Dear children! Also today, with maternal love, I’m coming among you. My dear children, open your hearts to feel and taste My Son Jesus’s wonders, Who has long given Me the grace to be among you on earth, so that you don’t feel alone. I’m with you, My children, and I desire to console everyone, who you don’t feel the love between you any more, because you’ ve lost the path that God’s traced for each of you and you’ve got lost with the things that surround you. Don’t let the evil one take away you grace and don’t make you feel a joyful heart any more. I’m urging you, My children, to pray so that your hearts don’t grow heavy by everything you can’t free yourselves from. For this I’ m among you to help you to meet the Peace King. But if you don’t live God’s Word and if you don’t feed on His Word, which is proclaimed every day, you, My children, how can you fall in love with God? I only repeat the Holy Scriptures. I don’t come to change the Word, but I come to remind you because many of you don’t manage to live It and don’t manage to live It as if they’ d never known His love. For this I’m asking you to decide to live the Messages that I give you. Only by living Them, you can savour His Peace. I need you, My Apostles, so that, through you, you may be the Light and Witnesses of true Peace. Peace can be obtained only through the Church union. My children, I’m urging you to be Witnesses in your Parishes, so that you may become a gift for others. Pray, pray, pray! Pray the Holy Spirit, so that He can always act in you. Thank you and I’ m blessing you all!
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
A – One more, we are in the prophetic kind as a pure exhortation: “He who prophesies speaks to men for an EDIFICATION, an EXHORTATION and a COMFORT” (1 Co 14, 3). There is no “revelation” in this text, no prediction of the future.
B – This message is given in Lent. We have to free ourselves of the disorderly attachment to creatures and fight against Satan.
C – The heart religion here predicted is savoury. That is very important for our contemporaries who have the prejudice that religion is boring, tormenting and gloomy. Note the terms used: Consular – Taste – Joyful Heart – Peace. The “sober life” brings all these things!
D – The path of «Mary’ Pilgrims» is of a perfect orthodoxy. It is so simple, ecclesial, ordinary that some would find it trivial.
COMMENT
“My dear children, open your hearts to feel and taste the wonders … so that you don’t feel alone.”
The profile and the particular mark of the charisma of the “Mary’s Pilgrims” are well defined here. The challenge of Medjugorje, like ours, is to respond to terrible objections:
«- the evangelical demands are inhuman.
-the Decalogue, the natural law and the evangelical counsels are oppressive and render unhappy. We want to be free and be like the whole world.
– we are a small minority lost in a massively incredulous world. God and the saints forget us and do not take care of us. »
A RESPONSE TO OBJECTIONS
As in the time of Moses, it is about experiencing that we are not alone in the desert. The desert is austere but the soul expands. We remember our most fervent past Lents! There exists in Medjugorje as in Osimo-Passatempo (An) a race of Christians that transpires peace and joy.
“I’ m urging you, My children, to pray so that your hearts don’t grow heavy by everything you can’t free yourselves from.”
The experience of the Exodus is that of the liberation of Egypt. Our experience must be that of joy and peace of heart obtained thanks to a rough but gentle asceticism. Freedom in the Pauline sense is opposite to that of the world. The more I am enslaved by the law of Christ, the more I find true freedom. Resisting the asphyxiation of consumerism and general saturation, I finally find joy and peace.
“But if you don’t live God’s Word and if you don’t feed on his Word that is proclaimed every day … I only repeat the Holy Scriptures. I don’t come to change the Word, but I come to remind you It. ”
These phrases respond to the objections we hear everywhere: “We don’t need all these prophets. “We’ ve God’s Word; that’s safe; it’s enough for us. »Through Her little prophet, Mary does not give us a new revelation but, knowing our inconstancy and our frivolity, like a mother, She repeats the same things indefinitely.
«Only by living [the Messages], you can savour His peace. I need you, My Apostles, so that, through you, you may be … the witnesses of true Peace.»
The proper mark of the Apostolate of« Medj-Oliveto-Raffaele Ferrara »is the demonstration of Peace that is read on the faces.
« Peace can only be achieved through the Church union. [Be] witnesses in your Parishes, so that you may become a gift for others.»
The grace of Medjugorje was first granted to the Parish of St. James destined to be a model for the whole world. In the same way, for the past 32 years, the progression of Raffaele Ferrara and his friends has been linked to Parish Priests and to the local Parishes. Here what should reassure the faithful, Priests and suspicious Bishops!
CONCLUSION
Through the succession of the Messages we are gradually trained on the vocation of “Mary’s Pilgrims”. This is not a pious movement intended to convey a notional discourse but an evangelical movement. The vocation of this spiritual family is to realize in people an experience of happiness visible to everyone. (By Father M.F)