“If you knew how much I love you….you would cry for JOY! Amen! Alleluia!
Can you imagine the Mother of God giving us those words from “Her Heart” in Medugorje???? We would cry for JOY!
Today was such a day to ponder these words! Today we celebrate the Feast Day of of honoring Mary as the Mother of God… but not only of Her Son…but of “us” as well! We are Her children given at the Cross by Jesus.
She is our Mother! Can we comprehend that fully in our hearts? I know it is very hard to understand it in our heads! The Mother of God is the Mother of all of us!!!!!
And so…today She made it very clear to my heart of just how She loves us….and will continue to love us all the remaining days of our lives here on earth.
This coming October 7, 2026 will be 9 years that I have been blogging for Christine. We began on the Feast of the Holy Rosary – a most beautiful feast day to begin to share our faith with others. As mentioned so many times prior to this posting, Christine asked for a title for our blogging posts. I entitled mine, “A Hand to Hold Through Life’s Journey.”
A dear friend took this picture above….actually showing me holding “Her Hand” in the last months of 2025. Note what is in Her right hand!!! A Rosary! The weapon that Padre Pio tells us should be in our hands always. Not a weapon of destruction but a weapon of peace….and so it should always be in our hands.
This morning before Mass even began, a friend that I just met in 2025 came into Mass with her husband. We were very happy to greet each other on the first day of this year. However, Lisa came back to me with a small package in her hands. It was a beautiful image of Mother Mary from Medugorje and beautiful rosary beads contained within. The “first gift” of the New Year….”A Rosary!” Lisa shared with me she had just been on pilgrimage to this beautiful apparition sight of the Blessed Virgin Mary and brought back these blessed Rosary beads.
I just couldn’t let them leave my hand. I held them throughout Holy Mass and clutched them as I went to receive Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. It was a very clear message on this first day of January, 2026! Keep these beads in your hands….and “pray them!”
When I got home, I opened the package and read the back of the holy card of Our Lady of Medugorje. What did it say? In various languages -it said these powerful words….“If you knew how much I love you, you would cry for JOY!”
Fr. Mark Beard had a beautiful saying concerning the prayers of the Rosary! He would tell us to “burn those beads!” What does that exactly mean?
It means to clutch them in your hands! Pray them and meditate upon the lives of Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph.
Pray them with your heart…not just mindlessly saying Hail Mary’s but truly reflecting on the mysteries.
The Rosary is truly a picture album of the Holy Family’s lives…and you can easily apply it to your own life. In the Joyful Mysteries and the birth of Jesus, we can easily meditate upon a little one being born – especially if we are grandparents. The “Joy” of holding that little baby and seeing their innocence expressed so lovingly in their facial movements.
How beautiful to ponder the thought that Mother Mary beheld the “Son of God” doing the same. The graces received by our Hail Mary’s as a backdrop to the scenes of “Their” lives are so valuable to living our faith fully. It helps us get by in the day to day living of our daily routines whether they be joys or sorrows.
Yes, “Mother Mary” the one who loves you so very much….knocks on the door. It is not a wooden door but it is a door made of flesh and blood. It’s the door to your heart!!!
Today on this first day of January – on the Feast Day of The Mother of God….She comes a-knocking! For what you may ask?
She comes to ask for your hands to pray Her Rosary and to meditate upon Her Son’s life. She wants you in this year of 2026 to know Him better, to love Him better and to serve Him better. What does He say to this?
Jesus always gave Gabrielle Bossis (He and I) a keynote word for the beginning of a New Year. In 1943, He gave her the following……“In each other’s hearts. You will keep yours in Mine and I’ll be in yours.”
He asks her to “give Me your heartfelt adoration with the Wise Men. You know how people say to each other, “I adore you.” But for you, it is your God – your incomparable One, your End. So adore Him with every fibre of your being. And since you are nothing, tie yourself to the All.”
He tells her to “take refuge in His heart.”
He goes on to say “nothing in you escapes Me and I watch over you. Aren’t you sometimes amazed to see that so many things work out well for you? That’s because I am there, in My little girl who has put her trust in me.”
Go to the Manger! Go and meet Mother Mary and St. Joseph. Do not go empty handed but go with your Rosary beads and go in silence. Miracles abound there at the Crib!
Jesus tells us “Never leave your Immaculate Mother. She won’t leave you either. She loves you even more than your own dear mother. She suffered more to give birth to you, for she bore My death.
“Where else would She lead you if not to Me?”
“Ask Her to teach you to live for Me.” Put all your trust in Her. She will help you on your uphill climb; it is strenuous work climbing the mountain of perfection. Just when you think you’re going up, you find that you are slipping back. Who will purify you? Who will put light into your mind, if not those who possess it – the Saints and the Queen of All Saints? See that you are very child-like with Her.”
Let this year of 2026 be a year that
you cry for JOY….that you not only “know”
the “Love of the Mother”
but also the “Love of the Son!”
Your Rosary Will Be the Ways and Means
to Understand that “Love.”
BURN THOSE BEADS!!!
©2026 Anita Guariglia
Photo Credits/ Pinterest/Instagram
Holding Her Hand/ Lana M.
Nativity Scene/ Anita Guariglia
Quotes from He and I/ Gabrielle Bossis
2 Responses
Thank you, Anita, for once again so beautifully showing us the way to the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is through devotion to the Holy Rosary. Their love for us is revealed in the Rosary as our hearts grow in love for them. Countless blessings to you and all who heed your words in 2026.
YES, dear Anita, Mary, the Mother of God, is HUMANITY’S spiritual mother. Venerable Fulton Sheen puts it so beautifully:
“Our Blessed Lord now looked down from His Cross to the two most beloved creatures that He had on earth – John and His Blessed Mother…He called her, “Woman.” It was the second Annunciation. With a gesture of His dust-filled eyes and His thorn-crowned head, He looked longingly at Her, who had sent him willingly to the Cross and who is now standing beneath it as a cooperator in His redemption; and He said: “Woman, this is thy son.” He did not call him John; to do that would have been to address him as the son of Zebedee and no one else. But, in his anonymity, John stood for all mankind. To His beloved disciple He said: “This is thy mother.”
Here is the answer, after all these years, to the mysterious words in the Gospel of the Incarnation which stated that Our Blessed Mother laid her ‘firstborn’ in the manger. Did that mean that our Blessed Mother was to have other children? It certainly did, but not according to the flesh. Our Divine Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was the unique Son of our Blessed Mother by the flesh. But our Lady was to have other children, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit!” Life of Christ, page 376, Venerable Fulton J. Sheen
God bless us in 2026!