Our Lady, as a true mother, does not stop calling Her children. She speaks to those who strive to hear Her voice and feel Her heart. Mother never gets tired. She never rests. She feels the duty and responsibility to save her children as every mother wants to save her child.

Mary is a Mother who has a heart, and that heart feels pain when we are far from Her, but also joy when we take seriously what She tells us. And she constantly tells us that there is no other way to experience God and his grace than prayer.

Our Lady invites us to be carriers of peace and joy. We can only give others what we have. How will we bring peace and joy to others if there is neither peace nor joy in our hearts? How will we receive peace and joy if there is no prayer in our life? If we do not seek peace and joy in prayer from Jesus who alone has it and wants to give it to us in abundance, then we will have nothing to give to others.

Prayer is communication with God. Prayer is the space where God comes to bestow upon us an abundance of his grace and healing.

For our prayer to be authentic and to bear fruit in our lives, we must fulfill the basic conditions of prayer. In the prayer of Our Father prayer, Jesus gave us the conditions for prayer. The first condition is concentrations and the awareness that God hears me, that he is with me. The second condition is to see my sins, to confess them and to ask for forgiveness. Sin blocks our relationship with God. The third condition of prayer is to forgive those who have done us wrong. Unforgiveness enslaves us, we are attached to evil and to those who have wronged us. The fourth condition for prayer is to renounce everything that stands in the way of prayer. The fifth condition is to accept God’s will. Accept what is difficult as an expression of God’s love and trust that all things will end well.

In this way we grow spiritually and allow God to give us peace, joy, health, and freedom that we can witness to others. In this way Jesus can work through us, come to other people and transform them. We can do nothing, but Jesus can do anything through us. That is why it is important, as St. John the Baptist says, that we decrease and that Christ and the power of his resurrection increase.

Let us pray:

St. John Henry Newman wrote the prayer Radiate Christ. This prayer was a favorite prayer of St. Mother Teresa, and the Missionaries of Charity pray it daily as the first prayer after receiving Holy Communion.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine. It will be You shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You. Amen.