Medjugorje - Commentary on Our Lady's October 25, 2008 Message

ARM YOURSELF WITH PRAYER AND FAST

"Dear children! In a special way I call you all to pray for my intentions so that, through your prayers, you may stop Satan's plan over this world, which is further from God every day, and which puts itself in the place of God and is destroying everything that is beautiful and good in the souls of each of you. Therefore, little children, arm yourselves with prayer and fasting so that you may be conscious of how much God loves you, and carry out God's will. Thank you for having responded to my call." Message of October 25, 2008


Our Lady invites us to pray for her intentions. If we give ourselves in prayer to the God, the satanic scheme will not be fulfilled on Earth. By this message, Our Lady asks for our cooperation. We are aware that Jesus and Our Lady can prevail over Satan without us, but they ask for our cooperation and our decision. God created us free and asks of us to take sides. God created us without our help, but He cannot saves us if we do not want it.

When Our Lady speaks about the satanic scheme on this Earth, she does not speak about the nature, but about the man and all the sins which mankind does when it fails before the satanic temptations, which are the various kinds of great sins: marriages of the same sex, abortus, killings, fornication, robbing of the poor, curses, drugs, alcohol, etc. The mankind today continuously puts itself in the place of God and repeats the mistake from the first pages of the Bible (Post 3). Human values have become more important than the Christian values. For many people, money has become a god. The consequence of this is that everything which is good and beautiful in the souls of men is being destroyed.

Our Lady gives us the tools to resist the satanic scheme, and these are the prayer and the fast. We all think that we pray a lot and that we have a deep faith. If we would make a poll, we would see that we do not pray so often. We spend more time talking on the phone, drinking coffees, reading newspapers or watching sport, than we spend praying. The fast and the prayer have been, from the Christian beginnings, the main tools in fighting the evil. If we do not pray and fast, we cannot believe, because the faith, i.e. the trust, is established in relation to someone, and this someone is God. The prayer is the encounter with God, and from this encounter, a strong and forceful faith is being born.

Our Lady invites us in the message from November 25th 1987. to pray that the Satan does not attract us with his vanity and false strength. She says: I am with you and I want you to believe me that I love you. Love and humility can be read from every message of Our Lady, and it is the main reason that so much people from the whole world visits Medugorje – because they feel they are loved.

Tonight’s message Our Lady ends with the words: do the God’s will. In 40th psalm, in 9th row, we can read: “It is dearer to me, my God, to do Your will.” A man who does God’s will is filled by joy and serenity. To do the God’s will means to stride toward sanctity. The humility is the characteristic of those who do the God’s will. They are obedient and meek. Those who do not respond to doing the God’s will are focused on the worldly matters and God is not in the first place for them. These are the people who are full of ambition and are trying to fulfill their goals by any means. These are the people who measure everything with this world’s measure, and consequently loose their joy.

Let us all together decide for God once again, let us heed the call of the Queen of peace, and we will become the true witnesses of the God’s love and the love of Our Lady, we will become such disciples as Jesus wants.


Fra Danko Perutina
Medugorje, October 26th 2008

Medjugorje - Commentary on Our Lady's October 25, 2007 Message

Peace to All!

Below please find the official English translation of Fr. Danko's commentary on Our Lady's October 25, 2007 message as provided by the Information Center in Medjugorje.

God Bless!
Steve and Ana Shawl
The Medjugorje Web
http://www.medjugorje.org
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BE THE LOVE AND THE LIGHT

“Dear children! God sent me among you out of love that I may lead you towards the way of salvation. Many of you opened your hearts and accepted my messages, but many have become lost on this way and have never come to know the God of love with the fullness of heart. Therefore, I call you to be love and light where there is darkness and sin. I am with you and bless you all. Thank you for having responded to my call.”

(Message of October 25, 2007)


At the beginning of her message, our Lady repeats the main goal of her mission – our salvation. Not once did she place herself in the first place. The words she uttered two thousand years ago at the wedding feast in Canaan in Galilee : Do whatever my son Jesus tells you (comp. John 2:5), are still relevant for us. To do whatever Jesus want, that is, to do God’s will - there lies the salvation.

As a true mother, our Lady wants for all her children to be saved. Therefore she constantly calls us, but she also warns us, like she did in the message of November 25th 1998, when she said: My children, I invite you all to the road of salvation and I want to show you the way to the heaven. There is only one way which leads to the eternal life, which leads to paradise, and that is Jesus Christ. He said of himself: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me". (John 14:6).

Our Lady says that many people have opened their hearts. To open our heart means to give our whole being to the God who is love, but also to the messages which invite us to such giving. The heart is the most precious, most beautiful possession of a human being. The heart is a symbol of life and love, of all good things which humans have. Our Lady has already asked of us to dedicate ourselves again to her heart and the heart of her Son Jesus. In her message of October 25th 2003 she said: Do not hesitate, my children, but say with all your heart: I want to help Jesus and Mary to introduce more brothers and sisters to the way of holiness. She reminds us that there are those who became lost on this road of dedication, because they never did give their hearts to the God. In the Gospel, Jesus often reminded his listeners that they have closed hearts, hearts of stone. And the people who have such hearts have inverted systems of value, in which the first place does not belong to the God, but to some person, wealth, honor, human considerations or something else. To have pure heart, heart of flesh, religious heart, means to turn completely to the God, who awaits us in secrecy and in silence.

Our Lady encourages us to be the love and the light. To be love means to be a witness of the pure Christ’s love which was given for us. This love is unconditional; it does not ask for anything, it just gives. It always thinks of others before it thinks of self. We learn such love from Jesus if we give ourselves to Him with our whole hearts, because he invites us to love not just our friends, but also our enemies. People were always ready to love their neighbors and hate their enemies (Mt 5:43) because it was easier. Jesus has gone beyond that. His disciple, believer, Christian, cannot be fastidious with his/her love. He/she has to love all people, including the enemies, in the spirit of the Lord. That means to be the love. What does it mean to be the light? To be the light means to shine for the others, so they do not stumble and wander in the dark. We should be the light which Christ has ignited, so people can see the truth and the face of His heavenly Father, instead of wandering and stumbling in misconceptions. In this light, people can recognize all men as their own brothers and sisters. As a true mother, our Lady follows us and blesses us on this road.


Fr. Danko Perutina
Meðugorje 26.10.2007

Medjugorje - Commentary on Our Lady's July 25, 2007 Message

The following is first the Virgin Mary's monthly message for the world, given July 25th, 2007, followed by Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic's (of Medjugorje) commentary on the message.

Mary's message:

"Dear children! Today, on the day of the Patron of your Parish, I call you to imitate the lives of the Saints. May they be, for you, an example and encouragement to a life of holiness. May prayer for you be like the air you breathe in and not a burden. Little children, God will reveal His love to you and you will experience the joy that you are my beloved. God will bless you and give you an abundance of grace. Thank you for having responded to my call." Message of July 25, 2007

Fr. Ljubo's commentary:

Our Lady calls to us as our Mother and invites and encourages us today, on the day of Saint Jacob the apostle, the patron saint of the Parish of Medugorje and pilgrims to inherit the life of the saints, the lives of those who came to heaven into a homeland we shall never leave. In her message on the 25th of July 2002, Our Lady also said: Dear children! Today I rejoice with your patron saint and call you to be open to God's will… Ask your holy protectors to help you grow in love towards God.” The saints are those who intercede for us and stand up for us before the face of God. That is why we turn to them and give up our prayers to them so that they may present them to God. The holy are an example to us that it is worth being faithful to God and that God will never betray us.

“Let prayer be like the air that you breathe” – says Our Mother Mary. Our body needs air. We know how we feel when we don’t have enough air. Without air our body cannot live. So as we have a physical body we also have a spiritual body. We can imagine that we are spiritually dead without prayer. Without prayer man’s life only consists of the body, material things, on dead things which do not have any life. Prayer is not something that is stipulated or ordered by the Church, God or Our Lady. Prayer is not only a devout exercise. Prayer is much more than this. Prayer is life. Without prayer we are dead and there is no life in us. Without prayer God has no room in us in which he can visit and heal us, save us and heal our hearts and souls.

It is only in prayer that God can reveal his love and we can experience the joy of being beloved children of God and Our Lady. From experience we know that it is not enough to only know that food is good, it is necessary to eat it to be able to live. It is not enough to know that God and Our Lady love us, rather it is necessary for us to experience this, experience it in out life as a reality more true than the physical one we see with our eyes.

“You will experience the joy of being my loved ones” – Our Lady says to us. However, it is necessary to fulfil one condition and this is prayer with our heart in which the soul opens and surrenders to God through Our Lady. The Gospel tells us at Jesus’ baptism at the River Jordan from the heavens thundered the voice of our Heavenly Father: “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1, 11). These words apply to Jesus. But through Jesus and in Jesus, also to you and me. Everyone of us are in Jesus and through Jesus the beloved son of the Father, beloved daughter of the Father, the chosen one, favourite of Our Father’s Heart. In Jesus and through Jesus we are also Our Lady’s beloved children.

Throughout our lives we have been told many times that it is important to love God. However it is far more important that God loves us. Our love towards God is of secondary importance. God’s love for us has precedence: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4, 10) – tells us the apostle John in his gospel. And still adds: “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. (1 John 4, 16).

Let the Virgin Mary, full of grace and Immaculate lead us and introduce us to the secrets of Our Father’s heart and love which he has for us.

Fra Ljubo Kurtovic

Medugorje 26.7.200