Medjugorje: The prayer to wait in joy for the message of Our Lady this Sunday, August 25, 2019

Prayer becomes a joy

Oh my Mother! 
Mother of goodness, love and mercy! 
I love you immensely, and I offer myself to you. 
Through your goodness, your love, 
And your mercy, save me! 
I wish to be yours. 
I love you immensely 
And I wish that you protect me. 
In my heart, oh Mother of goodness, 
Give me your goodness, 
So that I go to Heaven. 
I ask you for your immense love 
That you may give me the grace 
That I will be able to love each one 
Just like you loved Jesus Christ. 
I ask you in grace 
That I be able to be merciful to you. 
I offer myself completely to you 
And I wish that you will be with me at each step, 
Because you are full of grace. 
I wish never to forget your grace, 
And if I should lose it, 
I will ask, make me find it again. Amen.
 

VICKA: When Our Lady invites us to prayer, she does not ask us to pray only with words and with her mouth, but she wants us to strive to open our hearts, every day a little more, so that prayer becomes a joy for us.

The prayer of the heart is one of the most lively themes of spirituality which refers to the messages of the Queen of Peace.

A great deal has been said and written about it. However, the Madonna, with a hint of veiled reproach, kept on saying that we talk a lot about prayer, but we pray little. The prayer of the heart is a point of arrival for a journey that we could summarize in three steps: opening the heart, purifying the heart and giving the heart. At the beginning, fatigue is felt and then prayer must be a task to be applied with daily fidelity. But then we come to pray for joy because in our hearts we experience God. Whoever is at the first whim of prayer, can begin with all simplicity to slowly recite the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory to the Father, trying to appreciate with the heart the meaning of each word spoken with the lips. This simple experience is enough to open unsuspected horizons.

In this regard the Madonna has brought a beautiful example. All of you, she says, have in your houses a vase of flowers that you water every day with a few drops of water. You see how this flower grows slowly until it forms a beautiful rose. The same thing happens to our heart. If every day we feed our hearts with some prayer, then it grows and opens like a flower. But if for some days we neglect to give water, we see how the flower withers and dies. The same happens to our heart when prayer is lacking.

Water as a symbol of grace, the Queen of Peace draws it from the Sacred Scriptures and especially from the Gospels. Here, however, there is the particular sensitivity of the housewife who, in her small hermitage in Nazareth, bathed the flowers with care and love, as so many people do. The human heart is a parched earth that becomes fertile soil only with the living water of grace. But it must be drawn every day with persevering prayer. The messages of the Queen of Peace, despite their simplicity, are interwoven with expressions and biblical images. Our Lady, like Jesus in the Gospel, also willingly refers to things and situations in everyday life

Pray, pray, pray!

Our Lady says that when it is time for prayer, we often find excuses saying: “I am tired. Now I don’t feel like praying. I will do it tomorrow”. But the next day we postpone it again and so we detach ourselves in prayer and our heart turns away from God. Our Lady wants us to understand that like a flower it cannot live without water, so we cannot live without the Grace of God that we do. it comes from prayer. The prayer of the heart, says Our Lady, is not something that is learned by studying or reading books, but it is learned by living it and taking a few steps forward every day. 

The Queen of Peace reaffirms on several occasions that nothing is more important than prayer. In almost all of her messages there is a pressing invitation to pray. The triple “Pray! Pray!  Pray!” Resounds innumerable times and could rightly be taken as the distinctive message of the Medjugorje apparitions. The reason for this insistence is very simple. Without prayer there is no God. And without God there is no more life no eternity.