Prayer opens heart and gives hope! Prayer gives birth to and strengthens Faith!
The more the Lord gives me the grace to read the messages Our Heavenly Mother gives to us, her children, through Marija in every 25th day of the month, the more I realize how Mary is the teacher of prayer. The message she gave us on Friday 25 November 2022, speaks of itself. It reads:
“Dear children! The Most High sent me to you to teach you how to pray. Prayer opens hearts and gives hope, and faith is born and strengthened. Little children, with love I am calling you: return to God, because God is your love and hope. You have no future if you do not decide for God and that is why I am with you to guide you to decide for conversion and life, and not for death. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
In her own words, God is sending Mary to teach us HOW to pray! Let us remember, once more, to that beautiful reflection which, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, gave us in his general audience on March 14, 2012: Mary teaches us the necessity of prayer and shows us that only with a constant, intimate bond, full of love with her son can we emerge from “our house”, by ourselves, with courage, to reach the ends of the world and proclaim everywhere the Lord Jesus, Saviour of the world.
In his turn, Pope Francis kept developing Benedict’s reflection on the reality that Mary is a teacher of prayer. The Argentinian Pope, in his general audience of November 18, 2020, said:
Mary’s presence is prayer, and her presence among the disciples in the Upper Room, awaiting the Holy Spirit, is in prayer. Thus Mary gives birth to the Church, she is the Mother of the Church. Someone has compared Mary’s heart to a pearl of incomparable splendor, formed and smoothed by patient acceptance of God’s will through the mysteries of Jesus meditated on in prayer. How beautiful it would be if we too could be a bit like our Mother!
The great lesson Mary is giving us from Medjugorje is the following: start praying! If we pray you return to God. And God, who is infinite faith, hope and love, shows us how to have a future. We can only have a future if God’s values become ours! Prayer opens our heart for conversion in the way we think and act. Prayer saves us from the culture of death we are living in.
Let us get back to those five stones, that is: (1) Praying the Rosary daily. She said: Pray, pray, pray, prayer is the foundation of your peace (June 25, 1997); (2) Fasting. She said: Fast strictly on Wednesday and Fridays (14 August 1984); (3) Reading the Holy Scripture daily: I call on you to read the Bible every day in your homes and let it be in a visible place so as always to encourage you to read it and to pray (October 18, 1984); (4) Confession once a month. Our Lady said: May holy Confession be the first act of conversion for you and then, dear children, decide for holiness. May your conversion and decision for holiness begin today and not tomorrow (November 25, 1998); and (5) The Eucharist (Holy Mass). Our Lady said: May the Mass, the most exalted and most powerful act of your prayer, be the center of your spiritual life (August 2, 2008).
Mary, thank you for teaching us how to pray. Help us to pray with these five most precious stones which lead us to Heaven from this world with Jesus and you. Amen.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
