“Dear children, my little children, my beloved ones: you are chosen because you have responded, you have put into practice my instructions and love God above all else. Therefore, little children, pray with all your heart that my words may be realized. Fast, sacrifice yourselves, love out of love for God Who created you, and be, little children, my extended hands to this world that has not come to know the God of love. Thank you for having responded to my call.” -Our Lady of Medjugorje, in private revelation given to Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, on August 25, 2025
An excerpt from “Healing the Culture” by Father Robert J. Spitzer:
“Thy Will be done” makes forgiveness a possibility, for one does not have to let go in a void, as if the hurt would never be redressed. One lets go into the hands of God to redress the matter in whatever way would optimize love in the world. By using the prayer “Thy Will be done”, one overcomes the need for blame, continual recognition of the hurt, and consequent debt, through a more powerful desire for God to prevail in the world. The desire for love achieves its power over the desire for vengeance through the awareness of the peaceful presence of God in the relationship. As noted above, “Thy Will be done” brings peace, which, in its turn, brings empathy (toward love) and detachment (from vengeance).
There is another dimension to this. As one prays “Thy Will be done”, intending that God prevail in the world, one begins progressively to recognize one’s own shortcomings. One sees more clearly how far short of the ideal one truly is. One begins to see greater manifestations of the pride that undermines love in one’s own life. This awareness does not lead to discouragement or despair, for “Thy Will be done” again reveals God’s intention toward one’s own weakness.
One becomes certain of the forgiving and healing touch of God. This restores what was negated, brings back home what was alienated, and enhances the empowerment of surrender. When one has been forgiven much, one is led to forgive much. Inasmuch as “Thy Will be done” opens the way to a recognition of one’s own shortcomings and to an even more powerful recognition of God’s forgiving and loving intention directed toward [one’s self], it leads toward greater forgiveness and love of others.
An excerpt from “Agenda for the Third Millennium” by Saint John Paul II:
The twentieth century will be seen as a period of glaring attacks on life, an endless series of wars, and a permanent massacre of innocent human lives. False prophets and false teachers have known the greatest success possible.
Abortion and euthanasia—really and truly the murder of a genuine human being—are demanded as rights and as solutions to problems: problems of the individual, problems of society. This is a true massacre of the innocents.
Drugs, alcohol abuse, pornography and sexual disorder, violence: these are some of the grave problems requiring a serious response from society as a whole, in every country and at the international level. But these are personal tragedies too, which need to be tackled with practical, person-to-person acts of love and solidarity, due to a great renewing of our own personal responsibility before God, before others, and before our own consciences. We are our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers.
The culture of life means respect for the natural world and protection of the work of God’s creation. In particular, it means respect for human life from the first moment of conception until its natural end.
A culture of life means serving those who enjoy no privileges, the poor and oppressed, since justice and freedom are inseparable and only exist if they exist for all. The culture of life means thanking God every day for the gift of life, for our value and dignity as human beings, for the friendship He offers us as we perform the pilgrimage to our eternal destiny.
An excerpt from “The World’s First Love” by Venerable Fulton J. Sheen:
All love, before it mounts to a higher level, must die to a lower one. There are no plains in the kingdom of love. One is either going uphill or coming down. There is no certainty of increasing ecstasy. If there is no purification, the fire of passion becomes the flicker of the sentiment and finally only the ashes of habit.
No one is thirsty at the border of a well. There is no such thing as loving too much; one either loves madly or too little. Some wonder, in their satiety, if love itself is a snare and a delusion. The truth is that the law of love must always operate: love that does not mount perishes. The joys and the ecstasies, unless they are freshened by sacrifice, become mere friendships. Mediocrity is the penalty of all those who refuse to add sacrifice to their love, and thus to prepare it for a wider horizon and a higher peak.
At the Marriage Feast of Cana, Mary had an opportunity to keep the love of her Son to herself alone. She had the choice of continuing to be only the Mother of Jesus. But she knew that she must not keep that love for herself alone under the penalty of never enjoying love to the fullest. If she would save Jesus, she must lose Him. So she asked Him to work His first miracle, to begin His public life, and to anticipate the hour—and that means His Passion and Death. At that moment, when she asked water to be changed into wine, she died to love of Jesus as her Son and began to mount to that higher love for all whom Jesus would redeem when He died on the Cross.
Cana was the death of the mother-Son relationship and the beginning of that higher love involved in the Mother-humanity, Christ-redeemed relationship. And by giving up her Son for the world, she eventually got Him back—even in the Assumption and the Coronation.
An excerpt from Saint John Paul II’s homily on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on August 15, 1993 (during the 8th World Youth Day):
At this stage of history, the liberating message of the Gospel of Life has been put into your hands. And the mission of proclaiming it to the ends of the earth is now passing to your generation. Like the great Apostle Paul, you too must feel the full urgency of the task: “Woe to me if I do not evangelize” (1 Corinthians 9:16). Woe to you if you do not succeed in defending life. The Church needs your energies, your enthusiasm, your youthful ideals, in order to make the Gospel of Life penetrate the fabric of society, transforming people’s hearts and the structures of society in order to create a civilization of true justice and love. Now more than ever, in a world that is often without light and without the courage of noble ideals, people need the fresh, vital spirituality of the Gospel.
Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places, like the first Apostles who preached Christ and the Good News of salvation in the squares of cities, towns, and villages. This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel (cf. Romans 1:16). It is the time to preach it from the rooftops (cf. Matthew 10:27). Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living, in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern “metropolis”. It is you who must “go out into the byroads” (Matthew 22:9) and invite everyone you meet to the banquet which God has prepared for His people. The Gospel must not be kept hidden because of fear or indifference. It was never meant to be hidden away in private. It has to be put on a stand so that people may see its light and give praise to our heavenly Father.
Jesus went in search of the men and women of His time. He engaged them in an open and truthful dialogue, whatever their condition. As the Good Samaritan of the human family, He came close to people to heal them of their sins and of the wounds which life inflicts, and to bring them back to the Father’s house.
Young people of “World Youth Day”, the Church asks you to go, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to those who are near and those who are far away. Share with them the freedom you have found in Christ. People thirst for genuine inner freedom. They yearn for the Life which Christ came to give in abundance. The world at the approach of a new millennium, for which the whole Church is preparing, is like a field ready for the harvest. Christ needs laborers ready to work in His vineyard. May you, the Catholic young people of the world, not fail Him. In your hands, carry the Cross of Christ. On your lips, the words of Life. In your hearts, the saving grace of the Lord.
