Medjugorje News & Articles

Medjugorje, February, 1983

Svetozar Kraljevic: Ivanka, you and Mirjana were taking a walk together that day. Why were you walking together?

Ivanka Ivankovic: We regularly walked together in that area. We had been at my house; then we decided to take our walk.

...In the early years, Kathleen tells us, the church would be packed and the people - with great zeal - would always sing the "Ave" at the end of Mass. Marija said that very often Our Lady would reappear and she'd go above the people back and forth in the church, and she would be weeping. Marija once asked her why she wept. Our Lady said, "Because I didn't know so many people loved me!" (Kathleen's observation: She cried for joy because she didn't expect to be loved - which means she's not used to being loved by us

For ten years now, the statue of Gospa in the town of Civitavecchia is weeping tears of blood

An interview with Mons. Girolamo Grillo from Civitavecchia – “The tree can be recognised by its fruits”, quotes Bishop Girolamo Grillo the words of Jesus from the Gospel, when somebody asks him about Gospa weeping tears of blood in the town of Civitavecchia. A little statue of Our Lady bought in Medjugorje more than ten years ago started to weep tears of blood about ten years ago, in the village of Pantano, near the town of Civitavecchia, 60 km from Rome.

Love, sung, prayed, and proclaimed, has always been the object of man’s attention. To tell the truth, love is the only thing we seek and really need. Lack of love is the root of every conflict whether personal, or a family or world affair. If every person were to fully enjoy a portion of the love for which he was created, no one would ever bother to attack another, but he would simply love!

Some years ago when I was first a bishop in Louisiana, it must have been 1988, I was making my first "ad limina" visit to the Holy Father in Rome.

The other bishops of Louisiana were with me and, as what the custom of John Paul II, we were invited in to enjoy a lunch with him. There were eight of us at the table with him.

Soup was being served. Bishop Stanley Ott of Baton Rouge, La., who has since gone to God, asked the Holy Father: "Holy Father, what do you think of Medjugorje?"

Last summer, a dear Croatian friend went back to the Lord, after a very painful cancer. At her bedside I met an Austrian woman who often came to see her, prayed with her, and helped her to prepare for the great meeting. I was so impressed with her tactfulness, her know-how by a dying person, and the appropriateness of her words that I asked her for her secret. She told me her story and how the Lord had countered her plans to put her in His service. The testimony of this woman, Elizabeth, is worth knowing. The month of November is the month of All Saints and also the month of the dead who are waiting to come into the Light. Therefore everything that can help us Christianize our vision of death is good to take on!

There is an expression that is repeated very frequently in the messages of the Queen of Peace, perhaps so much so that her distracted children miss the importance of it and their hearts are unmoved by it. This expression is: “I am with you!”

When asked what he thought the most important message Heaven was offering us through Medjugorje, Padre Slavko would respond: “Mary’s special presence in our midst.”

We recently celebrated the Jubilee of Heaven: Our Lady’s presence in our midst for 25 years. Since that distant 25 June 1981, a good part of the world has been to Medugorje. Some pass through but once, but the greater majority return after the first visit, and continue to return as though to a special appointment that one is anxious for.

Medjugorje is known by now in every corner of the world, even if merely by hear-say. Every time one returns is though to drink fresh water from a well-spring which quenches our thirst for God and His love. This thirst is in the hearts of all, but at times is ignored, wittingly or unwittingly, and we often seek to quench it with “polluted water.” Mary came to awaken in us this thirst and to help us find at Jacob’s well Him who quenches every thirst: her Son Jesus. This then, explains the ongoing desire to make this pilgrimage, to begin the journey on which to encounter the Lord. At Medugorje, it is difficult not to encounter Him, not to hear the call to conversion, the need to pray, to reconcile with God through confession and begin a new life.

Quite to the contrary, Mons. Paul Hnilica was a courageous witness in the Church of the extraordinary grace of that blessed land. In 1997 he addressed a letter to Medjugorje-inspired prayer groups, a part of which we publish here to synthesize the immense value of the event known as Medjugorje.

A reflection for Medjugorje Message of October 25, 2006

This is an unusual message, not so much for its contents, but for its tone. The contents regard, as always, the need to convert, return to God, surrender to Him, and the need to undertake a journey towards the eternal life seriously, consciously, and with deter-mination. The tone, on the other hand, is not that of an invitation, but of reproach. Used as we are to being urged and spurred on, this message surprises us because rather than a call it appears more to capture a situation of distance between us and God.