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FASTING AND RENUNCIATION WILL MAKE YOU STRONGER IN FAITH

"Dear children! I desire to thank you from my heart for your Lenten renunciations. I desire to inspire you to continue to live fasting with an open heart. By fasting and renunciation, little children, you will be stronger in faith. In God you will find true peace through daily prayer. I am with you and I am not tired. I desire to take you all with me to Heaven, therefore, decide daily for holiness. Thank you for having responded to my call." Message of March 25, 2007


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As a mother, Mary, the Queen of Peace, thanks us for our Lenten renunciations. Mother Mary thanks us because she loves us. Only a heart filled with love can be a grateful heart. We should be thanking her for her encouragement, her call and love, her interceding with her son Jesus for us. She calls us because it is her desire that we continue to live fasting. She speaks to us about it and calls us to fast and make renunciations for ourselves and because of us, for our happiness and joy.

"By fasting and renunciation, little children you will be stronger in faith", – Heavenly Mother says to us. Fasting and renunciation are necessary in order for us to earn God's mercy. Our renunciation is like a bowl into which God pours His mercy. Blessed Mother Teresa said: "We need to be emptied before God can fill us". Fasting and renunciation are our part of the job in faith. Saint Augustine teaches us: "God created us without our aid; but he did not choose to save us without our aid." In Lent we should practise self-renunciation and do penance as if our salvation depends solely on us, but pray as if our salvation and everything else depends solely on God. Praying without self-renunciation is just like stopping halfway. It is as if you were rowing in a boat tied to the shore. We shall never move until the boat is untied. We cannot empty our body of sins nor eliminate sins from the world we live in. But we can die to sin and then He no longer has authority over us. Renunciation is dying to sin.

When Our Lady speaks to us about renunciation, she does not have in mind the mere physical penance and renunciation, but the spiritual side of it. The mere physical penance and fasting are not enough. They may lead us to arrogance, pharisaism and formalism. They may make us want to display our strength, not to subdue our will to God's will. Therefore in one of her messages Our Lady says to us: "Little children, fasting has become a custom which no one wants to stop. Fast with the heart." Fasting and love are indivisible. One cannot fast without love, nor can one love without fasting in its broadest sense. Prayer is also our answer to God's love. That is why fasting and prayer are inseparable. Fasting without prayer is a mere slimming diet. By fasting without prayer we in fact just revolve around ourselves. Fasting turns all our spiritual forces and powers of the heart, all of our inner being towards God.

Our Lent should not finish with Easter. Setting our mind on fasting and living it means to struggle for freedom. It will not mean much if we renounce some of our bad habits only during the time of Lent, whereas we continue pursuing them afterwards. If this is the case, our renunciation can become self-deceit. One may indulge in arrogance and self-sufficiency and say to oneself: "I am strong, I can do that. " Lent then becomes just another break of this habit, while there has been no change in the man himself. Fasting and renunciation is not proving your strength, but subduing your will to God's will. The best and the most fruitful renunciation is denying one's own self. Even Jesus will say: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself." (Mark 8 : 34).

The Virgin Mary comes and speaks to us not to steal something from us or to deprive us of our joys of life. She comes because she wants us to be happy, normal and free in God. Let us thank Mary from the bottom of our hearts because she has not become weary with us. Let us not become tired of everyday responding to the call of our Heavenly Mother.



Fr. Ljubo Kurtovic
Medugorje 26/03/200

[karnala]

Sorry, I didn't realise that first one was about Lent and here's another one by Fr Slavko:

Fr. Slavko's Commentary
Reflection on the Message of May 25, 1999

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"Dear Children! Also today I call you to convert and to more firmly believe in God. Children, you seek peace and pray in different ways, but you have not yet given your hearts to God for Him to fill them with His love. So, I am with you to teach you and to bring you closer to the love of God. If you love God above all else, it will be easy for you to pray and to open your hearts to Him. Thank you for having responded to my call."


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I greet all of you who are waiting for Our Lady's message or who are trying to follow Our Lady's messages, and now let us think back to April's message. First Mary called us again to prayer, and from all her messages here it becomes clear that prayer is extremely important to Mary, but then again it still is clear too that very many people are not yet praying. We must all try what we can so that our prayer becomes an encounter because the word 'prayer' really only means that we need something and that we therefore asking something of someone. In this encounter we can also pray, but we should also remember that encountering God also means praising Him, thanking God, trying to understand His will and then to follow it, to be with Him in silence, and then finally also to ask things of Him. The second point in April's message was that Mary wished us to become joyful carriers of peace in this world without peace. Let us be clear that to carry peace and love is the most beautiful assignment that a human-being could possibly be given, because every one of us wants nothing more than peace and love. But, at the same time, this is also the most difficult assignment that humans could be given, because were it so easy, then the world would be full of carriers of peace and of love. Why is it so difficult? Can we understand it when we look at the last point that Mary makes in that message? There Mary says that she is praying for us and that she is interceding for us so that our behavior may always be Christian. In order to understand Christian behavior a bit better, let us first think what normal behavior for us is. Normal behavior for us is to adjust our behavior according to the behavior of others, and this means that when someone injures us it is normal for us, with anger in our hearts, to decide to injure them and to pay them with what they did to us. When someone does something good for us, we return it with something good, and when someone does us harm, we then harm them. But Jesus said, about this normal type of behavior, that this is also the behavior of pagans and so it is nothing special. Christian behavior is when I adjust my thoughts, words and deeds according to Christ's behavior, and therefore not according to the behavior of others, but according to what Christ does towards me, and what He says and thinks of me. That is what is so difficult for us humans and there are no techniques or energies that can bring us to Christian behavior all at once. Rather it concerns doing our spiritual work such as praying, fasting, confessing and so forth very sincerely until these become what is normal and then develop into the daily nourishment for our organism. When we act in this fashion then certainly our behavior will step by little step become more Christian. Mary wishes of us that we become her witnesses through prayer and fasting, and it was Medjugorje that called fasting back to life. Fasting is a Heavenly calling and both a Biblical and Church custom. We know that fasting had been generally forgotten and that was incorrect; and so it is good that we renew our decision and again ask for the grace to be able to fast.

Pray Pray Pray
Karen