The 24th International Spiritual Retreat for Married Couples in Medjugorje began with the registration of participants on Wednesday, February 5, and the evening Holy Mass was celebrated by Fr. Jure Barišić with the concelebration of 13 priests.
At the beginning of the Holy Mass, the parish vicar of Medjugorje, Fr. Jure Barišić, who is also the lecturer at this spiritual retreat, greeted the participants of this spiritual retreat – about fifty married couples from 15 countries.
In his homily, Fr. Jure referred to the Gospel passage in which Jesus came to his homeland where they were offended by him, and he spoke about how often we reject certain people and make fun of them, which is also described in today’s Gospel.
”The people of Nazareth certainly knew who Jesus was. They grew up with him. They did not want to accept him. They ridiculed him, and by mentioning his origin and his family, they wanted to humiliate him in a way. They heard that he performed miracles, they heard that he healed, they heard that others accepted him as the Messiah, but his Nazarenes did not want to accept him as the Messiah and Jesus said: ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own homeland’. We should look for the reason in human pride. The Nazarenes were proud people. If it had been someone else from Bethlehem, from Capernaum, from any other place that they did not know, they might have more easily said that he was the Messiah, but pride did not allow them to admit that Jesus was the Messiah”, said Fr. Jure Barišić, adding that things are repeated today because pride often prevents us from admitting that Jesus is the King, the Lord of our lives, the Messiah, and that it would be easier to acknowledge Jesus’ humanity than that he was the Messiah, and he then explained why this is so.
”The encounter with Jesus changes us. Accepting Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior means changing our lives, looking at man and his needs differently. They were not ready for that. The same thing happens to us. We too, because of our pride, do not want to accept Jesus because we should change,” said Fr. Jure, emphasizing how pride leads to arrogance and only distances us from the Church and Christ, and in the end he called on us not to allow our pride to destroy us. “Every day when we celebrate Mass, Jesus comes to his homeland. This church is his homeland, we are his Nazarenes. It is up to us whether we will recognize him as the Savior, whether we will recognize him as the Messiah, or will we, because of our pride, go away so that Jesus will be surprised at our unbelief? Let us recognize him as the Messiah. Let us recognize him as the Savior. Let us allow the word of God that we listen to touch us, let the body that we partake change us. It will change our hearts and in our daily lives we will be like Christ, we will see others with the eyes of Christ, then we will not create prejudices about people, but we will accept people and see in them the image of God, said Fr. Jure Barišić.
The theme of the spiritual renewal for married couples, like all other spiritual renewals in Medjugorje this year, is “Let us go to the house of the Lord!” (Ps 122:1), and it continues with prayer, lectures, adoration before the Most Holy and evening prayer programs. In addition to lectures, prayers and participation in masses, participants in this spiritual renewal will also pray on Mount Cross and the Apparition Hill…
