Open Your Hearts to MARY Queen of Peace

The Message of Medjugorje

The Messages

These apparitions started on 24th June 1981 and are continuing every day. At the beginning, Our Lady presented herself saying : "I am the Queen of Peace"; and the first message that she sent to the world is one of peace. This message is the essential one around which all else revolves. The context of the message is this : The world with all its present tensions is going towards its ruin. If it wants to be saved, it must have peace, but it will only have peace if it finds God ; those who find God find a joy in their hearts from which comes peace.

Here is the second message which has been repeated to us a thousand times :"Be converted, be converted, be converted." Then come the messages of prayer and fasting. Our Lady says :"There are many Christians who no longer believe because they do not pray. So start with at least seven Our Father's, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's and the Creed every day. Fast on Fridays on bread and water. Fasting cannot be substituted by prayer and almsgiving ; only the sick can substitute it by prayer and almsgiving." Then she stressed the need for monthly confession for a full participation in the Holy Eucharist. Once she spoke of the Holy Eucharist saying :"Those Christians who go to church without preparation, without receiving Holy Communion, without giving thanks, it is better that they do not go because their hearts become hard." She said to Jelena, one of the visionaries :"When you go to church, start preparing for Mass as soon as you leave home and never leave the church without thanking God."

So the messages are these : PEACE, PRAYER, FASTING, THE SACRAMENTS AND AN URGENT CONVERSION.

The Ten Secrets

All the visionaries say they have seen Heaven and Purgatory, four of them have seen Hell and two girls prayed Our Lady not to let them see it because they were afraid. These visionaries say that, from the very beginning, Our Lady told them she would confide ten secrets to them for the whole of humanity : up to now (1984), eight secrets have already been confided to Vicka, ten to Mirjana, and nine to the others. (As at 31/1/03 - Ten secrets have been confided to Mirjana, Ivanka and to Jacov, and nine to the rest). I that you know the names of all the children who have the visions : Vicka Ivankovic, Ivanka Ivankovic, Jacov Colo, Ivan Dragicevic, Mirjana Dragicevic and Marija Pavlovic

These visionaries say that the ten secrets refer to the whole world and are linked together in a chain. There are also other secrets, personal secrets for the children or for certain people who are connected with these future world events. Among the ten secrets there is the promise of Our Lady to leave a visible sign on the site of the apparitions here in Medjugorje. The visionaries say they have seen this sign in a vision. It is very beautiful, permanent and indestructable. It will be given here in Medjugorje for all humanity and many miracles will be connected with it. Five of the children know the date on which the sign will occur : all of them stress that this period until the appearance of the visible sign, is a period of grace and for the strengthening of faith.

Mirjana tells us something more about the secrets and the future of the world. As from Christmas 1982, Mirjana no longer has daily apparitions, on that date she received the last of the ten secrets for humanity and the dates of all the secrets to come. On that day Our Lady said :" Now turn to God by faith as everybody else. I will appear for your birthday and when there are difficulties in your life." After this, Our Lady has appeared twice on her birthday on 18th March 1983 and 1984. (Since 1984 Our Lady has appeared each 18th March, and also Mirjana now sees Our Lady on the 2nd of each month, where she prays for unbelievers)

Mirjana says that before the visible sign appears, three secrets will be revealed to the world. These three secrets will be three admonishments to the world and will be revealed by her three days before they are to occur. She will tell a priest what should happen. After the three admonishments, the visible sign will appear and after the sign, if the world is not converted, the punishment will come. Mirjana says that the punishment will surely come because it is no use expecting the conversion of the whole world, but it can be diminished. She tell us that the seventh secret has already been cancelled. This was an evil one, which was coming to the world for its sins, but it has been cancelled because many people have fasted and prayed. From this we can see that punishment can be diminished by penance, fasting and prayer. This is why Our Lady always urges us :"Pray, fast and be converted."

I asked Mirjana if there is a long or rather short time before these things come to pass and she replied that, for her, it is a short time. What is meant by short I do not know ; does it mean months, years or decades ? I do not know. However, she said "This period is short." Then I asked her another question, "What do you want to tell the world of today ?" She replied,"Be converted as quickly as possible and open your hearts to God."

The Century of Satan.

Mirjana had a particular vision on 14th April 1982. While she was waiting for Our Lady to appear, Satan arrived disguised as Our Lady. She writes,"He was ugly, horribly ugly. You cannot even imagine how ugly, he almost killed me with his gaze, I almost fainted. He then told me,'You must leave God and Our Lady because they will make you suffer, come with me and I will make you happy in love and life.' My heart echoed -No, no, no! Then Satan went away and Our Lady came and she said to me :"I am sorry for this, but you must know that Satan exists and has asked God to allow him to test the Church for a certain period with the intention of destroying Her. God allowed him to have one century, saying ,'You will not destroy Her.' This century in which we are living is under Satan's power. When the secrets I have confided to you come about, his power will be destroyed. Satan has become aggresive because he is losing his power. He is breaking up marriages, causing quarrels amongst priests, obsessing people, even killing them. Therefore, protect yourselves by prayer, fasting and, above all, community prayer. Renew the use of holy water, wear blessed and holy objects and put them in your homes."

There have been foreign experts here in Medjugorje who say that this vision is the same as that which Pope Leo XIII had a century ago when he saw the Church attacked by demons in an apocalyptic vision. Afterwards, he introduced the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel to be recited by the priest after Mass which was said until the recent Vatican Council.

(The) Other five visionaries continue to have daily apparitions. The apparitions are now fairly brief, about one minute. Our Lady does not give many answers, but urges us continuously to pray, to do penance and to live the Gospel. The details about these five visionaries during the last year are the following. As from 7th January, 1983 Our Lady has been telling the children some episodes of her life. She has been telling Vicka the story of her life every evening and all this will be published when Our Lady says so. Since mid-July, 1983 Our Lady has been telling the future of the world to Ivanka. All this has to be written down by the visionary and afterwards, to be published when Our Lady tells her.

The last most powerful messages were given in the Autumn. In September, through Jacov, Our Lady said : "I have already several times that peace in the world is in danger : have brotherly love for each other, increase your prayers and fasting so that you may be saved." Jacov said that everyone must be told this. Then, on 30th November, 1983 Our Lady told Marija to tell the priest : "You must advise the Bishop and the Pope at once of the urgency and great importance of this message for the whole of humanity."

The Second type of Apparitions.

Other details of the last months are connected with the intention of Our Lady to guide the Parish on the way to its consecration to God. I will talk about this later, as it is connected with the other phenomenon. In addition to the six young people who have the apparitions in the strict sense of the word, there are two young girls, 11 and 12 years old, who see Our Lady with their heart. They see her in a different way and cannot touch her as the other six do. Their names are Jelena Vasilj and Marijana Vasilj. Jelena started this experience on 15th December 1982 : Marijana, together with another young girl, saw Our Lady on Good Friday 1983. Our Lady told Jelena that if the two of them continued with prayer and fasting they would receive the gift of locutio interna, that they would hear her voice. Marijana persevered and received the gift of locutio interna on 5th October 1983 for her birthday. This phenomenon is, at the same time, divergent from and convergent with the other phenomenon. That is to say that the separate accounts of everything that Our Lady has told the six children confirm one another. They do not know the secrets, however, and Our Lady told Jelena at the beginning : "I do not intend to reveal the secrets through you, but rather to guide you on the path to consecration to God." In this young girl we can, in fact, see very strong spiritual dynamics with many spiritual experiences.

Be Converted

Through Jelena, Our Lady sent a message to the world on 25th April 1983 : "Tell my sons and daughters that my heart is burning for them. I ask only for conversion, only conversion." I asked if I should tell this to the Pope and Our Lady replied : "To all as quickly as possible." She continued : "The word I tell the world is 'be converted'. I will pray to my Son not to punish the world, but you must be converted. You do not know, you will not know and cannot know what God will send the world; you must be converted. Renounce everything and be ready for everything. That is all I wish to tell the world; be converted."

This message was given in an atmosphere of a thousand questions from the clergy, the Bishop and priests who were saying; who knows if she has appeared, how she appeared, why she has appeared at Medjugorje, why not in another parish; why, why, why ? Then Our Lady said : "The word I want to tell the world is; be converted."

The Prayer Group

As from the second anniversary of the apparitions here at Medjugorje, 24th June, 1983, Our Lady through Jelena, is guiding a prayer group. Our Lady said : "I wish to have a prayer group. Everyone can participate, but I commend it particularly to young people because they are freer from engagements and, in a special way, to those young people who wish to lead a consecrated life."

Now the group is a closed one. Our Lady said : "I will tell you when other groups can be formed." She asks the following essential resolutions of the group : a total abandonment to God, to renounce all fear, because she said : "When you have abandoned yourselves to God, there is no more fear in your hearts." At least three hours prayer every day ; at least half an hour in the morning and evening. She recommended daily Mass. Then, twice a week, fasting on bread and water; for the past five months she has asked the group for three consecutive days of fasting for special needs of the Church

She stressed, especially, the need for the group to love its enemies, not to slander, not to bear ill feeling towards anybody, but only to love and bless. She has asked the group to follow her for four years and during this period not to choose a vocation, not to enter a convent or to marry. I asked, "Why not even go into a convent ?". She replied : "You are all free, you can become part of the group or not, but I am putting these conditions to the group and I tell all Christians that the most important thing is to enter into the depth of prayer and then you will able to make the right choice." Last year, through Jelena, Our Lady expressed the wish several times that the world be consecrated to the Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate Heart. In the Autumn she emphasised this and dictated two prayers of consecration to the Sacred Hearts.

In the last week of Advent, Our Lady said : "Start invoking the Holy Spirit every day in church." Later on she recommended that the invocation to the Holy Spirit be made, not only in church, also in the family and said : "Every morning say at least five Our Father's, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's in expiation of the wounds of Our Lord and a sixth Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be for the intentions of the Pope. Recite the 'Angelus', make the consecration to the Sacred Hearts and invoke the Holy Spirit. Do at least this much every morning."

The subject of prayer to the Holy Spirit is greatly stressed by Our Lady. Once she said : "Many people pray in the wrong way, they ask for graces, but few ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit. But it is those who receive the gift of the Holy Spirit who have received everything. First of all, ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit."

Our Lady is Guiding the Parish

At the beginning of 1984, through Jelena, Our Lady expressed the wish that the parishoners meet one evening each week and it was decided to do so each Thursday evening in order to be guided by Our Lady. Our first meeting took place on 1st March and, on that occasion, Our Lady gave the first message to the Parish through Marija :"Dear children, I have chosen this Parish in a special way because I want to guide you and protect you by love. Thank you for coming. May more of you come each time and stay close to my Son and I. I will give you a message each Thursday." She has continued in this way each Thursday to give us a message.

I will only give you a brief summary of Our Lady's messages. Once she expressed the desire that all the parishoners be truly converted so that this community could become a source of conversion for all those who come here. She stressed the importance of the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Veneration of Our Lord's Wounds, especially His Side Wound. Once she said : "Stop talking, but pray for the unity of the Parish because my Son and I have a special plan connected with it."

Last Thursday, Holy Thursday, she said : "Share in my feelings ; pray, pray, pray." On 1st March, through Jelena, at the first meeting of the Parish, she gave this message : "Every Thursday, re-read and put into practice the passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew VI, 24-34: a man cannot be the slave of two masters ! Do not be worried : look at the birds of the air, make it your first care to find the Kingdom of God ..." Later on you will realise that this passage of the Gospel has not been chosen by Our Lady at random but because it reflects the meaning of peace as spoken of by her. That same evening she said to Jelena : "Every Thursday, those who smoke should give it up at least on that day, those who drink alcohol give that up and others can give up some other pleasure and, if there are some generous people amongst you, they can also fast."

On 21st March she said to Jelena : "Today I am rejoicing with all my angels. The first part of my programme has been accomplished." Then she paused and wept saying : "I do not know what to say. There are many people who live in sin ! here amongst you, too, there are some people who are piercing my heart. Pray and fast for them."

The following day, 22nd March, she said to Jelena : "Yesterday I told you that the first part of my programme has already been accomplished ; now turn to the second part by fasting and prayer so that this part, too, may be accomplished."

The Messages for Holy Week

A special message during Lent was given for Holy Saturday. Our Lady said : "Prepare yourselves in a special way for Holy Saturday. Do not ask me why for Saturday, but I repeat to you ; prepare yourselves for Holy Saturday."

Now I will tell you what Our Lady said yesterday evening. I will try to translate it. Before I tell you what Our Lady said yesterday, on Good Friday she said : "You must be very happy. Today Jesus died for your salvation. He descended into Hell, opened the doors of Paradise and opened the door of Paradise in your hearts ; so you must be happy." I was surprised that Our Lady was not weeping and calling us to penance but actually on Good Friday said : "You must be very happy."

Yesterday evening Jelena and Marijana had a proper meditation. I will try to give you an approximate translation of the contents of the message. Jelena said this : Our Lady said : "Lift up your hands, long for Jesus because at this time of His Resurrection He wishes to give you graces. I am telling everyone to be enthusiastic about the Resurrection of Jesus. Meditate, meditate on this. Heaven and Earth are praising Him because He is risen." Then, after a silence, she said : "All of us in Heaven are happy but we need joy in your hearts. My gift and that of my Son Jesus which we are offering to you now is this : your ordeals will be lightened. We will be close to you in your difficulties and will show you the way out of them if you accept Us." I am doing my best to translate this for you ; to continue : "Now in moments of trial you will be especially helped and the trials made easier for you." Then she added : "Pray a great deal, pray tomorrow." - that is, today - : "that Jesus is truly risen, so that He may be truly risen in your families. There is much quarrelling and I want to transform it into resurrection and peace. I want something to be born in your hearts. Do not say that the year of Redemption is over and you do not need to pray but rather strengthen your prayer. May the year of Redemption be only a stepping stone in your lives."

Jelena has seen the Risen Jesus and a brilliant light shining from His wounds. Jesus blesses everyone, telling them to continuously experience the graces and joys in their hearts and to tell everyone in the world that salvation comes from Him and Him alone. At the end Our Lady said : "My Children, thank you ! Continue reawaking the Resurrection of Jesus in all men." Marijana then added that Our Lady also said : "Dear Children, today I am joyful because many of the faithful have truly lived Holy Saturday as I desired."

These are the latest items of news and the latest messages.

Some Essential Points.

I have only told you something about how Our Lady is guiding the prayer group and the contants of the messages. It would be possible to write a whole book on how she is guiding Jelena and Marijana but, unfortunately, we have not been able to do this yet. However, I will give you a few essential points so that you can follow them.

First of all, I want to tell you that Our Lady is guiding the prayer group on an interior level. It is useless for people wanting to organise prayer groups to come to us for guidelines because Our Lady does not speak of guidelines here, but guides in an interior way. We can offer the group leaders our experiences along the pilgrimage with Our Lady, but I say at once to those who wish to organise prayer groups : consecrate yourselves totally to Our Lady and I guarantee that she will be in your midst and will guide you in an interior way. Two weeks ago, a woman from Milan asked Our Lady through Jelena, "Dear Mother, as you see we have come from Milan to visit you, when are you coming to Milan to visit us ?" Our Lady replied : "When you open your hearts to me." This is the answer to all those who are seeking Our Lady and wish to follow this road. Our Lady is truly present wherever there is true opening of heart and guides every group and person. This is why it is useless to ask for guidelines because, as I have seen with this prayer group, Our Lady has a definite purpose.

False Prophecies and True Prophecies.

I have to explain several things to you so that you are able to walk truly on the path of spiritual life. Some people come here and, immediately, when they hear that these apparitions will be the last ones of Our Lady on earth and hear about the secrets, they become frightened and start saying that soon there will be a catastrophe, soon there will be a war, soon troubles will come. As to this Our Lady said :"Those who say that on such a date, in such a year, there will be a catastrophe are all false prophets. I have always said : be converted, be converted, be converted. Your future depends on your conversion." It is from this that we are able to see the difference between true and false prophecies. That is, false prophecies are always fatalistic, whilst Biblical prophecies are always conditional - "If Nineveh had converted, it would not have been destroyed." As you see, it depends on us and, for this reason, Our Lady always stresses the messages of peace, prayer and fasting.

Peace is a Positive, Inner Attitude.

Through Jelena, Our Lady said : "Love is peace, peace is love." When we speak of peace here you must understand it as a deeper spiritual reality, an attitude, a profound gift from which all others originate. Jelena explains this attitude of peace saying, "Our Lady does not like speaking of sin but, when she has to do so, she seems to be weeping because from the very beginning of her life she has always lived a pure life without sin." This is why Our Lady says : "Do not think of wars, punishment, evil, because if you do so you are on the road towards them. Your task is to accept the Divine peace, to live it and to spread it." From this we can see what is meant by peace : it is a totally positive attitude. Now you can understand that the passage of the Gospel of St. Matthew VI, 24-34, when Our Lady calls for total abandonment at every level, because in this way you can arrive at the true peace she desires. When Our Lady says : "Be converted." you must take a step forward. The majority of people who come here for the first time remain on a superficial level, on an earthly level, asking for healing, solving of marital problems, for their children, for the solution to various problems, but always on an earthly level. Divine peace cannot be found on this level because on this level everything collapses and if we only live on this level we are still in the condition of bearing our fears in our heart. This is why there are fears for the future and fanatical Christians who frighten others saying that Our Lady is menacing and so on. To solve this problem we must look realistically at our lives and at the true Christian life.

Fear does not exist for the Christian.

I know for sure that soon I will undergo a catastrophe : in a few month's time, in a few years, in hospital, at home, on the road or by an atom bomb, the effect is the same for me : I will die. This is my catastrophe. The only catastrophe of my earthly life. I believe that you, too, are certain of undergoing this catastrophe. If we shut our eyes and pretend death does not exist for us, we are deceiving ourselves and we will try to protect ourselves, to save ourselves from this catastrophe. Instead, we Christians will not undergo a catastrophe because, for us, life consists primarily in eternal life. This life is only a transition. I say this in a very special way after the experiences I have had here because, in a certain sense, through the visionaries, we have been able to touch Heaven, Paradise, because they have all seen Paradise. Three of them have had the experience of being taken up to Heaven. If we truly accept eternal life, a catastrophe does not exist for us any longer. This life is only a transition. We must truly accept this essentially Christian fact and then all fear will vanish, there will be no more fear of the future and we will be capable of accepting Divine peace, of living it and spreading it as Our Lady tells us. Otherwise, we cannot be true messengers when we speak of peace and the apparitions of Medjugorje. We will talk of punishment, troubles, secrets and we will spread fear. Our Lady has repeated several times : "Your task is to receive Divine peace, to live it and to spread it."

It is Necessary to Open Your Hearts in order to Obtain Graces

I must explain something else to those who come here to ask for the grace of healing and so on. Our Lady always replied to everyone : "The most important thing is to believe, to have faith, to pray every day for the same intention, to fast on Fridays on bread and water. For the gravely sick, pray more and fast more." When Our Lady says that the priority is to have faith, this does not only mean to believe that God exists. The faith of which Our Lady speaks here is an opening of one's whole self to God, in a total abandonment to Him. We can be helped to understand this if we read the episode in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 4 - where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman. They started to talk about water and Jesus entered into her heart and found evil there because she had been married six times, she was an adultress. An opening of heart had come about. Jesus wants to walk with us, so all of you, if you have a special intention you must set out on the path of faith. Perhaps you will not obtain it in five days, maybe five months will be necessary. Some intentions will be granted already today, but it is necessary to set out. With regard to advice that you often ask for here, I would say this : start out in faith with your priests and group leaders. Later, along the way, Jesus will draw near and will make it clear to us, deep down, what we have to do.

Do not Complicate Life. Let Yourselves be Guided by God

I believe that the most important messages for our spiritual life have been given in the last months. The essential one given by Our Lady is this : "If you want to be very happy, live a simple, humble life, pray a great deal, do not delve into your problems, but let yourselves be guided by God." I have meditated for many days on this message and I see it as fundamental, because our problems are the result of a really complicated life, which we have complicated with various philosophies and so on. Our Lady, on the contrary, leads us to a sincere and simple life. Several times during this period she has repeated to me, through the visionary : "Do not complicate matters. Yes, you can walk on a deeper spiritual way but you will have difficulties. Take the simple way, do not delve into your problems but let yourselves be guided by Jesus Christ." I understand this now and realise that those people who want to go deeply into their problems, aggravate matters and block Jesus and His work for us. On the other hand, putting ourselves in the hands of God with simplicity means leaving room for Him Who is Master of our life and of all the mysteries.

I see a great sin in the world in this : we have taken over many areas of our lives that should only belong to Jesus Christ

The Importance of Prayer.

About the method of prayer, Our Lady said this : "The fundamental point about prayer is to have a great desire for God and for the salvation of souls. Let yourselves be carried along by these desires, of thanking God, really longing for God, and for the salvation of man. If you possess these desires then you will pray and find time for prayer." Our Lady always says that the basis of prayer, like a fruit from which everything comes, is to reach an inner peace, a total abandonment to God. It is from this peace that Divine Gifts derive. But if you are agitated then you cannot understand the Will of God. Several times she has said : "Every agitation comes from Satan."

How to Reach Depth in Prayer.

Lastly, I want to tell you to set out on the pilgrimage of the messages. During this time, I have understood that the entire spiritual life consists in deep prayer. To enter spiritual life in depth means to enter prayer in depth. Depth of prayer is reached by praying, fasting and loving. I have seen that Our Lady has stressed these three elements during this period. You must pray not only with your lips but with your heart. Fast, love your enemies, love those who are suffering, love your neighbours, love everyone. It is by these means that it is possible to reach depth in prayer and reach a spiritual life. I repeat once more : set out on the path of the messages and of prayer. Never say that you have not time to pray. If you say this, it is as if you say you have no time for God, God is of no use to me, God cannot help me, I can live without God. All this means having no time for God. From my own experience I tell you to try to pray morning and evening. Those who wish to go ahead in their spiritual life must pray not less than half an hour each morning and evening. At least half an hour each morning and evening so that we can feel one with God. You will then see how the spiritual life within you reawakens and continually increases.

On Good Friday, Our Lady, through Jelena, said : "I will give you a spiritual secret so that you can be protected from sin and always be united with God." She said this : "Create an active conscience for yourselves. Pray in the morning and read a passage from the Gospel. Impress it on your mind and in your heart and carry it within you through the day. In moments of crisis, meditate on it again and pray to God to strengthen that Word within you." I now understand that this is fundamental for faith. Several times, Our Lady has told us "If your faith is strong Satan cannot harm you." Let us not forget, that to be strong in faith means to have this really active conscience, means growing, being full of the Word of God in an active sense : so it is that a person lives his faith.

Well, I do not want to tire you as our talk has already lasted for an hour. I only wanted to say that this evening at 6.15pm we begin the Rosary and at 7.00 pm Mass. Before Mass, the visionaries will recite seven Our Father's, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's and the Creed and invoke the Holy Spirit. After Mass there will be prayers for the sick. During the apparitions only priests, people in charge and special cases will be allowed in the chapel. By special cases we mean the sick, like that boy in the wheelchair. Let them be present as they feel a special need to be there. Do not be disappointed because Our Lady said : "It is better for people to remain in church in prayer than to be there out of curiosity." In any case, nobody can see anything that the visionaries see. Many people have seen the film of what happens during the apparitions and everyone will certainly see it in the future. If there is any extra room we will allow the group leaders to enter and, if possible, a few people from each group. Please accept our advice, otherwise, if the chapel is full, the visionaries will not be able to enter and they will go elsewhere and the apparition will take place there. After Mass there will be prayers for the sick and the blessing of religious objects. This evening the preparation for the prayers for the sick will be a little longer and fuller. Yesterday, the ceremonies were long and there was no time for preparation but this evening there is. I want to remind you that the Mass offered here each evening at 7.00pm Greenwich time or 6.00pm solar time is offered for peace in the world and for you pilgrims. We wish to be with you and pray for you each evening. Many groups in the world now pray with us for peace at the same hour and, in this way, we feel stronger and more united.

Now some words of consolation for you. You ask for graces and Our Lady says: "You can receive as many as you wish, it depends on you : pray, pray, pray."

I leave you with these words. Seek an answer for yourselves in the light of these words, because only a word which comes from your heart, like a light, is the true answer to each of us. I leave you in prayer.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 22nd April 1984, Easter Sunday)

This is a place of prayer

I am going to disappoint you to start with. On 24th April Our Lady said : "That is enough news. People know enough. Tell people : this is a place of prayer."

When people arrive here they say they are happy ! Then they go home and continue the same life as before. So, please do not forget this, that I am giving you the items of news so as to bring you to prayer and to the path towards Jesus Christ. Remember this.

I will tell you something very interesting: you are always curious to know what Our Lady says, how she appears. Our Lady is very interested to know what is happening in your souls. I want to talk to you a little about this. During the apparitions, especially to Jelena and Marijana, Our Lady almost every day says : "Pray and fast." In this way curiosity will have no place in your souls. Pray and fast. If you pray you will understand everything.

In February, Our Lady said : "Do not be surprised because I often say: pray, pray, pray. I have nothing else to tell you." I must mention something else. Our Lady said : "When I tell you 'pray' do not understand this as meaning only an increase in the number of prayers : I want to bring you to an attitude of a continuous longing and desire for God." Our life must be transformed into a day of prayer.

A week ago, Our Lady said : "Pray when you can. Pray how you can, but always pray more and more", and then added : "each of you could pray even for four hours a day. But I know that many people do not understand this because they think they can live by their work alone."

I said, "If I tell people this, they will turn away." She replied : "Even you do not understand this. It is only a sixth of your day." I added, "I understand that you want us to pray all day." Then she seemed happy.

I tell you that it is really possible to pray all day, to be in contact with God all day long. When I told the peasants(?), they looked at me in a rather amazed way . I asked them what they did after half an hour's heavy work in the fields ? They get up and try to rest for a while. So I asked them why not say, "Jesus help me", why not say then, "Jesus bless what I have done" ? Why not keep in contact with God while you rest so that He may bless your work ? This is how you can transform prayer into continuous prayer.

We must remember what Our Lady said in the Autumn : "Do not forget : man does not live by work alone but also by prayer. Your work will not go well without prayer."

In fact, in the beginning of the planting season here I told the parishoners, "If you want to tire yourselves out while planting the tobacco, do not pray and work very hard. But if you want God to help you plant the tobacco - which is very difficult here because the earth is dry, water has to be carried and the plants protected - if you want God to work for you and for you to rest .... then come to church." They came to church more frequently and everything went easily. They did not even have to carry one drop of water for the tobacco : God sent the rain at the right moment.

I am giving you this example so that you can understand that we really must pray more : if we do not pray more, we are not truly converted.

One more point I want to stress is this : if we want to be honest with God, we must recognise that we have put Him away in a corner. The worst sin in your families is that television has become like a god in your homes. Television dictates the routine in your homes, the timetable, how to behave, how to use your time. And God has no rights in your families, He remains in a corner. If you understand Our Lady properly then put God in the centre and the television in the corner. The television can only be watched when God allows it and not the other way round. We must reverse our values. You must bring order in your homes if you want to pray. If the television is at the centre of your day, there is no room for God there. If many objects and gadgets in your homes are the centre, God cannot be there. Make your home simple and you will see how close God is to you.

I will give you another piece of advice. In the Autumn Our Lady said : "I should be very happy if families would pray for half an hour each morning and evening." Many people were amazed when I said this, but really each family should do this if it wants to progress spiritually. If you want to live the day with God you need at least twenty minutes' prayer each morning. You will then be in a condition to spend the day with God. Those who say that the whole of their day belongs to God are not telling the truth if they do not pray enough.When you spend a day like this, in the evening you will need about half an hour to unload yourself of all the difficulties you have collected during the day and to be in peace.

It is really very little if we look at the Divine Promises, at what God is offering us. I am telling you this in order to explain a way of growth in your spiritual lives. If people only pray a little in the morning and then make the sign of the Cross and just do the same in the evening, they cannot progress spiritually, they will become more and more restless and distracted. They want graces granted quickly, they want to push a button, and to take ... To be healthy, I must sleep seven or eight hours ... how can we live with God within us if we do not dedicate any time for this ? It is impossible. All work takes a certain time. We must dedicate some silent, serious time to God. People usually say that they have no time. I can assure you that this is most untrue because I have seen many of these people who say they have no time, but watch television until midnight. When there is a football match everybody gets up and runs ...

I will tell you something else ; if you use your time for God, God will use time for you, for your children and many problems will disappear. If you pray you will not come back here to ask for graces to be granted because they will be granted in your homes. If you reduce your prayers to a minimum, then you will receive a minimum ; it will be given to you according to your measure.

Our Lady has recommended various means of praying, emphasising prayer, fasting, not being worried, but allowing God to act. Learn this rule. Watch people when they enter church ; they are worn out, full of fear and this is not a good thing. We have not abandoned ourselves to God ; our belongings and difficulties are more important to us than He is. Especially of late, people have been running up to me to say that their daughter is ill, she has this or that, for example ... but almost no one has said to me that they have a problem ; they have not been converted. This is a reversal of values and graces cannot be granted in such superficiality of soul. First of all we must be converted. This is why Our Lady tells us, first of all, to read the passage in the Gospel of St. Matthew VI, 24-34, "Make it your first care to find the Kingdom of God", that is my conversion. Then you can ask for graces to be granted. If there is the right attitude within me, right according to the Gospel, I shall not worry. When I am not worried about these things my soul is free and God can act in it. If I am full of fear, of worries, I am closed to God. Remember that Our Lady said : "Pray, fast and allow God to act."

Our Lady gave us another rule : "If you want to be very happy, live a simple, humble life, pray a great deal and do not delve into your problems, let God resolve them."

Another rule that you must learn is to simplify your homes, because life has become too complicated : all those clothes, toys and pleasures. Give all this to the poor and you will be freer, less worried. When you have problems, do not have them analysed or go here and there trying to find out what has happened - leave them to God. You just pray and have faith.

Here is another rule. Our Lady said : "Peace must follow your prayer." At the beginning, during and at the end of prayer must be followed by peace.

About prayer and especially group prayers, Our Lady says : "Often prayers recited aloud in a loud voice send Jesus away because men want to win through their efforts. In that way there is no place for God. Prayers recited aloud are are good but they must come from peace and from the heart." Our Lady then said : " Even the joy, the singing can be an obstacle in the groups if people are only moved emotionally...."

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 24th May 1984)

Prayer originates from a great desire for God and the salvation of souls

When you come here you are all interested in what Our Lady is saying , what you can see and so on. Our Lady is interested in what is happening in your souls.

This is most important, more important than all the news. This is really the deepest matter we must now consider. All the messages of Our Lady can be summed up in one word : "Pray". When I tell you to pray I have not said enough. By listening to the daily messages of Our Lady, especially through Jelena, this word takes on a new richness. A week ago, Our Lady said: "Pray as much as you can, pray how you can, pray more and more" and added "you can pray even four hours a day." I replied: 'if I tell people this perhaps they will turn away because it seems impossible'. She replied :"Even you do not understand . It is only one sixth of the day." I replied, through the visionary : 'You want us to pray all the time.' Then I saw that she was happy. Afterwards, I meditated on this and understood that we must really pray all the time. I understood that when we pray sufficiently we acquire a desire for God, a continuous contact with God. I remembered another message given by Our Lady, in February, I believe: "When I tell you to pray, pray, pray you must not understand just an increase in the number of prayers. I want to bring you to a deep desire for God. That you may always desire God." I understood then that to have a continuous desire for God means to pray. I remembered what Our Lady once said, on Holy Thursday, I believe, in answer to my question; 'Dear Mother, can you tell us how Jesus was able to pray for whole day and night ? What method did He use?' She replied: "He had a great desire for God and the salvation of souls." I then remembered that prayer comes from a great desire for God and the salvation of souls. If you put yourself before God with the attitude of Our Lady you will realise the things that need changing in your family life and in your private life in order to acquire this desire for God.

Meditating on this, I discovered that we Christians are like sick people because we have lost our appetite for God. We have an appetite for eating and sleeping but people have to make an effort to pray. Prayer has become an effort because the desire for God is lacking and He is not at the centre of our lives. In order to effect the conversion Our Lady speaks of we must progress so as to reach a prayer which is a desire for God.

Last week I explained to the parishoners how they could pray continuously. I told them that when they went into the fields, to pray as they went. After an hour's work and they are tired, to get up and rest a while and to say: Jesus, I want to rest in You; Jesus bless what I have done. This really is a continuous prayer, a breath of God. Try to find contact with God all the time. Seek His blessing and give Him everything.

Our Lady wishes to bring about this attitude in us. It seems to me that, with this attitude to prayer, we will reach the point in which God will be the centre of our families and our homes. It is my conviction that to put God at the centre of our lives is to put prayer at the centre of our lives, to desire God continuously and to discover the deepest values of Christianity.

It is through prayer that we realize this meeting with God.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 26th May 1984)

Create an active conscience for yourselves

When pilgrims come here they always want to know what the visionaries see, what Our Lady says and what is happening. Now I am acting as an interpreter of Our Lady’s question. She nearly always asks: “What is happening in your hearts ?” I am telling you this so that you can understand the importance of what is happening in your hearts. If all the messages we hear do not find an answer in our hearts we are here only out of curiosity, for tourism. I want to meditate with you now about what is happening within us.

During this month, the last one of three years’ apparitions (which began on 24th25th June, 1981) , Our Lady has repeatedly said : “Pray, pray, pray”. We cannot understand the message without prayer ; spoken and written words are empty without prayer, without an inner attitude; it is only through this inner attitude to prayer that light comes to us, by which we can really feel what God wants at this moment.

From the beginning of the apparitions Our Lady has constantly said : “Christians who do not pray are no longer believers “. I can tell you from my experience of these three years that Christians who do not pray at all are no longer Christians; those who pray only a little are only a little Christian and those who pray enough, well, are good Christians.

In order, therefore, to live prayer and to truly deepen it we need to look at certain elements which can help us. If you wish to accept this message of prayer, as I hope you do, I will explain these to you. First of all we must dedicate time to God. What does this mean ? Last year, when Our Lady said in a message to Jelena : “I would be very happy if all families started praying each morning and evening for at least half an hour.” Many of the people I said this to, looked at me almost as if to say that there is no time. I thought about this. Three weeks ago, in a message, Our Lady told the parishoners : ”You could all pray even four hours a day”. I replied, saying that if I tell this to the people they will turn away. Through the visionary , Our Lady replied : ”Not even you understand, it is only a sixth of your day.” I said that I understand that she wants us to pray continuously and I saw that she was satisfied. After meditating on what Our Lady had said during this period, I understood that she wants us to pray twentyfour hours a day. Now I will explain : six weeks ago, and American here told me that Our Lady is right when she tells us to stop watching television because our children look at pornographic films.

I replied that this is not one of the gravest sins but that, for me, it is that television has become like a god in your homes deciding how families spend their free time. This is the god you adore. If you want to understand prayer, put the television set in a corner and put God at the centre of your homes. It is God Who must put order in your family and Who must decide your routine.

I have given you this picture to explain how many of the things in your families, in your worries have become your god, and I have discovered a real and serious sickness amongst Christians : we need to eat and when we lose our appetites we think we are ill, we need to sleep and if someone cannot sleep we say that person is ill, Christians who do not feel the need to pray and must make an effort to do so, for me, are sick and when Our Lady says that she wants us to pray more she brings us exactly to this.

Once, I believe it was February of this year, Our Lady told Jelena :”When I say : pray, pray, pray, do not understand it as meaning only an increase in the number of your prayers, I want to bring you to a deep desire for God, a continuous desire for God.” Here I have discovered what Our Lady wishes : that, by means of prayer, by seeking God, we reach an attitude of a continuous desire for God. Here is an example : two people in love with each other think of each other all the time, write letters, dream : they are always united. When there is true faith in us, we are united to God. I need to be there ; I am tired without God, I need to rest in prayer; I have many serious problems, I need to go to God and tell Him what is happening to me; when I am full of joy I go to God to share my joy with Him. This is the attitude to which Our Lady wants to bring all of us, but, instead, we pray in fragments I pray for five minutes and that time is dedicated to God but the rest of the time is for my material welfare. Whilst our prayers are so partitioned, we cannot reach real Christianity, we cannot reach a real life with God.

On Holy Thursday, through Jelena, I asked Our Lady : ‘How was Jesus able to pray every night, what method did He use ?’. She replied : ”He had a great desire for God and for the salvation of souls”. He had a great desire for God: I think we can only reach this attitude to prayer if we reawaken this desire for God, we need to start to search for Him, to rediscover Him. In this age, we have really thrown God into a corner preferring machines, science and everything else and we have forgotten God. Now we must rediscover Him, live Him and we can only do this through prayer. Often people ask me how they can pray, how they can find peace in prayer. This is my answer, if you will accept it. It is simple : you have the Rosary, you have the Gospel. Your priests will tell you everything else in church . The Rosary and the Gospel. It is only necessary to dedicate enough time to God. Put order in your families but see that there is time for God in your daily routine; make a note of it, make a programme : this is time for God in my family, and do not let anyone take it away from you. Then ask Jesus to be the guide of your family and do not worry about your problems. Start to talk to God, to read the Gospel and to pray. Soon you will discover how that inner peace comes, because the peace Our Lady speaks of is not in concentration, but in a happiness which comes from God, because we really found Him, because we have spoken to Him.

On Holy Thursday, Our Lady gave another message which will help you to understand better what I have said : ”Today I am going to reveal a spiritual secret to you. If you want to be stronger than evil, than trials, create an active conscience for yourselves.” It was the first time in my life I had heard this expression ‘active conscience’. She said : ”pray sufficiently in the morning, read a page of the Gospel and root the Divine Word in your hearts and remember it during the day, live by it, particularly in your trials and, by evening, you will have become stronger”. This message, too, speaks to us of continuous prayer. When I say ‘continuous’ , it may seem to you impossible; but I say to you it is possible if you will allow God to enter into the routine of your lives.

Another message, which I hope will help you to live prayer, was given this Spring. Our Lady told the visionary ,” If you want to be very happy, lead a simple, humble life, pray a great deal and do not delve into your problems but leave God to solve them.” My advice is not to analyse life too much, do not tire yourselves, let God guide your life and I advise you to thoroughly clear out your homes because they are complicated with too many things, so that you have no time either for God or yourselves; we have all made our lives too complicated. Give to the poor and you will be able to pray, because it is my own experience that when my room is in disorder and too cluttered I cannot meditate or be recollected in prayer, so we must give everything and open our hearts.

I want to add something else : people come here because they are in need, we see them running up to the priests to tell them of headaches, ill husbands, daughters .... but few say, when they come here for the first time, that they need to be converted. I tell you to seek first of all to be converted because Jesus said: “Look first of all for the Kingdom of God and all the rest will be given to you”. I am telling you this because Our Lady has never given a formula to the questions put by people through the visionaries, she has only said, “The most important thing is to believe, that is to open oneself to God, to pray and to fast”.

I advise you to set out on the road to your conversion and to go ahead with your priests to deepen your faith, to open yourselves to God and you will understand the messages and accept the graces.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 1/6/84)

To accept the messages with an opening of heart

It is also important to accept the messages with an opening of heart. During the whole of this period Our Lady has always repeated: "Pray and fast. Be converted"

This is enough: but it has to be put into practice. So I tell you that the messages can only be accepted in an authentic way if people open their hearts and start out on the path of the messages. Without prayer as a means of searching for God we cannot discover the value of these messages

Last time a group asked me some questions about the type of prayer. I must tell you that at the root of prayer lies a searching for God. There can be many different forms of prayer but we must place God at the centre, seek Him and try to understand His plan at this moment in history and to put it into practice

There are different methods of prayer, different levels : there is a prayer that is cried aloud whenwe are in difficulty, prayer of meditation, communicated prayer. There are many different forms, but the essential is to unite ourselves to the Divine Word, to root it in our hearts so as to put it into practice. I could recite a thousand prayers during the day without desiring God. This is very dangerous; I must discover God in my prayers because God desires my heart in a concrete way. If I open the Gospel and the Gospel tells me "do not be worried" then I must go towards these words in order to assimilate them. If I pray all day in a worried way, without changing, while God repeats : "Do not worry, I am with you", it means I am praying in the wrong way

Union with God comes through the Gospel, because the Words of the Gospel are quite clear and concrete

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 19th June 1984, to a group of priests)

Be strong in your faith and protect the faith of your people

I want to tell you a little about our experience here but, above all, I want to allow you priests to ask questions so I can reply, because these are the deepest questions and concern pastoral work

As I told you yesterday, what is happening here is a tangible fact. Each of us can find different interpretations; until now nobody knows the religious interpretations of the apparitions. It is only possible to make suppositions. As far as we priests, who live here are concerned everything is very clear. I, personally, have seen that all these events have led me forward towards God and towards my fellow beings. As I feel truly helped along this path, then it must be real. During this period here, I have discovered Our Lady in a new light and I have come to realise that we have not yet discovered her strength. Most people, also priests, regard her as one of the saints. It is my opinion that we are about to enter into a new era when we will discover Our Lady in her full light and understand her special role

After the recent Vatican Council, we have seen many groups and movements springing up and I see in the apparitions of Our Lady a purification of all this spiritual growth. I put a precise question to Our Lady : "Have you come to purify these movements ?" She replied 'It is exactly so'

I see Our Lady here as an event and as a person who will take us beyond all movements, because in all these movements there exist our individual manner of organisation, our human subjectivity. Our Lady is above all this and what has impressed me, is that Christian prayer must be above all methodology. I discovered this here. For example, once I asked this question of Our Lady : "You can help us. How did Jesus manage to pray all night without becoming tired ? What method did He use ?" She replied 'He had a great desire for God and for the salvation of souls'. Everything consists in this. She has often repeated : 'Prayer is a dialogue with God. It is a discovery of the Gospel'. Here it is not a question of any special method of concentration in prayer or methodology, although we can each have our own method. It is something natural; just as a sick person has his own way of praying, so a young person has another and so on. But I have seen that the prayer Our Lady speaks of, brings us to discover Jesus

When we asked what Our Lady thought of oriental meditation, she replied : 'Why do you call it meditation when it is human work ? True meditation is a meeting with Jesus when you will discover joy and inner peace.' She is really saying : to be very happy with God, to be united to God. We can see that everything is centred on a personal meeting with God and this is the context of the pilgrimage which Our Lady is making with us. The path of prayer is, at the same time, a path of faith to discover the existence of only one God, the God of Jesus Christ and to discover Jesus Christ. Once Our Lady said : 'You must know that there is only one God and only one Mediator, Jesus Christ.'

It seems to me that this pilgrimage Our Lady is making with us is a pilgrimage of faith and prayer for a personal meeting with God through which the meaning of many movements is clarified. I have found this problem, that many people, even priests, look to the visionaries and Our Lady for rules, formulae, but there are none. We have to go beyond these. I will explain: during all this time, Our Lady has never given a formula to anyone, but has only wanted to put us on the path, to urge us forward. She has only given us brief words : 'Pray, pray, pray' and 'Be converted'. These are more of a stimulus, not a theology, not a treatise, but an inducement to open our hearts. What is happening ? We priests must take a step forward, beyond those words and discover, by the light of the Holt Spirit, the whole content of the words. When I am in my parish I must have the light within so as to bring that content to people, because words without content are empty. This is the reason why Our Lady has said several times : 'Pray to the Holy Spirit that He may descend upon you. People pray in the wrong way : they go to shrines, to churches to ask for special graces, but few are those who ask for the Holy Spirit. Those who receive the Holy Spirit have already received everything. ' She often advises us to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we may be enlightened. I see this as being extremely important for us priests, so that we may have inner light to conduct ourselves by this light, to understand the subject matter. We will be able in this way to lead people onwards. We have seen here that people want to be saved easily : press a button and expect special gracesat once. Here, by Divine Providence, we have been able to save the shrine, save the apparitions. I am sure that the apparitions were saved because people came into the church. The police had forbidden people to go on the mountain side and in this way we have been in a position to guide them. Otherwise, people transform everything into superstition, into something superficial

Those who have studied these things have told me about what has happened in several shrines where Our Lady has appeared. The priests withdrew and the visionaries were left alone and were turned into something like automatic machines for everything and that the nucleus of the apparitions has been literally covered with money and with superficial objects

Even yesterday we discovered the case of a lay person who had been bringing people here, giving them his own explanations. These were terrible : how women should be dressed, how the Holy Eucharist should be received, how a woman who has had an abortion cannot be pardoned and goes to Hell : and all this attributed to Our Lady ! Words that have never been spoken by Our Lady here ! We can see that where there is no guidance from the Church people will say anything, they bring their fanaticism, their problems, and leave them here. I see that it is most important for priests to feel the responsibility for guidong people. Our Lady is appearing in order to reawaken us and we must go forward, understand and remember the words, just as Our Lady remembered the words spoken about Jesus. I see this as being important

Another thing I consider important and would do if I were in a parish like you : I would immediately call everyone to a minimum of prayer and fasting. I have discovered that the greatest sin of the Christian today is indifference. A majority of the faithful are in practice unfaithful. They do not pray, they do not fast, they do not practice anything, they are carried away by society like everybody else. If we succeed in bringing them to at least a minimum of spiritual activity they will come out from their indifference. Our Lady had a very good lesson for us when, at the beginning of the apparitions she said : 'Say every day at least 7 Our Father's, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's and the Creed and begin to fast every Friday.' In my opinion this is not enough for a Christian. It means we are below a minimum of at least 7 minutes direct relationship with Jesus. If we succeed in bringing people to a minimum of prayer, fasting renunciation, then at home, in the family, something will start moving and people will lose their indifference. Then some generous people from the parish will come forward, who will go ahead and you will be able to form various active groups and start working together. In this way you will make the rest of the parish grow

I think that this way of working is very important in order to unite the whole parish and to allow spontaneous prayer groups and renewal groups to come out of their ghettos. Yes, I have seen many groups closed in on themselves and thus lacking the strength to influence others. If they are closed they run the risk of condemning others, considering themselves as good and honest and not so the others. I see that all groups can be corrected from within the parish and the parish priest can guide them together with the rest of the parish

I would like to tell you about another experience of mine : be open towards all groups because they will be able to help the parish and at the same time, be corrected if you are open towards them. In all groups I have seen some good initiatives but, if they are not guided, human elements often cause problems. The impulses which come from certain leaders at the beginning are good but, as they are not helped and guided, they do not blossom. Later the group becomes like a small sect ; this diminishes its strength and at the same time, creates problems in the parish. I think it is most important that the parish priests should be open towards all groups, because the groups are a human way of expression which can be improved and opened up when we are able to guide them. I have often seen that lay people have the spirit and the zeal but not the perspective that a priest should have in order to enlighten a movement and help it. I feel this is very important

Returning to my experience and way of thinking, everything undertaken with Our Lady receives more strength and the path with her is easier. Here, for a year, there has been a group guided by Our Lady. I have never found any of those difficulties in this group that are to be found in several other groups : certain fanaticisms, quarrels and jealousies. There is simplicity, harmony and peace, and simplicity is what Our Lady says about the path of faith. A total abandonment to God. I always say to the people who come here and ask me how they can pray that they have two things to take : the Rosary and the Gospel, and that their priest will give them everything else. Start praying with simplicity. All the methods we know can help us, but we must not be worried about them, it enough to set people out on the path of faith, before God

Last year, at the end of May, through little Jelena, Our Lady said :'I wish for a prayer group.' She gave us a month's time during which every young person could decide to enter or not, a month of preparation. On 2nd June, 1983 Our Lady said : 'Now I will give you some points to follow; I will guide this group and through its experiences and through what I do with it, later, when I say so, other groups can be formed in the world. Abandon yourselves totally to God, then cast out fear; in the hearts of those who have abandoned themselves to God there is no more place for fear.' She asked for three hours of prayer each day and said : 'In the morning and evening pray for at least half an hour.' She recommended daily Mass. She said : 'Do not be surprised because I ask for so much prayer, but you are weak because you pray too little.' She asked for fasting twice a week and in the last six months has asked for fasting three times a week. At the beginning she said : 'The time will come when I will ask you to fast even three times a week.' These three days are for certain needs of the Church. We know them. One of them has already been fulfilled. Our Lady told us before Christmas, 1983: 'Be happy because you have received the Grace, but it will be given later according to God's plan.' Then she asked the group that it should particularly love its enemies, not to bear ill feeling towards anybody, not to judge or slander but only to love and especially to visit the sick and suffering and to serve them. She has asked the group to follow a pilgrimage lasting four years. During this period she has told them not to choose a vocation, not to marry or go into a convent. I asked the reason for not even going into a convent and she replied : 'The most important thing for all Christians is to enter into the depth of prayer ; only then can one make the right choice.' This year I have realised that spiritual life consists in the deepening of prayer. As prayer deepens, so does spiritual life. The elements for entering more deeply into prayer are these : to pray more, to fast and to love. These three elements are clear. Our Lady has given us other suggestions, too. For example, she said in a message : 'If you want to be very happy, live a simple, humble life, pray a great deal and do not delve into your problems but allow God to resolve them.'

I find this recommendation, not to go into the depth of problems very deep because we have complicated everything, even the Church and theology, with much analysis because we want to be the guides, instead of allowing God to guide us

On Holy Thursday of this year, she said : 'I will reveal a spiritual secret to you : if you want to be stronger than evil, make yourselves an active conscience, that is, pray sufficiently in the morning, read a passage from the Gospel and root the Divine Word in your hearts and live by it during the day, particularly in your trials, in this way you will become stronger all the time.' I heard about having an active conscience forn the first time in my life from a girl of eleven, Jelena, who brought Our Lady's message. I can see that through this active conscience we enter into a permanent and continuous prayer and only in this way can we grow. Otherwise I realise that our prayers leave us in a closed circle : I pray but remain as before; I go to confession but remain as before. This active conscience takes me forward all the time and all the points given to us by Our Lady, that is: interior prayer for at least half an hour every morning and evening, strengthen this active conscience. I will explain: if a person who is mentally sick does not take medicine, tranquillisers, he will get worse because he will have frightening dreams and in the morning will get up feeling tired. During the day he will continue to accumulate difficulties and his sleep will deteriorate. The tension increases so the doctors prescribe medicines to halt this. So it is with us, in prayer, if we pray each morning, if we can be cleansed and purified in our hearts and abandon ourselves completely to God, we can live the day. In the evening, we must be unloaded of all our burdens in order to sleep during the night with a light heart; in the morning we will feel better. In this way we make progress all the time

Once Our Lady said to little Jelena : 'Your days will be different according to whether you pray in the evening or not.'

If we have a continuous rhythm for a direct relationship with God, our inner strength will increase, the light will increase and we will always be on the way forward.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - to a group of priests - 20/6/84)

Prayer means a searching for God

Prayer means a searching for God, it is not just reciting the Rosary, it means opening the Gospel and trying to become that Word written in the Gospel. It would be enough for a whole lifetime to read the 5th, 6th and 7th Chapters of St. Matthew. Only by prayer and fasting can we change the world. Talking does not change anything

But we can change it by the Word and by the Grace of God.
Therefore, I insist with you : pray, pray, pray.
Our Lady is repeating at this time : "Pray, pray"
And do not tell me : 'I do not know how to pray.' It is not true. You have the Rosary and the Gospel, and that is enough for you. The priests will tell you everything else. Dedicate some time every day to prayer

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 25th June)

We learn to pray by praying, fasting and loving

The last three messages are typical: three weeks ago, Our Lady said : 'Dear children, at this time Satan wants to obstruct all my plans. Pray so that he will not succeed. I will pray to My Son so that you may feel His victory.'

The following Thursday, she said : 'You have felt the presence of Satan during this week. Do not be worried. God is watching over all of you. I have given myself for you and I participate in each of your trials. Do not be afraid.'

Last Thursday there was a strong appeal to increase prayer, especially by young people, to increase prayer and sacrifice. Our Lady repeated this yesterday evening both to the young people of the parish and to those who were present.

Ivan tells us that Our Lady has promised to give special grace to people who pray, fast and open their hearts during this time. Now she has asked for a heartfelt confession and a true participation in the Holy Eucharist.

Through one of the visionaries, Our Lady has told us of her 2000th Birthday. The Bishop has told us not to speak about this date until the Pope makes an announcement. You are to prepare your hearts. I am not to disclose the date and must not introduce any special Feast : you are to prepare your hearts.

The entire spiritual life Our Lady speaks of consists in the deepening of prayer. In these three years we can see clearly that we must deepen our prayer if we want to see our spiritual life deepen. It is a parallelism : to deepen our prayer is to deepen our spiritual life. Those who have abandoned themselves to God in their spiritual life have no difficulty to pray : prayer is sweet to them.

We learn to pray by praying, fasting and loving.

These are the three elements we can see on this path.

Another very important question is this : Many Christians behave like atheists. From the beginning we have seen people coming here who did not pray at all or hardly at all. Everyone complained "Who can recite 7 Our Father's , Hail Mary's Glory Be's ? But is it compulsory ?" We have seen that the Christian mentality is like this: to put God in the last place in our daily lives. When we speak of 7 Our Father's, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's, there are Christians who say "I have no time, I have to work, I cannot manage it .." But truly, when I stand before God as now and say "I have no time to say 7 Our Father's, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's ...." I feel ashamed. How can I be one of the faithful of Almighty God, Of God who is everything to me, and not have time for Him ? I am truly ashamed. When people say they have no time to pray I always tell them they have twenty-four hours a day, but they use this time for pleasant things. When we do not have time for God it means that we do not like Him; He comes last in our life. We have not discovered Him.

I will explain : prayer means searching for God.

The Gospel tells us that the most important Commandment is to love God with all our strength, with all our being and to love our neighbour as ourselves. How do two people behave when they in love ? They seek each other all day, they dream of each other because they love each other with all their heart. Time does not exist for them : I love you for five minutes, I look for you for five minutes - it cannot exist. If we look at our Christianity, if we are searching for God, it cannot be for five minutes, or two minutes. This cannot be. This is not true Christianity ... which is to love God with all our strength, to be in love with Him.

I have discovered a serious problem : we Christians have lost the need to pray. Man has certain needs : the need to eat, the need to sleep ; when I do not eat I feel hungry, when I do not pray .... I feel nothing ! A great many Christians feel nothing when they pray. They do not feel the need to. This illness is like a form of atheism. I have realised this now because I cannot live without God, because He has made me in His image and when I lose the need for Him, for God, then there is something sick inside me. If we want to pray, we have to make an effort. That is not a natural need if we have to make an effort. When we have to force a person to eat he is ill.

By a continuous prayer Our Lady wants to bring us to a desire for God. I must ask God before I go to work, I must speak with Him during my work and say :"Help me God, I want to be united with You and I want You to be in me." It is a continuous dialogue : to live in God and to thank Him when I have finished my work.

I have seen that this point of Christianity cannot be reached with today's mentality which only feels the obligation for a few prayers during the day. It is necessary to increase our prayers to reawaken our inner life, our heart, to desire God. I think what Our Lady said to Jelena in the Autumn is very important : 'I should be very happy if all families would start to pray and fast, to pray each morning and evening for half an hour.'

We cannot be nourished in two minutes : who can live eating for two minutes a day ? Who can live sleeping two hours a day ? It is not possible. We are in time and space. Our day must also have a time for prayer. It is my experience that if I do not pray in the morning, if I do not pray for an hour to feel myself in dialogue with God, I do not feel strong to live the day. I feel the need to be nourished in the morning, to be unburdened of all my troubles in the evening and to put myself in the arms of God like a child in his mother's arms. I see this need and tell you, from my experience, that Our Lady is guiding us towards this attitude to our faith.

People usually meet this problem : how to finish their work if they pray enough ? From my experience I tell you this : you will finish your work in a shorter time than before. You will have more time than before because you will not need to quarrel, to correct the children and take them to the psychiatrist and many other things ... There will no longer be any need because you will find an interior happiness from which the family will grow ; many things will disappear because we will no need them any more. Our work will also improve and will go much better.

What I want to insist on, with you, is that you really do begin to pray.

When people say : "I do not know how to pray " I tell them : "Everyone knows how to pray : open the Gospel, take the Rosary, these are sufficient for you. For the rest be guided by your priest." It has been clear as the sun, during this period, that prayer is a dialogue with God, speaking to God, without any special method of concentration.

When Our Lady speaks of this peace she is not talking about a technique - it has nothing to do with oriental concentration. Peace comes to us like a fruit after coming into contact with God and everything is in its right place. Inner peace comes when we know that God is guiding everything and I am immersed in Him and so I am able to continue. This inner peace comes by means of prayer and grace, not by concentration.

I will tell you about our experiences here : thousands of people have been changed in an evening. Many people have told me that they count the days since they first came here. It is a total change. Two weeks ago, a woman told me of a group that came here, including a man, an unbeliever, who had been in prison for for nine years. He did not realise where he was and strolled around the church with his hands in his pockets, and so he came into the chapel carrying within himself all his bad temper. As he entered the chapel he was shaken. He felt a terrible pain in his legs. He only just managed to get back to the pews and the pain increased in all his body. Profoundly shaken, at that moment he felt a voice from within saying : "I must do penance for many months and must ask forgiveness of the people I have offended in order to be able to participate here" and he clearly heard this voice within him saying : "no, now you belong to me." That evening he went to confession and is now doing a great deal of penance and prayer. There are other striking examples that pilgrims from every part of the world tell us of.

This peace does not come through concentration, nor tranquillisers ; tranquillisers do not bring peace, they are only necessary when people have lost God's peace.

I urge you to start praying.

The first grace you are offered here this evening is a good confession. When you are ready, I will recommend the Italian priests to organise your group for confession. There is no need to look for special confessors : place yourself before God and the priest. Leave everything to God and He will guide you.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 31st July 1984)

Peace is the root of all life

I believe that most of you have come here to search for God. I say this because pilgrims often seek something else but not God .... a cure, perhaps, graces, but not God ! This is wrong ! The Gospel of Matthew says : "Look first of all for the Kingdom of God and all the rest will be given to you ..."

During this meeting, I would like us to set out towards God and in these three days I would like to develop some themes that will bring us to a deeper purification. Today is the Feast of the 'Pardon of Assisi' and I want to set out with you to obtain this Pardon.

On 2nd August, 1981 everybody here saw 'the sign of the sun'. This phenomenon has been repeated several times, but not to all the population. On that day the visionaries had another experience I do not think any of you know about. While they were in a wood praying with forty or fifty people, Our Lady appeared. When the people saw the visionaries in ecstasy, some of them asked if they could touch Our Lady. The visionaries asked Our Lady if this were possible and she replied : "Yes". One after the other they drew nearer and some of them felt the presence of a being. After the apparitions, Marija started to cry. A man asked her the reason why. She replied : 'Because people have made Our Lady all dirty.' She explained that when some drew close to Our Lady and touched her they made her garments dirty. Then Marija asked Our Lady the reason and Our Lady replied : "Those who live in sin have dirtied me. Tell people to go to confession and to make amends for their sins". From that day onwards (three years ago) many people have been to the priest to confess their sins and make amends. I would like you to start from this experience : that today each of you start out towards the purification of your souls and the garments of Our Lady. By this picture and experience we can see the effect of sin. Today is the Feast of the 'Pardon of Assisi' and I asked you if you wanted this pardon. You replied : "Yes, we wish to achieve it."

I will give you an example : we have very little water here, but this does not mean that a lake of water does not exist underneath us. In fact, it is said that under this arid earth there is water, that lakes exist in the whole area.

So it is with spiritual life: God offers Himself with infinite love and the Church wants to offer us pardon. However, pardon cannot be taken just like that, by going into a church and taking it. This is a deception. The Church asks for confession, not a ritual confession but a real opening of ourselves to God. This is why I want to develop this theme with you so that you will be able to make a true, deep confession, in order to obtain this grace offered to us by God. The visionaries say that the peace Our Lady speaks of here is the principal message. We must see how Our Lady and Scripture interpret it and how we can reach it. When we go to confession, peace does not come about only through a rite; peace must achieve a reconciliation between myself and God, myself and my neighbour, and I must be reconciled with myself. Many tense people are not reconciled with themselves, with their neighbour, not even with God. Whoever quarrels with himself, quarrels with God. Whoever is discontented with himself, quarrels with others. Whoever is not at peace with himself, who has not accepted himself, cannot accept others either. Whoever quarrels with his neighbour, quarrels with God in prayer and is not content with his life. In order to achieve reconciliation and forgiveness, it is necessary to reach them in all reality; between myself and God, my neighbour and myself, and to find reconciliation within myself. In this way I am able to accept myself in the Divine plan as God wants it to be.

In order to see what we must achieve I will put before you the message of peace, as the visionaries have given it to us. They describe Our Lady as a most beautiful person ; there is a smile on her face, a sweet gentle face full of peace. She never scolds, never gives orders, never gives punishments, never menaces. A certain journalist from 'Domenica del Corriere' wrote an article in exact opposition to the messages of Our Lady - his article was full of menaces.

Our Lady has never menaced. She has a sweet gentle face that is full of life. She never scolds. She is like a bud about to blossom. That is how I think of her. Peace is like this.

Little Jelena says: 'Our Lady does not like to speak about sin and Satan because she has lived everything in a totally realistic way from the very beginning.' When Our Lady has to speak about sin, she appears to be weeping and says : "Do not think about wars, evil, punishment, because if you do you are on the road towards them. Your task is to accept the Divine Peace, to live it and to spread it."

We are called to achieve a face like Our Lady's : a face that shines from the heart, a gentle face, full of forgiveness and joy. Jelena tells us that Our Lady says : "Christians make a mistake when they look to the future because they think of wars and evil. There is only one attitude to the future for a Christian : the hope of salvation." From this message, you will see that peace is hope, peace is joy and certainty. And you will see that peace is the root of all life.

We are not talking about political peace here; political peace comes as a consequence of an inner peace, like the root from which all fruits derive.

When people arrive here for the first time, they are still on a superficial level and are disappointed because they want to see some exterior happening, they want to ask for something superficial for their bodies. However, if we remain always on a bodily level only asking for cures, solutions to problems ... we are only on an earthly level. If an earthquake occurs everything is destroyed ! We must change this level, live a deeper one.

Soon I will undergo my catastrophe ... and you too : we will all die. This is our catastrophe but we behave like people who will not undergo this catastrophe. We want to be secure on this earth - this is the root of our fears and problems. I may undergo my catastrophe on the road, in hospital, by an atomic bomb - it makes no difference. Something deeper exists. I am talking about the experiences of the visionaries here where they have spoken of Heaven and of Paradise. Three of them have told us of an experience they had of being taken up to Heaven and living this reality for several minutes. I am telling you about their experience which I felt in my heart - this is the fundamental root which we must live. My death is not the end of me, it is not an evil or punishment but a transition. This is the root of Christianity : death and resurrection. This is the centre.

Every Mass celebrates this event : the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. If we set out to participate in this Mystery, if we live by this root, we will be able to be in peace. But if we want to build our house only on earthly things, all will be destroyed.

Our behaviour and our attitude to God in our daily life, bring us to this reality : if we behave like people who want to live on this earth for ever, we will never obtain Our Lady's peace. If we begin to behave in a radically Christian way in our lives here, and to offer ourselves totally to the Kingdom of God, we will also obtain peace on this earth. This is why Jesus says: "Seek first of all for the Kingdom of God and everything else will be given to you." This is important to enable us to start living a Christian life. It is important, too, for another reason. If you want to have a blessed life personally, in your family and in society, begin with the Kingdom of God. The fruits will follow. A plant can only bear good fruit if it draws water ; we cannot expect good fruit from dry earth.

The important fact is the call to peace and to open ourselves to God and to His Kingdom, to enable us to live this true Christian life. It is also important because, in this way, we will be able to purify all the shrines which have often become shrines of superficial and fanatic pilgrims. Take that article in 'Domenica del Corriere' - instead of bringing peace it brings wrong facts, brings fear and menaces. Many Christian pilgrims accept the message of peace but speak of wars, in this way bringing war into souls instead of peace. This is why Our Lady says, through the visionary : "Your task is to accept Divine Peace, to live it and to spread it - not with words but by your life."

I have spoken to you about this matter so that everyone can make a confession which is neither superficial nor ritualistic. We can start out today, and if we do so, tomorrow we will be closer to having peac, which will become richer and richer, and we will be able to go forward in our spiritual life.

I want to tell you what I have discovered from the pilgrims during this time ; some things which may be of use to you for your pilgrimage. People have transformed confession into a rite, just a rite. I often used to give a picture of domestic life to explain this : a broken washing machine does not work well and the clothes are still dirty when they are taken out. It seems to me that we Christians often make a confession like that, we go before the priest but we continue to live with a dirty soul : we do not change because going to confession once a year is just a habit. For me this is a sick kind of behaviour. If a person has a high temperature he goes to a doctor at once for help. A person who is sick in his soul waits for a year and does not feel the need to be reconciled to God, does not feel the need to be united with God - he has not discovered the reality of confession and the reality of life.

Jesus offers Himself in every Mass in the Holy Eucharist. People stay outside the church or at the door and do not move towards the altar. This is why there is not real peace in them and in their families.

If we want to understand and to obtain this peace I am speaking about, it is necessary to deepen our confession and not to remain at the level of making a list of sins, but of truly confessing. We must deepen our life and bring everybody to try to reach peace there and to search for peace. There is a great deal to say to each person individually about this path because each one of us has his own road. I have met other problems, too, I want to talk to you about. I have already told you about that of reeling off a list of our sins. There is a sin that's never confessed. I have never heard Christians confess it and this is the sin of putting God in a corner, like something of no use, something old. Look carefully at what it means not to entrust oneself to God each day, not to pray to Him. It means putting God in a corner, not relying on Him in prayer, in thanksgiving, in our requests ...

There is a scientific, sociological and political struggle, but do we seek God's strength to overcome the evil ? Or is God rather for five minutes only each day, something superficial and of secondary importance in our lives ? If this is so, we must face up to this problem, this sin.

We have often heard through the visionaries : pray, fast and leave your problems to God. This means abandoning ourselves totally to God, seeking Him each day to find rest in Him where everything is in order and at peace. When we meet God and put Him at the centre of our lives then we will be able to expect this reconciliation within us and with the whole world.

Another problem is that we priests do not gie enough penance, what we give people in confession is only symbolic : if someone has not been to confession for years and years and is only given a Rosary to recite, that person does not become reconciled with God. We must be sincere here and, if we want to achieve the peace I am speaking of, we must pray and do penance, to pray and to fast. You know well that if you want to build a house or factory you start looking for friends, money and so on, and when you have everything ready you start building. Why don't we do the same with our sins too ? When we see a sin in our life, a problem in our marriage then we must solve it ! We must start to pray and fast seriously, to ask God and to read Holy Scripture to see what God tells us on this matter. Go, knock and ask that it may be opened for us. Jesus has said ; "Knock and it wil be opened to you."

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 2nd August 1984)

I understand that you want continuous prayer

I have spoken of the peace that God offers, of peace that is beyond all human means, peace that comes from the supernatural life of man.

There is no reason, therefore, to be surprised because Our Lady always asks for prayer as a means of reaching peace. At the beginning of the apparitions in 1981, she once said: “By prayer and fasting you can even dispel wars.” Therefore, we must understand this theme: prayer is the only means of reaching God. No saint has ever become a saint without prayer and fasting. The Church has never renewed herself in spirit without prayer and fasting. Prayer and fasting stand at the centre of every religion and, for my part, I say that one of the faithful who knows how to pray, knows how to believe.

Prayer is only active faith; I will lead you to what Our Lady says about this through what I have heard from the visionaries. In the beginning, they told us that we should recite at least seven Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s, Glory Be’s and the Creed every day. Our Lady said: “Christians who do not pray are no longer believers.” In the Autumn of 1983 she said: “I would be happy if families started to pray each morning and evening for half an hour.” When I told this to pilgrims they shook their heads. In May, 1984 Our Lady said : “I know that all families in the Parish could pray for four hours a day. “ I replied that if I told people this, they would turn away. Through Jelena, Our Lady said: “Not even you understand it is only a sixth of your day you are not able to understand it because you think of living by your work alone.“ In another message in the Autumn, 1983 she said : “You do not live by your work alone, but also by prayer.” I replied ; ‘ I understand that you want continuous prayer.’ She did not answer and is content that we pray continuously. I want to explain what is meant by praying continuously. I have talked about a parable several times; two people in love are always seeking each other, they wish to live together, they are always dreaming of each other, they think of each other all the time, they write letters to each other because they are in love. The fundamental Commandment of Christianity is really to be in love with God: to love God with all our might and our neighbour as ourselves. Prayer is a continuous searching for God if we want to understand it.

Radical Christianity means to be united with an in God always. Prayer means searching for God. Many people pray but they do not search for God, they move their lips, they say prayers, but they do not search for God. Searching for God means going towards God from the depths of my heart, desiring what God wants, asking for His Kingdom to come, asking to be able to understand what He wants, asking for His Strength so that I may do what he wants. many people come to shrines to ask for something for themselves good health, solution to problems and so on ... but they do not search for God. This is an example : today I was with a girl who has been an invalid for seventeen years. In the Autumn, 1981, her mother and brother carried her in their arms towards the church as she could not walk by herself. Near here, in front of that little bridge, she saw a beautiful Lady who said to her : “Come here, I will heal you.” From that moment, she has been able to walk six or seven kilometres with a stick but is not completely healed. This morning she told me : ‘Our Lady did not tell me that I would be healed immediately. I understand that I must suffer for the salvation of souls and do not worry about my health. I prefer to save a soul more than anything else in the world and do not worry about my health but only pray for the salvation of souls.’ This is an example of how a person starts searching for God and the Kingdom of God. Jesus has told us : “Search first of all for the Kingdom of God and the rest will be given to you.” Many people want to receive the fruits of faith but do not search for God. It is like wanting to cure a fever without wanting to cure the illness; we must search for God. What does this mean ? We Christians do not look for God in the air; we know God. We know where to find Him, we are able to know everything necessary about Him to follow this path ; it is all written in the Gospel. We must search for God in the Gospel : it is very simple, everyone can understand it if they want to and so our task in prayer is to open the Gospel, meditate on the Word, accept it and put it into practice. This is Our Lady’s way : she accepted the Divine Word and gave life to It.

I want to show you how to search for God. To begin with, we are not searching for God because every day we say :’I have no time for God.’ Or in other words : You are not worth seeking for. If we have a friend who can resolve a problem for us, we go to see him. If we believe in God Our Saviour and we do not look for Him it means that God is a lost value for us. When people say they have no time for God, I reply : ‘You are really an atheist : you have time twenty four hours each day you have time to sleep, eat, pray, joke, gossip ... but you have no time to pray. If God is the least important factor in your life, then you are an atheist.’ We must prepare a new timetable if we want to meet God ; we must set a time for God during our day and not allow it to be taken from us. I also say this in convents, because these elements of prayer have been lost there, as well. I recommend all of you, in your families to find space for God in your homes as well as time for prayer to God. When you return home, I would like you to put God in the place of the television. it is most important for children and everyone else to have a room for meditation where there is a visible presence of God a cross, perhaps or a statue .... and where He can be adored. If you want salvation then free yourself from the mad rhythm of your towns you must have time and space for God.

Now I will give you some messages repeated to us by the visionaries in order to take us forward in our prayer. I already gave you this message yesterday : “Pray, fast and leave everything to God ... “, leaving everything to God really means to attain the salvation and peace Our Lady speaks of.

Another message is : “If you want to be very happy, lead a simple, humble life, pray a great deal, do not delve into your problems but leave God to resolve them.” Remember, pray a great deal because many problems will disappear on their own.

Another message was given on Holy Thursday, 1984 : “If you want to be stronger than evil make yourselves an active conscience; that is pray much in the morning, read a passage from the Gospel and root the Divine Word in your hearts and live by it during the day, especially in your trials, and by evening you will be stronger.” This message has meant a great deal to me and I now realise that, according to this message, Christians grow because their inner strength increases all the time. People who pray as a habit or who pray in fragments do not reach an inner resurrection but go round in circles: they are strengthened a little and then fall, they are strengthened and fall ...

If a person is charged with Divine Strength in the morning and continues to increase it, in the evening starts again, then the strength increases and this person is continuously growing. It seems to me that often we Christians do not want to use our spiritual medicine : if there are quarrels in the home, I must open the Gospel. What does the Gospel tell me ? We must root the Divine Word in our hearts and pray to Our Lord so that this Word may become life in us and grow within us and bring us fruits. The nervous person must seek the Word for himself, the impatient person must do the same and each one of us, every day, must find the Word for himself in order to grow. If we choose the Word that can heal us every day, we will reach a complete personality in God and so we will be able to live the presence of the Redemption.

Many people ask me : ‘How can we be recollected in this frenetic life ? ‘ and I want to indicate a way to you. Remember, first of all, what I have already told you: find time for God, make space in your homes for God, discover God as the greatest value: God is the Only One Who can resolve all my problems. I will search for Him .... Then there is another point : during this time Our Lady has stressed a fruit which must always follow prayer. This is the peace which must be created before prayer as recollection. Pray with peace and recollection. Our prayers must finish with a great sense of peace.

I want to remind you of what Jesus taught us : “Our Father ....” Pray very slowly, not hastily as you usually do. Pray like a child secure in its mother’s arms. When you want to pray, sit down so that your body is at rest because, if all your muscles are tense, prayers cannot be said with recollection. Try to sit or kneel down, calmly .... For the first few days, try to sit abandoned to God with your eyes closed. Offer every part of your personality to God, really unburden yourself and give God everything that weighs on you. In your mind place all your problems before God, then when you are abandoned to Him, start listening to the breathing within you. You must enjoy it because it happens not through our efforts but only through God. Remember Jesus with peace and invoke His Name, really savouring that Name and feeling its peace within you. Start to pray calmly and you will learn how to pray.

There is something else. People come here as though they know how to pray already but only very few people know how to pray, to search for God. To be able to know how to pray, we must make many sacrifices. I will tell you something if you want to follow me: start to pray today, tomorrow and the next day, pray all day; pray, pray, pray. You will receive an inner gift. Prayer cannot be learnt by techniques, but only by praying. Once I asked Our Lady, through Jelena: ‘Dear Mother, how was Jesus able to pray all night without becoming tired ?’ She replied: “He had a great desire for God and the salvation of souls.”

Prayer is a great desire to reach God, so start to desire and search for God and you will reach prayer. You must recognise this if you want to achieve this great attitude to prayer. Those who want a life of Christian prayer cannot be satisfied by brief prayer. It is a mistake when people say everything they do is prayer. Only a person who prays a great deal during the day can say this, not a person who never prays during the day.

Increase your prayer: you cannot live if you only eat for two minutes each day, you cannot live if you only sleep an hour a day, you cannot live a Christian life if you only pray five minutes every day. I am ashamed when I think that there are Christians who do not even pray five minutes a day and they call themselves Christians. How can God be my priority when I behave as if He were last ?

It is my experience that I cannot live my day well if I do not pray for an hour in the morning, if I do not search for God. Soon I get tired and turn to God again in prayer during the day so as to be with Him. In the evening I must withdraw for an hour to unburden myself and to find peace.

If you want to make progress, you must increase your prayer, you must give many things to the poor because you have many unwanted objects in your homes which prevent you from praying. Those who have many clothes must clean them and look after them. Those who have many possessions must worry about these. So we must empty ourselves, to be open towards the poor and other people, sacrifice many things in order to be able to pray.

Listen, I now want to tell you something practical: try not to talk too much outside the Church now, but instead increase your prayer, do not even lose a minute of prayer; I would be pleased if nobody comes to the Presbytery to ask questions or to look for holy objects; use your time for prayer.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 3rd August 1984)

Keep silent and listen

Dear Brethren, I have told you I do not want to give any news to you today.

I want you to hear God and Our Lady in the liturgy. If you really want to, you will be able to hear them. Now I would prefer to speak to the heart of each one of you, like our Heavenly Mother , in silence. Only in silence will you be able to understand what God is doing here today.

Following the readings you will hear today, all of them are like the heart of God open to us. He calls us: come to Me you who are thirsty and hungry.

The Psalmist tells us that God cares for every living being.

St. Paul then tells us his experience : no one can take us from Jesus Christ, not even death, not even our sins, not even illness. Remember : nothing. Jesus Christ remains amongst us.

The Gospel tells us : ‘Have compassion on people.’ When everyone, even the Apostles, wanted to send people away, saying :’You cannot stay here, you will have to look elsewhere, make do’ , Jesus performs the miracle. It is Jesus who remains here, it is He who performs the miracle and calls us. So today’s liturgy takes us in depth to savour this Divine Love. I want you to be able to live Jesus Christ here and this is why I told you I did not want to give you any news today. I felt yesterday and today, too, that this is the most beautiful day of my life.

It is the most beautiful feast day I have spent amongst people. It is the only day, up to now, that has been celebrated well. people purified by fasting, prayer, penance and the sacrament of Reconciliation. This day is not for amusement but it is the Lord’s Day. Yesterday and today I have seen some miracles amongst the people and there have been some amongst you who have had indescribable experiences. It would be better to listen to all those who have felt these miracles within them than to a sermon. This is why I said I did not want to give you any news today. I want you to live Jesus Christ in your hearts.

Jesus wants to embrace us today, wants to give us this love, but love is not given by force. We love only the person who loves, we give only to the person who opens his hand . This is why we must open ourselves to God.

A woman of eighty came here yesterday, barefoot; she had walked over one hundred and twenty kilometres. Today a man climbed up to the Cross on his knees. I have seen thousands of people fast on bread and water children, young people and old, sick and healthy, all saying : ‘yes, we can fast and are happy to do so’.

Those of you who have not yet opened their hearts to God please open them today. Do not ask for words from the priest. Keep silent and listen to what cannot be understood by words. God acts within us. Remember to hold your Rosary in your hand. Continue to go to confession, to leave all your sins behind you and open yourselves to God all day long so as to feel His Divine Love.

Leave the souvenirs, it is better to go home taking God within you.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 5/8/84)

Open your hearts, ask God; and I will ask for you

Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ. You are the True God, therefore You are the Word, You are the Food that nourishes us, because You are the God of Life.

We pray to You so that all of us here present now, through Your Word and through the messages of the Word, may feel life and strength and may return home with the experience of having met the Living Jesus, Jesus who saves us. Amen.

I will explain what has happened during the last four days. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, most of the parishoners fasted on bread and water. Some people and some families did not go to work. They only prayed. Many people fasted for the whole of the Novena. Yesterday was a day of prayer and the whole of the Parish prayed. It has been the happiest day of my life because I felt full of joy. This is my personal reason. Another reason is that as a priest, I have never seen so many miraculous conversions as during this time. All the priests who were hearing confessions agree. People really threw themselves into their confession asking how to mend their ways, what they had to do and were truly ready to change their lives. We have had some unexplainable cases of people on their way to the seaside feeling a force pushing them here to Medjugorje to pray and to go to confession. There have been examples of deep confessions after a lapse of fifteen, thirty five or forty years.

Yesterday and the day before, many young men and women came here in the deepest of faith to be consecrated to God and to Our Lady.

The reason for our happiness is that the visionaries say Our Lady is very joyful at this time. On all three days she said: “I am very joyful, continue, continue, continue. Continue to pray and to fast.” The visionaries say that Our Lady has never been as happy as she was yesterday. She was full of joy, just like a bud about to blossom, and she said: “Continue, continue. Open your hearts, ask God; and I will ask for you.”

The most moving of her apparitions was the following : the two young visionaries, Jelena and Marjana, gave Our Lady a small Madonna (Child Mary) from Lourdes on our behalf and asked her to bless it specially so we could have something by which to remember yesterday. Jelena said that Our Lady looked at it and started to weep, her usual tears were followed by tears of blood transformed into tears of gold and she said: “Never in my life have I wept in sorrow as in joy this evening. Thank you.” This is the reason why we are so happy.

The important matter for us priests now is what is happening at an interior level. As I said, we have seen a great many conversions and have been able to really feel the peace in people and in their souls. Yesterday I really understood what the Lord’s Day meant not a day for tourism, we have transformed Sundays and Feast Days into sight seeing days. This is what we are poor in spirit. Yesterday, as I told you, I lived a true Lord’s Day because people had prepared themselves for it by fasting and prayer and prayed all day. So I asked the population of this village to go ahead for thirty four days, because then we celebrate the Eucharistic Congress of the Croation Church and, on the same day 9th September the Feast of the Cross on the hill here. I have asked people to transform Sundays into the Lord’s Day, into a day of prayer, if they want to feel this is truly the Day of the Lord.

I am lying when I say I have no time to pray. In the past few days, as you have seen, I have been very busy but, in spite of this, I have recited many Rosaries because we decided to pray more and more. I took my Rosary wherever I went with the nuns, with people, in the car, and so I prayed all day. I told myself that I had been lying when I said I had no time to pray. After this, I felt purified within and other people, too, gave testimony to me of how they had been able to pray. For example, during these past few days, many families have not worked but prayed. Some young people asked their parents’ permission to pray and set up tents in the woods; they took bread and water with them and prayed and fasted all day. There were some wonderful experiences.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 6th August 1984)

The strength of the messages

The characteristic feature of the messages during the last few months has been as follows : in the middle of June, Our Lady said: “Dear children, at this time Satan wants to obstruct all my plans: pray that he will not succeed. I will pray to My Son Jesus so that during the trials you will be able to feel His Victory.”

After a week, during which the Parish had replied by praying and fasting, Our Lady said:

“During this week you have felt the presence of Satan. Do not be afraid because God is looking after all of you. I participate in your every trial. So do not be afraid.” After this we felt a wave of grace here.

Now we are able to tell you this: the visionaries announced the 2000th Birthday of Our Lady, but the Bishop told us not to talk about it until the Pope makes an announcement. Our Lady toldus : “If the Pope tells you, you may talk of this; if he does not, then abandon yourselves to me.” We priests did not say anything about it but only urged people to conversion, prayer and fasting. However, people heard about it from the visionaries and journalists who wrote that the 2000th Birthday of Our Lady was on 5th August. We priests felt a wave of grace at a spiritual level and have had many really fervent conversions. The happiest day of my life was that Sunday, I felt true happiness and felt the grace in confessions as well.

We priests have met many tourists who, at a certain moment, felt a force pushing them here to Medjugorje to make a heartfelt confession. We have met people who have not been to confession for ten, twenty or thirtyfive years who threw themselves before the priests asking how they must behave, how they could change, what they must do. I really felt in the same situation as St.John the Baptist when people went to him to ask what they must do. We know of the many graces people have received at this time, especially on a spiritual level, in a conversion of heart.

The visionaries tell us that on 5th August Our Lady was very happy, happier than ever before. Even before 5th August, every evening Our Lady said: “I am happy because people are praying a great deal. Continue, continue, continue.” Yesterday, too, she told the visionaries : “Continue and make me happy every day.” We can all go forward from here.

The deepest message or rather, the path that brings us to Our Lady’s peace, is prayer. I often tell pilgrims, and I think you have heard me, too, in several of our recorded messages, everything consists in prayer. Everything truly consists in prayer.

I am always happy to hear prayers when I go past the houses here in our village. When I was coming here, I passed a family of ten saying the Rosary outside their home. People have no work in the fields at this time, so take up their Rosaries and pray. It is like this : the message has become sweetness, people are happy when they can pray.

If you would like me to tell you something you can take home with you, it is this : pray, increase your prayers. In a message of 24th April this year, Our Lady told Jelena : “It is not necessary to tell people, people know what they must do. When they are in church they are happy. Go home and continue in the same way. Tell people: this place is a place of prayer. pray.“

I want to repeat this to you : pray, pray, pray more. When I tell you to pray I have to admit that I have not been telling the truth to myself. Even in my pastoral, priestly life I often said I have no time to pray because I must do this or that. During the days preceding 5th August, however, I was laden with work but managed to pray just the same. I started to pray, even in the car: I took up the Rosary and prayed, as soon as I went anywhere I started to pray. I discovered that I had not been truthful when I used to say I had no time to pray. There is time to pray. It is only necessary to want to pray and to discover the value of prayer. So start to pray, to live the Sacraments and you will discover the strength of the messages.

Pray by praying, dedicate time to God, take up the Rosary, take up the Gospel, have time for God.

To search for God, we must go towards Him, not just recite prayers. When I need to meet God I must place myself before Him like a child before I begin to recite Our Father, tell Him: ‘I do not feel well, I have a headache, I feel tense, help me !’. I have these problems. I want to be quiet and recollected to start on the path to reach God, so I do not begin immediately with a set prayer but I start by putting myself in the presence of God in order to arrive at prayer. Many people say their prayers but do not search for God. ‘Today I am oppressed, I have many difficulties, I cannot be calm as I stand before You, help me !’ This is the path we must take to reach God. This is how our prayer becomes a meeting with God; not prayer for prayer’s sake. This is important.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 7th August 1984)

Your task is to accept Divine peace, to live it and to spread it

... I would like to bring you to a spiritual level in life where you will be able to accept the message and put it into practice. In the middle of July this year, through Marija, Our Lady said: “Dear children, at this time Satan wants to obstruct all my plans: pray that he will not succeed. I will pray to My Son so that during the trials you will be able to feel the victory of God.” This message was repeated yesterday evening, too, in another way : “Dear children, Satan continues to impede my plans. Pray, for this reason, pray. Abandon yourselves to God in your prayer and pray with your heart.”

I would like to continue to meditate with you on these messages, telling you of my experiences here with people. The central message here, of which the visionaries speak, is peace. The visionaries tell us that the peace Our Lady calls us to is an inner, spiritual peace from which all other peace and wellbeing come.

Jelena tells us that Our Lady said: “The only attitude of the Christian towards the future is hope of salvation. Those who think only of war, evil, punishment, are not doing the right thing.“ Our Lady said : “If you think about evil, punishment, war, you are on the road towards them. Your task is to accept Divine Peace, to live it and to spread it.”

I must stop here and we must go to listen to today’s reading because the texts of today’s liturgy refer to this peace. What I want to say to you, what I feel in my heart, is this : do not ask a lot of questions. There are always people asking questions, asking for spiritual advisers everywhere, asking for specialist priests, always asking questions and never listening to what we say and never listening within themselves. It is useless to behave like this, useless I repeat, and this is why I want to emphasise what I have experienced here. Many people come here looking for priests to talk to, talk, talk. It seems that the mass is of no use to these people. Jesus speaks us so clearly in the Mass and in the Gospel but people do not understand or do not want to understand. The priest speaks clearly but people do not understand and after Mass ask the same question to which the answer has been given during Mass. For this reason, I now want to bring you to a correct attitude.

You have seen today in the liturgy: Elijah, the prophet, who worked many wonderful miracles ran away weighed down by the burden of life, he lay down and said: ‘Lord, I have had enough, take my life, I am no better than my ancestors.’ He was desolate, with no more hope left. But God gave him the strength to go to the Holy mountain, Sinai. What happened there ? Elijah sought a mighty God of thunder and earthquakes but instead God came in peace. The Bible tells us that a deep silence fell and a gentle breeze came and God said: “Go back and anoint kings and prophets.” We can see how everything changed when Elijah was led by God.

You can see what happened in the Gospel: the Apostles in the boat were full of fear because of the wind and the rough sea. Peter fell into the deep water and cried out. He sank because he had not believed. Here in the Gospel we see the reason for their lack of faith : the Apostles looked on Jesus as if he were a ghost something unreal. This is our problem, too, the reason we do not have peace or strength and why miracles do not happen: we accept Jesus as something ghostlike, but Jesus is here where we live. We say that perhaps the apparitions are real, but who of us can say that the world of tomorrow can be saved without peace ? Who of you Christians can say that we can go forward in the Church without conversion, fasting or prayer ? No one. But we continue to carry on as before, our same old lives because we only accept Jesus Christ as a ghost, something unreal. If you want peace, you must accept Jesus with certainty, accept every word of the Gospel with certainty. Jesus is my Lord. he must enter my life. I will only obtain the peace spoken of in the Gospel and by Our Lady if I accept Jesus Christ fully, with clarity . ‘I know who You are and I know that I live every day for You. I throw myself before You like Peter after he was saved.’ If we Christians do not recognise this, if, in our Mass and in our prayer, this does not happen, then we shall not be like the Apostles when they knelt down before Him saying: ‘Truly You are Our Saviour because you have the power to control even the sea and the wind.’ If, in our daily prayer and in our liturgy, we arrive at this attitude to peace, we are Christians and we belong to God. This peace does not come from heaven by itself, you can see this clearly in the Gospel. Peter said : ‘If it is you Lord tell me to go and I will walk on the water.’ Jesus replied : “Go” and Peter started to walk. So when God tells us : “Go on to the sea, go” we must really go.

In today’s Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul tells us that he was ready to be cursed and to lose everything, if this were possible for God. When God told Moses to strike the rock with his stick to bring forth water, it was necessary to strike. If you want to understand and reach the dynamics of peace you must keep all the Commandments, even if this means striking the rock by prayer and fasting. Even if it means throwing ourselves into the sea, we must do so. You can see that if we are to reach a really deep peace, we must keep the Commandments. it is useless to come into this Church to ask if it is true that Our Lady has appeared . It is of no use to know if she has appeared or not. Perhaps a Committee will discuss this question in ten or twenty years time; it is useless to discuss it because it is of no value to confirm whether Our Lady has appeared or not the value consists in whether we accept her messages, if we put them into practice and obtain the gift of the Redemption.

A few days ago, and Italian actress who did not want to give her name told me her story : her marriage was broken, she was desolate and lost, and so set out here on a pilgrimage. She was burnt out inside, everything was in ashes. Afterwards her life became orderly again and her marriage was saved, she was together with her husband again and all was well. She was given an award and invited to dinner to receive it. It was a Friday and while everyone ate, she just had bread and water. The cook came up to her and told her she was offending him as he had prepared everything in her honour. She told him she was a Catholic and was fasting on bread and water. He bowed and thanked her. Recently, she brought me some money but I told her I did not need any. She gave me her rings, too, but I told her I give everything to the poor and she told me I could do so, if I wished, with her offerings. I asked her what I could give to her but she said she needed nothing because she had received everything and from now on had only one task to give to others because she had received everything.

Look at this experience which brings us to inner life. If we allow God to change our lives, everything will become easy, our life will receive the peace from which gifts of joy, gratitude, thanksgiving and love are born. When you come here, I want to bring you to this attitude. If you come here only to hear the latest news it is useless: tomorrow you will be worse than today, because the human heart hardens after hearing and not accepting. For this reason, I want to call you to silence today, but to a silence which comes after a dialogue with God, after reconciliation with Him and from which you can go to God in depth so as to have the peace from which all solutions come, our Redemption.

I want to bring you to prayer; without prayer you cannot come to this attitude. Elijah spent forty days in prayer and fasting and arrived at this inner peace. Do you know how long St. Paul prayed to reach that experience of being ready, of being anathemized, in order to save his people ? Do you know how long a saint takes to arrive at this peace ? Here, now, we feel a call towards this deep peace which comes from God: we can only reach it if we pray, pray, pray. I ask you this because I want to call you to be fervent Christians. Yesterday I told you I have seen many Christian atheists who do not pray; they do certain Christian acts but their lives are something else. I have seen good Christians, those who go to Mass, say some Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s, Glory Be’s and in whose families all is well and they are in harmony with others. These are good Christians. But I do not want to call you to this attitude. I want you to become alive, fervent Christians who feel responsibility for saving the world, for the salvation of others. Can you understand me ? You must be first.

Yesterday I read an interview with a German sportsman who had won two gold and two silver medals in the U.S.A. and who trains every day for six hours because he wants to be the first. If we want to arrive at the peace of the Apostles when they threw themselves before Our Lord :’Truly You are the Lord’, if we want to move the world we must be fervent Christians. The Christian who just says a few short prayers during the day is not such a fervent Christian; he cannot support himself and even less support others in the depth of his heart. The Christian must be a messenger of salvation, should be truly full of peace and of salvation. He must be capable of solving his problems by prayer, feeling what God wants, not running everywhere asking questions. God speaks so simply in the Gospel; we must chatter less, ask fewer questions and put ourselves before God, listen to the Gospel and pray.

Last week, an office worker told me that at first he felt like hitting me. He explained that, at the beginning, I had said that Our Lady had asked for a minimum of seven Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s, Glory Be’s and the Creed every day. Now he could not understand a Christian who does not recite four or five rosaries every day. Think of it; the same man only three years ago said the rosary only after Confession when he was told to do so by the priest !

Yesterday, we heard the message : “Dear children, Satan is continuing to impede my plans: pray.” Now, if you feel united with God and with Our Lady and if you feel responsible for the Kingdom of God, then you must pray, you must pray more, put God in the first place in your family every day, before television and entertainments. You cannot accept life or a day without God, but this is what you are doing if you do not pray.

Yesterday, a Czechoslovakian here told me :’It is necessary to open our eyes with God every morning. People do not practice religion or their faith. It is necessary every morning to open our eyes with God and in the evening to close them with God.’ Do you understand ? We must be with God, live with God, we must really be centred on Divine Grace.

I want to conclude as I did yesterday. On 23rd April, 1984 Our Lady said: “There is no need to give items of news to people. People know what they have to do. When they are here they feel happy and content. Go home and continue in the same way. Tell people that this place is a place of prayer. Tell people to pray.”

I am repeating this message to you. Your talk is useless if you do not start to pray and fast in your families. It is useless: you will be destroyed by the rhythm of life in your cities if you do not organise your inner selves, your inner lives, your homes, your families by a Divine, Godly rhythm. Only if you plan this inner rhythm will you be stronger than that of the cities which drags you along and destroys you.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 12th August 1984)

It is risky to read the Gospel because it makes demands of us

On Tuesday, I told the people of Medjugorje that it is risky to attend Mass. I truly believe that it is risky to go to Mass every morning because the words are very clear : the Lord's words call us and we must always move onwards, or close our ears. It is risky because many people close their ears, they do not move onwards, they come to listen a little but they do not go forward. But if the Church went forward every day, it should be entirely holy. This is why I remembered the liturgy of St. Luke (Chapter 6) and reading the Gospel every day I see that it is not possible to live the Gospel in a superficial manner; it is risky to read the Gospel because it makes demands of us.

Two days ago, you saw the strength that came from Jesus there were many cures. Yesterday we read the Beatitudes : blessed are the poor, blessed are those who are slandered, blessed are the persecuted. I do not know if you have read today's Gospel: Jesus says we must love our enemies, and I understood that the fundamental point in our spiritual life is to have strength, feel the Divine Strength within us, to be stronger than all the obstacles, than all our enemies, than those noises around us in church, than slander, than poverty we must be strong. To be stronger than our difficulties means to be saved. When a person is not stronger than all obstacles, he is not saved, he does not live salvation; salvation is missing. This person instead of saving and constructing, destroys everything around him. He does not realise this, but, in actual fact, he destroys. You will be able to observe this in your daily behaviour in the future and you will see that there is always destruction when this strength is missing by which we are able to arrive at the Beatitudes.

I will give you an example that may be of help to you. I recently read a book that should be translated into Italian: "New man on fragile legs". Doctor Carlo Guido Rey, a psychiatrist, a Swiss I believe, describes his conversion: 'When my faith was reawakened and I felt the strength of the Spirit, I started to write articles and to speak openly about this. I had already begun to prepare a book on the subject. One day, returning home after a meeting with some of my followers whom I wanted to help progress, I found difficulties in my family and with my children. Later a friend left me, I had problems with my work I really ended up in a hopeless circle, and started to ruin my family life by being angry. My wife went away and my children went away from me like mice into their holes, and so the days passed by. One day I came home and found a German magazine with a large photograph of me in it, under which was written : a psychoanalyst lives God. I started to laugh and looked at my face and eyes in the picture and felt inside myself that I was nothing 'you are a light that goes out in a tiny breeze'. When I recognised that I was nothing, I felt completely unloaded of all my burdens. When my wife came she met me ready to pronounce judgement and with eyes full of anger, but when she looked at me she immediately changed and ran to embrace me. My children, like mice out of their holes, ran towards me because strength had come within me. I was saved and my family and the family felt my salvation; without a word, they moved towards me and my life began again.' I find this example useful to help us understand our behaviour. If we do not have Divine strength we are the destroyers of people around us. If we are saved, full of hope and inner strength, there will be more people around us and we will become persons from whom comes strength, like Jesus Christ.

If you read the Gospel only as words, it is empty. The Gospel without Divine strength is not worth anything. It is like the words of all philosophers. If we speak of the Gospel without this strength, we are nothing. If we have this strength, energy comes from us, Divine power comes from us and carries people onwards. The problem is: how can we live this strength ? How can we obtain this strength ? I know how to obtain it: you do if you want to. Jesus withdrew to pray all night and afterwards came down to act. At Medjugorje we have heard every day: pray, pray, pray. Now I want to underline for you the message which was given on Holy Thursday of this year : "If you want to be stronger than evil create an active conscience for yourselves. Pray, especially in the morning, read a passage from the Gospel, root the Divine word inside you and continually make it come alive during the day, especially in times of crisis, and by evening you will be stronger." It seems to me, that nowadays we cannot pray all night like Jesus, but must find a way of praying all day : staying with Jesus and continuing to strengthen our inner life all the time.

I have now understood that if you want to progress in spiritual life, if you want to be strengthened every day through all your prayers, it is necessary to take two steps: you cannot omit one of them, there are only two: it seems to me that it is the same as standing on two feet and walking with two feet.

The first step to take is to pray about the unredeemed part of our being: before praying we must be conscious of this unredeemed part of us. I am agitated, not in harmony with everybody, I am angry, I feel bitter, I am worried: I must always place that unredeemed part of me in front of my spiritual eyes; I must be aware of it, really able to feel it, to let others be aware of it, let them help me, that their criticism may help me. Then I must cry out from that part of me.

When I recite the rosary, too, the Hail Mary is a cry from the depth of my unredeemed being, that part of my family and society which is unredeemed. I must have everything before my eyes and cry out in search of the countenance of Our Lord. This step is most important so that our prayers are not merely formulae, but a search for God who saves us from the depth of our, as yet, unredeemed being. In this way, prayer will not be a pastime but a contact with God who will save us and give us new strength. I am fragile and weak and destroy all around me and Jesus wants me to become a person capable of saving others. If I omit this step, I can never become a person who is saved. This is the problem of many spiritual movements: people do not follow this step. Above all, they want to receive gifts, especially in the charismatic movement, or to have status or to hold important posts in the church. It is a step to take and it is no use omitting it. We must be redeemed, really aware of our own weaknesses and to cry out for salvation from the depth of our being so that we will be able to see the Divine Face and to go forward every day it is the first step.

The second step to take each day, is to forgive, but we have a mistaken concept of forgiveness. We think we must force ourselves a little to give someone something against our will this is not Christian forgiveness. Christian forgiveness is to love because I am blessed; it is like a full glass, full to the brim, where my joy, understanding and love overflow the glass, it goes beyond because I am full of strength and life. When I am full of God, I am able to understand all situations, the whole world and even darkness. I know, I understand and I can accept it, when I am slandered, persecuted, poor and not even allowed the holiest things I have a right to. To forgive means to go beyond: that is to be full of life. The second step to take every day is to go beyond the brim of the glass, to overcome bitterness, impatience and slander. To overcome in this way, means to live Redemption and to save others.

In my opinion, these two steps should always be present in our life: when we pray, during the routine of our daily life, when we are united to God. Every one of our prayers should be based on these two steps, so that every day we should cry out from the depth of our unredeemed being and go toward s the countenance of Our Lord in order to discover it and go towards forgiveness.

In the Gospel of Saint Luke, chapter VI 'love your enemies, be blessed when you are poor, when you are persecuted' means to go beyond the brim of the glass. This is what I wanted to tell you because it is only in this way that our inner strength increases; this is what happens: at the same time that our inner strength increases, people become converted. Not many words are needed, but people change as in the case of that psychiatrist: his wife and children came into the light because they felt his salvation in their hearts. This is the rule we must follow.

When you return from Medjugorje, I hope you follow this, in order to renew your countenance and the countenance of God. Look at what happens in the history of salvation and at what happens in the places where apparitions take place; it has always been so, when Our Lady appears, there is a contrast. Why are there apparitions ? Because a sleeping God does not disturb anyone, a God who sleeps and whose countenance is hidden does not even disturb the atheists. When the light appears, then the robbers run away or become aggressive. Our Lady's countenance brings the countenance of God amongst people it is the light ! Then opposition comes, because a very clear countenance has come.

Our task now is for all of us to become Our Lady's countenance and God's countenance. Then the darkness will disappear, but we must be aware how Our Lady's countenance becomes clearer and clearer to people. Why is this countenance so clear ? Because it disturbs the darkness. For our part, we must continue to live this countenance so that the darkness will vanish on its own. When there is light, the darkness disappears.

This is our role in the veneration of Our Lady: to increase this inner power of salvation so that Our Lady's countenance and that of God will shine on our face. Our face speaks to others; darkness vanishes and people will come to ask what we have inside us that makes us so serene, our family content, and how we have found happiness. This is the way the Gospel is spread.

I want to add something else; when you return to Italy, please do not accept this pilgrimage for personal motives. These may have been your reason on the way here. Now, on the way from Medjugorje to Italy you must feel this pilgrimage as a call from Our Lady for the salvation of the world. Look, if you now offer and accept this pilgrimage as a responsibility for the Kingdom of God, for the salvation of souls and for Our Lady, you will immediately realise that you feel a change inside yourselves. Difficulties then will no longer be difficulties but become bearable, made easier, but you must really put yourselves in Our Lady's hands and do what Our Lady and God tell us for the Kingdom of God. Then you will see that you will be unburdened and private graces and prayers will be granted, or you will be very happy to carry your cross.

This is what I wanted to tell you, what is important to me after reading the Gospel lately. I wish all of you to grow in Divine strength and I will always remember you in my prayers. Please also pray that Our Lady's plan may go forward. If you are willing no one will be able to halt Our Lady's plan any more. If you are willing, this is an important point.

An enormous theological error is made when only one side of the passage, at the beginning of the Bible, about a Woman being the sign and the salvation by which satan will be overcome, is stressed. We forget that it is the Woman with her children, and you are Our Lady's children. It is with us all that Our Lady wants to triumph. She needs us, our prayers, our fasting and our sense of responsibility. This is why I am reminding to accept this pilgrimage now on your return to Italy as God's pilgrimage, not for your own personal reasons, but for the salvation of the world, for the salvation of all those you meet and talk to.

Thank you for coming here.

Question: In the light for Our Lady's teaching about prayer, can you give us some practical suggestions as to how to start out on the way to deeper prayer ?

Answer: It is very simple ! Look, the experience at Medjugorje is different to that of Fatima and Lourdes. As you know, Our Lady is appearing here every day and has been doing so for nearly thirty nine months. it is a pilgrimage. At Fatima the apparitions were only once a month for a number of months and only several times at Lourdes. Here it is a pilgrimage, a path, and I feel quite sure that the time has come in which Our Lady will help the Church to come out of exile. Along this pilgrimage, Our Lady says few words in a very simple way which she asks us to put into practice: to pray and to put her words into practice. The problem of spiritual prayer life is of too many prayers and too little prayer. To make progress in our prayer life, start to read a very short passage of the Gospel, put it before you and desire God, but really place the Word before you so it becomes part of you. it must be transformed which means that it must be put into practice. As you desire the Divine Word in prayer, as you make progress in prayer each day and in your daily life, the horizon will open up and Our Lady will be before us, God will be with us and will open up our hearts. The important point is to search for God in a concrete way; God manifested Himself in a real way in the Gospel. I would remind you of what I said at the beginning: it is risky to read the Gospel. Open the Gospel at any page and you will realise how we have all run away from it. We do not want God, we do not want God as He has manifested Himself, when He says: "you must forgive", when He says: "do not worry I am guiding everything". The meaning of prayer is to put this into practice, to desire this in prayer, nothing else. How can we increase this desire for God in a concrete way ? By placing the Divine Word within us as Our Lady did and, as this desire increases, so will the growth of our inner spiritual life. It is so easy. But we must search for a real, manifested God. Other religions cannot do this. Soon all the oriental movements will be in crisis because they cannot a real and manifest God, theirs is only human wisdom. We have God manifested amongst us and we must search for Him in the Gospel, in the Sacraments so that His Word may enter deep within us where Redemption and Salvation are born.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 13th September 1984)

The complete rosary

During the past months and past Thursdays, too, the messages have always had the same meaning as the very first message. You know it: the first message is :"Peace"

Our Lady said: "I am the Queen of Peace, I have come to bring peace to the world".

To obtain peace, therefore, we must be converted, have faith and fast.

On 14th August, the Eve of the Assumprion, Our Lady appeared to Ivan in his home after prayers, in a special apparition, as he was not expecting to see Our Lady, and gave an important message: "I would like everybody to pray with me as much as they can at this time. To fast strictly on Wednesdays and Fridays and to recite the rosary every day, meditating on the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries."

By this message we can see what Our Lady wants of us. At the beginning, Our Lady asked for seven Our father's and we knew that this request was only the start. A start in the sense that all of us can begin, without any excuses, the Creed and Seven Our Father's. But 'THE CREED' does not just mean reciting it, there is a deeper meaning: a daily dedication to Our Lord. You should know that the apparitions are never new revelations and it is not possible to expect anything new from the content of them but they must be understood as a new impulse in order to drive us on. When we talk of 'peace, conversion, faith, prayer, fasting, sacramental life and confession each month' this is only a fruit to make us put the old message which we have known for nearly two thousand years into practice, because the first words of Jesus were: 'Be converted, do penance, pray and believe the Gospel. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.'

The practical side of the apparitions is always this stimulus and the first stimulus is the Creed which amounts to our daily choice for Our Lord.

We say seven Our Father's every evening with the visionaries but this is only the ABC to help us learn to read; it is necessary to read in order to learn to read. This means that when we start to pray we must continue to do so and to increase our prayer. Prayer can be defined as a life with Our Lord.

Meditating on this message of 14th August when Our Lady asked for the "complete rosary", I realised what she wants from us: a permanent prayer. I will explain this to you. When Our Lady asks for the complete rosary every day, this does not mean finding half an hour each day, reciting the Hail Mary's as quickly as possible and then telling ourselves that we have finished the message. No. The sense of this prayer is another. To recite the entire rosary of all fifteen mysteries means being close to the mysteries of life of Jesus, to the mysteries of the Redemption and to the life of Mary. If you want to pray in the sense of this message, it is not a question of finding half an hour for prayer; another type of behaviour is needed. For example, if you have no time for prayer in the morning, meditate on a mystery, a joyful one, for example. Our Lady said: "I am ready to do Your Will. I understand what You want from me. I am ready and allow myself to be guided by You." This is the first joyful mystery.

If we want to deepen our prayer, we must keep the Word in our heart; so that a readiness to look for and to do the Will of Our Lord every day may grow in us. After we have allowed the word of God to enter our heart and, by grace, our heart becomes ready to look for and to do the Will of Our Lord, then we may pray ten Hail Mary's for ourselves, our family, the people we work with or study with.

So our first impulse each day must be :'I want to look for Your Will and put it into practice.'

If you want to continue to pray and to follow Our Lady's message, take another mystery, for example: how did Our Lady visit her cousin, Elizabeth ? What significance does this have for us ? Our Lady is attentive to others, she sees their needs and visits those who need her time and her love. She brings joy to Elizabeth.

This is a concrete stimulus for you : to pray every day that we, too, may be ready to do the same: to give time to those who need us, to see, to help and to bring joy. This is the way to meditate each mystery. When we do this for five or ten minutes each day, we are then ready and close to the mysteries and always have a new stimulus to live our life with Our Lord. This is the most important factor in the message.

If we want peace we must pray and so prayer is only a means of finding peace once more, of meeting Our Lord.

I am convinced Our Lady is not asking for so much prayer just to take up our time, but to lead us to Jesus, to Our Lord.

This is an indirect invitation to read the Scriptures because the rosary is a meditative, biblical prayer and it is not possible to meditate on the rosary well without knowing the Bible.

Every Thursday, Our Lady gives a message to the Parish and to everyone. This is the latest message : "Dear Children, I need your prayers. Some of you ask the reason for so many prayers. I will tell you. Dear Children, look at what is happening in the world and you will see a great deal on sin reigning there. Pray that My Son may overcome."

Our Lady explains this to us: "Do not ask the reason for so many prayers. There is a great deal of sin in the world."

She invites us to help fulfil the plans for the whole world she has started here with us.

Two messages given this summer, those of July and August, are very important: "The Devil wants to destroy my plan, but I urge you: pray. I will pray to my Son that He may win." Look, if somebody asks me : 'how can I find so much time for prayer, for the whole rosary or, for prayer to contemplate the mysteries ?' I reply : ' I have realised we do have the time but, as we often do not see the value of prayer, we say we have no time.'

Each person who smokes finds time for twenty, thirty or forty cigarettes a day. if we say: 'I cannot find time for prayer'; it would be better and more honest to say: ' I do not see the value of prayer'. This is an invitation from Our Mother, an invitation which must bring us peace. If we want peace, I believe we must find time for prayer.

In another recent message, Our Lady said: "Dear children, without prayer you cannot have peace, so pray much before Cross for peace." This message was in direct connection with the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross which we celebrated last Sunday which is, by tradition, the first Sunday following Nativity of Our Lady.

This invitation is valid for all of us: to pray for peace every day in front of the Cross.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 15th September 1984)

What does it mean to recite the rosary ?

What does it mean to recite the rosary ?The rosary is a meditative, biblical prayer, and when Our Lady asks for the rosary, she wants us to come closer to the mysteries of the life of Jesus and her life too, so that we may come closer to the mysteries of the Redemption.

Prayer is life with Our Lord, not just words for Our Lord. So it is not enough to say one hundred and fifty Hail Mary’s, but to dialogue with Our Lord. Our Lady recommended the entire rosary and said: “Dear Children, pray and fast wholeheartedly: do not let fasting or prayer become a routine, a habit amongst you. Many have started to pray and fast because everyone is doing so. Pray with your heart.” She told the Parish : “Thank Our Lord, by fasting and prayer, for allowing me to remain with you for so long.” To recite and pray the rosary means looking for a real stimulus for our own life in each mystery, it does not mean just saying Hail Mary’s, but to deepen our prayer. We can begin with ten minutes each morning for one mystery. The first joyful mystery, for example: I am ready to do Your Will. Our Lady said: “Thy Will be done; Behold the Handmaid of the Lord” (Ecce ancilla Domini). When we contemplate the Annunciation we really must take time to do so; to contemplate means looking for the significance of the Will of Our Lord for me today. Where does Our Lord want me today ? What does Our Lord expect from me today ? Where can I do Our Lord’s Will today ? If we do not take time to pray in this way there is a danger that our prayer will become just lip prayer. When Our Lady asks us to contemplate all the mysteries that the Church gives us in the rosary every day, she wants the life of Christ to speak to us, to mean something to us. The moment in which the Word or a mystery of the life of Jesus or the Madonna starts to speak to us, our conversion has begun this signifies a change in our life and our behaviour. When Our Lady tells us : “Pray with your heart”, this is one of the biggest problems not a problem of knowledge because we know the message as the world has known it for two thousand years, but we have become like deaf and blind, we no longer search for Our Lord. Our Lady wants Our Lord’s Word to begin to speak to us. I will give you an example : in every Christian family there is a Cross. Many times what do we do in front of that Cross ? We do not forgive others, we quarrel, we blaspheme ... the Cross is the Word for forgiveness, love, sacrifice, eternal life. If it does not mean anything to us why do we have it ? When we look at the Cross new impulses should be born in us for our life with Our Lord and with others.

This is the experience of a man. He started to fast and pray with his wife and children, but his prayer was distracted, as was his first experience of fasting. Ho told himself that he had never taken to heart the words of the Gospel heard in church, and as he continued to fast he felt that the Word would not leave him in peace any more. But all of a sudden he knew what to do. he has been quarrelling with his brother for many years, but suddenly felt free to go to him and make peace. Without fasting, he had been able to be a Christian but, at the same time, quarrel with his brother. Now he realises that the Word of the Lord requires a radical change on his part.

I believe that this example shows us that this must happen to all of us : the Word must start to mean something to us and start to change us. This means conversion as it is meant in the message of Medjugorje, changing our lives according to the Will of Our lord which can be found in His Word if we listen with an open heart. Our Lady has explained in a message why she requests so much prayer : “Dearest, I still need your prayers. If someone asks me why they must pray so much, I tell you : look around you a little and you will see many sins. Pray that my Son may forgive.”

Our Lady invites, not only to change our lives, but to pray, to help, so that the plans of Our Lord and her plans may be fulfilled. Our Lady has made us responsible for peace by asking us for continuous prayer and a more radical life with Our Lord. Who can bring us this peace ? Only human beings, people with a new heart who are capable of forgiveness and making peace with each other. Peace is not possible without forgiveness and reconciliation. Who can forgive and make reconciliation ? It is difficult to do so and you know that many times it is easier to give money rather than to forgive.

Our Lady says that prayer and fasting are the means by which we can start to search for Our Lord in a radical way.

(Fr.Slavko Barbaric, 6th Otober 1984)

It is necessary to understand a pilgrimage

The last messages, as those at the beginning, are :"Pray, be converted and fast".

As I said to the other group, the apparitions at Medjugorje cannot be understood in the same way as those of Lourdes and Fatima which were of limited number over a short period of time. here at Medjugorje they follow a certain path which has lasted, up to now, for three years and three months. In order to understand the messages of Our Lady here, it is necessary to follow this path. When I tell people 'to pray' they understand 'prayer' in a general sense, but when one speaks of prayer here, it means a whole pilgrimage followed by people and along which Our Lady explains and urges us to live the message. Our Lady's message is, therefore, this whole pilgrimage.

The situation, as I see it t present, is this: the messages should be set forth in detail so that the pilgrims who come here can be nourished by them. I see the following levels: one of people who come for the first and second time because they feel attracted by Our Lady and who need to receive the general messages in order to be pushed towards prayer, fasting and conversion. Then there are people who have been here several times and who have already started our on the path of the messages: they have gone along part of the way but they need to be nourished by other messages, not new messages but an explanation of what Our Lady told this Parish in order to drive us onwards. In this second group there are, without doubt, priests, monks and nuns who need to, and feel they must, live their pilgrimage at a much deeper level. It is at this level that I believe we have now entered, a time in which we must give this nourishment to the people.

Looking at the books which you also have in Italy (those of Lauren tin, Rupcic), they are all for people who have yet to start out on the pilgrimage of the messages: they are the story of the apparitions. Up to now, there is no book written on a deep spiritual level in order to help those who have set out on the path of the messages. It seems to me that we have reached a time when something must be done at this level to help people who are progressing in their spiritual life, moved by the happenings at Medjugorje.

As I said earlier, there is always a danger that people go round in circles; they pray and fast in a group, in a parish, in a family but always remain the same, they do not progress or grow spiritually. This is why it seems important to me to give people nourishment; all pilgrims should have the means of growing and for the understanding of all the Gospel in a better sense. The programme remains the same: prayer, fasting and conversion, but my prayer today must not remain the same as yesterday's : if I go forward, my prayer will become better than today's; something will change. We really must go forward by means of prayer, fasting and attempting to be converted: we will make progress little by little if we do what Our Lady tells us.

The second step to take, in my opinion, is to open the Gospel and to put it into practice as it is written. Read the chapters of Saint Matthew 567; it is sufficient to read it and to act on it. In the Church and in the spiritual life of Christians there is a danger of a sort of diplomacy between the supernatural and the natural, which can be especially seen after the Vatican Council: I can be an ordinary person with two cars and a villa and a house and I can also go to church. So my life in church is something apart from my daily life. I am playing a game between Heaven and Earth. But for people who want to live completely for God, the last stage consists in leaving everything to live for god alone, as it did for Saint Francis.

We have been through a certain crisis in the Priesthood, and it still exists. There is a great deal of talk about celibacy in the West which is a problem because it is a law of the Church. Those who have started out on the way to a deeper spiritual life feel a real need to leave wife or husband, a real need to leave everything their villas, their money, to leave everything to live for God. if we are not capable of being crazy as Saint Francis was, we cannot go forward. Human logic and prudence are not the same as Divine prudence and often the prudence we use in our spiritual life more of a sophism : a diplomacy between the material and the supernatural. If a woman plans to have a child, for example, she realises what she will have to suffer, what can happen to the child, how naughty children can be ... and if she weighs all this up by human prudence she will never bring a child into the world. Love does not know tactics or sophist prudence. Love is total, love moves us forward because we love. If we want to love God with our whole heart when we are before Him, then this is the second step. Young people, especially, must be aware if there is something which is a stumbling block to them; to be able to live for God with a completely open heart, it is necessary to remove anything which interferes with this. This is what I see as the second step.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 6th October 1984)

The spiritual root from which the fruits of the beatitudes come: a total abandonment to God

Welcome, it is something very beautiful ! You went to Medjugorje to find Our Lady and now, returning home, along the way you have found Immaculate Mary. As you see, in the history of salvation, too, Our Lady is at the beginning and at the end of the Revelation, in the Apocalypse. She is to be found in everyday life as well. I have really experienced in my own life that we walk together with Our Lady more easily towards God, with greater security. I say this because Our Lady does not appear by chance, not like any ordinary saint, but has a special role in the Church for the salvation of each one of us. So I think that this period is the time to rediscover Our Lady's role in salvation, not in the sense of pietism, but in the true sense of theological reality, which is that Our Lady has a special role in the salvation of souls.

You have been given enough items of news in the last few days but I would like to add one more thing. Our Lady asks for conversion: who must be converted ? Everybody, even those who know Scripture, theology and all the laws of the Church, because they too are not sufficiently converted in spite of all their knowledge. In today's Gospel you will hear about someone who knew all the laws but did not understand something very small but fundamental: he did not understand love. He knew perfectly well what was necessary for the law but did not understand how to practice it, did not understand that he had to help his neighbour. Look, those who know all about Christianity are not converted if they do not have an open heart because the Holy Spirit acts within our heart. We all need to be converted, good people and even the best people. Read the Book of Job carefully: at the beginning we are told how Satan presented himself before the throne of God and God asked him: 'Have you seen my servant, Job ? There is no one else amongst men as good as he.' later Job was put to the test. First of all, his possessions were destroyed and when he starts to suffer physically he is filled with rage, but God puts Himself before Job and tells him: 'Be quiet ! I am the Creator and you are a creature.' Job replies: 'Earlier, I spoke like a mad man because I did not know You. I knew You only by what was said of You, but now I have known You.' During his suffering Job abandoned himself to God and reached total adoration. He recognised that God is the Creator and that he must adore Him in every situation. There are two points here I want to stress: not even the wise have been converted, not even the best people have been converted yet. We must all go forward and, through the trials of life, participate in the life of God. When we are ready to adore God with joy, as Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes, to jump with joy in our time of trial, when we are poor, slandered: if we are then capable of being full of joy, full of peace whilst suffering all this, then we are on the road to conversion and ready to live our life with God.

I think that this is what Our Lady wants from us; when she says :"Peace", this peace can be reached by means of our conversion and total abandonment to God. So even the best and wisest amongst are called to conversion to reach this spiritual maturity of total peace, total adoration before God and total joy, even in our trials. This is the spiritual root from which the fruits of the Beatitudes come a total abandonment to God. We must all proceed each day and, through our trials, mature in this abandonment like Job who was the best amongst the sons of men. All of us, the whole of Christianity, the whole Church, all the saints on this earth must go forward, going deeper into spiritual life through the trials which God offers us. These trials are very special graces and those who accept them will progress, but those who do not do so will come up against a wall. These trials bring us to spiritual depth. So if you have trials in your lives or difficulties, jump with joy and praise the Lord because He has allowed you these, because it is through them that your spiritual will deepen and the beatitudes increase. All you possess in this life will be increased if you truly participate in your trials with the fullness of your soul, as Job did.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 8th October 1984)

Give all your worries to the Lord

Last Thursday's message was this: "Thank you, dear children, for offering up all your worries about the fruit harvest; Our Lord loves you while he is testing you. Always do the same when you have worries: always offer everything up to Our Lord. Thank you for following my call".

This message tells us three important facts from the theological and practical point of view. Our Lady leads us to Our Lord, to Jesus, saying: "Our Lord loves you." She has repeated many times: "I love you." In a message for Jelena she said: "If you knew how much I love you you would cry for joy." These short messages show us a pure Mariology; Our Lady tells us : "Our Lord loves you even when He is testing you; give all your worries to Our Lord." This is said especially for those priests who ask themselves what is happening at Medjugorje and perhaps are sceptical. For me, as a priest, this is a criteria of authenticity because Our Lady's only duty is to bring us to Jesus, to Our Lord. She behaves in all the messages as she did at Cana in Galilee where she said: 'Do everything He tells you.' She always shows herself as the simple handmaid. She said something else of great importance to our people here : "Thank you for offering all your worries about the fruit harvest to Our Lord." People had many reasons to be worried as they picked the fruit recently because the vines and everything else had been destroyed by heavy rainfalls. Our Lord and His Mother see this, too, and console us: do not be worried. In March, through Jelena, Our Lady said: "Every Thursday, during the Adoration, meditate on the passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew 6,24 up to the end of the chapter."

This passage tells us that we cannot serve two masters. A decision is necessary, a choice. Another thought here is this : look at the birds of the air, the grass in the field .... you cannot lengthen your life by worrying, so abandon yourselves to Our Lord and He will guide everything. The third fact is to search first of all for the Kingdom of Heaven. Father Laurentin commented on this : Our Lady has adapted herself to the smallest things in our lives and tells us not to worry because she knows that the vines have been destroyed by the rains, but to remember that Our Lord loves us even when He sends us trials. This is an example: you have done well in giving your worries to Our Lady and always do this when you find yourselves in similar situations.

There were more than two hundred priests here on Saturday and one hundred and fiftytwo celebrated Mass together, there was a large assembly and, through Marija Pavlovic, they asked if Our Lady had a message for priests. Our Lady answered: "Dearest Children, Our Lord has permitted me to gather you here : always work with the Holy Spirit and always pray before you start work." In a message at the end of September, Our Lady said: "Thank you for helping me by your prayer and fasting because my plans and my projects are being fulfilled; but continue to pray so that all my plans may be fulfilled." I spoke to the visionaries, as I do every week, and asked if they know anything about these plans and if they are allowed to tell us anything about them. They said that they know about them but are not permitted to say anything.

In another message, the Madonna said: "Our Lord has allowed me to gather you here" which means that Our Lady has a plan. My coming here to Medjugorje, also yours and that of father Tomislav, is part of Our Lady's plan. There is a great plan but we cannot see it all. For me, working here, only one thing is important now: to do everything I can today. I have learnt what it means to abandon oneself to God and to let oneself to be guided because, many times, we have found ourselves in a situation without a solution but then realised that there was a solution, a new attitude to learn: abandonment to God.

Several times we have been given the messages when we found ourselves in a difficult situation : "Why are you worrying ? Pray and fast; I will guide everything." There is resistance here, of course. Twice this summer Our Lady repeated: "Pray because the Devil wants to destroy my plans." We have always felt the attacks very strongly several days after she has said this. This is the direction in which Our Lady is guiding us we must learn, and on the one hand, to pray and fast and, on the other, to abandon everything to Our Lord, all our difficulties because He really does know everything. Our Lady has told us many times that He knows; that He knows our life and that He loves us she is asking us to allow Our Lord to do what He wishes with us. In this sense, we are able to see what is meant by conversion.

Our Lady has told us to pray with our heart when she asked for the complete rosary. What does it mean to pray with our heart ? it means allowing the Word to speak to us and when this happens then our conversion has begun or is continuing. Our Lady has not come to give us new messages: "Peace Conversion Faith Prayer Fasting", it is all in the Gospel. The first words of Jesus were: 'Be converted'. We do not need the apparitions at the level of revelation or new truths, but they are to enable us to see these things in a practical way and to stimulate us to put them into practice. Our problem is not that we do not know what to do, but the difficulty to do it. Our Lady said: "Many people have started to pray, but pray with your heart. Do not allow prayer and fasting to become a habit, a routine for you. Many have started to pray and fast only because others are doing so." She said to the Parish: "Thank Our Lord for allowing me to stay with you for such a long time." We were following Our Lady's call when we began to pray, but in praying we must deepen our prayer. If our prayer remains at lip level, mere words, then we are not doing Our Lord's Will and we are not following the invitation to prayer because Our Lady has said: "with your heart." This means allowing each word and sign to speak to you and move you. For example, in every Christian family there is a Cross, and the Cross is the Word of forgiveness, love, sacrifice, eternal life and a total abandonment to Our Lord; but so many times in our homes and communities we quarrel, do not forgive, do not seek for reconciliation and behave in an egoistic way. Let us ask ourselves: what significance does the Cross have for us then ? The Cross is the Word, but if we look at the Cross without feeling in our hearts what significance it has, we have interrupted our path to conversion. Conversion begins when the Word begins to mean something to us again. When Our Lady asks us for the rosary she is not just asking us to say one hundred and fifty Hail Mary's in half an hour or forty minutes, but wants us to become closer to the mysteries of the Redemption and the lives of Mary and Jesus. To become closer to the mysteries means finding a real stimulus in each mystery for our everyday life.

If you find yourself in a difficult situation today or tomorrow and you lose patience, why not stop for ten minutes and meditate on how Jesus carries His Cross, for example ? In this way, a real situation can bring us to, and speak to us of, Our Lord. If we lose patience because it is a difficult cross or situation to bear, we should find a short time for prayer, to look and meditate on how Jesus behaved and to find in the mysteries a solution to our problems. If we contemplate how Our Lady visited her cousin, Elizabeth, for example, what does this mean ? Our Lady sees a situation, the need, goes to help and brings joy. In contemplation this mystery, if I find the Will of Our Lord for me, for example, is to visit an ill person, it means that I am continuing to pray, that I have prayed and that The Word has spoken to me and moved me to go out and act on it. Prayer is not only a word to Our Lord but is life: prayer must become life and life must become prayer, so prayer becomes permanent prayer. If we link our work to our prayer and prayer to our work, we will receive inspiration in our prayer and our work will inspire us to pray. This is possible, but if we cannot achieve it today, it does not mean that we will not be able to do so in a month's time: we must begin as we are able. By eating an appetite comes, by praying prayer also comes. When Our Lady asked for seven Our Father's in the beginning, she has shown that she wants permanent prayer from us. Our Lady does not theorise about prayer but gives concrete advice suited to the people she is speaking to. To tell people here 'become closer to the mysteries of the Redemption' does not mean anything, but to tell them to 'recite the rosary' means a great deal. It is in this way that we can recite the rosary all day and so start permanent prayer; this is the reason I did not tell you to find thirty minutes each day to say one hundred and fifty Hail Mary's, but to pray all day. Sometimes I say that every smoker finds time every now and then for a cigarette, so why should not every good Christian find time for prayer in certain circumstances during the day ? This is the prayer which is connected with my active life, but prayer has another dimension as well, an inner one, in my life with Our Lord. It is here that I receive the deep peace Our Lord wants to give me, peace for abandonment to Him, as He asked for in the Gospel of St. Matthew, 6, 2434, as I have already told you.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 17th October 1984)

If Our Lady's face does not shine on your face, then it is useless to speak about her

Our Lady is appearing and giving us messages. Her messages are intended to give us another face, another expression. She has appeared so that the Church itself 'appears', so that it may be transformed.

If you want to carry the messages to others, please go with a new heart and a new face; if Our Lady's face does not shine on your faces, then it is useless to speak about her. The Church will accept the apparitions at Medjugorje, or in any other place, only when she sees on the faces of those who accept the messages a new face the face of the Virgin and of God. This is the dynamics to actuate, this is the way to proceed: to really live these messages in such a way that they shine on your faces.

I remember something that happened when I was working in the nearby parish: parents were complaining because their children were naughty, disobedient, restless and so on. I asked about ten couples to come to see me one afternoon and asked them if they wanted their children to change. They replied that of course they wanted them to, so I told them to listen to me and for at least a week to obey me. They were willing to do so and I showed them a very simple way of meditating the Gospel and told them to do this for at least twenty minutes every morning and evening for a week and them we would meet again. After one week we exchanged experiences and everyone said their children had changed for the better. No one had said anything to their children but each parent meditated on the Gospel and his heart changed. The faces of the parents changed and the children changed spontaneously.

Our Lady asks us to accept the messages. The acceptance of the messages is really this new life which makes the face of God and of Our Lady shine on our faces. We can become authentic messengers only if we truly live these messages and become a Church in which the Face of God is manifest.

When Our Lady begins the fight against Satan she will not do it alone but with her children and we are her children, so we must enter the fight. Our Lady is giving us the messages and telling us what we must do. Truly we must set out on this pilgrimage to fight, to bring the Church to an inner renewal.

I want to tell you priests, particularly, not to be afraid of preaching the messages. You will soon see the churches full and the young people following you but, in the name of God and Our Lady, start telling people to begin to pray ! As a brother, rather than just as a preacher on the apparitions of Medjugorje, I am telling you that Christians are indifferent, and we priests have allowed this indifference. We have permitted Christians to be able to live without prayer, without Holy Communion, without Mass. We have allowed it ! We must start with those who come to church, with those who are willing and when these move towards Christian activity then others will follow. It is very important that we priests are capable of bringing one person, at least one person, towards a deep spirituality. If we are capable, in a short time, of bringing one person ourselves or another by our sermons and actions, we will be capable of bringing everyone to a depth in spirituality. My wish is that all of us united here, will remain in contact by prayer so we may all progress bringing a new light to our work, so we may truly guide people towards salvation.

Do not search for new truths from Our Lady and her messages, this is wrong: they can only be found at the level of new dynamics. As I have said, Our Lady wants to reawaken us so that we will be able to see, to hear and to feel within our hearts.

On my part, I will accompany you with daily prayers and will follow you, hoping to be united with you in prayer. It is my desire that you will now be able to feel a particular grace during this Mass. Amen.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 18th October 1984)

You must decide to live for God, with God, in God

I am going to meditate with you so that we can make progress together in our spiritual life and so that each one of you may find the joy of being in the arms of our Heavenly Mother, not only here but when you return to your own homes.

The last message of Our Lady was given on Thursday, through Marija :"Now you have finished your work in the fields : renew the rhythm of your prayer; start praying again, pray more."

Jacov and Ivan commend the sick to Our Lady in a special way each evening; and each one of us will be commended to the Virgin through the visionaries this evening so there is no need to ask for any special intention. The best thing you can do is to open your hearts and ask Our Lady in your hearts and she will read them. The visionaries tell us that Our Lady says it is better for people to stay in church praying with faith rather than to be in the chapel out of curiousity during the apparitions. This is what we will do this evening and we will tell you about the most important moments, so that you will be able to participate in the best way.

The daily visions continue. Mirjana (the visionary who, as from December 1982, does not see the Madonna every day, but to whom Our Lady appears for her birthday) has had some unexpected apparitions this year. She had the apparition for her birthday on 18th March when Our Lady said, :"We will probably see each other again sometimes this year because of the secrets." Mirjana has the task of informing a priest three days before the first secret is to occur. This visionary heard the voice of Our Lady in her soul in prayer at the beginning of August and Our Lady appeard to her on 25th August. She started praying and Our Lady appeared immediately and remained with her for eighteen minutes. Before this meeting, Our Lady had said : "We will see each other on 13th September because of the secrets." Mirjana cannot tell us anything about this because it is a secret, but, from her attitude, we can see that Our Lady stresses all the messages given up to the present time and, by her behaviour, we can see that we really must take these warnings seriously. Mirjana says that Our Lady complains especially about the many unfaithful: and when she speaks of unfaithful she means those who say they are Christians but who do not live as Christians and those who are not educated in the Faith. Our Lady says that every person is capable of knowing the existence of God. She says: "Your cities are full of churches and mosques but people do not go into them and are not interested." The visionary emphasises this aspect : that we are called to interest ourselves in God and to know what God wants of us and what we must do at this time.

I want to meditate with you on a theme I feel in my heart so that you will be able to use this information to go deeper into spiritual life. My impression is this: we Christians are making a great mistake, many people pray, pray, pray, but do not enter Church. They behave as if they were always outside the Church knocking and knocking without going in, and we hear: 'I pray, but God does not listen to me'; 'I pray, but God does not take any notice of me'; 'I pray, but God does not answer'. This is the biggest mistake because God has opened His Heart and tries to give all of us His gifts. He is ready to answer each of our prayers and our requests. Our sin and our problem is that we do not feel as if we have received His gifts because we do not want to enter into possession of them and enter into Church. We behave more or less like this : 'Please God, allow me to live outside the Church, far from You, allow me to enjoy good health, allow me to resolve some difficulties so as to continue my life on this earth ... But I do not want to enter into Your Heart, I do not want to change.' This is why we are so poor, because we are always outside the Church...

If you want to receive graces you must enter into Church because this means entering into the Heart of Jesus. Then it is no longer a question of asking to be given this or that, not even good health, but rather to interest myself in what God wants from me, what we must do for God, how I can offer my life for God and how I can offer my illness for Him.

If I am in the Church, in the Heart of Jesus, then my interest is to adore God, to praise Him, to enjoy Him and to really be involved. Note well that the prodigal son was happy when he returned to his father's house, but the son who had remained at home was unhappy with everything he had, because he did not possess what his father offered him.

So you see, dear brothers, you must enter into the Church, you must enter the Heart of Jesus, you must decide to live for God, with God, in God, act in God. Your life cannot be outside the Church. You are extremely poor if you remain outside and if this evening you ask God and Our Lady only something for your earthly life.

If you want to live fully the friendship which God offers you, you must abandon yourselves totally to Him, really enter into Him. I experimented this a few days ago reading a passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke which tells how a person came to the doors of the Kingdom of God, knocked and heard a voice say 'I do not know you, go away.' I wondered why God behaved in that way. Then I understood that it was not God who was not accepting his son, but rather that that person was not capable of choosing the right door and so could not enter. That morning I started to try to enter all day long with no success. In the evening I felt like crying: I had begun to pray but was distracted, I tried to be full of good will to people asking me favours, but did not manage it completely, I tried to take the school boys forward in their Faith, but did not manage any of these things. Finally that evening, discouraged, I threw myself before God and said: 'Forgive me, I cannot succeed in entering.' This is not a story, you can all try it out. We do not admit it when we are distracted and cannot be recollected; why ? Those who love a person are attentive to that person; those who love sport and watch television are attentive as they watch because they are interested. I recognised that on that day I was not sufficiently concentrated. I was easily distracted, carries right and left, so was not able to reach that peace, that blessedness which God offers us. I want to call all of you to try to attain that peace. But we must love. We must think about what Our Lady has said, through Marija, about renewing our prayer and the spirit of prayer now that we have finished our work in the fields. I want to call all of us to renew this great desire to enter.

I told you at the beginning that it would make me happy if you could all be in Our Lady's arms. You can be if you want to, but you must really try to grasp what is happening here. I have given some of you a picture which might be of help to you. Some time ago, I saw a large new Cross in a church, and was asked what I thought of it. I said that the Crucifix to me was like modern man: not standing, not hanging, not smiling, not crying. There is only a little superficial sorrow but I did not feel that that Crucufix had been truly pierced. It seemed like modern man, full of tension: incapable of standing up, only of running, not of feeling life.

It is the same with is Christians, we do not have time to contemplate, to put the message into practice and to centre ourselves on it. When I speak to you about 'entering' it seems to me like an impulse: that is, to have the time, patience and abandonment to God to live this Divine message and to be so centred on it that we are ready to act. If we have sin within us, we must be capable of crying within. If Jesus suffers, we must become people capable of crying.

If God offers us a gift, speaks to us in the Gospel, we must be joyful and able to praise: 'come with love', 'come in peace.' So, dear brothers, we must understand what God wants of us at this time and allow His message to enter deep within us, to change our being.

Who of you can say : is this the only way ? Our Lady was given the message from heaven by the Angel ; she accepted It, made It become Life in her, gave life to It, made It grow and finally offered It on the Cross as the gift of Salvation. This was the only way revealed to Our Lady and we must follow it too. Remember though, that not even Our Lady understood clearly at the beginning what God wanted from her, but she started to ask how this could be ? I have no husband ... Look carefully, if you want to go a few steps forward, you must take the step taken by the Virgin: a step forward each day : ' Lord,what do you want me to do for You' not 'do this for me' not 'do that for me' not 'you know that I need good health' because Jesus told us : 'Search firt of all for the Kingdom of God and the rest will be given to you.'

We must ask ourselves in every moment what God wants of us, how we can actuate His plan, what His Word in the Gospel is telling us, ask Him to explain It to us and give us the strength to put it into practice.

If we have an attitude like this we will find ourselves inside the Church and everything else, all the promises of God will be given to us. We will feel like the son when he returned home and will feel the Father's love and the friendship God is offering us. So, dear brothers, this is the path we must follow: start out. I urge you to start moving forward.

Those of you who are here for the first time should start out with the decision to pray each day, to fast at least on Fridays on bread and water. The visionaries say Our Lady has asked us to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays and to recite the entire Rosary every day. Do not be surprised at this. When the visionaries gave us Our Lady's request for the entire Rosary for the first time, I asked people here if they were ready to recite it and nearly everyone agreed. A man told me afterwards that he went back into the church and held his head in his hands asking himself what he had promised as he did not have time for the entire Rosary. He was worried, but as he had agreed he started to recite the Rosary every day and a month later confessed that he had been stupid because he now realised that he could say five Rosaries every day. When a person seriously sets out to do what God asks, he always finds time. Those of you who are here for the first time must make up your minds to do this. Those of you who have been here several times and have progressed further, please take anothe step forward to increase the quality of your prayer. We have heard from the visionaries that the newness of the Rosary is in contemplation. Our Lady asks us to contemplate each mystery, but I have seen that we Christians have transformed the Rosary into an "express Rosary", like an expresso coffee: 'in this mystery we contemplate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ - Our Father Who are in heaven, Hallowed be........' We do not meditate and cannot contemplate. So I ask you to make this progress.

The Rosary is a most beautiful prayer if it is contemplated, if we put Holy Scripture before every mystery, if we follow the life of Jesus and the life of our Redemption. In this way, we can proceed all the time with a heart that opens wider each day and with greater recollection. Be recollected like this in your homes, in your hearts, in your groups and you will see that everything will go well. In the name of God, please accept these messages and put them into practice.

Do not worry much about what you will tell people you meet, but try to bring joy which is the fruit of peace. If this blessedness which Jesus speaks about shines on your face then you can announce the Gospel and the apparitions. If we do not have this blessedness on our faces then our words will be empty.

As a step forward, make a sincere confession and continue, all of you, to deepen your understanding of these messages because it is clear that all these happenings are meant to bring us all out of slavery and bring us to a blessedness.

I repeat: the visionaries tell us that Our Lady says : "It is better for everyone to remain in Church in prayer then to remain there (in the chapel) out of curiosity." While these happenings are taking place, walls do not exist if we open our hearts.

Mass is offered for all the pilgrims. Every evening Mass is offered for you. Try to be united in a special way during the prayer for world peace. After Mass, there will be prayers for the healing of those in need of it.

Pray: the most useful thing for everyone is prayer. let this be a continuous time of prayer. If you cannot understand the language, you have the rosary in your hand and something else as well: you have your heart. It is better not to understand the words of the priest: if you close your eyes and invoke the name of Jesus and long for Our Lord, even if you do not understand the language, you will understand what God is offering you.

Thank you. It is a joy for us priests to write the Divine plan in your hearts, and we will be happy if this plan remains in your hearts and is filfilled.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 3rd November 1984)

Prayer is a dialogue with God

The principal message Our Lady is sending to the world at this time is peace. Our Lady's peace is a fruit which comes as a result of a meeting with God'. She says: "He who meets God finds a joy from which peace comes."

To reach this peace, Our Lady asks us for prayer. At the beginning, she said: "Start to recite at least seven Our Father's, Hail Mary's, Glory Be's and the Creed. Fast on Fridays on bread and water." Since then she has always urged us forward towards more prayer. On 14th August this year, she said: "At this time, I wish for people to pray as much as possible with me. Recite at least one entire rosary: the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries: fast properly on Wednesdays and Fridays."

You can see that Our Lady is always urging us onwards to prayer and fasting.

She has emphasised the need for the conversion of the world. In all her messages we can see this call to people to become closer to God. She has also stressed what she said at Fatima: "a monthly confession." During this time, Our Lady has continued to repeat these messages and to urge us on, through the visionaries.

Last Thursday's messages was this: "Dear Children, you do not know how many gifts God is sending you through me. God is giving you great grace. You do not understand this. So pray to the Holy Spirit that he may illuminate you. If you knew how much grace God is offering you, you would pray continuously. Thank you for answering my call."

On Thursday of the previous week she said: "Dear Children, now that you have finished your work in the fields, renew the spirit of prayer. Let prayer come first."

So you can see that Our Lady is continuing to call us and urge us onwards in our spiritual life.

This summer something interesting took place for Mirjana, who had finished the daily apparitions on 25th December 1982. While she was praying at the beginning of August, she heard Our Lady's voice in her heart letting her know that she would have an apparition on 25th August. On that day, after she had started to pray Our Lady appeared to her and remained with her for eighteen minutes. Our Lady told her: "I will come again on 13th September to talk to you about the secrets." On that day she appeared again and told Mirjana the day on which she must hand over details of the first secrets to the priest, and they talked about these secrets. Mirjana cannot tell us anything about this this but from her behaviour we can learn much. First of all, Mirjana has taken a very serious attitude to the future and when one of the Fathers remarked that considering she had seen Our Lady and knew the future she seemed very happy. She replied: 'It is not really like that: when I remember, it only takes a word to make me cry all day.' From this we can see the background; and she also says that Our Lady is very sad because there are so many unfaithful in the world. The Father asked her: 'Which unfaithful ? Those who go to Church but do not practice or those who do not know God ?' She replied: 'They are both the same.' But how can they be the same when one person has not entered into the Faith ? Mirjana replied: 'Our Lady says: "All adults have the capacity to know that God exists. The sin of the world consists in the fact that they are not interested in God. The cities and villages are full of churches and mosques but people do not go to ask how they must live. The sin of the world lies in this, that there is no interest for God." '

The visionary tells us about the seventh secret which has been diminished but not totally removed. Our Lady told us: "Do not ask for all the secrets to be removed because God has His plan. You must be converted and live your Faith." So from this we see that we must assume a serious attitude to the future. But Mirjana also said that it is necessary to announce hope to the world and at the same time reality that is, the seriousness of the events that lie before us.

This is what has been happening here during the last few months. I will begin to talk to you now about Our Lady's message: "The sin of the world lies in this, that it does not search for God, it is not interested in God." I would like to tell you all, those who just hear the messages and those of you who are following them and proceeding, that we cannot understand these messages unless we do really progress. This is because the apparitions have been continuing for so long that unless we follow their path, it is not possible to understand them. If I reread a message given to the prayer group it really shakes us: "Dear Children, you must understand that you have to pray. Prayer is not a trifle. Prayer is a dialogue with God. You must hear the voice of God in every prayer. It is not possible to live without prayer. Prayer is life." This message was given to Jelena on 10th September, 1984.

On 20th October, 1984 she said: "When you pray, you must pray more. Prayer is a dialogue with God. Prayer means understanding God. Prayer is necessary because after it, everything will become clear. Prayer is for knowing happiness. Prayer is for learning to cry. Prayer is for learning to blossom. Prayer is not a trifle. Prayer really is a dialogue with God."

We cannot understand these messages well because they lead to prayer and fasting and it is necessary to enter into the depth of them. We have forgotten how to fast: it is only an obligation twice a year: those who do not do it, or do not feel well, it does not matter .... We must rediscover it and discover depth in prayer and then all these messages will help us go forwards in a deeper way. This message of Our Lady to the prayer group is the centre of prayer because prayer means the Resurrection of a person when everything changes and after true prayer our life must alter. When I say 'go forward' I will explain to you what I told the people here last Thursday, because we have begun a long preparation for Christmas. I have seen many Christians who behave in their prayer like people in front of the door of the Church knocking, knocking and calling out for the door to be opened to them, but they do not want to receive and do not want to enter. They spend their whole life knocking and calling for the door to be opened to them but behave as though they were saying: 'I will come to Your side, Jesus, if you will come out of the Church to keep me company in this life by giving me good health, some happiness on this earth and other things for this life.' Only those few who enter into Church really feel full of the grace of God. Those who abandon themselves to God and live for Him are interested only in Him. To cry for God, to fight and suffer for Him, and ask: 'Our Lady, help me so that Jesus will not suffer any more through my fault and will not suffer in the world ... ' Those who enter into relationship with God, into the Heart of God are concerned only with Him.

The only possible behaviour for people who enter into the Church of Jesus is to praise God, thank Him continuously and to pray for His Kingdom. Everything else will be given to us only if we are inside, in the Heart of God, in the Heart of Our Lady, then we will receive all else. This is why our prayers are not granted: we do not want to enter into possession of Our Lord. Only those who start to live for God will possess Our Lord. These people do not ask to be given this and that every day, but offer themselves to live for God. When I tell you to enter into possession, I am telling you to live in the depth of your heart: it is by living these messages in the depth of our being that we can understand Our Lady's message. It is only in this way that we can help Our Lady so that the messages may win. Our Lady has said many times this year, particularly in July and August: "Satan wants to destroy my plans. Help me by prayer so that I may win." Only if these messages are accepted can Our Lady win and from this we can learn the basis of the veneration to the Madonna. The Blessed Virgin opened Her heart to receive the message of the Annunciation from Heaven. She made It grow within, giving birth to It and give It to the world. Every message from Heaven must follow this course of incarnation in each one of us and each of us must be mother and life of the Word. If we live these messages in the depth of our hearts then we will bring salvation to the world. We had a beautiful passage from the Gospel last Thursday when Jesus told the publicans and pharisees that anybody would leave ninetynine sheep to look for the missing one ... and said it is a greater joy for one sinner who repents than for many righteous ones ... This is also very sad because God offers us everything but we reject Him. I do not believe that we accept seriously the reality of the Divine weeping and that of Our Lady. On 24th April, 1984, I believe, Our Lady said, through Jelena: "Several times, in the face of criticism and your sins I have come back to you in tears. I could not say anything. I am your Mother, I do not wish to offend you ... What I shall do in you depends on you." It is a very special grace that Our Lady wants to give us, as she has told us. Our Lady said: "We must make Jesus rejoice", exactly that: "Make Him happy", by going into the depth of things and not remaining on the surface in a superficial way.

I believe one of the ways by which we can measure our path on the pilgrimage of conversion is prayer, the quality of prayer in the sense of seeking God. When I tell you these things, I feel within myself that we must pray a great deal more, discover prayer, not just the seven Our father's, but to pray until we are reborn within. Our Lady said, through Marija, in the latest message: "If you knew the gifts God is offering you, you would pray continuously !" here, Our Lady is not just asking for some prayers but is stressing the fundamental aspect of prayer. We do not even know how to recite the rosary any more. It has become like an expresso coffee: 'in this mystery we think about the Resurrection, Our Father Who art in Heaven ...' We cannot make progress in this way and are unable to hear what Jesus is telling us and cannot meditate on how the Resurrection is taking place within us. We must leave space and time in our lives so that we can put into practice what God tells us and let grace grow within us. Little by little, you will discover new horizons if you start to search for God and salvation. I want to tell you about an experience of mine, something that strikes me when I see people, Christians amongst them, standing outside the Church. We has been reading the Gospel of Saint Luke which tells us how people came to the door of Heaven and knocked. God replied that He did not know them; these people asked why He did not know them because they had eaten with Him, they had .... but God answered that he did not know them and told them to go away. After this, I started to pray but was not able to do so; at the end of the day, I felt like crying because so many things had carried me right and left; I had not managed to come close to people as God tells us to do. Ultimately, I really understood that it is not God who rejects us but we who go astray because we are not really interested. I am distracted because there are many things which are of greater value to me and so I am far from God. We must continue to enter into the depth of spiritual life, to really go to the core of it, means entering the Divine Heart through the Consecration to the Virgin Mary, to the Immaculate Heart and to the Heart of Jesus. We must feel and live the Divine Heart, this is the reason for which I want to urge you onwards to this Consecration, but it is only possible by prayer, fasting and loving one another. Remember, with only a minimum of prayer we enter into a minimum of Christian life, but with a maximum of prayer we enter a deep spirituality. I will leave you now so you are able to start out and go forward.

Make a good, heartfelt confession.

Yesterday, an Italian pilgrim asked me why it was necessary to fast and that it should be enough to give up sin. I replied that, from my experience, people usually confess sins of word but only a few confess sins of deed: theft, slander, ills done to others and so on. If we go to the depth of the matter: who does really confess what is hidden inside each of us ? We do not even see it. We will realise it when we start to fast and to do penance, little by little we will discover it. We have so much to discover: the value of fasting, of prayer, the face of the demon who is everywhere. He manifests himself in many different ways and we do not even see him, we go on as usual and he is pleased because we do not notice him.

Prayer, fasting and everything Our Lady tells us, are the means for making progress and putting these messages into practice and the means, too, for our happiness and contentment.

I urge you, therefore, to make a good confession and receive Holy Communion.

.... Increase your prayers: let your face speak to everyone, may your faces speak of Our Lady, and peace.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 10th November 1984)

Abandon yourselves to the Immaculate Heart

First of all, I would like to greet all my acquaintances, friends and brothers, because I feel we are all brothers and I want to assure you that I pray to Our Lady and her Immaculate Heart for all of you every day.

Now I want to ask you this: do you truly desire the triumph of the Immaculate Heart ? I want to say a few words about today's Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception is the most beautiful gift God gave to humanity before He sent His Son, Jesus Christ. Today God wants us to become immaculate and to start to live an immaculate life: this, too, is something beautiful. To really live an immaculate life is the sense of the celebration of this feast day and the consecration to the Immaculate Heart. Our Lady's triumph depends on us; we can slow it down or hasten it. If we, as the Church, begin to live immaculately, Our Lady will knock at our door and the door of the Church, so that we really do start to live this 'immaculate' attitude. This is the reason for the messages of conversion, prayer and fasting.

Remember how Our Lady was born: Saint Joachim and Saint Anne fasted and prayed a great deal and, finally, this great gift for humanity came into being. Now we must accept these messages and I want to remind you that, when we were baptised, we became immaculate but we became stained by sin again later. I want to tell you about an obstacle I have noted in the souls of pilgrims lately; that is that when there is opposition to our attitude of prayer, conversion and fasting, many pilgrims get upset, become perturbed and lost, or start to fight and shout. However, we must continue living in our immaculate way and this means living in this contrast. Wherever light increases darkness angers, wherever the countenance of God is manifested, darkness angers. But we should not try to lessen this contrast between light and darkness. The danger lies in accepting the weapons of darkness by starting to get angry we must not become angry, bitter or to judge and quarrel because this lessens the contrast. We must remain immaculate and continue to love and to pray. This guarantees our faithfulness to the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. If, at any moment, we lose this contrast and accept the weapons of the opposition, of the people who get angry and protest, then we are no longer the light. We must proceed towards the Immaculate Conception by living the beatitudes because the obstacles are put in front of us to be overcome, although not by human strength. Never, as at this moment, have I understood that it is not possible to illuminate the minds of people by human reasoning and logic, but only by the supernatural strength given to us by God. So I remind you to abandon yourselves to the Immaculate Heart and live in an immaculate way.

In her last message, Our Lady calls us to: "live community prayer." This is a very profound message because, if we can live community prayer, then we will be capable of everything. First of all, find time for this prayer in your families and then, on a deeper level, be united to the Holy Spirit at all times. I asked Our Lady, through one of the visionaries, how I should behave when I know that I am telling the truth but there is a negative judgement from the other part. Our Lady told me: "You must tell that person with your heart that you love him." Even if a person rejects me, does not accept me, I must accept that person and love him and from this we can see that the relationship with our neighbour is not only on an external level. If we want to hasten the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I believe that these factors are of great importance. If we want to increase the dynamics of conversion, then we must remain immaculate. In the face of all obstacles, we must remain in the light and not take up the weapons of darkness. We must remain united even with our enemies. We must do as the Gospel tells us: love our enemies, be united to them with love and tell each of them: 'I love you.' Even if they close our mouths and we are not able to say the words 'I love you' to others, we can do so with our heart. I wish that all of you may be able to put this into practice.

Here in Medjugorje, we pray continuously for you pilgrims so that we remain brothers, not separated but united more and more in the Immaculate Heart. I hope that today will bring you a true deepening of your spiritual life, not just in external prayer but also in silent life.

You Italians are numerous and I really ask you to make space in and around the church; a space of silence and silent prayer this evening. This is what Our Lady tells us to do because she has complained several times that people come here only to look, but I hope you have come to be with the Immaculate Heart. I wish the Mass this evening to be a true celebration of the Immaculate Heart so that Our Lady will begin to celebrate her triumph this evening. Start out towards Christmas as Our Lady tells us: "If you follow me, this Christmas will be unforgettable for you. I tell you: turn off your television sets, your radios and follow the programme set by God of meditation, prayer and reading the Gospel; foster the development of faith."

What began in the Immaculate Heart has grown and continued to grow all through Our Lady's life so let us set out, too, along this path.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 8th December 1984)

I am your Mother, my beloved ones, and I have come to teach you to love.

Every Thursday, Our Lady gives messages for the Parish and for all the pilgrims. last Thursday, she said: "I beg you, during this period, to renew prayer in your families. In the name of Our Lord I have given you many messages, but you have not followed them. If you listen, if you follow my messages, this Christmas will be unforgettable for you. If you do not follow them, do not allow this day of joy to become the saddest day for me!" After every message Our Lady says "Thank you for answering my call." What does this message mean ? You can understand it by these happenings at Medjugorje during the last fortyone months: Mary has decided to enter into every family and wants to be accepted as Mother. She says in a message: "If you have not listened to my messages, the day of joy will become the saddest day for me." In what sense does she say this ? Like a Mother she wants to gather us together in peace and love. If a son or daughter is missing from home a mother will be sad. We must understand the message in this sense. Each of us is in a way responsible for whether Christmas will be a day of joy or not. Our Lady, like a Mother, has entered into our life and families, into our Church.

On 8th May, Our Lady asked all of us to be consecrated to Our Lord. This means: 'I accept you as my Mother and let you enter my heart, my family, my community or where I live.'

At the start of this time of Advent Our Lady said: "Dear Children, you do not yet know how to love and you do not know how to listen to the messages with love, the words I give you: I am your Mother, my beloved ones, and I have come to teach you to love, to listen with love, to pray with love but not just because you have difficulties or crosses. You glorify Our Lord with each of your crosses."

A new liturgical year is beginning and we see that Our Lady, as Mother and teacher, tells us: "I am your Mother and I have come on earth to teach you to love." There is one question which is valid for all of us here in this church or in the world; who of us can say they have finished this school of love and know everything ? None of us can say this, I believe. Love is something dynamic and we cannot say today that we loved yesterday and that is sufficient, this is like saying that we breathed yesterday; we must breathe today as well. It is a hard school that lasts all our life long. If Our Lady has so much patience with us, our hardness and the hardness of our heart, then I believe that we are held to follow her. Our Lady is not coming to us because she has nothing else to do in heaven: she loves us all as Our Mother and in many messages has told us: "I am your Mother, and I am the Mother of everyone: I love you all."

In a message in November, she said: "Dear Children, you are a chosen people and Our Lord is giving you many graces. But you have not yet understood: I have nothing else to tell you but this: pray, pray, pray. By prayer you will understand my love for you and the love of Our Lord."

Our Lady behaves like a mother who has prepared a large table with much to eat and drink but who sees her children in the corners of the home complaining: we are hungry, thirsty, in trouble, have no peace .... The mother tells them to come, look, everything is ready, to come and be seated together and eat so there will be no more hunger and thirst ... but peace for all. So, everything is ready, Our Lord has given us everything. If we wait, then it is partly our fault. Let us open our hearts !

In another message in November, Our Lady said: "You do not yet understand the significance of the messages I have given you, which Our Lord has given through me. Pray to the Holy Spirit that he may illuminate you and that you may understand." So pray to the Holy Spirit. You will remember other messages about the Holy Spirit: once Our Lady said: "You ask for many things: ask first of all for the Holy Spirit and if He comes, everything else will be given to you."

On 18th October, Our Lady asked everyone: "Today I ask you, dear children, to read the Bible. Put it in a prominent place in your homes so that it may be a stimulus to you to read it and to pray." This was said on the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, who has written much about Our Lady, that only she could have told him: her dialogue with the Angel and her prayer, the Magnificat.

It is very important for us to know that Our Lady asks us for the entire rosary (the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries). Without knowing the Bible, we are not able to contemplate and meditate well. Our Lady asks us for these mysteries, not just to make us recite one hundred and fifty Hail Mary's each day and then to say we have finished ! This is not the sense of the rosary. In a message, she said: "Pray with your hearts." This means that, by contemplating the mysteries of Our Lady's life and those of Her Son, Jesus, we come closer to our Redemption. For example, if we say 'let us contemplate the second joyful mystery', we meditate on how Our Lady visited her cousin, Elizabeth. This does not mean just knowing that Mary visited Elizabeth, but Our Lady wants us to use her example to find a real stimulus for ourselves during contemplation: who is waiting for us today, who is waiting for our help, our time, our words, our consolation ? We have contemplated well if we act according to our prayer, so prayer continues.

Reciting the rosary with our heart means for each mystery, searching and finding real stimulation for our daily lives. If you cannot forgive someone or find it difficult, why not meditate the fifth sorrowful mystery: Jesus forgives everyone. If we contemplate this mystery with our heart, we will find grace and be able to forgive and make peace: our conversion has begun when the Word makes us act.

Jesus once said: My Word is like a sword, it will never leave you in peace while you are in sin, while you hate or are unable to forgive. The Word will not leave you until it has brought forth fruit. This is what it means for all of us to begin with, so take your time and your prayer will grow. Prayer comes by praying not by theory about prayer. Prayer comes by praying as an appetite comes by eating. to say that we do not know how to pray does not mean that we should not begin: it is but an excuse. We must find time, take up the Bible and the rosary. Start and you will see !

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 8th December 1984)

If we have not understood the Cross,we will never understand anything of Christian life.

Another message at the beginning of this time of Advent, tells us that Our Lady has come to teach us love: "You do not yet know how to love, you do not yet know how to listen with love. I am your Mother and I want to teach you something very important." At the beginning of the liturgical year, Our Lady gives us the task of: "Love." At this point, we must ask ourselves a deep and intimate question: if Our Lady had said once more "there will be a catastrophe" how would we behave ? If Our Lady says: "You do not yet know how to love" has this moved us or not ? If these words do not move us it is a sign to us that we see our physical life as more important than our spiritual one. We can pray or not do so, be converted or not, but one day we all must die and this will be our catastrophe. When Our Lady tells us: "I have come to teach you to love" this means that she has come to preserve us from the most dangerous death, the death of our soul. These words must move us.

Another very important fact is that Our Lady wants to bring us to the Cross. In two messages she has said: "Pray a great deal for peace in front of the Cross." Our Lady knows what significance the Cross has. She is educating a prayer group with Ivan and sometimes tells the group to pray the joyful mysteries together, the sorrowful mysteries two by two in the group, but for the glorious mysteries she says: "Go to your homes and pray in front of the Cross." The Cross is the most important Word Our Lord could tell us. What does the cross of illness or suffering mean ? If we have not understood the Cross, we will never understand anything of Christian life or of the life of Jesus. We have to pray a great deal in front of the Cross and meditate on It. Our Lady was poor in front of Our Lord, she said to the Angel: Behold the handmaid of the Lord. This is the summary of the whole of the Bible. By these words Our Lady showed that she understood that a Servant of the Lord would come Who by His Life and Love would save the world. Others were waiting for a political saviour. As a poor handmaid, Our Lady waited for the Servant of the Lord. To become the Mother of Our Lord, she had to understand the Cross and she wants us to understand It, too. You can see how much the visionaries suffer; they are with Our Lady every day but still suffer. It is suffering for Jacov to live without his parents and so is it also for Ivanka. Vicka has been ill for so long and now also Marija ! I can see that suffering exists in their lives, but in a different way because they bear their crosses with joy. Our Lady wants us to learn this, too. We will not be spared our crosses and our suffering, but Our Lord will give us strength. Our Lady has come, as Jesus did, not take away all the suffering of the world, but to show us how to live with it. As the Apostle says: 'to those who love Our Lord all suffering will be worthwhile.'

Our Lady wants to bring us to the Bible. She has said: "Read the Bible, put it in a prominent place in your families so that it will be a stimulus to you." We see the Cross and the Bible so often and can have a hundred Bibles in our homes, but if we do not look at them with our hearts they will not give us an impulse for reading and prayer; if we want them to do so, we must begin with our conversion. Conversion means letting ourselves be moved by the Cross and the Bible which is the Word given to us. Many times in our family life in front of the Cross we behave badly. If the Cross and the Bible do not mean anything to us anymore it means that our spiritual life is dead.

When Our lady asks us to fast she wants to lead us to the life of the poor. She is not asking for hunger from us, but for a deeper life, purified from every sin and evil. A poor person is able to believe and to abandon himself to God, because he will never put his hopes in the material world or earthly goods; he will never tell someone ho does not need them. A poor person is open to God and to his fellow men and this is what matters. Our Lady knows this and this is why she asks us to fast twice a week.

A French journalist told me today that he had not heard any more about Our Lady giving messages containing threats or similar warnings. I explained that all the secrets remain. Our Lady has not said that they will not come about, but has told us something important: "By your prayers and fasting you have helped the fulfilment of my plans." What can the plans of a mother be for her children ? Only plans of good and peace, but Our Lady added: "Continue to pray and fast so that all my plans may be fulfilled." Our Lady wants to save not only us, but the whole world when she gives us the means of prayer and fasting into our hands. We are all responsible and I understand this responsibility now more than ever in my life. We are all responsible for each other and for everything which happens in the world ! Yesterday I told you to appreciate every act of forgiveness; even if it is only forgiving a swear word, if you have shaken hands to make peace, it is a great step... peace is like a house, it is built with small stones, stone by stone it becomes a house, and forgiveness by forgiveness will make a new world. You have heard this today in the readings: Isiah, this voice from the desert, tells us to lower these hills. These hills and valleys are my hand and your hand, your heart that no longer knows how to forgive. If they are full if grace and love then Our Lord can come. The prophet Isiah and John the Baptist did not mean that we must lower our Monte Krizevac, the Italian Alps or the Apennines, but we are thinking of our hearts which can be higher than these hills and wider than all the valleys in the world. In this sense, too, we must understand Our Lady's last message: "You can say that my joy at Christmas lies in your hands." Like a Mother she wants to have everyone seated at the table in peace and love together.

The road of love is a great and long school that lasts all our life.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 9th December 1984)

It is necessary to start praying, to start with Our Lady

There is a general message: THE PRESENCE OF OUR LADY FOR EVERYONE.

The Second Vatican Council defined Our Lady as 'Mater Ecclesiae': Mother of the Church, and we are the Church. This presence of Our Lady is the strongest message of Medjugorje and this presence is seen in the daily apparitions. These daily apparitions are a problem for many people: how can it be possible ? I would never have believed that is could be possible, but I see that this is what Our Lady is doing because, for fortytwo months, with absolute certainty, the visionaries say: 'We are seeing Our Lady' in front of everyone, from the Bishop down to the last pilgrim who comes here.

I would never have thought it possible, but I can see what is happening and that this is the way Our Lady has of saying "I am with you." Consecrating ourselves to Our Lady, as we did on 25th March this year (in the whole world), means: 'I accept you as my Mother and keep you in my life.' To keep Our Lady in our life means allowing ourselves to be taken to Jesus because this is what Our Lady wishes. She behaves as she did in Cana in Galilee when she told Jesus that the family had no more wine and said to the servants to do everything Jesus told them. I am sure Our Lady did not know what Jesus would say to the servants, but she knew He would say something to save the family. It was important that the servants did as He told them. This is how Our Lady is behaving here: she comes and invites us to search for Jesus because she wants us to find Him. Many times she has said: "I need your prayers, help me !"

A person of responsibility in the Pentecostal Church told me here that he was afraid to come to Medjugorje because Our Lady has not yet been given a place in their churches, but after coming here and seeing what is happening and that at the centre of the apparitions there are the Eucharist, the Cross and Jesus, he was able to accept the apparitions. This is very important from the ecumenical point of view.

Our Lady tells us: "I am the Mother of everyone." She presents herself as the handmaid of the Lord who wants to help for the salvation of her children.

A famous Franciscan sculptor was given money in America for a statue of Our Lady at Medjugorje. He came here and told me he had the time and the money but wanted confirmation from Heaven: if Our Lady permitted him to, he would make a statue, but if she did not want it, there was no one on earth who could persuade him to do it. The question was asked through Marija Pavlovic and the answer was: "Not mine, but that of my Son (the statue) and let yourself be inspired by the words 'Come to Me all of you who are weary, I will restore you.' " He was breathless and said he would make the statue of Our Lady's Son with her permission, but would also make Our Lady's statue without permission from Heaven. We can see that Our Lady shows herself as the humble handmaid who wants to be of use for our welfare and for our heavenly salvation: "I am with you, but fast and pray so that you may have peace."

In the last message before Christmas she said: "Dear Children, I invite you to take a real step for Jesus, bring flowers. I wish every family in the Parish to bring a flower as a sign of abandonment and for each member of the family to have a flower on the crib so that Jesus may see your abandonment and come." Like this Mother who loves us, we must prepare ourselves for the coming of her Son.

In another message Our Lady said: "I am with you also in your sufferings." Vicka told me that Our Lady had been present during her fortyfive minute operation which took place at 4.00 pm. A young man was in the room after the operation and Vicka was still under the effects of the anaesthetic when, at 5.45 pm, she woke up, without an alarm, and had an apparition lasting five or six minutes. Immediately after the apparition she was under the effect of the anaesthetic again. The young man told me that if only he had had a video recorder it would have been the proof of all those who still have doubts. This apparition during Vicka's operation is a message for all of us. Our Lady said: "You do not yet understand: if you want to understand my love and Our Lord's love, you must pray." By this message she has told us something very important about prayer which is, not saying a Hail Mary to someone who is in a corner of our life, saying a Hail Mary or a Glory Be in the morning or evening and then going about our usual life; prayer is something else. Prayer is being together with someone who is listening to me and replying to me. Prayer is this communication. If we remain at a level of just asking for something, we are not praying. Prayer means taking time in the way we find time for a friend who comes to visit us and not allowing ourselves to be disturbed until we have finished our talk with him or the time we have dedicated to him. So it is in prayer, Our Lady will show herself little by little if we want to pray in this sense of prayer. We must take time. I have asked you if you can do without the telephone and all the rest for an hour, or a quarter of an hour, in your families in order to pray and to be with God ? If you say you are distracted and cannot pray .... it does not matter, you are distracted, but you have never looked for the place to pray. So continue or begin to pray but find both the time and the place to be able to pray. I think that we are all very busy, but we will always find excuses if we have not discovered that the whole of prayer is 'what does God mean for us.' Nobody can convince us: we must begin in in order to find out. A few months ago, I read some statistics about the hours spent watching television in France: a percentage of families watch television for eighteen hours each week, that is three hours each day. And we say we have no time to pray. We will not have time until the day in which we rediscover prayer. Prayer is being together with Our Lord. Our Lady asks us for the Creed which means decision. We live in a world full of atheism so how can we begin ? There is a personal practical atheism and an organised atheism. The practical atheism of the Christians is more dangerous for the Faith than the organised type. We must start to pray, to start with Our Lady who us asking us for Faith. Practical atheism means that I have everything and do not need Our Lord: I know Our Lord exists but I have everything. it is the most dangerous atheism for the Faith, for peace and for love. Our Lady is asking us for the whole rosary as well, all the 15 mysteries but not just to make us say one hundred and fifty Hail Mary's and then say that we have to do this again tomorrow. She is asking us to become closer to the mysteries of the Redemption, to become closer to God and to other people. The first joyful mystery means allowing Our Lord to enter our life, into the intimacy of our life as when Our Lady said: 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord.'

The meaning of her visit to her cousin Elizabeth is: 'I am bringing the Lord to those who are waiting for me and to whom I have to go.' Each mystery should be said in this way. To pray with our heart means to find the answer for myself and this must drive me to search for reconciliation and to forgive. If the Word does not urge me to act, I remain with my sins. Conversion begins when, on hearing the Word, I start to put it into practice. Our Lady visited her cousin, Elizabeth, and if I contemplate this mystery, it means that afterwards I must know who is waiting for me today, which sick person. This is the meaning of reciting the rosary.

Fasting is something else. Fasting means 'eating' not 'not eating'. Many people think that when we fast we do not eat anything. This is not so, we eat bread and Our Lady has asked for bread and water. People have asked me if it is possible to fast on tea rather than water. Of course. Why is Our Lady asking us to fast on bread ? I believe there is a deeper reason: Our Lady is not asking us to go hungry, but to live a life of the poor. A poor person as Our Lady, is open to Our Lord and to mankind.

Practical atheism means: I do not need you. If we start to live one or two days like a poor person with just a piece of bread, little by little, a process of purification starts whereby I become detached from the material world and my egoism, and open myself to God and to others. A person who is poor in spirit forgives easily. One who is proud, for example, tries to vindicate himself, whereas a person who is poor in spirit tries to make peace; a person who is poor in spirit can never say to Our Lord he does not need Him. A proud person, full of himself, can say to Our Lord that he does not need Him.

Our Lady's teaching is quite radical but is quite possible to practice. It is radical, not in wasting our time in prayer or making us live on bread, but in order to prepare us. Prayer and fasting are indispensable means for reaching peace, faith and to be able to abandon oneself to God. The experience of not needing much when we fast, serves us and helps us to understand this passage of the Gospel that Our Lady requests every Thursday. She said: "Every Thursday meditate on the Gospel of St. Matthew 6, 2434 during the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament."

This passage tells us that we cannot serve two masters: or Mammon (money) or God.

It is the same, when at the beginning the Madonna asked us to recite the 'CREED', which means to take a decision. For all else: look at the birds of the air. Why do you worry ? For all your worries and fears you cannot prolong your lives: abandon yourselves to God and search first of all for the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven consists in this: if I am open to God, if I am able to forgive, if I look for peace, if I love others, If I help as much as I can... this is the Kingdom of Heaven.

(Fr. Slavic Barbaric 29th December 1984)

Invoke Jesus in your hearts

Our Lady said: "I am your Mother. I have come to teach you love" and at this time we look at Jesus as a living Child. He becomes poor, even smaller

He becomes daily bread and enters into our life. He has done everything : now it is up to us to open our heart

Jesus comes in the Host: He has come. How many times do we receive Holy Communion without thinking of Who has come, Who we have accepted !

Invoke Jesus in your hearts

We have prayed and sung for two hours. Now enter into the depth of your hearts. Invoke Jesus with faith and when we are all united in love, in faith, let us pray for the sick

It is thus that Our Lord can make signs amongst us

Many times, as we know from the Gospel : He cannot do anything in the way He did at Nazareth because we do not believe

Jesus Himself said: "I cannot do it, because you do not believe"

So all these prayers prepare us and open our hearts. Now abandon yourselves in real communication with Jesus.

(Fr.Slavko Barbaric, 29th December 1984)