Dear Children of Medjugorje, praised be Jesus and Mary!
1. On August 2, 2015 Mirjana received her monthly apparition at the Blue Cross in the presence of an immense crowd, which had gathered for the Youth Festival. After the apparition, she conveyed the following message:. After the apparition, she conveyed the following message:
“Dear children! I, as a mother who loves her children, see how difficult the time in which you live is. I see your suffering, but you need to know that you are not alone. My Son is with you. He is everywhere. He is invisible, but you can see Him if you live Him. He is the light which illuminates your soul and gives you peace. He is the Church which you need to love and to always pray and fight for – but not only with words, instead with acts of love. My children, bring it about for everyone to come to know my Son, bring it about that He may be loved, because the truth is in my Son born of God – the Son of God. Do not waste time deliberating too much; you will distance yourselves from the truth. With a simple heart accept His word and live it. If you live His word, you will pray. If you live His word, you will love with a merciful love; you will love each other. The more that you will love, the farther away you will be from death. For those who will live the word of my Son and who will love, death will be life. Thank you.Pray to be able to see my Son in your shepherds. Pray to be able to embrace Him in them.“
2. Embrace Jesus in priests?
Here Our Lady uses an expression that asks for reflection. Obviously Our Lady does not ask us to embrace priests physically! It is about another very profound interior reality!
Being able to embrace Jesus, what more can we wish? And it is Mary who invites us to do so! If we had Jesus in front of us, we would run to kiss Him and we would not want to leave that embrace. And if He showed Himself to us as suffering Jesus, we would put even more love into that embrace, because we would want to console Him. Yet, it is us who would be consoled by this sweet exchange of love, and it would be joyful. But let us return to priests that we know: right away, without any effort, our thoughts fly to those in whom we can see Jesus without difficulty. We see their tiredness, their zeal, the sacrifice of their lives, their words. It is easy for us to love them and want to relieve them from their fatigue with fervent prayer.
But how do we go about praying and sacrificing for priests in whom we find it difficult to see Jesus? There again, faith comes to our rescue. Mary tells us that “Jesus is the Church”. My God! The Church of today is Him? We should embrace Him like that? It is true that the Church is the Bride who brings forth new saints, hidden in the eyes of men, but She Herself is so wounded and bleeding! Rather than run to embrace Her, wouldn’t we be overcome with disgust?
These words from Our Lady confirm that prayer for priests and the sacrifice of our lives for them is infinitely pleasing to God and represents a real embrace with Jesus. These words renew in us the enthusiasm and the strength to pray for them and offer our lives as a sacrifice for priests’ sanctification. And I notice that Heaven does not expect this commitment only from a few privileged souls in the last century like Teresa Musco, Padre Pio, Conchita, Little Fower, etc, but he asks this from all of us, today! And Mary explains it to us: Praying for priests, offering ourselves totally for them is equivalent to embracing Jesus!
Jesus is in all of His priests, the holy ones, the pure ones, those who take us on the way to Heaven, but also in those who are not good-looking, even those who hurt and repel us. I, a sinner, how dare I complain, but I often wonder at how Jesus lives in those priests, He being the innocent one. What torments, what pains, what agony is He living in priests who commit sins of impurity, sins of greed, sins of victimizing others. No, we do not want to run away in front of those putrid wounds! We want to pray for them!
I do not know any other way of embracing Jesus in a priest, apart from praying for them and the Church, and sacrificing ourselves for their sake. Within the Church, we see so many beautiful examples of Spiritual motherhood! May we support one another in loving the Church! May we fight for Her as we fight against our own corruption. This fight is all about an interior battle, because the embrace that we can offer to Jesus through his priests is interior.
3. The Medjugorje Case. Nothing new for the moment, it is summer in Rome also!
Let’s remember an Interview with Mirjana about St John Paul II. She said, “A priest told me that from the very beginning, the Pope was very fond of Medjugorje because two months before the apparitions in Medjugorje started, he was praying to Our Lady, asking her to come again on earth. He said, ‘I cannot do it all alone because Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland etc, are all communist countries. I cannot do it on my own. I need you.’ And later he heard that in a little village, Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, a communist country, Our Lady was appearing and he said, ‘that is the response to my prayers.'”(Adapted from a question and answer session with Mirjana in Oct. 2009.)
During the Youth Festival, Cardinal Schönborn, from Vienna,(pictured above) sent this message in support of the thousands of young people gathered in Medjugorje:
“Dear young people, who gathered in Medjugorje again in great numbers! I am with you, intensively united in one heart with you and and in prayer the last few days. Today we are celebrating the memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola. He had only one desire: to completely place himself at God’s disposal for the spreading of His Kingdom! That readiness brought so many great fruits. Finally, we have our dear Holy Father Francis, the first pope from the Jesuit order. Let us entrust him and his service to the Gospa!
Jesus tells us what St. Ignatius was saying: ‘Here I am!’ In communion with You. I would like to go in my life!’
May the Lord bless you and your days that you will spend there with Him and His Mother in Medjugorje! Please pray for the Synod on the Family! Yours, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn!”
For my part, Pope Francis’ silence about Medjugorje is positive. I think he is waiting for the appropriate moment to express his views.
A small, but meaningful anecdote that is worth sharing here: on Wednesday June 17th, Douglas, an old friend of mine who often comes to Medjugorje, met Pope Francis during the general audience following his catechesis about Family. On that day the Gospel inspired Douglas in a special way – it was about the young man who was being taken to the cemetery and whose mother was widowed (Luke 7:11-15). Douglas said to Pope Francis: “Holy Father, this is exactly what is happening in Medjguorje: some priests arrive, and they are dead inside. And in Medjugorje Jesus resurrects them and gives them back to His Mother.” The Pope answered with deep conviction, “I know, I know!”
4. The key episode that changed Joel’s life:
“I was going to Medjugorje with little enthusiasm,” Joel tells us. “I was taking with me, in the twilight of a long and busy life, my troubles, my regrets, quite a few betrayals, all the ingredients that point to a rather pessimistic future.
A young seminarian went with us. He was very nice but still a little annoying, with all his certainties. I am a lawyer, steeped in Cartesian logic, and I am used to resolving my problems on my own, without taking others into account. As soon as we arrived, I felt this maternal presence, enveloping, very sweet but also very powerful and definitive. So I allowed myself to be taken by the hand, so to speak, and at every step, I experienced love from others. The Holy Mother had taken over, she knows us perfectly, and knows what we need.
Back in France, the Blessed Mother sent me to school. I wanted to serve, so I helped out here and there, little things that did not seem very important to me but surely did to God. Notwithstanding all my clumsiness, I received a great deal from others, indulgences, leniency, love. Increasingly, during Mass, at the elevation, I felt this intense need to watch the host with great attention and fervor.
The young seminarian I was talking about became a priest, and came to celebrate his first Mass in my parish. I knelt and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes during the elevation, I was astounded: the priest gradually blended away, and instead I saw our Lord Jesus, surrounded by His disciples. In addition, all the people attending the Mass, including myself, were still there. And I saw many Angels who, by their presence, were blessing this scene which was none other than the Lord’s Supper! What struck me most is that this Supper was animated, it wasn’t static! In addition to great beauty, this scene exuded a feeling of love and immeasurable peace, far away from all the trials of our lives! So I really never wanted to leave this place where one feels so wonderful. This was not a hallucination, I have no doubt about that, this was real.
Gradually, everything went back to the way it was, but I will never forget this encounter with the living Jesus, and I will always experience the Holy Eucharist in a different, much fuller way.”
What Joel tells us here is a wakeup call to welcome the great gift that Christ is offering us through His real presence. Adoration of Jesus in the Host is what will save the world today from all its horrors and straying! It is no coincidence that perpetual adoration chapels are increasing in numbers in the Church. When we worship Jesus, He is the one who first looks at us, and His gaze of a Creator rebuilds our innermost being. He takes all the scattered pieces of our hectic lives, and recreates within us that intimate unity and wholeness that makes us unique, beautiful and able to love. In doing so He restores our inner peace by making us become what we truly are, in God’s magnificent plan. In a word, He recreates us, with an infinitely delicate touch. It is the same look that Christ turned toward Peter after his denial, and which enabled this beloved Apostle to become “Saint” Peter. One glance was enough with those eyes!
On this link, you may find a 40 minute video we produced in French called, “How to live Mass?”
Last March, Vicka was no longer to be seen in Medjugorje. In fact, she had to have an operation in Rome. It is the fourth time that surgeons are trying to repair her back which underwent many shocks (blows and falls), and is in a bad condition; but she still does not seem to have recovered. For the moment she is undergoing therapy in Croatia, and no one knows what the outcome will be. So let us unite our hearts and voices so that her health may recover, if it is God’s plan for her! May she continue her wonderful ministry as a witness! She who prays so much for the sick and obtains so many graces and healings for us all through her powerful prayer, let us not forget her, it is now our turn to support her!
7. Good news! It is now possible to get a new app for your smartphone and receive all the official messages of Our Lady since 1984. This app is free and available in many languages. It can be found in the app store. In the search menu, type “Medjugorje Friends of Mary”. Share this super news with your friends! What a beautiful means of evangelization!
Dearest Gospa, you are the cause of our joy, you are the dawn of true Light and the Door of Heaven! You are never tired to love! How blessed we are to have you as a Mother!
P.S. 2. Watch what Sister Emmanuel had to say in St. Louis (Missouri) last month: http://sremmanuel.org/video/. Also find there short videos on several topics like ‘Pearls of the Gospel with Sr Emmanuel’, what happens in Medjugorje, the monthly message of the 2nd, etc. They are all in English, especially for you!
P.S. 3. Maryam of Bethlehem (1846-1878) Learn about this sublime child of God who was just canonized in Rome on April 17th! Read “Maryam of Bethlehem, the little Arab” by Sr. Emmanuel, available at www.sremmanuel.org and click on “store”.
P.S. 4. On August 11th, the visionaries and the Franciscan priests of St. James met in order to speak together about the actual situation of Medjugorje. Marija told us, “We are living in a moment of confusion and we need to find a common line. As for me,” she said. “Whatever decision Rome is going to take, I’ll be happy. We have nothing to fear, because in Medjugorje, there are 3 things that no one can take away: Mount Krizevac, Apparition Hill of Podbrdo and prayer!”
P.S. 5. Sister Emmanuel’s next live broadcast in Frenchwill be on Sept. 3rd at 9:00 pm Medjugorje time.
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