Medjugorje News & Articles

Fr. John Cooper: I think that there is a strong connection between praying and faith. The more you pray, the more you grow in faith. But also, I encourage people to pray for the gift of faith. People pray for material things, but how many pray to have a strong faith, for ability to love their husband or wife? When we pray for the spiritual gifts, which are necessary, God always answers our prayers. Many people come to me and say their faith is growing weaker. I tell them to pray for a stronger faith, to get into the habit of daily prayer, to take daily prayer seriously, to pray about faults they have. We need to relate confession to daily life.

Manuel Reato (23), a student of theology from Torino, has come several times to Medjugorje. Medjugorje has changed his life. Our Lady’s messages have deeply touched his heart and he believes that they are important for the whole world. Manuel is trying to live Our Lady’s message in his daily life. In Medjugorje, he has learned to seek God, here, he has learned how to pray. Although he is in a wheelchair since his early childhood, Manuel feels a call to become a priest.

One thing we can do is that each one of us tries as best as he can to live the messages, which the Queen of Peace gives us so patiently and tirelessly. Another thing we can do is to take care that the original message is not being falsified or obscured in the Medjugorje centres and prayer groups. Medjugorje is not just any pious prayer movement. The program of Medjugorje is not simply that of any popular mission, as it is from time to time presented to our communities. It is good to pray, to fast, to go to holy mass, to go to confession regularly, to read Sacred Scriptures. But, if we do not understand that, despite all personal piety, we are dealing here with total peace and conversion, then we have not yet correctly understood the essence of the Medjugorje message.

For me, Medjugorje is like a source of fresh water, where I come to drink, and to feel the power of God and the strength of Our Lady. The world we live in is different, very rough; there are so many things that surround us, that are offered to us, and that are happening, and there is so little presence of God in them. There are so many things that we still have to learn… Each time I come to Medjugorje, I learn something new.

Fr. Roman Grüter: I noticed that many people who come to Medjugorje seek healing of the body, of the soul, of the spirit. This is similar in all places of pilgrimages, but here it is especially strong. People seek to be transformed, renewed, healed in the deepest sense of the word; this is very important for people. I think that we should encourage them and help them in this process, and we need to give them good spiritual guides and help on this way.

Fra Tomislav Pervan: Medjugorje began with the laity, with ordinary children, it was brought to the laity and it was they who first beleived and only then was it passed on to the priests. And today it is the laity who bring the Medjugorje movement to the whole world. It is really the laity who hundreds of times cross even oceans to come to Medjugorje. When I ask them why they come so often to Medjugorje, and why they bring pilgrims to these parts which aren't safe, they reply that they do it because they see changes in people. Spiritual changes.

Interview by Marijan Sivric

Vicka Ivankovic: "She would like us to accept the message with our hearts and to live them. Often we accept the message, we begin to live it, but then we get tired and we remain the way we were before. And Our Lady would like that everyday we live her messages a little bit and that we would make progress in our lives."

Mons. George Tracy: Medjugorje began to have a great influence when I came here for the first time and it has continued. It has taught me in the depth of my being to live in the Immaculate Heart of Mary along with the Sacred Heart of her Son, which are the two Hearts that are central in my work in the “Cor Christi”. I have developed in my heart a real sense for the teachings of Grignon de Montfort, who is Mary’s child: To put my heart into her heart when I have to get in the Heart of Christ. I want to be Mother Mary’s child.

Mary says always again in her messages: Open your hearts! From the psychological point of view, I know that, because of our wounds, we develop mechanisms to defend ourselves. Out of fear, we have built up defence mechanisms that impede us to be able to trust blindly. If a person, as a child, has been rejected by the parents, he/she cannot believe that God will not reject him/her. Or if someone was beaten by the father, it is difficult to believe that God wants no harm on him/her. For people with these kinds of wounds, each step of the opening of the heart, each time, is an act of trust, a step in faith. In Medjugorje, Mary heals our hearts so that this path of opening and trust may become possible again, that we may receive a greater share of the fullness of the grace of God.

What I like in Medjugorje is that visionaries are also witnesses. They accept to give witness, they accept to transmit Our Lady’s message. They are missionaries and this is the characteristic of Our Lady’s apparitions in last 30 years. Bernadette entered into a convent, but these visionaries are educated by Our Lady to be evangelisators. It was wonderful when I was in the USA, at the Notre-Dame University, with Ivan. I was giving talks, he was giving talks, and it was wonderful: myself as a catholic priest and he as a child of God in a direct connection with heaven. It is wonderful.