When we are talking about ‘Medjugorje, then it is more than just talking about a town in Herzegovina that carries this name. It is about the movement that this name has triggered since six young people indicated that on the 24th of June 1981 Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in Medjugorje named Gospa, appeared to them, and she is still appearing and giving messages to them until today. The four most important aspects of this movement can be described as this: Firstly, it is a movement of pilgrimage. Until this day, many millions of people have come to this place of pilgrimage from all over the world. Furthermore, the small place Medjugorje represents a movement of peace. Many people say that they have experienced there the gift of peace in their hearts and they are ready to pass it on to others in their proximity: in their marriage and their family, in their neighbourhood, in their circle of friends, their community and their working place. They are motivated by their own experience of reconciliation and peace and of course by the name which Virgin Mary “Gospa” used to introduce Herself to the visionaries : I am the Queen of Peace.
Third, Medjugorje can also be called a movement of renewal, which permanently revive the spiritual life people. There is a great number of people who claim that they have had deep spiritual experiences like physical and spiritual healings, conversions, resuming of prayer and faith, impulses for fasting or liberation from addictions. One sign of these renewals, which is more than obvious, is the fact that people started to build prayer groups. There are numerous groups which were buildet by the pilgrims in their communities after their return from Medjugorje. It is a place where they meet, usually once or twice a week, for prayer and adoration, to pray the rosary, to read or to discuss the gospel and Christian life. And the fourth and last aspect: Medjugorje has become the symbol for a movement of humanitarian aid, which is unique. This became especially obvious when the Balkan war began and when it extended into Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was unbelievable, but millions of pilgrims, who had received spiritual gifts in Medjugorje, started now showing their gratitude by helping materially.They sent food, clothes, medicines and other goods, they helped with money and by sponsoring orphans and war victims. This executive summary shows what is meant when someone talks about Medjugorje as being a movement. It should also be mentioned that this movement has been filled with the messages, which the Virgin Mary has given to Marija Pavlovic from March 1, 1984 to January 8, 1987, every week, and since then on the 25th of each month. Of course the messages, which are given to the other visionaries are also a part of this. These messages of Medjugorje consist usually only of a few sentences and are initiations to make the five original basic messages more concrete: faith, conversion, prayer, fasting, and of course peace.
Archive for September, 2009
Spiritual movement
A man who walked 1400km to Medjugorje
The Croat Jožef Ratković lives in Austria and made something amazing. He decided to walk from Zürich to Medjugorje by foot to fulfill his solemn promise: to pray for healing of his wife because she suffers from multiple sclerosis. And so he walked in 42 days around 1,400 km. He said: “I do believe in God and I hope for his help. I also pray for peace with God and with people. For me, peace is when we reach out to another and great another. This is basic.”
The first thing he did after his arriving in Medjugorje was going to the church to thank God. He says that he is not a bit tired, in spite of his age of 69. “I was always practicing sport. With my bicycle, I crossed millions of kilometers. I have been all over Europe with my bicycle.”
He heard about Medjugorje for the first time something around 15 years ago, while he was still working. “When I was retired, I went on a pilgrimage to Spain, to Santiago de Compostela in 2002. I walked 82 days and crossed 2,500 km. Two years later, I walked to Mariazel, 1350 km in 43 days. And now – Medjugorje. I am a Croat, but never visited either Croatia, or Medjugorje.”
His ancestry moved from Gospić to Stikapron 300 years ago. He also lived the first years of his life in Stikapron (Steinbrunn) in Austria. He graduated in Mathematics in Vienna, and moved to Zürich, Switzerland, where he was working in the computer technology.
His family: two daughters, one son and seven grandchildren. He says that he always was religious “I`m a believer since my childhood, I love to meditate and to pray. Prayer is for me a dialogue with God who feeds the hungry and gives drink to the thirsty”. And he loves good communication with people. One very important thing in his family is tolerance, because his wife, his son and one of his daughters belong to other denominations. “We reach to one another, this is important. God is one, we only approach him differently”.
He says that young people often aspire to fun, and not to God. “They live without God, but when something goes wrong, they do aspire to Him”.
He described this pilgrimage to Medjugorje with following words: “Walking alone is so good for meditation. I aspire to answers to different questions: Why am I on earth? What are my intentions? What do I want? What do I have to do? When you live, you have to act. This is my life, and my life is important. This is my moment, and in this moment, I have to do what God want me to do. He wants me to work for peace with Him and with people and peace is possible if I accept other people as brothers and sisters. People that I meet – I consider them brothers and sisters, I cannot do differently. For me, it is important to know that God is here, all around me.”
Medjugorje became an important place for Jožef. “I pray for my wife’s health, and whatever happens will be the will of God. I want to tell Mother Mary that I am here and ask her what I have to do”. He will go back to Zürich by bicycle. He said:”It will take around two weeks, because I want to visit Gospić to investigate the origins of the Ratković family”.
He made many experiences as a pilgrim who walked many weeks in silence and he says: “We need to walk alone, to be alone, this is when ideas and visions come. It is different when we drive a car. In this ways, we have time to think. It is great to be alone, to have time. It is a little school of life.”
If you also want to make a special experience visit Medjugorje, stay at one of its beautiful Medjugorje and feel the magic.
Death doesn’t exist
Most of us are afraid when we think about our own death, or the death of those who are close to us.But we should remember what Virgin Mary Virgin Mary told us in Medjugorje : “Death does not exist”! It is more like a veil that falls or like the curtain of the temple in Jerusalem that was torn in the middle and revealing what was invisible hidden there, the Holy of Holies!
Imagine a picture that is maybe a kind of inadequate, as is any comparison to this: There are some windows with glass panes that allow us to see from inside what is happening outside, but at the same time they prevent people on the outside from seeing inside. But what if the glazier makes a mistake, and installs the panes in such a way that the people on the inside cannot see outside! And this is what is happening to us! On earth we are like the people who are inside and can not see what is going on outside, we don`t see those who see us! This is why the tragedy of unbelief exists, because there is only a small step between “not seeing” someone, and a totaly ingnorance of one`s existence. Virgin Mary tells us not only in Medjugorje “Dear children you are unaware.” Ivan, one of the visionaries visionaries, said to the crowed during his mission in Dublin, “If you could see the Gospa for only one second, all the things of this earth would immediately lose their attraction in your eyes.”
The saints got over this lack of clarity and lived like they could see the invisible. This allowed them to accept invisible realities without having fear of the day when the glass panes would break or the veil would fall. The Heavenly tribunal was already familiar to them, and they viewed the pass through the vale of death as a long awaited touch that would bring them forever into the association of the elect after their exile, they finally will be free.
The time on earth is a time of desire and hope; Heaven is possession for eternity. If we do not desire Heaven while we are on earth, then we are dying persons who can still be revived. If we focus our extent for desire on the material world, then we are terrified of the moment of our death, because we will lose all our false treasures. Being less allured to material things will certainly cause us to await the eternal life with joy. The visionary Marija has already been given some knowledge about this subject to us. Virgin Mary explained to her in a message that in Heaven each of the chosen ones knows exactly what other people have done for them, and how they have done it. By their prayers, sacrifices and offerings, they became a part in increasing the degree of their eternal glory. Sometimes, the chosen ones realize that the prayers for them were the reason that they were not lost! In Heaven, each one of us will be eternally grateful to each one of these people who prayed for us and kept thinking about us, and we will have a very special bond of love with them. This reality is incredible and encouraging, especially because we often do not see the fruits of our sacrifices and prayers for those we love while we are on the earth . Virgin Mary gives us the hope that can heal us of our demoralization! She can help us to invest in real values!
Visit Medjugorje, accommodate yourself in one of the beautiful hotels
hotels and feel the special atmosphere there and find the truth about death and heaven.
62 days walking to Medjugorje
Mrs. Katarina Bednarczyk Sieminska is 55 years old and she walked 62 days from Kazimierz Dolny near Lublin in Poland to Medjugorje . She made this pilgrimage with empty hands, only trusting in God’s Providence. She took only a cross, the breviary and a geographic map along. Her intention of this pilgrimage was for the peace in the world. She is married to an artist, has no children.
Her testimony about the pilgrimage:
I decided to walk to Medjugorje because I believe that the Mother and the Queen of Peace is appearing here. Of course, She is everywhere, but she is presenting herself in a special way in Medjugorje, where She wants to prepare the humanity for the encounter with Jesus, with God.
We are living in a very difficult time, and I think that the time has come for the reconciliation of the whole world. I have received this intention in prayer. We are all children, God`s children. The humanity is in pain, and we have to be conscious of it. We are all brothers and sisters and this is why I wasn`t carrying neither bread nor water. I consciously and intentionally wanted to depend on those I would encounter and their goodness. Sometimes they wanted me to take bread or water along, but I did not take anything. It is great to ask, to request and people are happy when they can give, when they can offer something to somebody. Then we can see them like members of our own family and God works through them.
Of course I was rejected sometimes, but this was also a very good experience. How many times did God knock at the door of our heart, and we refused Him. Sometimes we just have to knock several times until someone open his door. We can encounter Jesus in the homeless or the poor, and if we don`t recognize this, we are completely blind. All humans are members of our family, including the sick, including those who don`t have anything and including those who lost their mind. Sometimes it might happen that someone wants to steal something from us and we should allow even this. Let us not close our heart, open them and people will be less aggressive.
Sometimes we want to be better then the others, but God doesn`t want us to be better then the others, he just wants us all to be good. To be good doesn`t mean to be better then the others, good means that we don`t differentiate between us and others. We have to ask God for His help and we have to ask people for their help. Only God can open human hearts. We cannot change ourselves without His help, only God can give us the power to change ourselves, and this is why we have to pray for all of us.
I am not poor at home. My husband is a painter and he gave me money for this journey, but I left it in Poland. I didn`t want to take anything along. Once we, my husband, a friend of ours and myself walked together from Poland to Rome, but this time I felt that I have to go alone, exactly like God inspired me to do it: with empty hands, without any protection. We should all make the experience that He is always taking care of us. Here is an example: It was autumn when I started the walk to Medjugorje, wearing a raincoat, and during the first ten days, it was raining non-stop. When I decided to leave this completely wet and torn raincoat,the sun began to shine!Yes, it is really true, God can make it raining all around, except on the way where you are walking! This experience made me extremely happy and i felt stronger. I really feel sorry for all those who don`t believe in God. They think that they have to do everything by themselves, and this is why they cannot find peace.
I slept in parish houses. From Poland, I went through Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Bosnia. In Bosnia I went through a region inhabited by the Muslims. I talk to them and found out that they don`t know that God is a Father. This is what I told them: that we have a common Father and that they are our younger brothers, born several centuries after us. In a small town near Zenica I went to a mosque where I asked them to find an accommodation for me; they did it and they also gave me to eat. I told them that I was on my way to Medjugorje. When I left this town, many people there were greeting me and telling me to take this or that, but I went with empty hands. They were glad that I was going to Medjugorje to pray for peace, and they were telling me that they also want peace, peace and only peace.
Some years ago, I was walking to Czestochowa with 25 kg baggage on my back. At that time, I thought that I will need all that… After my walk to Medjugorje I understood how funny and a kind of stupid it was. Mary told me: if you want to follow my Son, you don`t need anything. He will take care of you. And it was true, he took care of me.
False Visionaries
Some people say that no one of the visionaries of Medjugorje has been particularly devout before the apparitions began. So how do we know they have not been simply falsifying these apparitions apparitions for their own personal gain?
When the Church started to examine the visionaries or the recipients of the reported apparition, they looked for evidence of the moral integrity of each visionary particularly from the beginning of apparitions onward. The Church doesn`t require a specific standard of holiness for the visionaries before the reported miraculous occurrence begins, but rather what level of Christian virtue and integrity does the individual visionaries exhibit during the period of reported apparitions as a potential result of the apparition itself.
The Church says there is a possibility that God could choose, in his numinous and mysterious ways, someone to receive a heavenly message who could be far from Christ or from the Church, to experience then a conversion as a result of the supernatural happening. But otherwise, how could we make provision for some of the apostles and disciples of Jesus himself, St. Mary Magdalene for example, whose former live was not in conformity with the Gospel, but the later conversion became an example of Christian discipleship for all times.
So considering that, we can say that a basic moral integrity, and not an exceptional standard of holiness, is what commission members of Church investigations look for in evaluating the main conditions for a possible recipient of heavenly visits or messages.
The six visionaries of Medjugorje, Ivanka Ivankovic, Mirjana Dragicevic, Vicka Ivankovic, Ivan Dragicevic, Marija Pavlovic and Jakov Colo, have been under a public microscope for most of their youth and adult lives. They have been interviewed by a countless number of people,bishops, priests, religious, theologians,scientists and laity. The stunning identicalness of public opinion for those who have had direct contact with these six people is a profound respect for their manifest integrity, truthfulness, and the down-to-earth approach to the Christian life and to their experience as visionaries. Theologians who have interviewed all visionaries have similarly concluded to the same obvious presence of moral integrity and personal authenticity .
Considerable personal sacrifice rather than personal gain has been the foremost experience of these six visionaries, often at the painful prices of personal privacy and hardship. What was waiting for them after the apparitions have begun? Daily talks to pilgrims, prayer groups, and healing prayer sessions have become the benchmark of life for most of the Medjugorje seers for the last 27 years.
Since the apparitions have begun, the visionary Vicka has suffered an inoperable brain cyst, serious spinal pain, and a series of similar physical and spiritual penances, which she joyously chooses to offer for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of souls. It sounds unbelievable but numerous reports of spiritual and physical healings have become a result of Vicka’s praying over pilgrims. She does this praying only with the expressed permission of the parish priests. And although extraordenary Christian holiness is not a requirement for being a true visionary, but Vicka seems to personify both roles with an inspiring and contagious Christian joy.
Two medical and scientifical teams, one from Milan and the other from the French University of Montpellier, have scientifically probed the visionaries during the time of the first apparitions. Each of them has independently validated the legitimacy of their state of ecstasy as being in some form of true and real communication out of their ordinary time-space experience . These scientific studies also exclude any possibility of collective hallucination and any form of mere human deceit of falsification.
So it is a true story, with true visionaries. Visit Medjugorje and experience this true miracle.Medjugorje offers an amazing atmosphere, especially during the summer month, and you can stay at very comfortable Medjugorje hotels .
Mysterious Medjugorje
It is amazing that the ongoing events around the Marian apparitions in Medjugorje , a place of pilgrimage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, last until now. Medjugorje became well known all over the world.
On Midsummer Day of 1981 six children saw a floating woman on a hill in the small, at that time Yugoslavian village. The woman was pointing to a newborn baby, she wore in her arm. Out of fear the children ran away.
The next day, the 25th of June, the woman appeared again at the same place, this time alone, and this time the children ran to her and they started a conversation with her. This conversation has not ended until today. This woman is Virgin Mary and she still appeares to the six people and talks to them.
She was wearing a light gray dress with a white veil and they told that she had blue eyes and was surrounded by a wreath of twelve stars.
One day later Mother Mary appeared again, but only to one of the girls and she said the words: “Mir, mir, mir – peace, peace, peace…”
This is still the marrow of all her messages, which should be suppressed by tanks ten years later.
The mountain was barricaded and the church was closed. Exactly ten years later, on 26 June 1991, Yugoslavia the war broke out.
When the war captured one place of Yugoslavia after another and devastated all of them, only this small place Medjugorje was in a strange way completely spared of all atrocities. Not even a bullet has been fired.
Meanwhile, countless reports about all these curiosities went through numerous countries all over the world.
Mysterious photos
Beside these apparitions a lot of other miracles and mysterious phenomena happen in Medjugorje.
One example: It happend a few times that someone in Medjugorje or in other places in the world has made a picture and instead of the original motive there was an entirely different picture, namely the Virgin Mary. Of course, it is surely possible to fake a photograph, but this happend to people who didn`t know each other.They are from totaly different countries but the motive on the picture was always the same.
After a while the motiv changed. It was always Virgin Mary, but sometimes it was just her and sometimes you could see her holding Jesus.
A picture which was made in Medjugorje didn`t show the original motiv after the development. Instead of the original motiv something entirely different was shown: in this case the image of Mary with the child Jesus.
Sun miracle
Priest Slavko reported that he saw a mysterious celestial sign in the sky, but it didn`t seem to be something good. That was at the beginning of August in 1981: “About 150 people were on the mountain of appearances (Apparition Hill), and many of them have told and testified that they all have seen the same, and some of them have been scared about that.
And finally, in Medjugorje and in all other places where Mary has appeared, people are talking about miraculous recoveries and miracle cures.
Medical examinations of the Visionaries
Even the young viewers had to undergo medical examinations during the apparitions of Mother Mary. It was in 1984 when medical scientists put them electrodes on their body to observe their brain waves, their ears, their eyes and their larynx during an apparition.
The result was that the ecstasy brought forth an elimination of sensual perceptions of the external world. A noise of 90 decibels for example wasn`t realised by Ivan. The Visionaries also don`t feel no pressure, no tricks, no pinching or otherwise during an apparition.
It is also veryfascinating to note that at the moment when Virgin Mary appears, the brain activity of every single Visionary jumps to 100% and stays at this level until Our Lady leaves while most of people are able to use around 15% of their brain during normal activities.
If Medjugorje arouses interest in you now, visit this small town . You will find helpful information about accommodations, a map, messages of Virgin Mary, everything about the Visionaries, videos, pictures, etc.
Visionary Jakov about the messages
The youngest visionary Jakov, is going to tell us some important things about our Lady’s apparitions and answer some questions many people asked like “what is the most important reason why Our Lady is calling us to listen to her messages? The apparitions last already nearly 25 years and many people visited Medjugorje since the apparitions have begun, and many of them ask themselves, “why are these apparitions lasting so long?” and “why Our Lady has been giving us so many messages?”
Jakov always says to everybody, instead of asking why, we should say thank you. Thank God because he let Our Lady to be here for 25 years.
Why these apparitions are lasting such a long period of time? Why Our Lady has been coming to Medjugorje ? What does she want?
If we open up our hearts, we will be able to find the right answers by ourselves. Our Lady is coming to us because she is Our Mother Mary and we are her children. She loves us and she wants us to live in peace, joy and love we can only find in Jesus Christ. That is why Our Lady is giving us her messages. What are Our Lady’s messages about? These messages are the way to show us how to reach Jesus and how to get to Jesus. Our Lady is trying to show us this way 25 years.
She wants us to pray, to convert, and to fast so we can live a satisfied and peaceful life. We just have to open up our hearts and to surrender our lives into her hands, like she said in one of her messages “Dear Children, just open your hearts and I will do the rest…”.
Our Lady says in all Medjugorje messages “pray, pray, pray the holy rosary”. She also says that we should renew the prayer of the rosary and pray it with all our heart to feel the joy and peace of the prayer. Our Lady says turn the prayer into the joy. We shouldn’t pray if we only do it because we think that someone is expecting from us to do it. Pray only if you feel the need in your heart to do it. Pray if YOU really want to it. Our Lady wants to help us to come to the point where we realize that t is for our own good to pray. She also says that all questions will be answered by prayers.
Many people ask, how to pray fro the bottom of the heart? The answer to this question is very siple: praying from the heart is a natural gift God has given to everyone of us, but numerous people ignore this gift and forget about it. These people have to seek for that gift and God will let us find it again.
Our Lady also says that we should pray together with our families. Find time for God in your family every day. If God is within your family, you will have peace in our family and you will have love in your family. And of course we should be a role model for our children. Fr Slavko always used to say, if you give your children the roots of faith from the beginning, they will always return to the faith, even if they decide to remove themselves from God one day. A little bit of faith you have given to them will stay forever in their hearts.
Just follow your heart, listen to the messages of Virgin Mary and pray for peace for yourself, your beloved ones and for the world and we will all live in a better world.
And don’t miss the amazing atmosphere in Medjugorje. Visiting this small town is really a great experience. Stay at one of numerous Medjugorje hotels and have a great time.
