I was a young priest - ordained four years previously. The parish priest then was Fr. Pervan, and when I was told I’d be coming here as a spiritual assistant it frightened me a little. Being newly ordained it came as a challenge. I’d thus far come to Medjugorje as a pilgrim, and it was here that I decided to become a monk; after that I came here a few times also to help with the confessions. It is totally different to come here every now and again, and to live here. To live here is like an immersion; you live Mary’s presence in your heart.
On August 24, 2002, Jelena Vasilj got married to Massimiliano Valente in St James Church, Medjugorje. It was indeed a very prayerful and joyful wedding! Visionary, Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, was Jelena's Maid of Honor. Rarely do we see such beautiful and striking newly weds! A week before the wedding, they visited our home and shared at length about their values as a christian couple. Let's remember that Jelena had been taught by Our Lady herself for many years, through inner locutions, under the wings of Fr. Tomislav Vlasic, and she was chosen by Our Lady to lead a prayer group until she started her studies in the US in 1991. I'll start reporting here some of Jelena's answers to my questions.
Tatiana Matejaš-Cameron (also known as Tajči) is a singer who gave a concert and a testimony on the Youth Festival "Mladifest" in Medjugorje, 2006. This was the first time that Tajči has performed in the former Yugoslavia region since leaving Croatia in the nineties. Tatiana no longer sings pop music, but only spiritual songs. During the last years, Tatiana has given hundreds of concerts all over the USA, where she found her way to God and where she settled and founded her family. See also her official website, www.idobelieve.com)
Fr. Rainer Herteis, born in 1975, received his priestly ordination on May 6, 2006, in the Diocese Eichstätt (Germany). The story of his life and of his vocation are closely connected with Medjugorje. In June 2007, he was in Medjugorje. Lidija Paris spoke with him.
I was born with reduced vision. Already in the kindergarten, the doctors determined an illness of the retina, which is medically incurable. A metabolic disturbance, which led to it that, when I was 25, I could see only very little light. As the doctors were giving me very little hope to see again, I met a woman who told me: I am going to pray for you. I was about 15 when she prayed for me for the first time. I felt a very strong warmth, and I concluded that it could come only from God. This was for me the first experience that God was a living God who can hear our prayers, a God who loves us, and who is there for us.
In May 2007, a group of pilgrims came to Medjugorje from Hong Kong and Macao. The group was accompanied by a priest, and led by Michelle Yau Ivy (Hong Kong) and S. Claire-Marie (Macao). Lidija Paris spoke with them.
Michelle Yau Ivy: Everything started in December 2001, with my first trip here. I was coming just for fun with a group of friends from Hong Kong. I did not expect anything. I just wanted to come with friends. After this trip, I received a great blessing. When I returned, my husband asked to learn to pray the Rosary and became truly devoted to this. I was very amazed. Soon after, he asked to learn the catechism, and five months later, he was baptized, on the feast of Our Lady of Assumption. He is working now for the monks, in the monastery “Our Lady of Joy” in Hong Kong! For me, this is a fruit of Medjugorje. Then, I was thinking to come back, so I decided to bring a group here. I know that people wanted to come, but they were very afraid. I tried to organize a trip. There was a rumor in Hong Kong that this was a very cold place without electricity and without water, where people eat just bread, so they thought that they should bring along as much food as they can! This is what we have done on the first trip!
Mons. Bernardo Cazzaro, Servant of Mary, Archbishop Emeritus of Puerto Montt (Chile) spent the major part of his life as a missionary in Chile. At the end of its active episcopal service, he returned to Italy in order to help as a spiritual councillor and confessor in the Marian shrine Monte Berico.
In May 2007, during a pilgrimage to Medjugorje with a group from Vittorio Veneto, in an interview with Lidija Paris he expressed his impressions on Medjugorje.
This feeling cannot possibly be put in words, for there are no words to describe it. It is something special, a special peace, satisfaction, a joy that cannot be experienced with any man, but only with Our Lady.
Tomislav Vlasic: Mirjana, we have not seen each other for some time, and I would like you to tell me about the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and especially with the events that are connected to you.
Mirjana Dragicevic: I have seen the Blessed Virgin Mary for eighteen months now, and feel I know Her very well. I feel she loves me with Her Motherly love, and so I have been able to ask Her about anything I would like to know. I've asked her to explain some things about Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell that were not clear to me. For example, I asked Her how God can be so unmerciful as to throw people into Hell, to suffer forever. I thought: If a person commits a crime and goes to jail, he stays there for a while and then is forgiven - but to Hell, forever? She told me that souls who go to Hell have ceased thinking favorably of God - have cursed Him, more and more. So they've already become a part of Hell, and choose not to be delivered from it.
The village is quiet during these winter months. For many pension owners and the visionaries, less pilgrims means more time spent with family around the wood-burning stove. This past month a woman from China stayed in Medjugorje, with my community. She mentioned that she thought it must be easy for the visionaries to discern what God wants of them. "When you see Our Lady every day", she said, "you know how to follow the right path. But for us, how are we to know the will of God in our lives and how can we be sure not to be mistaken?" I took a chance that Vicka would have some "winter time" to spend with us and would share some insights of hers. She welcomed my friend very kindly. Because she radiates such a heavenly joy and love, one may think she can give a magic recipe for peace! Well, she did draw a clear line to happiness, but indeed nothing magic!
26.01.2002 – On Saturday, January 26th, 2002, in the parish church of St. James in Medjugorje, the wedding of Vicka Ivankovic from Medjugorje and Mario Mijatovic, a native from Sarajevo, was celebrated.
The marriage that was blessed by Fr. Branko Radoš, pastor of Medjugorje, the Holy Mass at which concelebrated Fr. Jozo Zovko and Fr. Ivan Landeka along with more than 20 other priests from all over the world, the wedding that attracted hundreds of friends from all over the world and more then 30 photographers and journalists, means for Vicka - the always smiling parishioner who still today has daily apparitions of Our Lady - that with her henceforth stands a man with whom she is eternally bound in love, and who will be a sure support at the service of Our Lady’s messages and the faithful, who day and night come seeking light on their Christian path.
Svetozar Kraljevic: Ivanka, you and Mirjana were taking a walk together that day. Why were you walking together?
Ivanka Ivankovic: We regularly walked together in that area. We had been at my house; then we decided to take our walk.
For ten years now, the statue of Gospa in the town of Civitavecchia is weeping tears of blood
An interview with Mons. Girolamo Grillo from Civitavecchia – “The tree can be recognised by its fruits”, quotes Bishop Girolamo Grillo the words of Jesus from the Gospel, when somebody asks him about Gospa weeping tears of blood in the town of Civitavecchia. A little statue of Our Lady bought in Medjugorje more than ten years ago started to weep tears of blood about ten years ago, in the village of Pantano, near the town of Civitavecchia, 60 km from Rome.
Bishop Hnilica – In all three places, Our Lady is inviting us to repentance, forgiveness and prayer. In this aspect of the message, these three apparitions are similar. However, the difference in Medjugorje is that the apparitions are lasting for 23 years now. The intensity of the continuation of the supernatural is neither declining nor diminishing during all these years, and the result is an even greater number of intellectuals that are converted here.
This festival began 17 years ago when Fr. Slavko began to help a group of young people understand Medjugorje, also through the help of songs personal testimonies. I wasn’t here then, so I can’t tell you more about that. It was certainly a group of young people who had been touched by Medjugorje and by Our Lady’s presence and by her messages. So, gradually, this festival, this international meeting grew.
I have been asking the question of myself and others if there is a distinct spirituality of Medjugorje. I do not think there is. I think it is more a call to deepen the spirituality that we already have. A new understanding of what we all received as children, in school and home; it is a reawakening of that, it is a renewal of that kind of uncomplicated faith, unembarrassed faith. As for the apparitions of Mary, at first you feel - if she is the Mother of God - her messages should be more theologically substantial. In fact they are deceptively simple. And I say to myself: I have been through theology courses, maybe this is the time for me to get back to the simple faith that we all have, and we grew up with. Time to look again at what Our Lady is saying, read the messages again, re-read them, and read between the lines, between the words.
We’re expecting our third child, but the pregnancy hasn’t been going according to previsions, and I’ve been confined to total rest. But I’ve seen how this condition of immobility regards my body only, while my spirit has been able to broaden out continually. So this has been a time of grace for me, because love has two sides to it. There is the joy and the enthusiasm of giving, even though this is accompanied by the cross, but it is when the cross is accepted, that our joy is even deeper. Then, everything is okay. It seems as though life should be always downhill to be true – or that’s how we imagine it. However, I am coming to understand ever more how suffering is our true life. So I can say that right now I am living this “true life.”
With regards to my past years in Medjugorje, not a lot of things come to mind right now. In 1985 I began gradually withdrawing from Medjugorje to live in contemplation. As my relationship with God grew deeper there was an awakening of the memory of my soul, that space where the Holy Spirit was able to assume the role of main actor, to reveal the Mystery. In this memory there’s not so much the phenomena of Medjugorje, but rather the divine truth of the living and true God, and the Mother of God who is present in and works in us. It is the truth of the Church.
Vicka: ... When you look at Our Lady the beauty of her face is so wonderful that words can't describe it. She herself has said that she is beautiful because she loves. This is the way we must be beautiful - above all, beautiful inside - so that our faces can radiate this beauty too... Unfortunately, we hide our faces behind many types of masks; we hide everything inside.. We have to begin to love to be beautiful. With all our hearts we should begin by loving those in our homes, our family and then the others around us. True beauty is spiritual beauty.
Vicka: ... Just entered, we have gone on, walking, perhaps three, four meters. We have not visited the whole Heaven, but the Gospa has made sense of it. We have seen a great space wound by a light that it doesn't exist here on the earth. We have seen the people that are neither fat, neither thin, but all equal ones and they have dresses of three colors: the grey , the yellow and the pink. The people walk, sing, pray. There were some small flying Angels. The Gospa has told us: "Look at how much the people are happy in the Heaven". And a joy that cannot be described and that here on the earth it doesn't exist.
Their longing for peace, their thirst for the truth. The world deceives us so often. The media emphasise mostly negative things. Young people are very much manipulated in the area of sexuality, and attacked in their souls. This can lead to severe consequences if their faith has not been strengthened beforehand. The message of Medjugorje awakens in them a longing for true peace, and probably for God and for the family... for intact families. Many people come from broken families nowadays. It is very rare that one finds a family, where the love of the neighbour is really lived, where there is prayer, where parents do not divorce after the first difficulty. But, in my opinion, what draws them mostly to Medjugorje is their longing for God, and the longing to find a meaning to their lives. Here you can meet Mary and Christ more intensely than at home. Another important factor is that young people meet other young people, whom they perceive to have found peace, and to have immersed more deeply in the spiritual life.