29 November 2024

By Mauro, Loredana and Luisa

(Taken from the book, Our Lady Is Alive in Međugorje – Conversations with Father Tomislav Vlašić; Publisher Luci dell’Esodo)

Man’s encounter with God

The spiritual companion must take care of man’s development and his entirety above all. Man is mature when he knows how to relate to God and when he knows how to experience communion with others in the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul teaches us this in the Letter to the Ephesians: Jesus came into the world to save man, so that he might co-operate with him in the salvation of the world.¹ He gave man all the graces necessary to conquer evil and frailty, and to be promoted to the dignity of Son of God. Therefore those who accompany a person on their pathway of faith, should carefully promote their freedom, responsibility, dignity, integrity.

The central message of Jesus’ teaching is love: love for God, for ourselves and for our neighbour. In the biblical sense, this means that love must embrace man in his entirety: in his depth, in the width and all the potential of his being. This is the true fulfilment of the law.² The entire message of the Bible aims at leading us to experiencing this alliance with God in love. Man can develop in fullness and within himself he can develop all his virtues, only if he welcomes the love of God and allows that love to grow within him.³ And so when he is fulfilled, man will truly be able to praise God. What a great responsibility it is to be called to promote Christians and guide them towards this fullness of love!

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus explains that promoting man, in compliance with Christian beliefs, means helping him to develop God’s image within himself, to develop his originality which is generated within the Father’s breast. The old carnal man must be buried with Christ in order to rise up with him. He who took this step, has conquered the first death.

Then Christ can promote him and transform him, he can imprint his image on him. In this way, when we experience the divine image impressed within us, it guides us and introduces us to true knowledge.⁴

This image is alive within us, because in it the Trinitarian God acts. Saint Peter also points out how to enter into true knowledge: “The divine power of Christ has given us everything that is necessary to live in a holy manner. Because he let us come to know God, who has called us with his glory and his power”.⁵

In this context the apparitions are a powerful means, like no other human means, and their duty is to reawaken humanity: Mary comes near to us as a Mother and she pours out all the graces necessary for this time over humanity. With simple messages she teaches us to enter into the life of God.

I recall a simple pedagogical teaching that Our Lady gave to a prayer group through Jelena. One day she asked the members of the group to go into nature and praise God and then pick a flower of our choice; following this, each of us was to return to the place where the meeting was taking place with that flower. When we all returned, Our Lady began to explain that the soul is like a flower with its petals, and the petals are virtues. If all the petals, that is, the virtues, are integral, then Satan cannot enter the soul, because that flower belongs solely to Jesus. She then added that all the virtues must be linked to each other, because one perfects the other and one cannot develop without the other. A person is mature only when the virtues develop within that person in a harmonious manner.

As I have already said on several occasions, Our Lady is appearing in order to teach us to experience a living relationship with God through prayer, and this relationship may only be built in the freedom of the Holy Spirit. A sense of responsibility stems from this relationship and we grow in God’s creativity. This is faith’s simplest and most normal pedagogy. God shows himself to those who open themselves up to him, he allows them to enter into the truth of life, into that truth transmitted to humanity through the apostles. There is nothing new in Our Lady’s pedagogy that the Church has not already announced. But at the same time, everything is new because the relationship with God guides us continually towards new things.

It is impossible to give an exhaustive answer, because the theme is quite extensive and profound. I will try to highlight certain points that I believe to be fundamental, beginning from my experience. The priest should live in God and with God, he should be in God also when he is in the midst of people. This means that he is called to be so united with Jesus as to enable him to personally act within him and through him. This living relationship with Jesus should lead him to keep a healthy distance from the people he meets and from their experiences. The priest should be able to bring and offer everything to Jesus, allowing him to operate in the souls that he takes care of, and to help people to recognize God’s will; to offer God the sacrifices of people but also their sufferings and sin, so that they might be forgiven.

One thing that I have learnt from life and that I believe to be important is that the priest can never impose himself on souls, he can never impose his faith by force. On the contrary, he should communicate the life of God and accompany people in their growth, without imposing himself and without crushing their originality. The priest’s fundamental duty remains that of offering himself on the altar for the people in order to teach the people to offer themselves with him to Jesus through Mary. And so Jesus welcomes this offering and gives it to the Father, subjecting everything to the Father’s will.

In this manner, in the eucharistic celebration, the priest and the people experience the Easter passage in which Jesus opens up the pathway towards the Father to souls, as he opened up the pathway towards the Father in the souls of the apostles. Nothing concrete happens within souls without this passage. A person, a community that is united in this manner with Jesus and that goes towards the Father with Him, embarks on a safe journey.