During the Medjugorje congress in preparation for the 40th anniversary of the apparitions, the seer Ivan highlights the essence of the invitation of the Queen of Peace, and a risk we run today.
“Dear priests and friends in Christ – begins the visionary Ivan – I would like to greet you all and I would like to address all of you in a few words to send you a message for this great day. In fact, the topic of the congress at this moment cannot be more effective and cannot be more proactive in the theme of the new evangelization for the world, for the family, for the Church, for the young.
Our Lady’s invitation to evangelization
Our Lady wants exactly this: she began this evangelization forty years ago, giving us her messages through which she wants to lead us to Jesus.
Her words are words of the Gospel that we must welcome because Our Lady, by giving messages in a simple way, actually quotes the message of the Gospel, so that we can better understand and live it.
At the beginning of the apparitions themselves, Our Lady introduces herself, and when we asked her who she was and what her name was and she replied with these warm words: I am the Queen of Peace . Dear children: Peace, peace, peace, only peace. May it be peace. May peace reign in the world. Peace must reign between man and God and between men.
Precisely these words: peace must reign between God and man and between men themselves. Today more than ever they resonate in the world in which we live: peace between God and man and between men.
We have turned away from God
We have distanced ourselves from God, we have distanced ourselves from his love. We have become alone , abandoned. The Mother calls us: return to God , put God back in the first place in your life. Pray in your families, renew prayer in your families. It is precisely this evangelization that Our Lady has been offering us for forty years through her messages. She wants to lead us all to Jesus who is the truth, the way and the life.
I would like to start with a message that Our Lady gave a few years ago:
“ Dear children, even today, as never before, I invite you to open your hearts to my messages. Children, be those who attract souls to God and not those who distance them. I am with you and I love you all with a special love. This is a time of penance and conversion. From the bottom of my heart I invite you: be mine with all your heart and then you will see that your God is great because he will give you an abundance of blessings and peace. Thank you for having responded to my call ”.
Look dear friends, Our Lady invites us to be those who attract souls to God that we are an instrument in the hands of God, a model in the hands of God: a model of evangelization . We are all called to be new apostles in this time in which we live, those who will evangelize today’s world, who will bring people closer to God and to peace, to true peace, the peace of Christ. Because this world today cannot give us peace: only in God is there peace he will give us peace.
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Open our hearts to God and to Our Lady in these difficult times
Look at this pandemic time the world is going through a very difficult time but Mary is with us . We must open our hearts to her messages, to her words. We have to open our hearts . The mother cannot stop inviting, she cannot stop loving her children. The desire to encounter God and his love should arise from our heart.
It remains for us to desire more strongly that meeting that will take place if we really desire it because God takes our desires and our prayers seriously .
Without this desire of our heart, all maternal pleas and calls are in vain and a mother cannot help but invite, instruct, advise what is best for her children.
In one of her messages the Madonna says: “you dear faith cannot do it alone so I am here to help them” . We cannot do it alone, we do not know how to open the heart, nor do we know why it is closed. She opened, she gave her heart to God and for this she knows better what means are those that can help us.
Our Lady walked our same paths
She can teach us best because she herself has walked our paths , which we are walking today. Our Lady comes because she wants us to be there where she is.
Jesus through Mary knocks on the door of our hearts today: “Behold, I am standing at the door and knocking. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will go in and dine with him and he with me ” . So the book of Revelation tells us. We must listen to God’s voice and pray together.
To hear the Lord’s knock on the door of our heart, it is necessary above all in this time of grace, to listen to the voice of God who speaks to us through his Word in sacred scripture through other people, through various events and situations of our life , through simple little things that happen to us every day.
It is important to open the eyes of our hearts and our spirits, to pray the Lord to open him for us. Therefore it is necessary to decide to read the Holy Scriptures at this time. To this Our Lady invites us so much: read Sacred Scripture, let it be food in our way of life, participate more often in Holy Mass, that it be at the center of your life .
God through Mary invites us to renunciation and brotherly love
Make a concrete decision to do good: cut the cords of attachment to evil, hatred , laziness , murmuring and any other evil .
Through Mary, God also invites us to fast , to renounce , to fraternal love , to prayer to break our dependence on human strength, to bind us completely to himself.
So when we are ruled by some vice , sin, lust or laziness, it is a sign that we are not yet free , but that we are under the dominion of sin.
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True freedom
Penance always means a new renunciation . Giving up means always taking what we like. Avoid what evil offers us, do not offend others, do not allow every desire of our body to be fulfilled, do not try to take every pleasure ; to give up is to become free .
The fathers of the Church teach us: do what is contrary to your corrupt human nature , so that God in us can do his works of love and freedom. Dear friends, this time in which we live is a time of great grace, but at the same time of great responsibility. Our Lady does not stop encouraging us. Our Lady does not stop delighting us by counting on us who we want and we welcome the words of her messages.
She knows that we cannot be threatened by those who hate us, but we can be threatened more by our lack of faith, love, friendship towards Jesus
We are responsible not only for our own life, but also for the lives of the people God has placed in our path . Our happiness also depends on the happiness of other people : we all try today, not tomorrow, to listen to the echo of the divine voice, as the desire of our heart.
The Mother of Hope
Let us silence the noise and the voices with which we are occupied, those negative news, those catastrophes of the newspapers, of the radio and television, to feel the closeness and the warm heart of our Celestial Mother , who comes and brings us hope. She brings us hope, not fear. It does not bring a cataclysm, so as not to scare us with anything. Instead she comes as the Mother of hope, and with hope she wants to guide us.
Let’s hold onto his messages , let’s live those messages. So that we all become partakers of God’s plan that she has with us. Many times Our Lady has called us: “Pray for my intentions , pray for my projects that I want to carry out with the world, with all of you. I need you. With you I can carry out those projects: decide for the good and fight against evil, against sin ”.
Dear friends, today’s world is going through its serious crises : the greatest crisis is the crisis of faith God, because we have distanced ourselves from God, we have distanced ourselves from his love, from his goodness. Today’s world and humanity want to go to a future without God, dwelling on all those earthly things that the world offers us. Our Lady invites us: decide for God .
If we want the Church to be strong today, we must be strong, strong in faith. Therefore I invite you all, dear friends: let us unite in prayer , let us welcome the messages of Our Lady, so that we can participate in a new world. A world worthy of God’s children.
We welcome the messages of Our Lady and are active in the evangelization of this world, of the Church, of the family, of young people. Especially young people: we must be a model ourselves . A model for which the Madonna can rejoice. We must move from words to deeds , to deeds, because today’s world does not need words but deeds. I will pray for all of you in a special way. I will recommend you all and pray with the Mother.
And finally, dear friends, may Our Lady’s messages of peace, conversion, prayer and penance of firm faith, love, hope, the Eucharist , make us accept and live those messages. And don’t be afraid!
We do not look at the external signs and what the world offers us to be able to see something: Our Lady calls all of us to be a living sign , a sign of living faith, a sign of goodness, a sign to live what Our Lady brings us to. he invites and calls us with this hope. May Mary accompany you on your journey, bless you and pray to her son for all of you. Queen of Peace, pray for us ”.