Pray with Your Heart

Pray, Fast have Faith

With regard to the latest events in Medjugorje - there are events in Medjugorje and there are events in the press. When one talks of Medjugorje regarding press articles which are critical of it, the path to follow is the one indicated in the 1st reading of the Feast of St. Peter : "St. Peter, watched by two guards and tied with two chains, was sleeping, whilst just outside the iron gate the sentries were guarding the goal ... "

At this point something happens : "Wake up, arise, get dressed !" and an angel leads him through the gate into the street.

What strikes me here is the presence of the Father who takes care of his children, even when everything appears impossible. St. Peter is asleep in chains and the opposing forces are on guard, ready ; on the human level it is impossible to save him, whilst on the divine one everything is possible, everything begins to move and he is saved. God wakes people up and takes the steps that a mother and father usually take towards ther child : "Wake up - he says - get up, get dressed and walk." And when he is well on his way, he says, "Now you are capable of walking on your own - go !"

What happened, in my opinion, has happened for two reasons : one, because the Church has not brandished the sword against Herod, but has, instead, got down to praying unceasingly, and two, because St. Peter has put himself totally at God's disposal by being ready to be crucified.

St. Paul says, "Everybody has abandoned me, but the Lord has been near to me and has given me strength."

The same applies to Medjugorje and to whomever wants to walk in God's path. Medjugorje is often on trial, but never in crisis, because a crisis is something interior, whereas trials are exterior. Everyone who wants to move forward in one's faith will be tried ; the more forward one is, the more one is tried. He who wants to climb a higher mountain will have to surmount bigger obstacles, and the same goes for faith.

For me, Medjugorje is a divine grace for the whole world and, therefore, we must not wonder whether we are being and will be tried ; however, on looking back at it from the beginning, we have been undergoing trials during all the time of the apparitions and in no trial were we strong enough to face it.

It is God who has taken care of everything; we were not capable of overcoming our trials, but God has seen to it all.

I can say at this moment that God guides everything and that there will be still harder trials, since salvation has to go right down to its roots. We cannot be healed by theories, but we are healed, we are saved through God's work - the kind of love which, embodied in the church, for all those who want to follow Christ radically goes as far as sacrificing one's own life for God, suffering for Him and offering one's own blood for Him.

This is the maximum Jesus accomplished for us and, if we want to belong to God until the end, then we must cross the path on which God's salvation is fulfilled.

When we talk about conversion, we cannot debate it on a theoretical level, but we must practise it in such a way that our old self is truly destroyed. It follows that we can also expect the destruction of a false world around us. In the Gospel we have, therefore, two choices : - the first one telling us, "Be converted, so that you may not be destroyed", and the second, "If you will not be converted you shall all perish together."

When I am talking about conversion, we must understand that it is not something theoretical. And so, I make a plan and move along slowly; above all, allowing God to guide me along various ways and to even make me suffer, to even make me destroy the false world within me, including the false world, as it were, within the Church herself and all of us. If we are able to face all this, then we can honestly expect some results. The same could be said of a house we intend to renovate; we have to pull down walls, get rid of so many things, sometimes we even have to sleep outside, in order to put everything right, so that everything might be renewed. We are incapable of seeing all these things by ourselves alone. God, on the other hand, sees even the falseness within us and the world. We have to allow God to lead us through these trials. I am telling you - try not to fall into a crisis; that is why I would like to stress the fact that the primitive church used to pray whilst its leaders were on trial. She used to pray, without discussing. She did not fear, nor did she write any articles on the subject, or worry, but prayed, abandoning herself to the Lord.

It is God who is then able to guide those in authority, events, no matter how chained up everything might look, because everything is possible to God - starting from the Virgin's womb, where the impossible human logic began, the one that we ourselves, as well, must follow in the same way the Saints Peter and Paul did.

It is useless looking just at the messages given by Our Lady, as there are many pilgrims who learn the messages by heart - I repeat it is useless ! The pharisees also knew the scriptures by heart.

Our Lady is, for us, a sign ; he, however, who despite having understood the sign does not go ahead shows himself not to have understood the sign in the first place, since the sign is there not for its own sake, but in order to enable us to move forward. Our Lady, therefore, does not answer questions. She does not give out recipes, but simply says, 'Pray, fast and have faith'. And this means going beyond the sign. Open yourselves to the Holy Spirit, may He enlighten you to understand the times, your sickness, your difficulties. And so, even in moments of trial, as now, all of you pilgrims must lead the others to a positive attitude of hope. The attitude of Medjugorje is the attitude of peace, which is the root of hope, and the fruit of hope is peace.

You must not, therefore, in the moments of trial lose your head and allow yourselves to become prey to anxieties, to fears. Our Lady said, 'These come from satan'. We must, instead, be full of peace, using the very weapons Our Lady pointed out to us - prayer, fasting, fraternal love and humility - with these alone we will overcome all obstacles and be stronger in all adversities. This is all very important for priests, for group leaders - that they should bring this hope. Trials are themselves a grace, since only when on trial and after undergoing one, can we see and understand more clearly, better, and can go further ahead. Without trials one cannot go further, one cannot deepen one's faith. Look, therefore, at your trials with peace, with joy, carrying on praying, loving, offering everything to God.

The messages given by Our Lady become slowly, slowly, for us, similar one to the other. For those who accept them with an open heart all messages are similar because they encourage us, call us again and enlighten us ; but this applies only to those who go forward.

To those who have sat down and stayed put, no new message whatever can bring light, but instead it will only disturb them. It disturbs them, as the message wants people to walk, whereas people want to stay put and say, "we are disturbed by this logic, by these messages."

What I want to tell you is - be brave, go ahead, do not worry ! If someone puts the messages in doubt, do not allow that to happen. If a Christian doubts about peace, love, penance, prayer, then we have been throwing our words to the pigs.

We have thrown out of the church even our own saints, and yet they have become saints thanks to the fact that they have been following this path. So, there is not much to discuss with people on what might be the extraordinary happenings at Medjugorje, but rather there is a great deal to talk about on a fundamental, spiritual level and to tell the people "If you believe, this is the way leading to God, to the Gospel". He who does not believe takes the easy way out. I must believe.

Our Lady is inviting us to this, but as we do not want to accept this way towards God, we are disturbed by Our Lady who is telling us : 'Be converted, pray'. We need go no further than this : it is necessary to understand the fundamental points and then Our Lady's message will become clear to us.

This I wanted to tell you - get stronger, do not argue, do not talk things over much, but pray.

Trials are there so that we may become stronger and the others may grow. They will grow, though, only to the degree in which you will be the spokesman of hope, and hope always brings security, joy and peace. And what happened to St. Peter will happen to everybody. God will lead the Church to the salvation of the world.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 1st July 1985)

"As long as you are closed, I cannot talk to you, I cannot give you graces"

Last time we heard how Jesus was sent away from his own country, how God who is omnipotent, was driven from his country and could not, therefore, perform any miracles. By this, you can see the resistance in their souls. Also tomorrow you will listen to this reading and witness how souls put up resistance. On the other hand, you will hear in the Gospel, “Go, preach, testify”, and Jesus sends his apostles without any human means, any power whatsoever, but just says “Go ...”

If you listened to the Gospel well today, you will have heard Jesus saying, “do not worry, but go every hair on your head is counted, do not be afraid”.

I would like to call you to a total opening to the Lord.

Besides these six visionaries, there are two more, especially the visionary Jelena, through whom Our Lady gives messages to a prayer group on mystical life. Once when we were all gathered together and Our Lady wanted to have an evening devoted to a particular programme, a particular message, she simply said , “I cannot talk to you, your hearts are closed ....”.

One evening two weeks ago, she told us, “None of you has practised what I told you to, therefore I cannot talk to you, I cannot give you any graces as long as you are closed ... “. That is why I am telling you, be converted. Our Lady has also invited us towards conversion, prayer, fasting and total abandonment to God. I invite you to confession and hope that each one of you may really become more of a pilgrim and that none of you may be just a tourist. Go to confession, pray, and in that way you will be able to open your hearts and to be made free to receive the messages of Our Lady.

Moreover, I invite all of you to bear witness. But who can testify ? Only a person who has been granted internal light and strength can.

And how can you really be sure of God’s and Our Lady’s presence here ?

In a message through Jelena, Our Lady said, “Each one of you has a particular personal gift and can only grasp it by himself alone, within himself.” The light of faith is something interior, not exterior. There, indeed tomorrow you will listen to the prophet Amos, a herdsman, who says, “The Lord took me from caring for my flocks and told me, ‘Go and prophesy to my people, Israel’.” This is inner light. And so, you and I must be ready to welcome this inner light; and it is when there is inner light that we are able to realise the presence of Our Lady.

The facts of truth and of faith cannot simply be substantiated by adequate reasoning you must instead start from this inner light. Do you remember when the angel came to greet Our Lady and to invite her to accept the Son of God ? What would have happened if Our Lady had waited for an order ? She started off from an inner certainty. And do you remember when the angel appeared to St. Joseph in his sleep ? What would have happened if St. Joseph had waited for an order ? He, too, started off from an inner certainty, the certainty of faith. St. Francis heard an inner voice saying, “Go and renovate my Church... “ What if he had waited for an order ? Nothing ever would have been done, since everybody was against that inner conviction. I say this, because we must develop the light of faith within us and be moved by the strength of the Holy Spirit. If we are not sure within our hearts, if the light of faith is not there, then we shall doubt even our name and surname. We have to be certain at least of the fact that the only way to save the world has to be the way of peace, which one obtains through conversion, through change and through prayer. I, therefore, invite you to open your hearts in order to welcome the messages of Our Lady and with the opening of your hearts, you will be granted light and inner confidence, with which you will be able to go ahead and testify. Then, when you feel this inner strength, this inner light, do not wait for outside help, since the Lord told the apostles to leave everything , not to take weapons with them, but to just set off with confidence, as he had given them power; and we must ask him today and tomorrow for this power, this strangth and this inner light, so as to be able to go forth and to announce. How can we go about announcing ? Do not go into the cities, Milan, Rome, Turin and shout, ‘Our Lady has appeared !’. In a message to a prayer group Our Lady said, “When you carry my messages, try not to be robbed. Carry my messages with humility, so that when people see happiness in you, they might aspire to become like you. Do not carry my message to throw it away to the others.” This is very important; if you want to carry the message of Our Lady, start by living it and being full of divine strength, bringing happiness , salvation, one’s own salvation to others.

The others will notice you are saved and will ask you, ‘How come you are so happy ?’ And so you will start announcing, pointing out the way to salvation. There, I wish you to welcome these prophecies through the visionaries, so that you may become the people, the messengers of salvation.

Already Fr. Slavko has told you that the Rosary starts at six. In a message, Our Lady has addressed herself to the priests asking them to pray the rosary, as the rosary will protect the Catholic Church from the evil that satan wants to bring to this era. So you priests, pray the rosary, devote time to the rosary ! With this I end and give you my blessing.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 13th July 1985)

"I must wish to be like Jesus"

I have good news for you. You have come here wishing to find something, but far more than you wish awaits you here, provided that you open your hearts God always offers us far more than we expect. The problem is that we are not open and come still worried about something, we want to retain something for ourselves, we come with our own plans. And God, as it were, is left with no room to manoeuvre within us. That is why I am telling you today first of all long for the Kingdom of God. What does that mean ? Above all, ask for any bitterness, any worry about things, about your families and everything that harasses you to be removed from you. If you are able to remove everything, then you are able to let God work within yourselves and you will attain the divine love and, through that, everything else will be granted to you.

At this point I will tell you about my experience. We Christians say many prayers, but, unfortunately , do not pray. We are people who say many prayers, not knowing what to ask God or what we should ask for. In my prayer, however, I must know what I want. What I ask for should become, first of all, the wish to become what the Gospel says. I must wish to be like Jesus. Read the Gospel, agree with every word in the Gospel. When your wishes become the wishes of Jesus Christ, then they will be met, then you will be able to obtain what Jesus Christ has promised. Something else I have learned here. We Christians ask God, ‘I want this, I want that”; however, we are incapable of receiving. It happens to us exactly as it happened to the eldest son of the parable, the one who stayed at home whilst the prodigal one had gone away. The eldest was at home, but, nevertheless, did not know how to take what was his own, he was incapable of making use of what he possessed. The most important thing in prayer is knowing how to receive, but unfortunately, we do not want to receive. We say, ‘Our Father, Thy Kingdom come.. ‘, but do not want his Kingdom. We say, ‘Thy will be done .. ‘, instead, we want to do our own will. We say, ‘Forgive us our trespassers as we forgive ... ‘, but do not want to forgive. Therefore, we do not want to receive. When we pray in such a way as to do in practice what we say in words, then we will be able to receive all the graces. They will all be at our disposal. Whereas, if we do not put into practice the words of the Gospel, the ones contained in the Our Father, we will not be in a position to receive anything at all. There, you can see now how easy it is to succeed in obtaining. We only need to accept with simplicity the very simple words we say in our daily prayers or what we hear at Mass.

And if you want to know how one gets to moving mountains with the prayer of faith, you must set off with concrete steps, you must live those words more and more. You see, something terrible can happen the word can be taken away from our heart and then it cannot produce fruit. There are people, Jesus explains, who listen to the word, but who allow themselves to be robbed straight away of it by satan, like a seed fallen on the road and taken away by the birds. Let us be careful. If we go to church and we listen to the Word of the Lord, but do not live it, we have allowed satan to rob us; that is something terrible. If we do not receive this word addressed to us by the priest, by our father, by our mother, how can we possibly obtain fruit, if we have not even planted the divine Word ? I now beg you to apply yourselves to receive with simplicity and humility every Word of God, day by day, and allow it to grow.

I want to remind you of the message given by Our Lady on Monday Thursday 1984, “Today I will disclose to you a spiritual secret. If you want to become stronger than evil, pray enough in the morning, read a passage in the Gospel and plant the divine Word in your hearts. Later on, during the day, often remember that Word, long for it and allow it to grow in the evening you will be stronger than in the morning.” In real terms, if you are impatient, find a word that heals your impatience. Are you the sort of person who often bears bitterness ? Find the word that teaches you to forgive. Let it grow during the day and in this way you will practise a continuous resurrection, during the day. If this continuous process of growth is not in us, we cannot progress in the Gospel. Today we have seen so many Christians, but when we see a Christian after ten years, do we see in him more of a Christian or the same as before ? More of a saint or the same ? Often, the same. If, during the lapse of ten years, a Christian has not grown, if he has not become more saintly, this is a tragedy for Christianity. So the message loses strength. I therefore invite you to welcome the divine word this evening.

Try and find some silence, put all these words into your hearts and decide to pray every day, as Our Lady tells us. Every morning plant the divine word that heals, let it grow during the day, then you will understand that you will have received today far more than you had wished for. You will then slowly enter into friendship with God and your neighbour and you will live in love.

Then you will not need to ask for so many things any more. They will be offered to you, but you will find them already obtained. Christ will come towards you, he will be all for you.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 2nd August 1985)

Continue to grow in peace, in reconciliation, in love.

The apparitions now last sometimes three, four or five minutes as Our Lady wishes. Vicka, Marija, Ivan, Jacov have daily apparitions and always pray for peace and for all pilgrims, with Our Lady ; they ask the blessing for the sick and also for sacred objects. What does Our Lady want from us ? The first message is the presence of Our Lady. When I asked Ivanka , "What shall I tell the pilgrims ?" "Shall I talk about fear or hope ?

"Of hope, since Our Lady has come not to condemn us, but to save us." So you see, Our Lady is present and from Her presence one can explain all that has been happening here for the last fifty months. It is a very exceptional thing, but as far as we are concerned, a very common and daily happening. Our Lady asks for peace, conversion, faith, prayer, fasting, as guidelines for our life and, more specifically, She asks for the daily Creed, for seven Our Father's, the whole Rosary, complete with the three parts - joyful, sorrowful and glorious - for the reading of the Bible, to fast twice a week and confession once a month.

These are the concrete things Our Lady is asking of us. She obviously asks us to pray with all our hearts, to make time for prayer, to become active in prayer and to ensure that our Mass becomes a live experience of God. However, in all this, Our Lady asks us to open ourselves to prayer, to Our Lord's invitation, to this invitation of peace, reconciliation - She wants to save us. And all the other Thursday are stimuli for us to stick to the path with Our Lady.

During these days I want to mention one thing - Peace. Every day, for the last fifty months, Our Lady has been praying with the visionaries for peace and we are all invited to peace.

The visionaries say, 'peace, reconciliation' and only repeat the words ou Mother asks them to pass on to us. And I can honestly say, according to my own experience here in Medjugorje of the last forty months, that many hearts, if not all, who having got here and started to pray and fast, have actually felt this call, this invitation to peace. Only Heaven and no one else in this world can pronounce the word peace, can invite us to peace, to the degree where we can believe that peace is actually possible.

Judging by what is happening here with us, I think I can quite honestly say that on the spiritual front, the one of faith, the messages have been accepted as being messages of the Gospel and has also accepted their practice.

After this appeal who will be able to say, 'I have been waiting'. What for ? You see, it is fifty months now, and I think I am in a position to say that the longer it lasts, the firmer I am in my conviction that it must be a strong appeal for us all. As fas as we can gather from here, this message is spreading to the whole world and Our Lady has already found many a soul even within other churches, that is the Anglican, Protestant and Baptist churches.

An Anglican vicar spent three weeks here and said, 'I have understood one thing - Our Lady is not asking my conversion to the Catholic Church, but that I improve myself, as I too have the Gospel.' Last year he came back and said, ' As I got back home, I started talking to my friends about it and - one wondered - how is it that so many people would listen with wide-open eyes. We formed nearly thirty prayer groups, all made up of Anglicans, Baptists, Protestants, Pentecostals with some members of these prayer groups being even Buddhists and atheists. They stated that if a Madonna is called Queen of Peace and invites us to pray, they too would join in and pray.'

And this is a great miracle for the Anglican who told me, ' Father, you know there is not a great deal of room for Our Lady in our churches, as She has almost been chased out ; She is now inviting us, and this message is spreading.'

Look at the Thursday messages, one can say that Our Lady is inviting us to prayer in order to obtain the deepest joy, to solve difficulties, to overcome tiredness.

On this point we can really afford to become selfish ; if you pray you will obtain your joy, you will overcome your tiredness, you will solve your problems. We are, therefore, allowed to become selfish. However, if we carry on growing in peace, reconciliation, spiritual strength, love, people will receive a lot from us, even the whole world.

One cannot expect this call to peace to come from others though, one must start from oneself and this is, somehow, the hardest way of going about it, as it is easier to invite others to patience rather than being patient oneself, it is easier to invite others to forgiveness than to forgive. We must start from ourselves. If we Christians start living the Gospel message Our Lady repeats here, the world will be closer to peace. And this is very important - that we should feel a little responsible for what is happening around, even though we are not heads of state, it does not matter ; peace depends on all of us - from your prayer, from your beheviour.

And now some of yesterday's news :

... Ivanka was not present at the apparition, Jacov is in Sarajevo. To Vicka, Marija and Ivan Our Lady has appeared three times ; once as She usually does, before Mass. They then went up to the hillside, as Our Lady appears there every Monday night, for their group only. Today Marija told me that She appeared at half past eleven and again at midnight. On all three occasions She repeated that we must really be full of joy. They told me that She has blessed everyone in a special way.

She was joyful because so many people had come. Lately Our Lady has been asking the visionaries for some other prayers. She asked them to pray more "until my birthday".

You can therefore feel a very close, very motherly and friendly presence. It does not seem strange to me any more if the visionaries come up to me and say, "The Queen of Peace says so and so ...." It is as if one who is amongst us were to say, " Do this, do that " All those who come here and start to pray feel Her presence, hear Her voice.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric - 6th August 1985)

"To the Lord of all hearts"

... When one talks to Mirjana one perceives that there are certain things which are drawing near, but when a visionary or a prophet says, ‘it will not be long now’, we cannot possibly measure this in terms of days or months as we know them; it is the same as when in the Gospel Jesus Says, “this generation will not be over that everything will come true”; but which generation ? In any case, what we can say is that certain things will happen shortly. This is not for us to fear this is rather, once again, for all of us, a call to accept the message, to pray and to fast as Our Lady asks.

I can and must say that satan’s primary task is to stop us from hearing the Lord’s call. I am always appealing to you to pay attention to this fact. Try to discern well what one should wait for and what not to wait for in order to get started.

So, therefore, all these messages, all these events have only one aim Our Lady wants to take us by the hand and lead us to Jesus, to God. In a message She said, ”To the Lord of all hearts”, so that we may have the peace, the strength for reconciliation, the deepest joy the world cannot give, that we may have faith, that we may truly live.

So many times I hear the question, ‘What Our Lady asks for is too much. How is it ? How can we ? We have our work to do, how can we pray the whole Rosary ?’ It is certainly a permissable question and I have a general answer to it. ‘When we will have discovered the value of prayer, we shall also find the time for it.’ For example, he who smokes wastes a little time; where does he get this time from ? You may say that he is used to it, he needs to find some quiet, some peace through his cigarette. You see, we are used to seeing people smoking, but we have yet to discover prayer.

The whole world, all we possess cannot give us what the Lord gives us in prayer. And if so many are tired of this world, if there are many conflicts, many wars, if so many have nothing to eat (there are eight hundred million of them), if there are so many unhappy people with no aim in life, it is only because we do not pray, because we have sent the Lord away. By inviting us to prayer, Our Lady wants us to rediscover the Lord and, with this, the opportunity to carry on living.

The Rosary is an appeal to be together with Our Lady and Jesus in everything. If we have grasped this, then we can take advantage of the Rosary, of the mysteries. By being close to Mary when She says yes to the Lord’s will, when She visits others, when Jesus is born, when She presents Him to the Temple, we also learn about this life that Jesus has asked of us. If a mother tells her son, ‘You must take two hundred steps and, by so doing, we can spend two hours together’ and that son replies, ‘My God, who can do two hundred steps a day ?’ he has forgotten that his mother invites him to be together. And the same goes for the Rosary. The Rosary is the biblical meditative prayer which takes us step by step, which takes even our heart and soul close to Jesus, to Our Lady. I was speaking yesterday to Marija, together with two priests, and they asked, ‘Does it seem a lot to you, that Our Lady should ask for the whole Rosary’ Marija replied, ‘Not at all, when I see what is happening in the world, I could pray three times the whole Rosary’. Therefore, when we finally discover the value of prayer and when we start believing that prayer can actually help the whole world, then we shall find and have more time for prayer.

Why fasting ? There is a lot to be said about this. I will explain how Our Lady asks us to fast that it should be based on bread and water. This is the strictest, the ideal form. Obviously, if someone cannot, if one has problems with low blood pressure, then he is allowed some coffee.

If someone is ill, he will find his way. if someone has trouble fasting for two days, then he can start with one. However, this fasting is not an invitation to give up something. Our Lady invites us to live on bread for one day, to discover bread. If you start in this way you will once again discover the Eucharist and you will probably pay attention to the grace of faith; you will be able to pray more easily, you will detach yourselves a little from the material world and you will become freer in your hearts, even more transparent. And that is good for the soul and for the body. Medicine itself advises us to let our stomachs rest for a day.

If you do this, if you start, you will see what fasting means it is very important. Fasting also helps faith and prayer. We must know that Jesus also fasted and so have all the prophets and saints. We Christians of this world do not want to bother with it.

The Church has established a minimum of two days in a year Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, but that is the absolute minimum. We, instead, on these two days have dined better than usual by preparing a good fish dish.

Here is a call to rediscover fasting. In fact, the Fathers of the Church have said, ‘ Fasting is the body’s prayer’ ; it is prayer, but it also helps us to understand others. If someone feels a little hungry twice a week, he will more easily and more deeply hear the voices of Africa and Asia crying out, ‘ We have nothing to live on. We have no bread.’

A lot more can be said. Starting with prayer and fasting, we give our hand to Our Lady, and Our Lady will be able to lead us to Jesus.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 7th August 1985)

"I protect you with my cloak"

We must always ask ourselves why the apparitions are lasting so long. Maybe because we happen to be at a special time when the Lord wants to save us.

Our Lady gave us Her name, “I am the Queen of Peace”. We can therefore understand what She wants ; She has asked of everyone Peace, Reconciliation.

Marija Pavlovic told us that on the third day of the apparitions she received a special vision she saw Our Lady with a big black cross who repeated three times, “Be reconciled”. So, the first important message for us all is the invitation to peace and reconciliation.

Once Our Lady said, “Be converted to prayer. But you are not able to because your hearts are caught up by the material world.” By fasting, in this case, we liberate ourselves and, step by step, we become freer. Prayer helps fasting and fasting helps prayer.

And this, whether we start it or carry on, is a radical move towards peace. I invite you on behalf of all the visionaries and of Our Lady with whom they talk, “Open yourselves”. In the next few days you will receive new stimuli for your Christian life. So many have already taken up praying again, living peace, reconciliation. We pray for everyone and you, when you get home, pray for us.

Today’s message was, “Dear children, today I call you especially to help Me fight against satan by means of prayer. Satan has decided to act more vigorously now that you are aware of his activity. Take up your arms against satan and with the Rosary in your hands defeat him. Thank you for responding to my call.” Our Lady once again invites us to fight against satan. Satan does not get weary and Our Lady invites us once again to take up our arms and pray the Rosary.

Today is the feast of St. Dominic, maybe it is for this reason that She invites once again to the prayer of the Rosary. For the last month, every Thursday, She has been inviting us to the battle against satan. She wants to protect us so that She may bring to our lives the very fruits that satan wants to prevent us from having.

She once said, “Do not be afraid of satan. There is no need for that, since one can easily disarm him with humble prayer and with burning love. “ So with this hope Our Lady is with us.

In the message before last She said, “I protect you with my cloak”, She did not say, ‘I shall try and protect you’ , but She said, “I protect you”. So we want to follow Her and go forward with her in our life.

Now, go in peace, we shall meet again tomorrow. To everyone leaving now ‘Peace’.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 8th August 1985)

"Defeat satan with the Rosary in your hand"

Yesterday, Vicka, Marija and Ivan were present at the apparition they prayed the Our father, Hail Mary, Glory Be. At the second Our Father they knelt down, and the apparition lasted five minutes. In yesterday’s message Our Lady invites us to fight against satan with prayer and said, “Satan now knows you know he is active. Pray and defeat him with prayer, with the Rosary in your hands.” For the last month, in nearly every message, Our Lady has been repeating, “Beware of satan!” and a theologian said, ‘The safest strategy of satan is when people say he does not exist and does not operate. When he is hidden he is capable of everything.’

But Our Lady has discovered him and therefore you can say he is angry and wants to act even more. But one need not be afraid of satan. Our Lady once told us, “With fervent prayer, with humble love one can easily disarm him.” , and promised She would protect us. In any case, if we stick to this path of faith, prayer and fasting, the Lord’s project with us will triumph. His project is universal and personal.

If I allow sin to destroy my peace, my love, satan has already succeeded in destroying part of the Lord’s projects, as the Lord wants us all to be saved. And so here is a strong invitation to pray, fast and abandon ourselves in faith.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 9th August 1985)

"Here heaven is speaking"

Every Thursday, Our Lady is giving messages through Marija Pavlovic. On the one hand these messages describe our present situation whilst, on the other hand, they are an impulse to go further and further ahead in prayer, in fasting, in our abandonment to God a letting ourselves be guided by the Lord.

Last Thursday’s message is very simple, but also very deep, “I am inviting you once more to prayer. Satan now wants to use the grapes of your vineyard for his purpose. Pray the he may not succeed.” What does this mean ? Look, the vineyard is one word or one parable of the Gospel. Our Lady talks biblically.

So many times one reads in the Psalms of how the Lord has planted a vineyard, or how He wants to keep it ... On the other hand Our Lady is a good teacher She borrows images and symbols from everyday life. Now it is the vineyards. She is using the grapes of the vineyards as a symbol for any form of materialism. Your vineyard or your grapes in the vineyard, even though you may live in town and only see it on television, could be your money, something bothering you so much that you are not able to pray or be reconciled or forgive.

A third consideration, strictly in basic terms, which we often preach from the altar about is this: there are people even around here who, having noticed the flow of foreign pilgrims, are selling grapes at an incredible price, much too high, much higher than they are worth.

So this is a test, a temptation for those who are attached to money, who want to earn. Therefore, Our Lady wants to educate us at different levels and to tell us to ‘pay attention’, because any attachment to materialism of any sort is a danger to man, to faith, to love, to reconciliation, also to peace, since wars come because we want to take from others ...

... I can tell you of my experiences here I have been here forty months now and I do not know how much longer I shall still be here. I see us receiving a grace in advance here. There are many people coming here who are ready to pray, fast, be reconciled, confess; really wonderful conversions. And this has not been going on for one month or a fortnight, but fifty one months. Every day, this is for me, a new proof to see Our Lord is present in a special way and that He is inviting us through Our Lady.

Who can possibly, at this time, invite us to peace in the world ? If a politician does so, people do not believe his words and say; ‘Maybe it is sheer diplomacy’. If someone else says so it is the same again.

Here the visionaries convey messages, they convey them to us and say, ‘Be reconciled, peace.’ and more and more people come from all over the world. At four o’clock I was speaking to group of people coming from Egypt. In these days there is a book being published in Arabic in Egypt. Already there are some booklets in Chinese, too.

I seem to be able to explain it in this way here Heaven is speaking. Yet again, it is the word without politics or diplomacy which can find its direct path to our heart. I know many people having already come once, tend to come again. This is quite inexplicable to me, since anybody can see that we do not have good parking spaces, we still do not have proper facilities, we do not have good homes to lodge people or good hotels.

But I can see that, all of a sudden, when essential things are at stake, all this becomes a question of secondary importance. Then Heaven surely is speaking and inviting us. I can honestly say that many people in the world, millions of people are now fasting, praying for peace, getting ready to be reconciled.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 5th September 1985)

Pray for the fulfilment of all that God is planning for the parish

I shall read out and explain yesterday's message. "Dear children, I am thanking you today for all your prayers. Pray even more, so that satan will be driven away from this place. Dear children, satan's plan has failed. Pray for the fulfilment of all that God is planning in this parish. I thank the youth here most especially, for the sacrifices they have offered. Thank you for responding to my call."

In these words one can feel the Mother, the Mother who is always hoping that Her children will do well. A Mother - I would say - who is optimistic even when saying, 'You have not done well, or you have forgotton' and then, at the end, saying, "Thank you for listening, for having responded to my call."

A theologian who was here, when he heard these things for the first time said, 'In the text Our Lady reprimands us, then She says, "I thank you for responding to my call" ; it is impossible, Father, this is a contradiction.' I replied, 'Be careful, in the words of a mother you can always find contradictions. The moment she reproaches, she also invites and gives at the same time.' On a pedagogical level one can say - there is no contradiction. Obviously one could argue - how can one thank and say, 'You have not responded.' ? But She wants to educate us. And this, it seems to me, is a very important thing. Our Lady is showing herself to be a Mother, a friend of the visionaries. They meet, they talk, they touch Her, they see Her in three dimensions. She leads them and through them She also leads us.

She is close. One loses one's fears. She is here and we have become used to it.

This is the structure of the messages where Our Lady shows herself as Mother, as Teacher, as someone who knows how to talk, and by talking, how to educate. In these messages She thanks people for all their prayers. It is nice to hear that. I do not know who has been praying - anyway Our Lady sees, hears and thanks.

And from this point of view, we must look again and even wonder how - according to this message - She thanks our hearts with this 'thank you.' But if in my heart, your heart, there is still resentment, if there is anguish, if there is fear or something else, perhaps we have become blind with all that have, that has been given to us as a gift. ...

Therefore, if Our Lady thanks us, we really have to ask ourselves - does our heart know how to thank ? If it does not, especially if someone says, 'To thank, what for ?' it is a true sign that we have become blind.

But look how the Mother says, "Thank you" and, at the same time : "Pray even more."

Just like a mother saying to her son, 'You have been very good today', and at the same time she says, 'I hope, however, that tomorrow you will be better still.'

Our Lady does the same. Then we must pray even more when She says, "So that satan may be driven away from this place."

Judging by all messages, mainly of July and August of this year (1985), it seems to me that in every message She has spoken of satan as someone who wants to destroy, who wants to hurt us, who wants to take away from us peace or reconciliation.

In a message of August, I believe, She said, "Pray that you may hear my call" and beware, satan wants to stop it. I am saying this and repeating this for your own benefit - it seems to me that satan's primary task is to stop us from hearing the call, because Our Lady has the word ready for us, for our consolation, for our healing, for our comfort. But if satan succeeds in preventing us from hearing these words, we stay where we are and do not move on. If satan, in fact, prevents us from listening to these events of Medjugorje, then he has stopped many an ear from hearing the message.

For example, how many people have been thinking or still are thinking today of hallucinations ? Of all those who have come here, of all the doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, none of them has stated that they are hallucinations. Only those living far away from us say this.

I ask you to be careful when you hear the message. If you have any problems in your life, perhaps you will ask yourself, 'Where is the Lord, why has He foresaken me ?' This does not come from the good Spirit, it is certainly not coming from the Holy Spirit who counsels us. It is coming from another spirit. If we bear resentment in our hearts, if we say, 'I do not wish to be reconciled, I do not wish to forgive because I am offended', I am telling you to beware because these things do not come from a good spirit. Therefore, Our Lady says, "Pray that he may be driven away."

It is very important that he should be far away from this place, because here Our Lord is speaking and He wants to find our hearts and move us onwards. And the one thing that gives us hope is when She says, "Dear children, Satan's plan has failed."

We hope and we know that Our Lord has won. The Kingdom of the Lord is the kingdom of peace, love, of reconciliation. The Lord Jesus has conquered the kingdom of satan with His Cross. But satan still remains active.

We were told the same thing by Jelena, yesterday. Our Lady was full of joy and said, "Satan's plan has failed." But Jelena said that towards the end of the vision Our Lady's face had once again become serious and She said, "Beware, satan will not abandon the fight." Obviously this is quite clear.

But in January Our Lady said that, with fervent prayer and love, one can disarm him with no difficulty at all. I shall explain the last message a little and you shall see how much there is to be said. Yet another appeal - pray for the fulfilment of all God is planning in this parish. We do not know what the Lord is planning but, according to what has been expressed by the visionaries, it is something great. Not just for this parish, but for the whole world. For instance, a great sign and other things which we shall see, have been announced. Surely a great plan.

I had a talk with Jelena this afternoon, Jelena being the girl who receives the locutio interna ; she receives various visions and she was telling me that in one vision she saw satan offering Our Lord all his kingdom in order to win here in Medjugorje. Is this clear to you ? Satan is, therefore, offering the Lord all the other kingdom to hinder fulfilment of the plans.

I asked her, 'Jelena, how is that ?' 'Look - she replied - the way I understand it is this - many have received a new hope in Medjugorje. If satan were to succeed in destroying this plan, everyone, or at least many, would lose this hope.'

According to the theologians and the priests, if someone wonders, 'How can the Lord deal with satan like this, or satan with Our Lord ?' This is certainly a biblical account. In the book of Job we also find similar things, in which satan facing the Lord's throne says, 'give me Job, your servant and I shall show you that he will not be faithful to you.' And then the Lord told satan to test him.

Ultimately, this is true: satan fights against peace, against love, against reconciliation with all possible means and if Our Lady did say in a message, "Satan has now become stronger and acts in a stronger way because we have discovered him", this is also very important to know. Anyone who has been in the army will know that the best tactic is if the enemy on the other side starts thinking that the others do not want to fight, because then they let themselves go.

She said, "We have discovered him and now he is getting a lot stronger, he is getting angry ..."

So we just do not know what the Lord is planning for this Parish and for the whole world.

After fifty one months from the first apparition one can see the urgency of conversion, of faith and also of peace. One can also see that Our Lord has a great plan. We have seen that whenever in trouble, Medjugorje has always received fresh impulse and help, even from men themselves.

One can therefore see that Our Lord guides us through all the troubles, through all trials. But He can only guide us if He has found - and still finds - people who will listen to Him, people who pray, people who fast. And so it is very important to see how each one of us who takes up prayer and fasting, by so doing helps the Lord, and at the same time, helps himself as well.

Because everything that God plans through Our Mother can only be for our own good. Our Lady then especially thanks the youth for the sacrifices they have offered. I do not know who, at this moment in time, is feeling young and hears this word "thank you" and is accepting it as if addressed to himself ; in any case I can say two things - many young people of this Parish and of the entire world certainly pray a lot and make sacrifices. If Our Lady is thanking the youth, I really think She is addressing Herself to the young of age ..

This is very important. Who is young ? Young is he who is open, who allows himself to be moved on, who says, 'I can, I will try, I want to start again.' If you are 60, 70 or 90 say, 'I want to start afresh', then you are young. And if a youngster of 20 says, 'I cannot take it any more, I cannot find any sense in my life, I do not want to study ...' he is old, even though he is 20.

So surely, when Our Lady says, "I thank the youth", She is thanking all those who have replied in prayer, in fasting and in faith, those who have allowed themselves to be made responsible for peace in this world.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric - 6th September 1985)

"We are all invited to peace and reconciliation"

Welcome everybody. You are with us because you believe in the testimony of our visionaries. We are now in the fifty first month, since they started being witnesses to seeing Our Lady.

I have just come from a long chat with the doctors. Even in Zagreb (they are all psychiatrists and psychologists) the last word was, ‘This phenomenon is highly complicated for us. It is very difficult to explain. A great many aspects have to be taken into account in order to see what it is all about.”

For the visionaries, however, it is very simple, from the start until now they say, ‘We see Our Lady. We see Her in three dimensions, the same way we see one another. We can talk to Her, we pray with Her, we can hear Her, we see Her clearly, we can touch Her.’

Our Lady is giving us messages, She is inviting us to prayer, peace, reconciliation, faith and fasting, and it cannot be any other way. Faith and spirituality are something quite other than medicine, psychology ....

Why does this happen ? It happens for one reason only. We are all invited to peace and reconciliation. And we are all in great need of this very peace individuals, families, the Church and the whole world. According to these messages one could say Our Lady is making us responsible for peace. And I do believe Our Lady knows what She is doing, what She is saying namely, that we must allow ourselves to be made responsible.

Please do not wash your hands of it by saying, ‘I am not a diplomat, I am not a politician, peace does not depend on me.’ Peace depends on us all. This , it seems to me, is the most important thing to look with a new heart, with a new eye at one’s own responsibility in this world and at all that is going on around us. How can we give our personal response to all this which we are invited to ? Our Lady says, “Pray and Fast”.

This we must do in order to obtain peace in our hearts and to enable us to bring peace to others. This is perhaps the hardest way to obtain peace, but is it not perhaps the only one ?

Conversion is asked of us all a change in one’s own everyday life. And this is the most difficult thing of all. Sometimes it is easier to give money to the poor than to forgive someone for a word or to forget an insult. But it is only on these grounds that one can build up peace: by being reconciled and by forgiving. And every man who is reconciled, every family who lives in peace is always a new sign that peace is possible and, with each reconciled person, the entire world is brought closer to peace.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 7th September 1985)

"The kind of faith Our Lady wants us to learn about is abandonment to the Lord"

We have just heard Dr. Frigerio of the medical team in Milan saying that where technology, science, medicine, psychology and psychiatry stop, faith must carry on. It is true as Dr. Frigerio affirmed and previously Dr. Joyeux, ‘We have found our limits, and can honestly say that it is not a question of illness or of a pathology. The visionaries are healthy in body and soul.’ These positive encouragements do exist and now, for someone who believes, what is there left to do ? Either one throws everything away and says he is not interested or one takes a dive into faith. And this is the very point from which everything happens. When the visionaries talk about this phenomenon , they speak very simply, ‘We start to pray, a glow appears, we kneel down, we begin to speak, we receive the messages, we touch Our Lady, we hear Her, we see Her, She show us Paradise, Hell, Purgatory ....’ What they tell us is very simple indeed.

These encounters fill a person with joy and peace. When we start explaining with our own means, we come across words whose meaning we do not understand there are many gadgets, many specialists pointing to a clue, others to some other clue. But thousands of clues do not make up proof. Now look, you either throw away everything or you accept what the visionaries say. And we are under a moral obligation to believe a person who speaks the truth , until we find it to be false. Therefore, I can say at this point, ‘I have a duty and I believe in what the visionaries say’. I know that the simplicity of their affirmations is something given to us for the benefit of our faith.

The Lord does not want, through these phenomena, to show doctors that they still do not know so many things. No, He does not; what He wants to tell us is Look, you are looking at tangible signs and therefore you can believe, have trust in Me and let yourselves be guided. Through these simple facts, inexplicable to us, Our Lady wants that we, who live in a rational world, be once again able to open ourselves to the reality of the hereafter.

When I first spoke to Fr. Gobbi, he asked me what Our Lady is asking of the priests. I told him that there is no special message. Only once did She say that priests have to be faithful and preserve people’s faith. This is the point which follows on from Fatima.

My deepest experience is the following we are all very superficial in our faith. The kind of faith Our Lady wants us to learn about is abandonment to the Lord, letting ourselves be guided by Our Lady who is still coming every evening.

So, at this stage, She has asked first of all for the Creed. ‘Giving with our hearts’, abandoning ourselves. One can give one’s heart to somebody one loves, to somebody one trusts. She is asking, amongst other things, for our weekly meditation of the passage of the Gospel, Matthew VI, 2434, where it says that one cannot serve two masters. Hence a decision.

And then She says, why worry, why grieve ? The Father knows all. Seek first the kingdom of Heaven . This is also the message of faith. Fasting is also very useful for our faith one can more easily hear the voice of the Lord and can also understand more easily one’s neighbour. It is a kind of faith which means in my life, as in yours abandonment.

By the same token, any distress, any distressing situation, any fear, every conflict is a sign of our hearts not yet knowing Our Father nor Our Mother. It is not enough for a little boy who is crying to know that a father and mother exist he only quietens down, he only finds peace when he is in his father’s or mother’s arms.

The same goes for faith; one can only allow oneself to be led if one starts to pray, if one starts to fast. You will find excuses every day for not having time, until you have discovered the value of prayer. When you have finally discovered it, you will have a lot of time for prayer.

Any situation will be a new one, also for prayer. And I am telling you that we have become real champions in finding excuses when it comes to prayer and fasting, but Our Lady does not want to accept these excuses any longer.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 8th September 1985)

To consecrate oneself to the Cross.

I can tell you of many experiences.

First of all, as far as the messages of Our Lady are concerned, it is quite clear that the events of Medjugorje are facts. Our Lady has appeared, the Woman clad in the sun, fighting against satan.

From the beginning of July to the end of August almost all messages have been a warning of satan's presence and we, here in Medjugorje, have experienced just this. It is not a question of items of news from a newspaper, but a question of real happenings, after which we were able to experience satan's attacks, his real presence. For Her part, Our Lady teaches us to face this problem, how to fight it and She always points out to us the weapons - prayer, penance, inner spiritual life - by which we are able to face the problem of satan's presence. We have, in fact, lived through one of satan's revelations, not so much in the sense of a new revelation, but in the sense that, through these messages, Our Lady has made us rediscover satan's presence.

And we have opened our eyes and seen him and learned something very, very important, in my opinion, for the whole Church, since through these warnings of Our Lady we have discovered satan's presence, really hidden in civilisation which has denied satan's presence, just as it has denied God's presence.

The other experiences are more those of spiritual dynamics. Whenever I can, I work in Medjugorje mainly with those groups formed by Our Lady - the prayer groups. I cannot talk now about the messages given to the prayer groups, but what I can say is that a profound plan on the part of Our Lady and of God is involved whereby people grow in a very healthy way and the fruits of this spiritual path are there already to be seen ; at the same time a vital revelation has become clear to us. For instance, during all this period of time we have been experiencing what happens to people who have practised yoga when they enter the Medjugorje area. They all suffer from some sort of breakdown, that is, they all feel some considerable distress. By following, for instance, those who practise yoga, I have personally discovered many limitations.

We have discovered what Jesus Christ means in the face of yoga. We have also discovered why these people, as they enter the area where a strong grace is present, experience inner distress.

First of all, we have discovered that yoga is a human technique ; it is a human kind of wisdom and brings people up to a certain limit, where people stop and stay, without going any further.

Another problem we have discovered is this - people following the yoga techniques open themselves and become totally open, the total opening being such as to allow beings to enter. There is even the possibility that eveil beings may enter, but it is usually the case of the guru, the master, the one who directs the person.

The limitation of yoga is the human limit, whereby, with the aid of a technique my body can be made to reach silence, but it will not go any further.

As St. John has pointed to Jesus Christ, similarly, yoga's point of arrival can only be that human limit, after which the open person ought to make room for Jesus Christ and for Jesus Christ alone. These ailments come because these people have not actually met the living God who leads us to total enlightment and salvation.

What we have recently experienced is mainly this - on the one hand we have discovered that those who live a spiritual technique strive to get some sort of concentration, silence, to attain a calm attitude. On the other hand, in these days, it has also become clear to us that we are given certain disturbances, temptations, because - as we have found out through the visionaries - God allows these very disturbances, these very temptations, in order to bring us to total purification.

So there you have a spritual path, the one of yoga, following human foot-prints and reaching the human limit, whereas we, in our opening up to faith, go beyond human limits.

It is God who allows even misfortunes, who allows even trials, through which we are able to go beyond.

This I have learned : yoga gives us silence. Christ gives us peace. Peace which goes beyond silence. This confirms what Our Lady told us through jelena in 1983 - that She indeed has come to purify all the world movements and to lead us to Jesus Christ. This is one of our experiences. As far as Medjugorje is concerned, I see this as being of paramount importance, namely, that those priests who have lived this experience of Medjugorje themselves may help those who have been in the East looking for salvation, and bring the to Jesus Christ, without denying certain values of yoga, of oriental human wisdom, but setting out as priests with these people, just like Jesus Christ used to do with the Apostles, in order to bring them to total enlightment.

How sad I am ! Indeed I am sad, we are too few here in Medjugorje to help people coming from every part of the world in search of God. Many are those who write to me on the very issue of the spiritual level of yoga asking for help, asking to be guided, and I cannot do anything, since I am so committed in the parish ...

In this spiritual field alone, experts are needed who live interiorly these messages of Our Lady in order to enlighten those who, somehow, have got lost, who have lost their way, who have not fully found God. This is connected with something else ; some people have been to India searching for yoga, whilst the whole of the West lives yoga - the Oriental live according to techniques, whereas the Western Christians live the yoga of pleasure : they smoke, drink, eat, enjoy themselves, they want a pleasant Christianity. People in the East look directly for a spiritual path, whereas in the West, those who believe in Christ say they believe in Jesus Christ, but at the same time , look for Christ in pleasure. I have discovered the medieval asceticism - indeed these days I have understood that I can deepen my relationship with God in prayer, only to the degree in which I mortify myself, just as Jesus explained to us yesterday, in the Gospel. He openly started telling the Apostles what one has to bear in mind, "He who is prepared to lose his life will gain it."

The meaning of penance, the meaning of fasting is just this. Particularly during the last few months, Our Lady and also Jesus have been asking through Jelena - particularly some group members - to consecrate themselves to the Cross. Our Lady's last message is also indeed a call to the consecration to the Cross, the kind of consecration whereby Jesus wishes there were people willing to consecrate everything, ready to really offer everything to God.

In my opinion we shall reach once more a spiritual depth along this path. Why have many monasteries remained empty ? As I see it, they have, because they have lost mystical prayer and I turn, mystical prayer has been lost because we have lost the meaning of fasting and deep prayer.

Now, with these experiences, we are making our way towards a spiritual, mystical life from which many a vocation will stem.

.. I know we are strong when we are close to God and that we can solve problems to the degree in which we are close to God, but as so many Christians are far from prayer, they are also far from God.

We have learned to live, to have our own lives in God, to feel that when we are closer to God, we are really closer to life, we are more complete.

But since we are not quite so close to God through prayer, we are not even able to choose God's means, to choose God's weapons against evil.

Let us start praying, let us learn prayer and we shall, day by day, discover within ourselves a greater strength, a brighter light. Every day we shall have more life.

If we manage to discover exactly what Our Lady teaches us and if that becomes tangible for us, a true experience, then we will also be able to bring salvation to the whole world.

It is useless to bring Our Lady's messages to the world as we would bring the messages of newspapaers or books, because Bibles and the most beautiful written works are to be found everywhere, but these are lifeless without us. Without a deep and serious commitment through conversion, Our Lady's word has no meaning.

I would like to invite everyone to live this deep reality, through daily prayer, through conversion.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 16th September 1985)

"God has decided to purify the world"

If you look at the Gospels of the last few Sundays, what has Jesus been talking about ? Jesus has been talking of His and our own suffering.

Jesus started telling the Apostles openly that He was to suffer, not with the intention of putting them into a crisis or of frightening them, but so that they might know that they would have to go through the Cross, through suffering. If we are not aware of this reality, then we are not true Christians. This is where the pilgrim’s problem appears, a problem which, if unsolved, is a source of fear, but if solved, becomes hope for the future.

Yesterday I read in a Croatian monthly published in West Germany that last year four hundred million marks have been allocated to abortion. Who will pay for this before God ? Who will ? We will. All of us.

I just gave you one example. Who will pay for the drug addicts ? Who will pay for those killed ? Who will pay for those dying of starvation ? All this is injustice on earth which must be paid for. We live in a civilisation which is virtually without God. Unfortunately, we Christians too, we live on the whole a life of atheism. And if we Christians do nothing to bring people towards hope, then we are left with a terribly hard Cross.

Therefore, to look ahead at a future which will be beautiful means to look at a world without sin. If we, at this moment, when Our Lady is inviting us, do not see these sins and the need for conversion, penance, prayer, then we have not understood the times we live in.

There is no need for us to fear the future, but we do need to look at the future in the light of faith, of supernatural life and we do need to commit ourselves to the world’s future, so that men may be saved and life on earth may be more beautiful. But this will be difficult if the world is to carry on living without God.

I am sure that, from all these messages, God has decided to purify the world. If we are converted then this purification will be easy; but if the world will not be converted, if it is not prepared to accept the programme of God, then God will go ahead by means sacrifices and these sacrifices will not be voluntary. You must be realistic if you want to renovate your house, see how many difficulties there are, and when God wants to put this world right, which is living in atheism, how many difficulties we are then faced with ! We must be realistic and look at the future with realism but with peace ; if you want to find once again your peace in looking at the future, then you must become ‘voluntary sacrifices’. Many, out of their own will, chose sacrifices, fasting, prayer, sufferings for God, so that God may save the world.

This is the reality of the Gospel, when Jesus plainly told the Apostles that He has to suffer. He willingly took the sacrifice upon himself in order to save His brothers, because through sacrifice the one in which we offer everything to God we do the best thing before God. For this reason Our Lady invites us to fast, for this very reason Our Lady invites us to conversion, to point out a radical decision to follow God, to belong to God.

Talking of suffering, the Gospel says you have to cut off your hand, you have to cut off your leg; theorists say that this is too much. But this is not too much. If you have a ruined limb, you tell the doctor, ‘Cut it off to save my life’. ’Get rid of my eye in order to save the other one, in order to save my life’. This is the way we have to behave before eternal life. If we do not behave in this way before eternal life, we are not realistic, we do not wish to save our lives; we want to save one hundred thousand liras, we want to save something, we want to save a car, but not our lives. Try to clear out your homes of all superfluous wealth.

You will realise the need to cut things out all the time to cut habits out, to cut time out, to cut things out, to cut pleasures out; how many things there are that need to be cut out !

If we were able to remove so many things, so many programmes, so many wishes, then we will come round to understanding the joy of suffering on which we must meditate on Friday, the Feast of St. Francis.

You will be in a position to welcome the Word of God only to the degree in which you will have been able to renounce things, in which you will have done penance; therefore penance combined with prayer is worth more. They are two paths without prayer, fasting is lame, without fasting, prayer is lame, whereas both help us and drive us forward. For this reason Our Lady has particularly recommended that we fast. There are people who are unable to fast on bread and water; however nobody is exempt from fasting. There are a thousand ways to fast.

One must fast, because our body which is constantly worried about nourishment, money, pleasures, needs to be emptied like one does when one is under treatment; it needs to be purified also with regard to spiritual life, so that we do not worry if we spend a whole day without eating, but are rather like Jesus in the desert who, after forty days was not worried, but could bear up to it because He was living on the Word of God.

This is the sense of penance, of fasting, the sense of sacrifice, and another thing if you want to go forward and follow Our Lady then make some voluntary sacrifices. Those four hundred million marks need to be compensated, must be paid for, let us make sacrifices for the sins of the world.

Without this, we will not have understood Mass, as Mass is not only the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, but it must also be my sacrifice united with the one of Jesus Christ, my blood, my sweat united with the one of Jesus Christ. Then Mass becomes what Jesus meant it should be.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 29th September 1985)

In this period God and Our Lady want people who are ready to offer everything

Welcome. I really wish that you may receive all the graces God and Our Lady are offering you here.

... When I see you pilgrims, a majority of you prefers to listen with your ears, rather then with your hearts. But I do beg you to set about listening with your hearts. One can only listen with one's heart if one is immersed in prayer, if there really is total abandonment to God, if we have time to pray, if we do not listen to the visionaries, but listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit within us. When I say this, it is important to know that Our Lady does not speak only to the visionaries, but also to each one of us, although in a different way.

In a message of 1984 Our Lady told the prayer group, through Jelena, that in every prayer one must listen to God's voice, one must try to understand it. If we, therefore, pray this way and, after prayer, we have not seen anybody, we have not heard anybody, then most probably our prayer was not genuine. If prayer is - as it must be - the dialogue with God, then we must look at Him with our souls, we must listen to Him, we must be in tune with Him, with His Word, with His messages.

Please acquire an attitude of inner listening; I am telling you this, as otherwise, you will not understand Medjugorje. You would like to listen to the messages and the explanation of what is happening here; I cannot tell you what is going on whilst your hearts are closed.

Now, when thinking about Medjugorje, they all think of the six visionaries - that is not enough. When I now look at Medjugorje, visionaries are for me just one of the signs of Our Lady's presence here, but there are other various deeper gifts in and around Medjugorje, and connected with Medjugorje all over the world. Many gifts are still hidden, but are growing. God is preparing them for future events.

This you will never understand unless you acquire an inner listening, unless you pray with your hearts, unless you are abandoned to God.

Moreover, those amongst you who pray in groups according to Our Lady's intentions will not discover the gifts unless you have started listening with your hearts. Many people come and ask me how they can form a prayer group, but the actual formation of a prayer group in its exterior structure is not important; what is important is an inner opening to God, an inner path. The groups guided by Our Lady here in Medjugorje are different from other groups, only because here we can hear Our Lady's voice guiding the groups and not because the girls and boys are different from the others. The difference between them and the others consists only in the fact that Our Lady's voice can be heard, and Our Lady simply explains the steps to be taken.

If you want to form prayer groups, seek first of all to bring people to prayer, to a desire to reach out for God and to live Our Lady's messages; the Holy Spirit will give you the words and you will be enlightened as to how to go ahead. I cannot tell you how to go ahead with a group.

There are several groups here as well as sub-groups. Both last month and this month I have joined several small groups in prayer and we have realised that there is no need for a programme for prayer; sometimes we have been praying for hours without a programme, just staying with God, since for him who loves God, for him who believes in God with all his heart, when his heart is opened, there is always something to say, to sing, to exchange with God, to listen to ...

Prayer and the formation of prayer groups depends on inner formation and, as a group progresses in spiritual life, the Holy Spirit enlightens its people as to how they can walk, go forward. It is important to emphasize that prayer groups are not made up according to human techniques, but according to God's will.

If prayer groups are formed with an attitude of meeting God, of living God, of living God's Word, then it will be the Holy Spirit to guide them through those responsible; light will be given; it is God who will take care of them.

In order to reach this inner listening - in the messages given to the prayer groups in the last few months - there is another typical message, besides prayer, which was given also to the Parish before the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross - i.e. to be consecrated to the Cross.

In several messages Our Lady has been looking for people prepared to sacrifice their lives to God; She has been looking for people ready to offer everything to God, so that, through their sufferings, the world and the souls may be saved.

Do not forget - when you are ready to offer your lives, to offer everything, then you are ready to pray, then the opening of the heart takes place.

Remember the Gospel of the Sunday before last - that young man placed himself before Jesus and asked Him what he had to do in order to acheive eternal life. Jesus replied that hae had to follow the commandments. But the man wanted his life to be perfect and so Jesus told him to forsake everything. The Gospel says that he was rich and he left in sadness, but Jesus too, was sad.

We must understand that if we wish to be completely ready at God's service, we must make voluntary sacrifices.

When I heard this message, I started purifying my room by removing from it all superfluous things and it took me about a week to do so. I have not yet managed to get rid of many of the superfluous things, but I am still in the process of emptying my room of useless things. Start emptying yourselves as well in this period and you will see how much time you have to spare, how much time is used up in a superfluous way, how much time you tend to spend in front of the television, how many hours are spent uselessly, how many things are in your rooms, in your houses, while people are dying of starvation.

All this is important to notice, for when we will have emptied our lives of all superfluous things, of all our needs, then we shall be able to go forward, like that young man who was called to a perfect life.

It is most important - I would say mainly for priests - to return to those spiritual exercises done at the time when people were seeking penance entirely of their own will, when they were seeking sacrifices to offer God. It seems to me that , at this monent in history, we have forgotten those sacrifices, so much so that educational teaching does not know sacrifices. They say sacrifices have to be avoided or removed, instead of being accepted with good will and offered to God entirely of one's own free will in order to save others.

In this period, God and Our Lady want people who are ready to offer everything. However, he who has decided to offer everything must beware of two things; Firstly, he must repeat the offer every day and during his life seek those sacrifices to offer to God; secondly, he must make sure if he really has consecrated himself as a victim, he must be aware of the fact that Jesus is seriously accepting this consecration and already starting to make plans for him.

After this he must make sure he does not escape from those crosses Our Lord will give him. You must, however, be conscious of the fact that, for all the crosses Our Lord gives you, you will be rewarded a hundred times, here on earth itself with blessedness of the heart.

If you so live your future you will bring no fear of chastisements, of difficulties; your only aim will be to meet Jesus, to meet God, to be united with Him and to live for the whole of eternity.

To end, I would like to emphasize that you must listen with your hearts and not with your earsl in order to enter the depth of prayer you must sacrifice your own selves, you must sacrifice yourselves and offer yourselves as victims to God. With the offer we make (to) God, we become more open to listening to Our Lord's and Our Lady's messages.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic - 16th October 1985)

Everything has its time

Belgrade Television has shown a documentary film on Medjugorje. When one already knows the situation from the beginning, this event appears even greater than it did at first sight. it is the first time someone has spoken in this manner - it is a documentary of about an hour, a really good one, followed by discussion. But how can sociologists, psychologists, neuropsychiatrists debate on these things if they do not believe in God ? They had a debate ; there was also a representative of the Orthodox Church and he was the best of them all, as he gave some very good explanations regarding faith, mystery, the visions, the apparitions and did not fall short on other issues either.

He told a psychologist, "Can a person who is colour-blind give the judgement on colours ?" That is, in other words, how can an unbeliever talk about the apparitions ? Surely, he must always explain them on a pathological, psychological or sociological level, but never on a spiritual one.

There was also a representative of the Catholic Church, an actual member of the Commission and with regard to him I will say in a nutshell - when he had to speak, he did not, and when he did, he spoke badly.

However, on the whole it was something very positive.

Marija Pavlovic spoke in such an inspired way that I said that, had they all spoken against the apparitions, Marija would have amazed everyone, for she was so genuine and said some really good things. It is quite clear, therefore, that this time is not the hour of triumph for us, but just a new appeal, a new call to be accepted, in order to believe in and live the messages.

In the last message Our Lady asks us to take care of our hearts, to clean up every corner of our hearts. She said, :"Now that your work on the land is over you have more time available. You clean every corner of your homes, but neglect your hearts."

And so she invited us to clean our hearts.

It is very important to feel that everything has its own time, that we are invited to find a daily balance - the balance of our time spent, that is, finding time for prayer, for spiritual life, the same way one finds time for work, study, rest.

Our Lady proposed we should pray - when on prays well, I believe that an hour and a half is sufficient. If one were also to manage to go to Mass sometimes, perhaps that too, would give some balance to our day.

You see, even when one goes to work or to study one does not go out without having washed oneself ; it takes some time to wash one's face, to shave ; women especially need more time in the morning. And that is all right, it would not be right to go out anyhow ; it is not normal.

We must ask ourselves, however, how long we devote to prayer in the morning. If we say, "I have no time", is it that we seem to have time for breakfast, for other things, but not for prayer ? We go out with a starving soul, with a soul which has had nothing to eat all morning. How can we face the day ? How can we meet others ? How can we give peace ? How can we forgive ? Be reconciled ? An empty soul, an empty heart cannot forgive, an empty soul is amidst conflicts ; there is a saying here, "If one does not eat bread, one must eat bones."

So, you see, if Our Lady says, "Everything has its time", one ought to find time in the morning for prayer, for one's soul. One ought to find time for prayer in the evening also. And in a message Our Lady has asked us to become active in prayer.

Our Lady says, "Everything has its time": this message is very important for parents. You must know that everything has its time, but if you do not know it, how can the young know it ? How can the children ? If you start immediately, if you start from scratch, it will not be difficult even for the young, even for the children to learn about this time.

... Why does Our Lady ask for prayer ? Prayer is a means of obtaining peace, joy, of being able to be reconciled. We all want peace, we all want reconciliation, to be loved and to love, but it is quite something else if we all desire the means to receive this grace.

I will give you an example - surely, at school every student wants to succeed at the end of the school year ; this is certain, but it does not follow that all students want to study. The same goes for all of us - we all want peace, reconciliation, love, but we do not all wish to take up the means to receive it, which is prayer.

Two Dutch girls left their testimony with me : 'We have discovered that prayer is the path to peace and to happiness and to joy. And this means a lot, because after having discovered this we were able to stop smoking hashish, drinking and other things'. This is the way to peace. We cannot give up nothing. I am certain that only when have discovered the finer things, when we have discovered a greater value, can we then forsake the other things.

And so, if any of you is still saying, "I cannot resist swear words", I think he is saying so because he has not yet discovered prayer, the joy of prayer. If someone says he cannot give up alcohol or other things he knows are not good, I believe that it is only because he has not yet discovered what these girls say - the joy, the happiness in prayer.

I want to repeat what Our Lady said, "I am saved, but I want you too, to be saved". And one cannot be saved in this world unless one starts with prayer, with fasting, with this kind of faith. In a message Our Lady is inviting us to be consecrated to the Cross - that means being with the Cross, feeling the Cross, talking to the Cross, letting it speak. What is the Cross talking about ? "Here is your son, here is your Mother". The Cross talks about forgiveness, sacrifice, love and eternal life. If we, in our homes, carry on swearing, doing evil before the Cross, if we behave selfishly before the Cross, we can effectively say the Cross does not speak anymore, it is dumb.

But the Cross wants to talk to us, Our Lady wants the Cross to talk to us. Be consecrated, open your hearts and you will see that it will tell you - perhaps as with St. Francis - it will say, 'Go and renew your life, your family, your love, your parish, your church, your community'.

Do not say, 'I cannot', for the Lord knows what He is saying and when He invites us to something, He also gives us the graces, He also gives us the strength.

We can do nothing with our own strength, but as we open ourselves in prayer, in fasting, we are given the same experience as St. Paul had, when he said, "I am a weak man, but in my very weakness I have lived. I have experienced the glory of the Cross, the strength of Grace".

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric - 18th October 1985)

"If we put ourselves at God’s disposal, it is God who leads us"

I greet you, I do not have much time, I cannot stay long.

I have been talking to you far too much these days, have I not ? When words fill up too much space in one’s heart, then they leave no room for spiritual creativity; that is why I say to you, I have spoken far too much !

I only want you to go forward, to carry on, since every word of God, every word of Our Lady increases the graces. Do not worry as to how to form a group, do not worry as to how to pray, but above all, start praying, conversing with God, with Jesus.

For example, people usually say that the Rosary is no meditative prayer, that it is no contemplative prayer. It is too rational, one cannot manage to pray it with one’s heart; but in these days I have been in contact with some people who are concerned with deep meditation, where there is silence; indeed, they had a problem with words as they needed total silence, without prayers, to pray with silence. During the two or three days of their stay in Medjugorje they have meditated a lot and felt a real need to pray the Rosary. They needed to say a thousand Hail Mary’s, to invoke ‘Hail Mary’ all the time.

I

n that prayer there was no impediment to entering into depth; on the contrary, they were opening themselves more and more, as they prayed. So you see that it does not depend on the form of prayer but on our hearts, on their opening. At the bottom of prayer there is always a desire to reach out for God, to find God, to live what God wants. So therefore, if we put ourselves at God’s disposal, it is God who is leading us along different paths.

Let us not worry on the spiritual level either, this principle is valid for the material level as for the spiritual one. If we remain worried people at a spiritual level we are prevented from going ahead.

Recently I met a mystical person who has supernatural visions and who told me that what makes Jesus sad is indeed our carrying fear within ourselves. he is just, but He is also merciful. He would rather die again than lose one soul.

You see how we must dismiss any worry. There should be inside our hearts a continuous chant to God’s mercy, we ought to have God’s mercy actually singing inside us. And there shall we also find humility and everything, when God’s mercy flourishes inside us.

So, I wish you to become more and more a praise of God’s mercy, a real joy. This way, you will be able to bring the messages to the entire world.

(Fr. Tomislav Vlasic 18th October 1985)

"Our Lady takes new steps everywhere”

.... Yugoslavian television has transmitted a broadcast on Medjugorje lately. In it, the orthodox priest spoke thus, ‘This is something great also for Ecumenism, for all these orthodox believers who have already come and for those who will follow’.

This seems to me to be a step taken by Our Lady.

At the same time, in London, an article appeared in a very important paper and we were invited to give a short talk on television. The woman journalist who was in the studio with me gave a very important testimony. The interviewer asked, ‘So, you have been to Medjugorje, what have you seen ? ’ She replied, ‘I am a Protestant, nonpractising; my husband too is a nonpractising Protestant. Our photographer is Jewish, the interpreter, a girl from Belgrade, orthodox, a psychologist. All four of us were against this.’ And she said in front of all the English audience: ‘I have not seen Our Lady, but I can honestly say that all four of us have changed. We have changed our way of thinking and I am sure that the visionaries do see someone, but I do not know who that is .’

This is highly important testimony.

Through these events Our Lady takes new steps in every direction. This surely, is not the moment of triumph of something, but it means for us yet another obligation to take what is happening seriously.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 19th October 1985)

To believe means to commit oneself to God

Welcome.

It is fifty four months now since the beginning of the apparitions, this is a very long story, a world event.

We have allowed all possible experiments to be carried out so as to make sure, to find out what is happening and one can now say that medicine, psychology, pathology have no more to say. What is now left is theology, pastoral spirituality, mysticism to explore, to carry on researching all that is happening here.

What does Our Lady want in so many months of apparitions ? Peace. Our Lady has entrusted peace in our hands, we are responsible for it. She is thus showing a great trust in us, by asking us to help Her in bringing peace to this world.

Our Lady, as a Mother, is calling on us to help Her to bring peace to this world - how can we do it ? She said, quite simply, "Pray and fast."

To recite the Creed every day means to commit oneself to God - I give you my life today, at every moment, in every difficulty, in my suffering, in my work, in my study; I know who I belong to. This is the Creed. Our Lady wants us to pray every day, so that each day may be an impulse, a path towards the Lord.

Our Lady, as a Mother, wants to be with us and She can only be with us if we devote time to Her, by meditating on Her life and coming closer to Her life with our lives.

Recently I was talking to a Bishop in Ireland. He told me, 'I have heard of Medjugorje, of the messages, but one thing is bothering me somewhat, these daily apparitions, why ?'

I replied , 'Our Lady knows the answer. I can only speak for myself. Our Lady is a Mother and, as a Mother, wants to be in every family every day, not just on Sundays when one goes to Mass. She wants to be there every day and She can, provided we take time for the Rosary.'

All this must be a means for us to change our life and every day deepen our faith, love, peace and reconciliation.

I am sure that each one of you who has started to pray has met some sort of difficulty in prayer - he is distracted and so on. But it does not matter. Do not be afraid when you are faced with these difficulties, just go on. As far a fasting in concerned, Our Lady said, ideally twice a week on bread and water.

Fasting certainly helps prayer. One can pray better when one is fasting and one can fast better when praying.

Fasting also helps faith - one can hear the Word of the Lord better. To fast means to come out of ourselves, from the broken home of our hearts in order to hear the Lord. Fasting purifies us and faith also comes from listening; in this way, we are better prepared to listen to the Word, which inside a heart which is free from materialism and selfishness, can more readily become active, and change our lives.

Fasting also helps love, for, by fasting, one becomes a bit more open, one is more sensitive to the other, to our neighbour, one can more easily see that we have plenty, that we really must think more of others. When you fast, the principle to follow in order to know whether you are fasting well or not, is to feel whether prayer is growing deeper, whether you are praying more easily, whether you are feeling more sorrow when you have done something to offend someone else. This means that we are becoming more sensitive and this is the only way to reach peace.

The Thursday messages help us to deepen the messages of peace, conversion, faith and prayer.

Three weeks ago Our Lady asked us once again, to be thankful, to learn how to be thankful, even for the smallest of things. This is another word for peace. When do I say, thank you ? When should I say, thank you ? Who can say thank you ? The one who sees the other, who recognises the other, who is humble. One can read in the Magnificat how Our Lady was thankful. Not to say thank you, not to be grateful, not to have any gratitude in one's heart - this is the greatest atheism.

Think of the story of Adam and Eve - they received everything from the Lord, but in one moment, they forgot, they became blind to what the Lord had given them; they wanted to sin, they felt they had to sin in the hope of receiving even more. They became blind. This is the deepest form of atheism. Who can give everything to a selfish person ? When will a selfish person ever say thank you ? If he were to be given the whole world, it would not be enough. When can a proud person say thank you ? Even if you do everything for him, it will not be enough. He who is humble sees the others, he sees ths smallest of things, he starts thanking. If one does that, then peace comes to families, peace comes to the world. I am telling you this in order to be able to be thankful - the way Our Lady is asking - one must pray, one must confess, one must fast.

Therefore, it is necessary to see in order to thank.

When you receive these Thursday messages, always try and deepen them, try and find a connection with the other messages, because there is always a reason why Our Lady give the messages. You know that recently She said She wants to guide us, She wants us to be full of peace, joy, conversion, like a new dress. This is yet another word for peace, to have a new dress of goodness, of love. When Our Lady says, a new dress of love, of peace, we must think of those clothes which have been torn by sin. It is always a sin which breaks a person, a community, a Church. Sin always breaks, and the new dress is love, peace.

In Her last message, She invited us all to be active in the Church, to bring one's own flowers to the church, to Jesus, and added that everyone should be happy. When Our Lady says we must be active, this means we are capable of being so. Our Lady knows who She is talking to, which means there is no one, even if sick, who can say, 'What can I do ?'

Think of St. Paul's comaprison between the body and the Church - the eye cannot say to the head, 'I do not need you', nor can the head say to the leg, 'I do not need you.' We all have many charisms, we have received many graces and can serve the Churh and Jesus.

And when I look at myself positively, when I acknowledge the fact that I have received a lot, I also feel responsible for going ahead. Our Lady wants this.

The whole logic of these apparitions can be said in the one word Our Lady told to Marija, I believe two months ago. During one of the apparitions Marija asked, 'Blessed Virgin, doyou have something specific for me ?' The answer was ,"Yes, I have. I give you my love, so that you my give it to others." This is the logic, 'I give you my love, my peace, reconciliation, everything, all the graces, so that you may give them to others.' If in these days, in these times we are without peace, without love, without reconciliation, this means we have not opened our hands.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric - 2nd November 1985)

"Prepare yourselves for Christmas with prayer, penance and works of love”

When Mirjana announced the content of the last before one locution, many telephoned to ask, ‘Has she already told you when, how... ? ’ And many were also frightened. I also heard some people saying, ‘ If something is bound to happen, if we cannot stop it, then why work, why pray, why fast ? ‘ All reactions like these are false.

These messages are apocalyptic, and in order to understand them, one needs perhaps to read once again the Apocalypse of St. John or Jesus’ address in the Gospel admonishing his listeners.

During these last two Sundays you have been hearing of signs of the stars and many other things when will this happen ? Jesus said ,”Soon”. But this ‘soon’ is not to be gauged in our days or months. These apocalyptic messages have a purpose our faith must be awake and not asleep.

Remember some of Jesus’ parables, when He talked about the ten virgins, five of who were wise and five foolish what did the foolishness of the foolish ones consist of ? That thought, ‘The bridegroom will not come so early’, they were not ready and could not go to dinner with the bridegroom. Our faith must always have this dimension.

Think of the other parables of Jesus, in which is said, ‘... my soul rejoice now for you have enough to eat and drink’, and the Lord said, ‘Fool, what will you do if this night your soul is required of you ? And to whom will you leave all you have gathered ? ‘ One element of faith is the element of waiting, of keeping vigilant.

The apocalyptic messages require us to be awake, not to sleep as regards our faith, our peace with God, with others, and as regards our conversion ..... there is no need to be afraid, there is no need to say , ‘This soon ? Then there is no need to work or pray anymore... ‘ A reaction of this kind is false.

These messages are to enable us to succeed in getting there. The last stop of our journey is Heaven and, if by hearing and listening to these messages we start praying better, if we start fasting, believing, being reconciled, forgiving, thinking of others, of helping them, we are doing well this is the reaction of a Christian.

The source of our peace is the Lord and our hearts must become a source of peace; they must open up to the peace Our Lord gives.

In a message of about a month ago, Our Lady once again exhorted us to love our neighbour and said , “Above all, those who provoke you.” Here is where Christian love begins, that is to say, from peace.

Jesus said, “What is special in loving those who love you ? In your forgiving those who forgive you ? “ We must do more than that we must love also the other one who causes us evil. Our Lady wants this at this point peace starts, that is, when we start forgiving, being reconciled, unconditionally. In another message She said , “Pray and love. Even those things that seem impossible to you become possible.”

If any of us says, ‘How can I forgive ? How can I be reconciled ? ’ , he has perhaps not asked for strength. Where should he look for it ? From Our Lord, in prayer. If we have decided to live peace, reconciled with Our Lord and others, then peace starts, and the whole world is perhaps a millimetre closer to peace. Each of us who decides to live peace radically, by being reconciled, brings a new hope to the world; thus peace will come if each one of us does not ask for peace from others, for love from others, but gives it readily himself.

What does conversion mean ? It means not to allow oneself to give up trying to change. We all know our weaknesses and the weaknesses of others. Think of Jesus’ words when St. Peter asked, ‘How many times do we have to forgive ? Seven times ? ‘Peter thought seven times, but Jesus said “Seventy times seven. “ One must on no account ever get tired of trying, but continue one’s path with Our Lady.

In Her last Thursday’s message, Our Lady said, “I appeal to you , prepare yourselves for Christmas”, but you must prepare yourselves in prayer, penance, in works of love. “Do not look at material things for they will stop you and you will not be able to live the experience of Christmas”. She repeated, as it were, all the messages prayer, penance and works of love

We have interpreted the messages in this way and in this way, we try and live them in the community, in the parish one hour for preparation, one hour for Mass, and after Mass, thanksgiving .

It is most important to pray in families, in the groups, in the parish ; to pray and love as Our Lady said, and then all things, even those which seem impossible will become possible.

And when you get back to your homes, I wish you to try doing this. Everything can be changed for the better if we start praying, loving radically, unconditionally.

In order to love and pray this way, one must also pray for the grace of love. Our Lady has told us many times that Our Lord is happy if He can grant us His mercy, His love.

Also this evening He is at our disposal and if we open ourselves, if we pray, Our Lord will grant us them.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 7th December 1985)

Conversion lasts the whole of one's life

In my opinion, one very important thing for us all is what Our Lady asked Ivan's group a few weeks ago - to have a week's spiritual retreat, to have one wherever one happens to be, without looking for a cloister or a retreat house, but to hold one in our own daily life.

Each of us, especially now bfore Christmas, ought to spend a week this way, one ought to devote oneself more to prayer, more to silence, one ought to be more in contact with Our Lord; this programme is very beautiful and simple, suitable to us all. No matter where we are or what we do. What we can do is this - pray more at the beginning of the day, pray to the Holy Spirit, read the Bible, pray the Rosary, attend Mass. let us retire and live one week this way.

Mirjana received a further apparition on 30 November - these messages, these words, all these things she heard and saw are an appeal to us. If we think of Jesus' parables where He was saying we must be awake, not asleep, we already have the answer to Mirjana's words.

The situation here with us is as follows : every day we see many people, many conversions, many healings, a new spirit of prayer, we receive a great many testimonies from all parts of the world. Many prayer groups are being created ; many priests who have been heve decided - one day or one evening - to pray this way in their own parishes, together with their own people, as they have seen us do here, three hours of prayer. This is the most important thing. All those who have started to pray, to come together to pray in groups,in families, are doing well.

Prayer, fasting, faith, bring these events about in the face of all difficulties.

Last week, the Bishop's Commission had a new meeting - they have not decided anything. The next meeting will be held in May ; they are allowing themselves some time for this, and this is a good thing.

Fr. Ivan, now working here at the Parish as chaplain and also a member of the Commission has come back from the meeting more satisfied than usual - some seem to have noticed even the encouraging aspects. A member of the Commission has told us, "Many say that the events of Medjugorje depend on the Franciscans. If the liturgy of Medjugorje belongs to the Franciscans, who do the Franciscans belong to ?" He meant that, if this liturgy, if prayer and all that is happening is a work of theirs, then we know who they are.

It is most important for us to pray, to open ourselves to love, peace - all the rest will be given to us.

Conversion, in the messages of Medjugorje, means to change one's way of life, to forsake sin, selfishenss, arrogance, pride, and to open ourselves to humility, love and never to give up. Conversion has two elements - one, whereby we are called to forsake sin and another, whereby we are called to open ourselves to love. None of us will be able to say he loves enough, that he cannot love more. This is conversion - to try and love more, to try and get to be fully aware of sin, to pray for the spirit of love and to go forward.

I am saying this for the benefit of all those who have started with enthusiasm after hearing of the apparitions and have realised that change is not easy, it requires some hard work. Do not allow yourselves to tire, conversion lasts the whole of one's life. Our Lord understands this. Our Lady understands this - this is why She has invited all to confess every month. If She is inviting us to confession, one can say She knows we are sinners. She knows we will remain as such, but that does not matter. What matters is to look once again for reconciliation and the strength which is given to us by the Lord. This is hope and strength for us.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric - 8th December 1985)

"Our Lady wants us to start living our vocation radically”

The admonishments and these messages have a simple meaning, they tell us nothing new, but simply bring us back to the Gospels before Christmas, to Jesus’ words as to what is to happen signs in the sky, in the stars, in the sun, earthquakes .... Our Lady can say no more, but Her saying this should help our fear, our anguish, our new worries ...

In what respect ? Many Christians live saying ‘I believe, I am a Christian, I go to church, I confess’, but their hearts and lives are only on earth. Many say, ‘I believe’, but rely on money, success, progress and material things alone and do not open themselves to the other things.

A true faith, a deep faith has this apocalyptic element that is, I live my faith by my trust of the Lord: I know the Lord can call me any day.

We are wrong in saying. I shall be converted tomorrow, I shall forgive tomorrow, I shall be reconciled tomorrow; confession is asked of me today, not tomorrow.

So, the messages have this meaning to be awake in faith, to work, to pray, to believe to abandon oneself and be at the same time, open and ready every day to be called and meet the Lord in love. Where do we stand now you see that there are always many people coming here despite the winter. The message has been spread all over the world; I can honestly say Our Lady has found her agents everywhere.

One thing seems vital to me next year has been declared ‘The Year of Peace’ by UNESCO. I do not know, but I think I can say that Medjugorje and all those who have started praying and fasting for peace, surely must have helped, if next year is to be declared the year of peace; and all those who have come the Medjugorje , all those who have read about Medjugorje, immediately will connect Medjugorje and the message of peace and many will be more open if there will be more talk of peace at all levels; it is probably a new chance for the whole world. And so we are all responsible for peace, most of all those who have accepted the message of the Queen of Peace. Praying for peace, fasting for peace and being reconciled with all those one lives with, that is how peace will come.

Peace does not come from treaties, it does not come from paper, peace comes from the heart of the man who lives peace and spreads peace, not just with words.

This kind of peace has justice, truth and love as its content. Where do wars come from ? Why? Because many commit injustices and others do not forgive them this is how conflicts in families, amongst people, in the Church and all over the world happen. In other words all those who start to live love for their neighbour and for God, all those who try and be righteous by also helping the poor, the needy, by so doing, pave the way for peace.

Many ask what stand is the government taking all I can say is that we can work; you can come here and that is all. Something that seemed like a miracle to me was when, on 17 October, they showed a documentary film on Medjugorje on Belgrade Television; it was very good, it gave people a fresh impulse. This is most important. I can say only one thing in the Church, in the newspapers of the Church it is still forbidden to publish all that is happening here, but in this very serious situation you can see how God is behaving towards all of us.

God leaves us free and if we reject Our Lady, He finds somebody else; He finds the others, those who do not believe in God, who do not believe in Our Lady, but come here. These are wonderful things that help the spreading of the messages.

Here it seems to me, that the Word of the Lord has come true, when He said, “If you give praise to the Lord, the Lord can create a new descent from Abraham out of stones”.

It is a sign that Our lady as She once said in a message is tireless. She will not leave us in peace until we will have found peace.

A priest told me, ‘I have guided two busloads to Medjugorje, I have felt more stimulus to prayer and faith than from all the work I have put in’. And he now often brings his people here and the number he says grows wonderfully all the time.

Another priest told me, ‘I asked my people to pray, but I did not pray myself. But when I started to pray and confess every month, my parishioners did so too’.

Our Lady wants this that we start living our vocation radically. We are all, and must be, apostles; we must spread peace; we are all equally invited to love. I wish you to really feel, during these days, the Lord’s hand over you and also Our Lady’s love and, thus blessed, may you go into the new year abandoned in prayer, living your lives in the love of your neighbour and God above all things.

(Fr. Slavko Barbaric 27th December 1985)