It is he who forgives all your guilt, who heals everyone of your ills, who redeems your life from the grave, who crowns you with love and compassion. Psalm 102
Dear children! Today I wish to give you my own love. You do not know, dear children, how great my love is, and you do not know how to accept it. In various ways I wish to show it to you, but you, dear children, do not recognise it. You do not understand my words with your heart and neither are you able to comprehend my love. Dear children, accept me in your life and so you will be able to accept all I am saying to you and to which I am calling you. Thank you for having responded to my call. Medjugorje message, May 22, 1986
• Love is the most beautiful gift we can give to anyone. Love is the greatest gift. Whatever we give to others, or whatever others give to us, if it is given without love, it seems to lose some value. When we receive human love, our heart lives and blossoms. What joy, then, should our human heart feel when we hear the joyful news that God is giving us his love... Mary. She also wants to give us her love as a gift. Mary’s love is resourceful and finds ways of opening the eyes of those she loves, so that we can see and accept love. The first response to love is that it be accepted and not rejected. Only then can we effectively respond and discover love.
However, in this message, Our Lady complains – as a mother who loves. We, the people, her children, are not recognising her love. Our hearts are closed, our eyes blinded, and our ears deaf. What is happening with people today? Many do not recognise love anymore and are not able to accept love. This is the description of a terrible diagnosis for spiritual death! What great sadness Our Lady must feel when she sees her children in such condition! Her sadness is as great as is her love. How hard it would be for a mother if her own children did not recognise her or if their hearts were not open to her.
So man today is in a strange situation: the further he is from love, the more he desires it. Unfulfilled desire disappoints and closes the heart, and man becomes unhappy. This is the circle of death in which many people are entangled. God, in his love, is not forgetting the world and is offering himself through Mary.
I am convinced that there is nothing left for us but to pray that we can recognise and accept Our Lady’s love and God’s love with our heart. Then we will be able to accept with love all of her messages and everything she wants to give us. It is very difficult to see blindness in those whom you regard as your own. When those we love close their eyes to us, it offends us he most; but when they are open to our love, we are joyful.
Fr Slavko Barbaric
He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him. But to all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God. John 1 : 1-12
• adapted from the book: IN THE SCHOOL OF LOVE, by Fr Slavko Barbaric ofm
