Put  God  in  the center  of  your  living! (Fr. Marinko Shakota, OFM)

“Dear children, In this year of grace, I am calling you to conversion. Put God, dear children, in the center of your living and the fruits will be love towards neighbor and joy of witnessing; and the holiness of your life will become a true witness of faith. Thank you for having responded to my call”.

• What is the first message of Our Lady?

The first message of Our Lady is not Her words but Her coming to earth and Her presence.

It induces us to ask: Why does the Virgin Mary descend to us people from heaven to earth? What is the reason for Her coming?

 Our Lady says to us by Her coming and presence among us: “I have come to you to help you because you need help. You can’t do it on your own. You’re my beloved children. I love you! You are important for Me. I take care of you”.

We are able to comprehend Who the Virgin Mary is like according to Her coming and presence:

• She is not indifferent. She cares about everything that happens with us;
• She lives in heaven, she lives with God, She has peace but She is “restless”. She can’t be at ease if we don’t have peace, if we don’t move in the right direction.

We learn from this what true love is and measure ourselves by it.

Hence the question arises: Are we indifferent? Is the coming of Our Lady of any consequence for us? Will we respond Her calls or not? 

2. “In this year of grace, I am calling you to conversion”

The Virgin Mary follows the call of Pope Francis for this year to be a year of grace. She acts in such a way because She loves and respects the Church because She is its Mother. She came not just to the neutral district but She chose the parish of Medjugorje because the parish is a fundamental Church unit. Our Lady does it because She desires the Church to be renewed and through it the renewal of the world may take place.

Why conversion? It is because the Jubilee year reminds us of the first Jesus’s call: “Repent and believe the good news” (Mk.1:15). One of the examples of the conversion is the younger or prodigal son who walked out on his father and left for foreign land. Being a free man he became a slave and blind. His conversion started when he had “come to his senses” and realized his deeds. Then he made the decision to come back home and to his father.

Do we need to be converted? Everyone needs it! We are all growing away from God, prayer and from one another. Nowadays there are many trials, challenges, temptations that attract us and lead us away from God and from prayer. As a result we are not “at home” and we have become slaves and blind.

Let’s listen to the Mother and set out on the path of conversion. Let’s “come to our senses” and acknowledge within our heart the distance between us and Jesus, realize the prayer, God’s word, our families, our neighbors, poor ones and those who suffer…

3. “Put God, dear children, in the center of your living and the fruits will be love towards neighbor and joy of witnessing”

These words of the Virgin Mary arise the questions for us: Who and what is in the center of our life? We can exactly answer this question at home, recognizing whether the TV set is in the center of our living. Perhaps, the mobile phone is in the center.

There is another check: who and what is within my inner center and my heart in first place? Where is my heart and what is it focused on? What do I dedicate the great part of the day to? What does my heart strive for and what does it desire? What is for my heart the most important and what does it absolutely not want to let go or pass? 

Now we understand what the conversion is: it is when God is again in the center of our living. How can we be aware of it? It is when we begin our day with prayer giving thanks to God for a new day; when we give and entrust God ourselves and our most loved ones right at the beginning of the day. It is when we say like Mary: “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word. Your will must be done today”. Besides, it is when we thank God for the passing day in the evening and when we read the Sacred Scripture (we can take reading the bible verse of the day); it’s when the Holy Sunday Mass is irreplaceable and important for us…

There is one more check: if God is in the center of our living then the fruits will be born: we will love our neighbors and witness the experience of faith with joy. If we don’t feel this then God isn’t in the center of our living yet. Let’s pray for this to happen.

4. “The holiness of your life will become a true witness of faith”.

Now we know what holiness is. Our Lady emphasizes on “a true” witness. Truthfulness means that we can’t do it. It just has  to happen. When something is the truth then we have an easy manner and don’t make any efforts and we don’t pretend. If our living became holy and penetrated with God, if God really is in our center then we can’t do anything except true witnessing of faith.

Let’s remember our parents. They didn’t think of how they would witness. They didn’t create any projects. They just lived their faith. Their whole life was the truth. Their lives weren’t divided into two parts: to live faith only while attending church and not to live faith outside the church.

The questions are clear: Do we witness faith? Is our witness true? If it isn’t then there is a time of grace to begin…