In the August message, Our Lady told us that She prays for us with Her Son to give us faith and hope for a better future. We know how easy it is to believe in a better future when everything is going well for us. But when adversity and the cross finds us, then it is no longer easy to believe. Then our faith is being tested.

St. Paul in the Book of Romans tells us, “We know that all things work for good for those who love God” (Rom 8:28a). God leads our lives for good even when we cannot see or feel it. We need to love God more and complain less about our lives. We can love God because he first loved us.

Often, because of life’s difficulties and tragedies, we fall into self-pity – the sweet poison of the soul, as Dostoyevsky calls it. Self-pity kills our life force and will to live. Even in the difficulties and tragedies that have happened to us, God has been with us. He has allowed them to happen. Therefore, let us no longer ask: Why is this happening to me, but what is the nature of what is happening to me. Yet even the most difficult situations God can turn to good.        In this month’s message, Our Lady, whom we call the Bride of the Holy Spirit, invites us to pray to the Holy Spirit so that, enlightened by His light and strengthened by His power, we may seek God. We would not seek him if he had not first sought us and met us in his Son. Prayer, as an encounter of man with God, is always a gift of God’s grace to us, it is never our merit. God Himself reaches out to us by free grace. We can meet him only because he wants to meet us, because he is present and waiting for us to be here too, ready to meet him.

We know that in prayer the Holy Spirit descends. Our Lady prayed with the Apostles in one accord and without ceasing, expecting the promise of Jesus – the Holy Spirit. Jesus says that He will teach us when He is gone and remind us of all that He has spoken to us. The power and authority of the Holy Spirit was not just given to the apostles, but to everyone who believes. To all who ask the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Without the Holy Spirit, the Church is only a human organization. Without the Holy Spirit, our prayers are just empty words. Without the Holy Spirit, we remain enslaved in the darkness of this world, which is lost without God’s light. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to awaken in us the desire to seek God.

It is only when we encounter God that we can witness Him to others. We can only give to others what we have.

May Our Lady, full of grace and full of God, lead us to a true encounter and experience of God and of the love of God that she herself is filled with.

Let us pray: Our Lady, Mother of grace and mercy, you who were entirely open to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and became his bride, intercede for us with your Son. Do not cease to encourage us, especially when we are distant, when we are spiritually weak, so that the desire for God may always burn within us. Mother Mary, grant us a heart fervent and ready for conversion and transformation of life, that we may receive the fullness of joy which the Lord has promised us and which only He can give us. We also want to pray with you, Mary, for an experience of God’s love without bounds, which we want to joyfully witness, and thus to become apostles of your motherly presence and closeness from day to day. To you, Mary, we entrust all of us, and especially those who have distanced themselves from the source of God’s love and live in fear and restlessness. May every heart experience the peace that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, wants to give us. Amen.