Medjugorje is the Hope of the World

 

The following talk was given by Medjugorje visionary Mirjana Soldo on May 3, 2011, the day after she had her monthly apparition and message on May 2. As Mirjana refers to Our Lady’s May 2 apparition in her talk, we encourage you to read again the following message given that day.

Our Lady of Medjugorje’s May 2, 2011 Message for non-believers

“Dear children; God the Father is sending me to show you the way of salvation, because He, my children, desires to save you and not to condemn you. That is why I, as a mother, am gathering you around me, because with my motherly love I desire to help you to be free of the dirtiness of the past and to begin to live anew and differently. I am calling you to resurrect in my Son. Along with confession of sins renounce everything that has distanced you from my Son and that has made your life empty and unsuccessful. Say ‘yes’ to the Father with the heart and set out on the way of salvation to which He is calling you through the Holy Spirit. Thank you. I am especially praying for the shepherds, for God to help them to be alongside you with a fullness of heart.”

 

 

Medjugorje Visionary Mirjana May 3, 2011 A.D.

 

I welcome you with all my heart, especially today, because I am still full of emotion, overwhelmed. I haven’t yet descended on earth after my experience of yesterday morning, when I see how much the Blessed Mother loves us; how much God loves us. He loves us – look how much when He allows the Blessed Mother to come. He sends Her to us for all these years. It is so hard after that encounter with the Blessed Mother to return to the earth in this life, in this reality. I know that among you there are so many who are here for the first time. So for all of you who are here for the first time, I would like to give a testimony about how it all happened, how it all started, how we had the apparitions. Then I will tell you about the principal messages of the Blessed Mother, and in the end, we will see if there is time for some questions. If I can answer, I will be happy to.

On June 24, 1981, you know that the 24th of June is the feast day of St. John the Baptist, and all the feast days have always been respected in the parish of Medjugorje. Ivanka and I, we were fourteen – fifteen. We were not going to work in the fields that day. We got together and walked out of the village together, walking at the foot of Podbrdo Hill which is known today as Apparition Hill. At a certain point, Ivanka said, “I think the Blessed Mother is on the hill,” but I didn’t even bother to look because back then it was the time of the communist regime in ex-Yugoslavia. We could go to Mass, and we were going always on Sunday, but not more times a week. The only religious life was taking place within our homes, in our families. We prayed together every evening with our parents a Rosary, but they wouldn’t speak to us because they were concerned that we might speak about it in school, other children might repeat it in their homes, and then that might provoke problems for our families. I didn’t know about Lourdes, about Fatima. I thought the Blessed Mother is in Heaven, and we pray to Her, but that She was already on earth during these two thousand years, I didn’t know. So when Ivanka said that I think the Blessed Mother is on the hill, I answered in a hard way. “Oh yea, like the Blessed Mother hasn’t anything else better to do than to come here on the hill to you and me to see Her. Don’t say silly stuff.” So I was walking back towards the village. When arriving to almost where the first houses of the village, something stronger than me made me turn around and return. When I got back, I saw Ivanka standing in the same spot, and she told me look now. I looked up the hill, and I saw, in the midst of the rocks, a young woman with a baby in Her arms. She was dressed in a long gray gown. That was strange because nobody was going up that hill, certainly not in summer, certainly not women with little children, certainly not in a long gown. Now there is a path up the hill, but that was made originally from the feet of millions of pilgrims. Later on it was enlarged. I was confused. I also remember that Ivanka’s mother died two months prior to that. I ran away and I said to my grandmother that I think I saw the Blessed Mother. My grandmother said you better pray a Rosary. Go to your room and pray. Let the Blessed Mother be where She is, in Heaven. I really did so as my grandma said. I did not have the strength to discuss with her. I needed to be alone. I wanted to be in prayer. So I did spend all night long in prayer. It was the only way, when I had peace. The following day, as days before, I was helping my uncle in the fields. I did not have the chance to see the other visionaries, but there was a time in the afternoon, like the day before when I saw the Blessed Mother, when that time in the afternoon arrived, I felt the need in my heart to go there. I needed to go to the foot of Podbrdo Hill, so my uncle came with me. When we got there, there was already there half of the village in the crowd. With each visionary, somebody came. So we saw the Blessed Mother once again. Only this time the Blessed Mother did not have a child in Her arms. That was the day of June 25th. It was the first time we went really close to the Blessed Mother. She introduced Herself. She said, “My children, be not afraid of me. I am the Queen of Peace.”

So the apparitions started. We only for a short time had the apparitions on the hill. I told you already that it was the time of communist regime, and soon policemen came with dogs. They were not allowing anyone to go up the hill. If anyone tried to, they were taken to prison. With Our Lady coming, there were so many signs in the beginning. For example, we saw written in the sky above the parish the letters MIR, which means peace; fire coming out of the cross on the mountain, and how many times the cross on the mountain disappeared and Our Lady appeared there dressed in white. The local parishioners and other people, knowing us as the children we are, they believed us as we continued to see the Blessed Mother in different places. Nobody knew in advance where we were going to be. It was hard time, a really hard time, not only for us six visionaries, but also for all the parishioners, because one really had to decide to either have life with the Blessed Mother and persecution, or to live in peace and be without the Blessed Mother. Once we asked the Blessed Mother why Medjugorje? She told us because I found the faith here alive. When we asked Her why the six of us, She said simply because I need you just the way you are. So the six of us we are different, we are really different from each other. And just like all other children, we were nothing better than others. I recall the words of Fr. Slavko, a Franciscan who passed away after he finished praying the Way of the Cross on Cross Mountain. He was coming often to visit with me. Once he came angry and I asked him what happened. He was agitated. He said, I think, I believe the Blessed Mother is here only because it is you six, only because She chose you six. Only the Blessed Mother could do that because I would never ever pick you six out. For six months he was trying to get the six of us together for a conversation, but he did not succeed. That was why he was mad that day.

I continued to see the Blessed Mother on a daily basis until Christmas 1982. I was in Sarajevo. That day I remained alone. You know that I always speak of my uncles, I wasn’t living here in Medjugorje. My parents were from here by origin, but they were living in Sarajevo and I was there with them. Just for holidays I was coming to Medjugorje because I had my grandparents here, both from my father’s as well as my mother’s side. So when the apparitions started, I was with my grandparents. The other visionaries were from here. I was telling them that the Blessed Mother was waiting for me to come in Sarajevo to start to appear. After the apparitions started, two months later, the policemen made me leave Medjugorje and go to Sarajevo. I didn’t want to. They were kicking me out. I was afraid that if I went to Sarajevo, the Blessed Mother would no longer be appearing to me, but they made me. Here, all people are Croatian and Catholic, all Croats are Catholic, but in Sarajevo there were only a few Catholics, the majority were atheists and communists. I was alone with them. It may be difficult for you to understand and what the communist regime is like. But for example, nobody could visit us, nobody could enter our house. They totally isolated us. Policemen were coming every day to our house. They were breaking things. They were taking things away. It was hard, and I really felt so alone and abandoned. I thought, the Blessed Mother will help me. I know the Blessed Mother will tell me why. But when Our Lady was appearing, She was always giving the same message to me as the visionaries here, and it was nothing about me and my personal situation. So I understood right away that in the eyes of God, and in the eyes of the Blessed Mother, there are no privileged ones. We are all the same. They simply chose the six of us to do certain things.

So on Christmas Day, 1982, when I had the last apparition of the Blessed Mother, Our Lady gave me the tenth secret and told me that I should choose a priest of my confidence to whom I will reveal the secrets ten days before their realization starts. The two of us will spend 7 days fasting on bread and water and praying. Then three days before the realization of the secrets, the priest is going to reveal them to the whole world. The Blessed Mother tells us not to speak about the secrets, but to pray. She says who sees Mother in me and Father in God needs not be afraid of anything. Who is afraid are those who have not yet come to know the love of God. Many people speak always of the future, what it will be like, but I say always, who among us present here can say with certainty that we will be alive tomorrow. So what Our Lady is teaching us is to be ready at every moment to come before God and to avoid talking about the future.

The Blessed Mother also said to us here that “what I started in Fatima, dear children, I will finish here in Medjugorje. My Immaculate Heart will triumph.” Our Lady’s heart will triumph, so why would we be afraid of anything. One pilgrim asked me if the first secret is going to take place during my life. I said, what if secret would be realized in ten days and you die tomorrow? So what about the first secret? You better be ready at any moment to come before God.

On Christmas 1982, the Blessed Mother told me that I would no longer see Her everyday. She said from now on for the rest of my life, once a year on the 18th of March, I will have an apparition for the rest of my life. But also I will have at a certain point extraordinary apparitions which started on the second of August, 1987 and are still continuing. I do not know till when. These apparitions on the second of each month are also prayer for non-believers, although the Blessed Mother never uses this term because when we say non-believers, we are judging, and Our Lady never judges. So She does not use this word, She says those who have not yet known the love of God. They need our help and Our Lady is asking our help to help Her. When She is asking for our help, She did not only think of the six visionaries, but of all those who think of Her as Mother. She says that we can change those who do not believe, but only with our prayer and with our example, with our love of heart. She would like us to put in the first place as our intentions those who do not believe, who do not yet know the love of God, especially today with all the wars, suicides, drugs, abortions, divorces. Our Lady says that all that comes from those who do not yet know the love of God. She says, “Dear children, when you pray for them, you pray for yourselves and well as your future.” So Our Lady is asking us as well for our example. She does not want us to go around preaching to others. She wants us to talk with our lives, so those who do not believe, they can see through us God and also learn about His love. Please take this seriously in your heart, because only if you could see tears in Our Lady’s eyes when She speaks of Her beloved children who do not yet know the love of God, I am certain you would not do anything else for the rest of your lives but to pray for that intention.

Our Lady says that this is the time of decision – let us decide ourselves that we are children, sons of God. That is important. When Our Lady calls us to pray for non-believers, She wants us to do it in Her way. That is how I understood. First of all, we need to feel love for them, feel them as our brothers that are less fortunate enough to know the love of God already. When you love them, then you can pray for them – never judging, never criticizing, never obliging them, oppressing them, but praying for them, loving them and setting an example with our own life. That is the only way to help. Each one of us in our families or close where we live or where we work, there are some people around you who do not know God. They see us, they see the way we act. We should ask ourselves, can they really see the love of God through me, because we have a responsibility before God for these persons. I always give one example of that happened to me. I often go to Mass in the morning. One morning I wasn’t able to go in the morning so I went in the evening. You know that our church is always extra full. I saw a seat in one pew and I wanted to sit down when all of the sudden they started to shout around me – Italians telling me that they came first, so I stood up in silence. Then a person arrived who was a member of that group. She told them that I was one of the visionaries – then everyone was giving me the entire pew. Why am I telling you this? What do you think? What if I was a non-believer who for the first time felt called to walk into a Catholic Church. I enter and those who are suppose to give me the love of God, they treat me that way. What do you think as a non-believer – am I going to return ever again to that Church? That is what we who say we are children of God – we have to realize that we have tremendous responsibility. These apparitions here in Medjugorje, the Blessed Mother gave to each one of the six visionaries a mission, a task, an apostolate. Mine is to prayer for non-believers. Maybe the Blessed Mother chose me for that intention because I was the only one who was not brought up in the midst of the believers, but in a big town, an atheist one. Maybe this is why Our Lady chose me for this intention.

 

Another message that is so important that Our Lady always repeats is Holy Mass, but not only on Sundays. At the beginning of the apparitions, with the six of us visionaries, Our Lady told us if you have to choose between seeing me in an apparition or going to church for Mass, you have always to choose Mass over seeing me. Because it is during Mass the my Son comes alive in your midst and He is with you. In all these years of Her apparitions, Our Lady never ever said pray and I will give you. She always says pray so that I can intercede for you before my Son and ask of Him to give you.

 

Many pilgrims when they come to Medjugorje, they think that the six visionaries are privileged. If only they could tell us what are their needs and their intentions. Some think it is enough if they could touch us, all their intentions will be heard by God. But that is not true. There are no privileged children before the Blessed Mother. We are all Her children. She is choosing us for different things. For us, the six visionaries, She chose us to transmit Her messages to the world. On the second of each month, Our Lady is really speaking to you. She said, “Dear children, I have invited you. Open your hearts, let me in so that I can make of you my apostles.” So all of us are important before the Blessed Mother. There are none who are more valuable or important than others or less. I can give you thousands of examples of the things that happened during the apparitions, during the second of each month. People who got to know the love of God without ever touching me, seeing me, or talking to me, or having asked me to pray for them. They were simply there. They were praying. They asked the Blessed Mother and the Blessed Mother is asking Her Son for Her children – for me and for each one of you. Always when you are in the middle of difficulties, when there are crosses in your life, all you need is to have an open heart. You don’t need to know a visionary. Just as your earthly mom, so also your Heavenly Mother – if you have three or four children, how can you say you love one child more over the other. Maybe your way with each child may be different, but you love them all. So before our Heavenly Mother, I assure you, I am just like anyone of you.

 

If there is anyone being privileged in the eyes of Our Blessed Mother, then it would only be our priests because She never says what priests should do. She always says what we should do for our priests. Our Lady says that they do not need your criticism, they do not need your judgments, but your love and your prayers because it is God who will judge them on what their ways were as priests. But one day God will judge you on what were your ways towards priests. The Blessed Mother says if you lose respect for priests, little by little you will lose respect for the Church, and then you will end up losing respect for God. So during the apparitions on the second of each month, Our Lady always emphasized the importance of priests. She, like yesterday, gave us Her Motherly blessing. She said that as a Mother. But She always repeats that the most important blessing that we can receive on earth is the one from a priest because it is Her Son Jesus, through them, that blesses us. On behalf of the Church, priests bless us. So though we believe that the Blessed Mother blesses all the religious articles, you should take them to the church where a priest will bless them as well in the name of Christ and the Church. Our Lady is continuously reminding us to never forget to pray for our priests, for our shepherds. So I am asking you when you return to your parishes, give your testimony that you come from the school of the Blessed Mother and set an example of the treatment toward a priest. If you think that a priest is doing something that he should not do, don’t go around calumniating him, slandering him, joking about him, bad-mouthing him. Don’t judge him, don’t criticize him. This world in which we live, there is too much judging and so little of love. Let us not pretend to have the right to do something that only belongs to God to decide. We should love, and pray and respect.

 

This time in which we live exists, but there is also the time of the triumph of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. There is a bridge between these two times, and priests are this bridge. So Our Lady insists on prayers for priests. They are the bridge that we can all walk across towards the triumph of Our Lady’s heart. Our Lady always says that I will triumph with priests. Without priests, there is no triumph of the heart of the Mother. This is why She is insisting so much on prayer for them. Yesterday, once again She has called us to pray for them so they can help us. They can work with us with love, with the heart.

 

The Blessed Mother wants us to renew prayer in our homes. The Blessed Mother says that nothing can unite families as much as through prayer, when we pray together. So we have great responsibility. Parents have it before their children. Parents are those who should develop these roots of faith and correct life in the hearts of their children. Children do only what they see in the house. So we cannot tell our children about the importance of the Holy Eucharist if they do not see that the Eucharist is so very important in our lives – that we go to church for Mass. So we cannot tell them to pray if we do not pray. So we parents, we have tremendous responsibility because children should be able to see that God is really in the first place in the lives of their parents. I would like to tell you one example. Something happened in my house with Marija, my older daughter who was only 2 ½ years old at the time. I was still not talking to her about the apparitions because I thought she was still far too young to understand these things. One day she was playing with a girl, a neighbor, in her room. I overheard the neighbor’s daughter say, boasting proudly, my mom can drive a car. It was a big thing that a woman could drive back then. So I was waiting to see what my daughter would say. She simply said, “So what, my mom speaks with the Blessed Mother.” So although I did not speak about the apparitions to her, she was only 2 ½ years old, but she understood what was happening in the house. So when children see that Jesus, God, the Blessed Mother are in the first place in the life of parents, it will be in their lives too.

 

When somebody asked me what is Medjugorje for me, I say always what I have lived. One experience of mine – when I was going up Cross Mountain. There was a little group of young people from Italy ahead of me. They were carrying up one handicapped boy. You who have gone up Cross Mountain know how hard it is to go up the mountain. Imagine what it is like when you have to carry on your back a handicapped person. They were doing it with love. Then there was a group of American pilgrims who came up around the group and who simply said “Change.” They took that boy and carried him. Then another group of Polish pilgrims came and they wanted to carry him. Then a handicapped boy arrived at the top of the Cross Mountain on the shoulders of the whole Church. Everybody recognized in him brother. That is Medjugorje for me. That is what Our Lady is teaching us all.

 

When Our Lady says that she wants us to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays on bread and water, I know that for 90 percent of you She is referring to Italians – it is in a way to speak about that message because Italians ask a thousand questions. How long is Wednesday, how long is Friday, as if I can shorten the day of fast. Can I eat a plate of pasta? I am not saying this with meanness. I am saying this because I love you. If I did not love you, I would not come here to speak. I find it cute when you are protesting against the message of fasting. I want to give you the example of what happened when Our Lady first came to Medjugorje. She asked just for Creed, seven Our Fathers, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s. It was after some time when She asked for a Rosary. She then asked for one Rosary a day and a day of fasting on Friday. Then She asked for a second Rosary a day, then a third part of the Rosary as well as Wednesday, a second day of fasting. So She did all the path in steps with us. Why don’t you try to do the same? It is important to walk. Just say, Blessed Mother I want to walk with you. Please come and walk with me. If you say, when I return home I will promise I will fast twice a week, I will pray everyday. Don’t do that, no need. Promise as much as you can, at your own pace. Promise that you will start with seven Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s, and then little by little you will get to point of doing all other things. Like fasting too. For example, we Catholics, we don’t eat meat on Fridays, so you can start by renouncing meat on Fridays. It is important to do the first step. Then later on the Blessed Mother is going to help you so don’t be too scrupulous if something happens, but remember God is love. I remember Americans asking me if it is possible to drink a cup of coffee in the morning. I said, ok, but do it very early in the morning before the Blessed Mother wakes up so she does not see you. So if you drink a cup of coffee next Friday, okay, you will grow through that, prayer is going to help you open yourselves up even more and you will be able to do even more and more.

 

The only thing that Our Lady wants is to give us Her Child. We can have everything that the world has to offer us, but if we don’t have peace, it is not worth it. Real peace is only Jesus who can give us. Especially I would like to say something to you young people because young people many think that, of course those are the people that I have met, those from Hollywood for example, from Beverly Hills, they have everything. They are well known, famous in the world. They believe themselves to be stars, but I wish that you could see them crying, getting on their knees amidst the rocks of Apparition Hill. They were looking for peace and happiness in money, but when they had money, they realized that was not peace, nor alcohol, drugs, Buddhism and everything else, then finally they understand now, that now the only Jesus can give me peace. He is the only peace I need. So, many young people think if they follow Jesus, that everything will be forbidden to them. Nothing is forbidden for you, only that which can hurt you. Like one priest use to say if you like to go dance in a disco then go, why not go dance, you are young, but dance with Jesus. What does that mean? So don’t drink, don’t choose drugs to have peace and joy. Jesus will give you peace. He will give you joy. He will give you eternal life – drugs and alcohol – no. That can last only a couple of months, a couple of years, but then your life will be miserable. Drugs do not give true peace, they only bring destruction. How many young people die in accidents on the streets, over the weekends, driving on drugs or drunk from discothèques? Let us pray for them that they may find Jesus and get to know the real peace. That is what Our Lady’s desire.

 

Our Lady is asking us to go to Confession at least once a month. She said that there is not one man in the world that doesn’t need Holy Confession at least once a month. So, if you have already done so much for the Blessed Mother, you left your homes, your families, you came on this long trip, this journey. You decided to spend days here in prayer with rain. I would like to invite you as a sister, if you have done all that, then make that final step. Go for a Confession because only a pure heart can be in grace, can know how to receive and accept grace. Don’t think of it as an obligation.

 

Our Lady also wants us to have the Bible in a visible place in our homes. When She gives us a message, She does not interpret that message for us. The way She tells us the message, we tell this message to you. So just like you, we also need to pray in order to understand what God speaks to me through that message. But Our Lady told us to have the Bible in our homes. I think that everybody, all of us have Bible in our homes. Our Lady wants us to read the Bible every day.

 

Many ask me what was Our Lady like when She appears. What was She like yesterday morning when She appeared? Look, if I told you on the second of each month is a prayer for all those who have not yet come to know the love of God, until there is none in the world that does not believe in God, Our Lady cannot be joyful because that child is Her child and because that child does not believe. Our Lady does not want that child to vanish. She wants that child as well to be saved. She is sad. Yesterday, She was decisive. Not that sad, but She was very decisive, determined. She gave us that message. And I advise you, don’t ask anybody to interpret what Our Lady wants to tell to you. I advise you to read and pray and with prayer to understand what God is telling you with that message. We are different persons. We don’t have the same lives, same crosses. God speaks to each one of us. So if I understand the message in one way, not necessarily you will understand in the same way. It doesn’t mean that you are not right or that I am wrong. We are simply different and God speaks to us in different ways. Our Lady also yesterday blessed all the articles that we brought as well as all of us who were there. She gave us Her Motherly blessing, so that is what I wanted to share with you, and now perhaps if there is a question. I am happy if you have all the answers.

 

We are all full of joy because our John Paul II, the Holy Father, is beatified. He is already a saint for me. I was blessed to get to know him personally. This is why others are jealous of me because I was really personally with him alone. I was in the Vatican, in St. Peters in a general audience. I was accompanied by a priest and the Pope blessed me when he was passing by. The priest said, “Holy Father, this is Mirjana, visionary from Medjugorje.” So the Holy Father returned, blessed me once more and was walking away. But I said to the priest who was accompanying me, “Nothing can be done. He only thinks that I need a blessing twice.” But that afternoon we received a letter, an invitation to see him privately the following morning. The following day we were there. I was with him, and among other things he told me, “If I was not the pope, I would already be in Medjugorje. I know everything. I follow everything. Please ask the pilgrims to pray for my intentions. Protect Medjugorje for me because Medjugorje is hope for the world.” We were all so happy. The Holy Father has blessed us so many times and we know he is a saint and will be canonized.