Fr. Martin’s
reflection on - Our Lady’s Message
25th
April 2026
“Dear
children! I am praying for you and encourage you to a
new life, a life in joy and prayer. May the Holy Spirit fill you, little
children, with joy so that you may be like a spring of pure and drinkable
water; that you, little children, may be in God and with God missionaries of
love and peace. Your life is short here on earth and that is why I am with you
to lead you towards Heaven. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
(With Ecclesiastical
approval)
Dear Brothers and sisters of Medjugorje North East and beyond,
Let us turn to the holy Scriptures for guidance and encouragement, as we
reflect on this message from Our Lady.
In the days following our Lords Resurrection St. Luke tells us in the Acts of the
Apostles ( 1; 14.) “the Apostles, together with several
women, including ‘Mary, Mother of Jesus’
joined together in persevering
prayer.” There in the upper room in
Jerusalem, the place of the Last supper, the first believer’s, united in a
cenacle of prayer, around Our Lady, as they devoted themselves to preparing the
way for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Our Lady continues her Motherly role of Intercession for all her
children in heaven. She begins this
message saying, “I am praying for you and encourage you to a new life, a
life of ‘joy
and prayer.’ ” It is a great consolation to be reminded that Our Lady is
praying for us from heaven. We are
assured of her prayers, because as Mother of the Church, and the first disciple
of the Lord, she does today what she did for the Church after her Son’s
Resurrection, devotes herself to prayer, for us her children. We are accompanied by the prayers of Our Lady,
she is with us in a special way, through the power of prayer.
Mary, encourages us ‘towards a new life of Joy and Prayer.’ This new life is the life of her Son, the
Risen one. We all need encouragement in the
living out of her Faith, Our Lady understands it is not always easy, but the
key is ‘Joy and Prayer.’ The two are
interconnected, the fruit of prayer is Joy, Joy is a gift of the Holy spirit,
the Joy that flowed into the heart of Our Lady, and the Apostles after the Lord’s Resurrection. The Scriptures tell us, “They were filled
with ‘Joy’ when they saw their Lord.’ ( John : 20:20)
So in encouraging us
towards a renewed spiritual life, the invitation to decide for prayer is
ours. For the source of all ‘Joy’ is the
Risen Lord. This is why Our Lady from the start of the apparitions has
emphasised ‘prayer.’ Beginning with the
recitation of the Apostles creed, seven Our Father’s, seven Hail Mary’s, and
seven Glory be’s, Mary, Queen of
Peace, has led us along the path of ‘Joy
and prayer.’
Our Lady continues,
“May the Holy Spirit fill you little children with Joy, so
that you may be like a spring of pure and drinkable water, that you little
children may be in God, and with God, be missionaries of love and peace.”
An image of the Holy Spirit is that of a fountain, or a spring. The Holy Spirit is the source of the new
life, to which Our Lady invites us. The
Holy Spirit is the one who cleanses, purifies, refreshes and makes clean. In professing our faith in the Creed, we say
of the Holy Spirit, “The Lord and giver of Life.” Our Lady invites us to be ‘filled’ with Holy
Spirit, and so become living ‘springs’ ‘in God and with God’ for others. When Our Lady invited St. Bernadette to ‘go
and wash in the spring’ Bernadette firstly had to scrape through mud and soil,
in order to reach the cleansing pure water.
So too for us, conversion of life, leads us towards the new life of the
Holy Spirit, to which Mary reminds us.
“You will receive power, when the Holy spirit comes upon you, and you
will be my witnesses” said Jesus, before his Ascension. ( Acts: 1:18) We have not received the spirit of the world,
but the spirit that comes from God. ( 1: Cor: 2: 12) Our Lady has called us many times to pray
for the gift of the Holy Spirit, for enlightenment, for understanding,, for
conversion and renewal. On one occasion,
Our Lady said, “In silence, may the Holy Spirit speak to you, and permit him to
convert and change you.” ( July, 25th , 2006. ) This is how we allow
the Holy Spirit to act within us, and so make us like a ‘spring of pure and
drinkable water.’ The Sacrament of
Confession is also
an important source in our journey of conversion.
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scriptures
say, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. “Now, he said this,
about the Spirit, , through those who would believe in
him, they would receive.” ( Johhn:
7: 37-39.).
“Little children, be in God, and with God, missionaries of love and
peace.”
The spring of living water has a source, and it is God – the source of
all life and love. Contact with this
source is prayer, for prayer means nothing else, but contact with God., the
eternal spring. For those who do
everything out of love for God, this contact is not only being realised in
formal prayer, like Holy Mass and Rosary, but also through every action and
word of ours. The awareness to co-
operate with God, the source of all life, make it possible for our lives to become a living prayer. The main
condition for this is ‘love.’ Without
love, our prayers remain just words.
Like the first Apostles at Pentecost, it is prayer that filled them with
the love and peace of Christ. So let
each of us decide in prayer to be the missionaries of love and peace, Mary
calls us to be.
Our Lady is the queen of prophets, and she is Mother and Queen of
peace. In these times when so many have
chosen the path away from God and his saving truth, Our Lady shows us the path
to ‘new Life’ and invites us to decide for renewed holiness of life. There is a goal in Our Lady’s call, and she
mentions this at the very end of her message.
“life is short here on earth, and that is
why I am with you to lead you towards Heaven.” This is our Lady’s goal, our eternal
Salvation. Jesus tells us in the Gospels
that it is better to enter into eternal life without a hand or a foot, or an
eye, than to have all limbs and enter into eternal damnation. ( Matthew 5:
29-30) The point is to decide for
conversion, for the ‘new life.’ Because
this life is short. So let us permit ourselves to be led by Our Lady, with her,
to listen to her, and stay on the path of light.
Come Holy Spirit of Jesus.
God Bless,
Fr. Martin