God is love and peace – Our Lady says, and that is exactly what you feel in your soul here in Medjugorje when Our Lady touches you. - Written by: Paula Tomić/ Glasnik Mira 7/2025.
MEDJUGORJE OR THE SCHOOL OF HUMILITY
The grace-filled time of the novena of prayer with the apparition of Our Lady to the visionary Marija Pavlović-Lunetti at 5 a.m. on Apparition Hill is over. The 44th anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions is also behind us. The experience of Our Lady's strong call, felt in our hearts, to come to her, to approach her, and to open ourselves to her, remains. For this fulfillment of the encounter with Our Lady's maternal love remains like a supreme peak of spiritual fullness, to which the heart longs to return again and again. Just as an athlete achieves a record in their sport and then strives to achieve the same or even better results, so too does the heart that has experienced Our Lady's embrace, that ocean of abundance that fills every desert and emptiness in life, remain hungry and thirsty for more.
This is why pilgrims return to Medjugorje again and again. They want to repeat this experience and this refreshment of the soul that only Our Lady's maternal love can give. God is love and peace, Our Lady says, and that is exactly what you feel in your soul here in Medjugorje when Our Lady touches you.
Psychologists say that children "live off what passes between their parents." They learn best by observing and imitating. Isn't that why Our Lady has been here all these years? She gives us what flows between her and the Almighty: gratitude, love, and peace, so that we can grow spiritually properly: become mature Christians capable of a love that doesn't seek its own but forgives, believes, accepts, and gives everything... (cf. "Today too, I thank the Almighty that I am with you and can lead you to the God of love and peace." Message of June 25, 2025.) The world thirsts for this love, not for ideologies that exalt the ego and leave spiritual and material devastation in their wake. A mature Christian knows where they come from and where they are going, is aware of their identity as a child of God, and knows that they are built up by following Jesus, the only Way, the Truth, and the Life! Therefore, he thinks with his own mind and doesn't fall into the traps of transient truths. (See "Ideologies that destroy you and your spiritual life are transient." Message of June 25, 2025.)
EVERYTHING BEGINS WITH HUMILITY
This year, the anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady fell during the novena for the Feasts of the Two Hearts: the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on Friday, June 27, and the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Perhaps this is why the prayer preparation for the anniversary was characterized by such a strong dynamic of purifying hearts from pride, for what unites the Hearts of Jesus, Mary, and Our Lady is certainly humility. And humility is also the greatest quality of Jesus' forerunner, John the Baptist. Precisely because Saint John chose to spend his entire life in the shadow of and serving the Lamb, whose sandal straps he was unworthy to tie, in the deep awareness of his own inadequacy, sinfulness, and weakness, and by paving the way to the conversion and glorification of Jesus, he earned Jesus' praise that "no one greater than John the Baptist was born of a woman." It is certainly no coincidence that the first apparition of the Queen of Peace took place precisely on the Feast of the Nativity of John.
The Baptist, who testifies to everything, how he must decrease and Christ must increase in him.
FIRST MESSAGE
This year, everything has spoken to us of humility. Only the humble and pure of heart will see God. That is why, in her first anniversary message on Apparition Hill at 5 a.m., Our Lady said: "Dear children, be peacemakers! Satan is strong and wants war and unrest; he wants hatred. Therefore, I call you to be my children, children of my Heart!" To be children of the Heart of Mary means to be pure like her. (Pure Heart of Mary, be our salvation!)
SECOND MESSAGE
In the second anniversary message, which she addressed to the parish and the world through Marija Pavlović Lunetti, Our Lady calls us to return to God, "for with God you have a future and eternal life." Message June 25, 2025. Returning to God is only possible through a daily walk of humility, for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, and he will exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you." (1 Peter 5:5-7)
THIRD MESSAGE
The path of humility, like everything else in life, must be learned. It is learned through the example of our fellow human beings, through the situations we find ourselves in, through prayer, and the experience of our own sinfulness. Therefore, the third message Our Lady sent to the visionary Ivanka Ivanković Elez on the 44th anniversary of her apparition expressed the most important thing for our personal journey and that of all humanity: "Renew family prayer. Pray, pray, pray!"
CONCLUSION
No man is an island, and children are not raised alone. A well-known African proverb states that it takes a whole village to raise a child. Therefore, if we want to raise children who are in keeping with Mary's heart, it is time for us to begin to become like her and then create living conditions around us that are nourished not by ideologies, but by love.
Written by: Paula Tomić/ Glasnik Mira 7/2025.
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