Medjugorje Day 8: Through Him, With Him, and In Him
This morning, we made our way through the fields between the church of Saint James and Apparition Hill to pray at the bottom at the Blue Cross, a place where the Blessed Mother appeared to the children secretly when the Communists were blocking them from ascending the hill.
Once we arrived at the Blue Cross, we sat down together to pray with our last mediation on the parts of the Mass before praying the Chaplet of Peace, which was taught to the children by Our Lady during the first Apparitions. It consists of praying The Creed, 7 Our Fathers, 7 Hail Marys, and 7 Glory Be.
A word about peace - something so very needed in “our days.”
If we consider what happens in the Mass leading up to the exchange of the sign of peace, we see that peace is a gift from the Father. He grants us His peace, through His Son, because we have united our imperfect prayers with Christ’s perfect prayer, our imperfect offerings with Christ’s perfect offering.
This, I think, is crucial to our understanding what makes for true and lasting peace: If I unite my prayers to Christ’s perfect prayer, through the Mass, I will be more capable of accepting the imperfection of my neighbor, more capable of accepting the limitations and the inadequacies of others. I won’t need to fight against everyone. Nor will they hold my joy hostage when they disagree with me or think differently than me.
If I have perfect love in my life - the love of God - then I won’t need you to be perfect. And if I do not need you to be perfect, I can live at peace with you. I can forgive you, even if you wrong me. And if you have the love of God in your life, then you will not need me to be perfect either. Peace is being offered by the Father to those of us who unite our very imperfect lives - sins and all - with the life of His perfect Son.
I’m stopping midday to write this to you, because this evening we’ll sit down for a sharing of graces before going to bed early for a 4AM departure. So, these will be my last words of this daily blog of our pilgrimage. But what else needs to be said about our pilgrimage to Medjugorje, other than that it was very peaceful?
But it wasn’t peaceful because we did everything perfectly this week. It was perfect in that we united everything - all week long, every day - with Christ’s perfect prayer to the Father. The Mass is at the heart of everything here in Medjugorje. And the Mass - the perfect prayer that is offered to God through Him, with Him, and in Him - completes all that is lacking in us.
Like the rocks we climbed to ascend Apparition Hill and Cross Mountain - with all of their imperfections, cracks, and crevices - our hearts, too, are full of uneven movements and disjointed memories with jagged edges. But Our Lady bids us give our hearts to her Son that He might pour into us His perfect love, filling in all the spaces between, and making it possible for us to offer an acceptable sacrifice to God, which is our own newly formed merciful hearts, now capable of forgiving others.
In the past, it was enough to deal out justice to those who had offended God or sinned against their neighbor. But a new thing has happened, a new measure. Mercy has entered the world. Now, the only response to injustice that is truly right and just is forgiveness. This is the only acceptable sacrifice now. It is the forgiving heart that pleases God.
God has given us permission to forgive. We will not be offending His justice. He has given us permission. God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself, and poured out the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church - most powerfully living through the parish of Saint James in Medjugorje - may God grant us pardon and peace, peace, peace. +
