Dear children; with motherly love I desire to open the heart of each of you and to teach you personal unity with the Father. To accept this, you must comprehend that you are important to God and that he is calling you individually. You must comprehend that your prayer is a conversation of a child with the Father; that love is the way by which you must set out – love for God and for your neighbour. That is, my children, the love that has no boundaries, that is the love that emanates from truth and goes to the end. Follow me, my children, so that also others, in recognising the truth and love in you, may follow you. Thank you.
Medjugorje message, April 2, 2011
Let us set ourselves to know the Lord... Hosea 6 : 3
You must comprehend that your prayer is a conversation of a child with the Father; that love is the way by which you must set out – love for God and for your neighbour.
In today’s gospel (Luke 18 : 9-14), the parable of the pharisee and publican, Jesus says: “The pharisee stood there and said this prayer to HIMSELF...”
We see also that the pharisee stands a distance away from the publican, and this divide is expressed in his ‘prayer’ when he exalts himself above his ‘sinful’ neighbour.
But it is the publican who goes home at rights with God. It is the publican who, in his humilty in confessing his sinfulness, is united with the Father.
The pharisee has still to set himself to know the Lord, to set out on the way of love. The false ‘love’ he has for himself separates him from the truth and ‘the love that has no boundaries’. He can see the sins of others and chooses to place himself above the ‘sinners’, but in doing so also distances himself from God.
The pharisee may consider himself important in God’s eyes but by exalting himself in this way he also disassociates himself from the love of God in others. The pharisee’s ‘love’ is self-contained.
• Fr Neil Buchlein’s audio commentary
