Medjugorje

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bleeding and crying statues, pictures and icons make headlines every year. Like the place of pilgrimage Medjugorje (Bosnia and Herzegovina)does, where a sculpture of the risen Christ seems to shed tears.

Medjugorje – depending on the route, two till four car hours of the Adriatic coast and only some kilometers from Mostar away- is perhaps the most famous catholic place of pilgrimage worldwide. The holy Virgin Maria appeared for the first time in the summer 1981 to six young people, the Visionaries .She gave them messages about devotions, confession and fast. The especialness of Medjugorje is: In contrast to places of pilgrimage where Virgin Mary appeared like Lourdes (France) and Fatima (Portugal), the apparitions in Medjugorje last until today. Three of the six Visionaries say that Virgin Mary still appeared to them daily. The other three Visionaries have apparitions once a year, always on the same date.

But this is not the only miracle: further miracles happen in Medjugorje.

The almost six meter large bronze sculpture, named “Risen Christ” of the Slovenian artist Andrej Ajdiae is located in Medjugorje since 1998. And then suddenly it began “to cry”.
More precisely said: An Italian pilgrim had noted that “tears” seeped out of the right leg, beneath the knee, small drops of a clear fluid – so if we keep it in perspective it can`t be a speech about “tears”, especially because this occurrence happens extremely leisurely and one drop is formed approximately only each minute.

In the course of the following day the “risen Christ” was steadly beset with pilgrims and inquisitive people, who wiped that drops of this Jesus statue with the fingers, cloths or also with its rosaries. The people believed that a new miracle happened in Medjugorje .
It is imperative to mention that only least of them agree with the religious belief and interpretation of the older Dragica Stojiae, who said: “God, I know that your tears flow because of our sins.”

The “father” of the bronze sculpture, Andrej Ajdiae, was faced with the supposed miracle of the Croatian daily newspaper “Vecernji list” and reacted apparently rather indignant, because the reporter noticed at the end of its article: “He (Ajdiae) was in a snit because of our incorporated question, whether he had fit a small water pump into the interior of the bronze statue.”

Rightly – how could someone impute a journalistic idea of deception to the dignified goldsmith Andrej Ajdiae. Because the allegation of a deception is in this case just misleading like the acceptance of a divine sign.
Gerhard Hubmer, who is working for VAI (Voest Alpine industry plant building) as a process model developer, mediated the contact to its colleague Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Dieter Paesold, specialty more responsible expert in the specialist division research and development in the “voestalpine steel Linz”.
And he commendably started his work at this case: the analysis didn`t yield where the emerging fluid is coming from, because it was too little substance therein and therefor this did not allow an unambiguous statement.
In the green blue and gray brown coverings around the exit point at the knee of the statue are corrosion products of the metals bronze, copper and tin – what lets us suggest, that the fluid is normal rain water.
But a mystery still remained: according to these analysis of the metal expert, this strong grey coatings could contain “additionally water ingredients such as chalk, plaster, magnesium sulphate etc., which is heavy soluble after evaporating of the water. But if this fluid is realy rain water, the existance of such salts of alkali or alkali-earts metals(Ca, Mg), can`t be explained.”
And a demand at the artist Andrej Ajdiae yielded that he filled out the entire sculpture with concrete.
So what else could it be if this is not one more
miracle in Medjugorje!

Jacques Bousquet, living in France,visited Medjugorje 57 times. The first time he came to Medjugorje was when the apparations began and the name of Madjugorje couldn`t be found on any map. He remembers how close the pilgrims have been to the Franciscans and the visionaries at those time. They could be so close to them during the apparations. He also remembers Fr.Slavko Barbaric who was able to transmit the spirit of Medjugorje to all pilgrims. And he also remembers how all this experiences gave him the certitude that Our Lady is really there, in Medjugorje.

When Bosnia-Hercegovina was at war Jacque Bousquet asked the Franciscans in Medjugorje what he could do to help in this difficult situation. Fr.Ivan Landeka asked him for shoes.Shoes for all the refugees.
So Mr. Bousquet and his wife bring the humanitarian association ” Le defi” into being. This association was improvising convoys and bringing shoes to Medjugorje once a month.He sent altogether more than 20.000 pairs of shoes and he`s still happy that he was able to help and to do something good.

The name Medjugorje means (area between two mountains.)
Medjugorje is one of the villages of the Herzegovina municipality of Citluk or you can say of historic Brotnjo.The territory of Medjugorje has a mild Mediterranean climate and spreads out at the altitude of 150 meters above sea level.

The parish of Medjugorje was founded in 1892 and also placed under the protection of St. James, patron of pilgrims. Five years later, the old parish church of St. James in Medjugorje was
completed.The church was completed and blessed on 19.1.1969. So there was a beatifull church which attracted no attention, not even from the people of the nearest surroundings. The story of Medjugorje started in the summer of 1981.

It has become well known all over the world, because of six young people who claim to have seen visions of our Lady.

Beginning on June 24, 1981, the Madonna appeared to, and later told the visionaries God sent her with messages for the world to help us convert our hearts and lives back to Him.
Our Lady’s mission is one of love,peace and faith.
She told them that these years she is spending with us are a time of Grace granted by God.

Her words has been:”I have come to tell the world that God exists. He is the fullness of life, and to enjoy this fullness and peace, you must return to God”.

Our Lady continues to give messages to the six visionaries: Ivan, Jakov, Mirjana, Marija,Vicka, and Ivanka.
Here is a part of some messages our Madonna gave us:

“Do not allow satan to gain control of your hearts, so you would be an image of satan and not of me.” (January 30, 1986)

“You are ready to commit sin, and to put yourselves in the hands of satan without reflecting.” (May 25, 1987)

“Dear children, this is the reason for my presence among you for such a long time: to lead you on the path of Jesus. I want to save you and, through you, to save the whole world. Many people now live without faith; some don’t even want to hear about Jesus, but they still want peace and satisfaction! Children, here is the reason why I need your prayer: prayer is the only way to save the human race.” (July 30, 1987)

“Children, darkness reigns over the whole world. People are attracted by many things and they forget about the more important.”

“Light won’t reign in the world until people accept Jesus, until they live His words, which is the Word of the Gospel.”
Since 1981,when the apparitions began, 25 millions of people of all faiths, from all over the world, have visited Medjugorje. Many come back home with stories of miracles in the form of healings (of mind, body and soul), supernatural visual events, and deep conversions back to God. You can get more informations about the location and pictures of Medjugorje on Medjugorje Map

Video about Medjugorje