Medjugorje Grey Book

Open Your Hearts to MARY Queen of Peace

Other languages: English, Italiano

This book is the first of the four volumes of sermons and discourses given by Fr. Slavko Barbaric and Fr. Tomislav Vlasic during 1984 - 1987 in Medjugorje, and contains talks given from Easter until December 1984.

All chapters of this book are now included

I am your Mother, my beloved ones, and I have come to teach you to love.

Every Thursday, Our Lady gives messages for the Parish and for all the pilgrims. last Thursday, she said: "I beg you, during this period, to renew prayer in your families. In the name of Our Lord I have given you many messages, but you have not followed them. If you listen, if you follow my messages, this Christmas will be unforgettable for you. If you do not follow them, do not allow this day of joy to become the saddest day for me!" After every message Our Lady says "Thank you for answering my call." What does this message mean ? You can understand it by these happenings at Medjugorje during the last fortyone months: Mary has decided to enter into every family and wants to be accepted as Mother. She says in a message: "If you have not listened to my messages, the day of joy will become the saddest day for me." In what sense does she say this ? Like a Mother she wants to gather us together in peace and love. If a son or daughter is missing from home a mother will be sad. We must understand the message in this sense. Each of us is in a way responsible for whether Christmas will be a day of joy or not. Our Lady, like a Mother, has entered into our life and families, into our Church.

On 8th May, Our Lady asked all of us to be consecrated to Our Lord. This means: 'I accept you as my Mother and let you enter my heart, my family, my community or where I live.'

At the start of this time of Advent Our Lady said: "Dear Children, you do not yet know how to love and you do not know how to listen to the messages with love, the words I give you: I am your Mother, my beloved ones, and I have come to teach you to love, to listen with love, to pray with love but not just because you have difficulties or crosses. You glorify Our Lord with each of your crosses."

A new liturgical year is beginning and we see that Our Lady, as Mother and teacher, tells us: "I am your Mother and I have come on earth to teach you to love." There is one question which is valid for all of us here in this church or in the world; who of us can say they have finished this school of love and know everything ? None of us can say this, I believe. Love is something dynamic and we cannot say today that we loved yesterday and that is sufficient, this is like saying that we breathed yesterday; we must breathe today as well. It is a hard school that lasts all our life long. If Our Lady has so much patience with us, our hardness and the hardness of our heart, then I believe that we are held to follow her. Our Lady is not coming to us because she has nothing else to do in heaven: she loves us all as Our Mother and in many messages has told us: "I am your Mother, and I am the Mother of everyone: I love you all."

In a message in November, she said: "Dear Children, you are a chosen people and Our Lord is giving you many graces. But you have not yet understood: I have nothing else to tell you but this: pray, pray, pray. By prayer you will understand my love for you and the love of Our Lord."

Our Lady behaves like a mother who has prepared a large table with much to eat and drink but who sees her children in the corners of the home complaining: we are hungry, thirsty, in trouble, have no peace .... The mother tells them to come, look, everything is ready, to come and be seated together and eat so there will be no more hunger and thirst ... but peace for all. So, everything is ready, Our Lord has given us everything. If we wait, then it is partly our fault. Let us open our hearts !

In another message in November, Our Lady said: "You do not yet understand the significance of the messages I have given you, which Our Lord has given through me. Pray to the Holy Spirit that he may illuminate you and that you may understand." So pray to the Holy Spirit. You will remember other messages about the Holy Spirit: once Our Lady said: "You ask for many things: ask first of all for the Holy Spirit and if He comes, everything else will be given to you."

On 18th October, Our Lady asked everyone: "Today I ask you, dear children, to read the Bible. Put it in a prominent place in your homes so that it may be a stimulus to you to read it and to pray." This was said on the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, who has written much about Our Lady, that only she could have told him: her dialogue with the Angel and her prayer, the Magnificat.

It is very important for us to know that Our Lady asks us for the entire rosary (the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries). Without knowing the Bible, we are not able to contemplate and meditate well. Our Lady asks us for these mysteries, not just to make us recite one hundred and fifty Hail Mary's each day and then to say we have finished ! This is not the sense of the rosary. In a message, she said: "Pray with your hearts." This means that, by contemplating the mysteries of Our Lady's life and those of Her Son, Jesus, we come closer to our Redemption. For example, if we say 'let us contemplate the second joyful mystery', we meditate on how Our Lady visited her cousin, Elizabeth. This does not mean just knowing that Mary visited Elizabeth, but Our Lady wants us to use her example to find a real stimulus for ourselves during contemplation: who is waiting for us today, who is waiting for our help, our time, our words, our consolation ? We have contemplated well if we act according to our prayer, so prayer continues.

Reciting the rosary with our heart means for each mystery, searching and finding real stimulation for our daily lives. If you cannot forgive someone or find it difficult, why not meditate the fifth sorrowful mystery: Jesus forgives everyone. If we contemplate this mystery with our heart, we will find grace and be able to forgive and make peace: our conversion has begun when the Word makes us act.

Jesus once said: My Word is like a sword, it will never leave you in peace while you are in sin, while you hate or are unable to forgive. The Word will not leave you until it has brought forth fruit. This is what it means for all of us to begin with, so take your time and your prayer will grow. Prayer comes by praying not by theory about prayer. Prayer comes by praying as an appetite comes by eating. to say that we do not know how to pray does not mean that we should not begin: it is but an excuse. We must find time, take up the Bible and the rosary. Start and you will see !

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 8th December 1984)

 

For God to live in your hearts, you must love.

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