“Dear children! May this time be a time of prayer.” -Our Lady of Medjugorje, in private revelation given to Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, on January 25, 2024
O Mother Mary,
your heart is so big, so compassionate for all your children.
Even those in Purgatory don’t escape your maternal gaze.
How can I ever thank you for your intercessions throughout our lives?
If not for your protection, I would continuously fall into the darkness of sin, loneliness, and despair.
You are our treasured gift from God, a perfect example of how to say “yes” to the Lord, of how to carry Him in our hearts and ponder the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity.
May I be faithful as your consecrated child.
And even should I suffer, I know that you will stay with me as you did with your Son on Calvary.
Thank you, and praise be to God for you. Amen.
Our Lord, in private revelation given to Gabrielle Bossis, on November 17, 1949:
Why do I ask you to pray? Because prayer is to grace as the lighted match to the candle. You get the picture: the first effort is man’s; then comes God. Always oneness. Never God alone. Never man alone. But God and man working together. This is the law of My love. Isn’t it beautiful? Why should you try to escape it? Wouldn’t you find greater joy in hastening our reunion by your calling desires and your cries of love? What delight it gives Me to be invited by your hearts!
So don’t be reticent. If you want Me, tell Me so. I mean pray—sink deep down into the remembrance of Me and talk to Me in a direct look. That’s what prayer is—the prayer that asks, the prayer that praises and thanks, the prayer that loves. Don’t you think that the direct look of love is very eloquent?
Praises of God by Saint Francis of Assisi:
Thou art holy, Lord God, Who alone workest wonders.
Thou art strong. Thou art great. Thou art most high.
Thou art the Almighty King, Thou, holy Father, King of heaven and earth.
Thou art the Lord God, Triune and One; all good.
Thou art good, all good, highest good, Lord God living and true.
Thou art charity, love.
Thou art wisdom. Thou art humility. Thou art patience.
Thou art security. Thou art quietude. Thou art joy and gladness.
Thou art justice and temperance. Thou art all riches to sufficiency.
Thou art beauty. Thou art meekness. Thou art protector.
Thou art guardian and defender. Thou art strength. Thou art refreshment.
Thou art our hope. Thou art our faith. Thou art our great sweetness.
Thou art our eternal life, great and admirable Lord, God almighty, merciful Saviour.
“To put it simply: the main source of deep conversion is to fall in love with endless Beauty. A genuine person will gladly sacrifice for real love. Christic martyrs are in love. Jesus tortured to death on the Cross is the icon of perfect love, unconditional, selfless love. All the saints imitate Him in their heroic virtue because they too are in love. Their concern, determination, and motivation are rooted in and arise from their intimacy with triune Beauty Who is purest and endless love (cf. 1 John 4:8).” –Father Thomas Dubay
An excerpt from “The Sanctifier” by Archbishop Luis M. Martinez:
To adore and love the Father and to fulfill His most Holy Will was the whole life of Jesus. It should also be our life.
As Jesus taught us, we must adore in spirit and in truth the infinite majesty that shines forth from the Father. “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeks such to worship Him. God is spirit, and they who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24)
The Father must be adored in light and love: in light, the reflection of eternal light; in love, the image of infinite love. And He must be adored in Jesus Who is Truth, and in the Holy Spirit Who is Love. To adore the Father in spirit and in truth is to share, as much as a creature can, in the mystery of the Trinity, contemplating the Father with the eyes of Jesus and effacing ourselves lovingly before His majesty under the impulse of infinite Love.
