracles to happen in our lives.

Let us pray for priests. Can he who does not do anything, who does not listen, that is who does not live the messages, can he hear confessions and lead pilgrims?

It is here that big problems emerge in the hearts and souls of those who have heard the call. It suffices that an ungodly man writes an article or gives a statement to make some people falter. But our call is not just to join a group or family, but to start living and bearing fruit. In this peaceless world that does not accept God and His grace, His Mother, His Church and sacraments, man remains without peace and love. And peace and love are not goods that can be imported or exported by a company.  They are a gift of God. Only those who cooperate with Him and serve Him can carry His gifts of peace and love. Without these gifts the world is a desert, including America and Europe and Russia, and every family and every soul. We are called to be joyous carriers and distributors of these gifts. If we have no sympathy for those who are in troubles and crises, who have remained without peace and love, then we have failed to understand the message. Brothers and sisters, it is us this word is addressed to. Not to journalists, not to the media but just to us who will live it with our lives.

Dear Mother, thank you for the blessing and your love. We badly need them. We ask for them in order to see and recognise all those who have been given to us as a gift and put on our life's path. May no one remain without consolation and grace. Thank you for encouragement!

This month we are going to pray for the following intentions:

1. For all priests who in this month and this year are going to be anointed, consecrated with this greatest gift, the sacrament of priesthood, that they may persevere on the way of holiness and devoted apostolate. That they may be open to the Mother, that is, Marian priests.
2. For all boys and girls who are called, or feel a call to priestly or religious ministry, that they may enthusiastically accept and respond to the call with their life.
3. For all priests who these days are coming to retreats in Međugorje, that is, to Our Lady's school, that the Holy Spirit may enlighten them and fill them with enthusiasm for the call and the way of holiness. For all the pilgrims for this anniversary as well as for our prayer family that we may persevere in living and testifying to the messages.

Our dear Mother, thank you for having once again clearly spoken to us through a new message. We have heard you with the heart and we pray to live it. Give us your blessing!