Medjugorje Visionary Ivan Dragicevic Says Our Lady Wants to Lead Us From This Darkness Into the Light

August 31, 2009 A.D.

Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic gives us a better understanding of the importance of prayer in his talk to pilgrims August 31, 2009.
 

My dear friends in Christ, at the beginning of this meeting I would like to greet you all from the bottom my heart. I would like to share, in this short time, the most important things our Mother, Our Lady has been calling us to during these years. It is very difficult to tell you everything, in this short time, that Our Lady has been giving us in these 28 years. I would like to focus today on the most important messages that Our Lady is giving to all of us, and to talk about these messages. I would like to talk to you in a simple way. I would like to speak as simple as Our Lady talks to us, because Mother always talks in a simple way. She speaks very simple so that we can understand everything and so that we can live what She speaks to us. As you know, it has been 28 years since Our Lady has been with us. 28 years ago Our Lady knocked on the door of my own heart, and She chose me to be Her instrument, an instrument in Hers’ and Gods’ hands. 28 years ago Our Lady put me in Her school, the school of peace, the school of love and also the school of prayer. I want to be a good student in this school, and I would like everyday to finish that homework, that task in which Our Lady is inviting me in all these years, or maybe it is better to say that I’m trying very hard to be a good student in that school. None of us are perfect, and we are all trying to be better, and I myself, it doesn’t mean that because I saw Our Lady I changed and converted over night. I know that my conversion is a process. That’s the program for my life, that’s the program that I have to decide for, in which I have to be perseverant, in which I have to change myself on a daily basis. Everyday I have to be able to feel that sin and evil, and I have to open myself towards peace. That is the process and the program for my life, in which I have to be very perseverant. But everyday throughout these 28 years, there is always everyday one question. “Mother, why just me? My Mother, why did you choose me? Maybe Mother You could have found somebody that was better than me?” There was another question, “Mother, is it possible that I will be able to fulfill everything you are asking through me?” There is no single day I do not ask that question. In one apparition, I was alone with Our Lady, and then I asked Her, “Mother why did you pick me, why not somebody else? And She laughed and smiled and She said, “You know what My dear child, I’m not always looking for the best one.” (laughter) And I have never asked that question again. (laughter) So 28 years ago, Our Lady chose me, for me and for my family, this is, of course, a great, great gift, but at the same time it is a great responsibility. I know that God gave me a lot, but at the same time I am very well aware that He is asking a lot from me. I am very well aware of this responsibility and I live with it every day of my life, but I have to tell you, it’s not easy, and it’s not simple. To be with Our Lady every single day, to talk to Her everyday, five, ten minutes or even more time, and then to have to return to the reality, to come back to earth and continue with my daily life, I have to tell you it’s not easy. Sometimes I need a few hours in order to return to reality to the real world and to return to my everyday routine.

 

What are the most important things Our Lady has been calling us to all these 28 years? What are the most important messages Our Lady is telling us? Peace, conversion, prayer with the heart, penance and fasting, strong firm faith, love, forgiveness, the Eucharist, and also the message of hope. Through all these messages Our Lady is leading us, and through each of these messages She has been trying to simplify and to guide us in these messages so that we can live them. At the beginning of Our Lady’s apparitions back in 1981, Our Lady presented Herself as the Queen of Peace, and Her first words were, “Dear children, I am coming here because My Son is sending Me in order to help you.” “Dear children, peace, peace, only peace.” “Let there be peace, let peace reign in the world.” “Dear children, peace must reign between man and God.” “Dear children, today’s world is in great danger, there is a threat of self destruction.” These were the first messages, the first words Our Lady was sending through us to the world. Through these words we can see what Her greatest desire was, and what Her biggest wish was, and that is peace. Mother comes from the King of Peace, and who can know better than a mother how peace is so necessary in today’s tiresome world. How much we need that peace in our families, in our youth. Also, how that peace is necessary in our tiresome Church, and we are the living Church, we are the lungs of the Church, all of us today gathered here, we are the living Church. That is why Our Lady says, “Dear children, if you are strong, the Church will be strong as well, but if you are weak, also the Church will be weak.” “because My dear children, you are the lungs of the Church.”

The second thing that I would like to tell you is, Mother is coming to us as the Mother of the Church, and She comes here in order to help us. She comes to us because She wants to console us, and to encourage us. She is coming here because She wants to give us that divine medicine, She wants to cure all our pains. She comes to us, because She wants to take our hands, and She wants to bring us towards peace, towards Her Son. Only in Her Son is our peace. Our Lady says, “Dear children, today, more than ever,” as you know, today’s world, mankind goes through a great crisis, and maybe the largest crisis in today’s world is that crisis of believing in God, having faith in God. People, as you know, go away from God, the prayer of the family is missing, “Dear children, today’s world is heading towards life without God in the future.” “Dear children, there is no more prayer in your families.” In many situations fathers don’t have time for mothers and mothers don’t have time for fathers, and the same with parents and children, they don’t have time for each other. There is no more love in our families, there is no fidelity in our marriages. There are so many tired and broken families; there is actually the complete collapse and destruction of morality. There are so many young people today who live far away from their parents, and there are so many abortions in today’s world, because of which, Our Lady is shedding Her tears. We have to wipe Her tears.

 

Mother comes to us, She wants to lead us from this darkness into the light. She wants to show us the way, the path of hope. Hope, because in today’s world that hope is so necessary. Hope in families, hope in the future, there is no hope in our families these days. Mother says, “Dear children, if there is no peace in mans’ hearts, if one man doesn’t have peace within himself, if there is no peace within your families, dear children, then there is no chance that we can have peace in the world. Therefore I would like to invite you, dear children, do not just talk about peace, but start to live that peace, don’t just talk about prayer, but start to live that prayer.” “Dear children, only with the return of the peace with prayer in the family, will your family be spiritually healed.” In today’s world, in today’s families, what they need is that spiritual healing. We cannot expect that the world will be better, that families are better, if there is no prayer, if there is no return of prayer into our families. We have to place God in the first place in our families, and together with Him we have to go towards the future. We can’t expect that there will be more vocations in the Church, if we don’t return the prayer into our families. Actually, through that family prayer God is calling us, priests are actually born in the families, through family prayer. This is why Our Lady has been inviting us for so long, and She wants us to renew family prayer. Our Lady says, “Dear Children, today’s world is really spiritually sick,” and that is the prognosis of our Mother. There is no chance that we will experience a physical cure or physical healing without spiritual healing. First of all we have to be spiritually healed. Mother is coming to us, and She is bring to us and offering to us that divine cure, that divine medicine, and She is actually healing our pains, She is bandaging our wounds. She is lifting us up, She is lifting up the sinful mankind, and She is very concerned about our salvation. She says, “Dear children, I am with you, I am coming among you because I want you to obtain that peace, but dear children, I need you at the same time, I really need you, because only with you can I realize that peace. Therefore, dear children, you have to decide for good, and you have to fight against evil and against the bad things of the world.”

Mother speaks very simply, so many times She has repeated things, and She is not tired, same as me. You see I have repeated these things that I tell you so many times, and I’m not tired, because everyday I am with Her in that meeting in the evening. I can see that She is not tired of inviting us and warning us on a daily basis. You mothers here How many times have you repeated to your children certain things, for example: study, work, listen, do not do this or that because it is not good, do not forget to do your homework. Thousands and thousands of times you have repeated these things to your own children. Are you tired? (laughter) I do hope that you are not tired. Is there a mother here who can say, “I’m really happy because I said that to my child just once and my child was obedient from the beginning.” (laughter) No, there is no such mother! Every mother has to repeat, and that’s the same with Our Lady. Our Mother is repeating to us so we do not forget. Also, our Mother didn’t come to us to frighten us, to criticize us, or to talk to us about the end of the world, about the second coming of Jesus. She comes here as a Mother of hope, and She brings that hope into the families and into todays world.

 

Sometimes the pilgrims ask me or say to me, “Ivan, can you please tell us why Our Lady is coming for such a long time?” “Also, Ivan, Our Lady, She is saying these things so many times, repeating so many times and there is nothing new that She is telling us?” Also people say, “Ivan, we have the Church, we have the Bible, we have the sacraments, so why is Our Lady coming for so long, through you, to us?” That’s true, we do have the Church, we do have the sacraments, and we have the Bible, but Our Lady is actually asking a new question to all of us. “Dear children, all these things that you have, my dear children, do you live these things?” This is the question we must find the answer to. Do we really live those things that we have? Through all these years, Our Lady didn’t say anything new, all the messages that Our Lady is giving to us, we all know these messages, we know these messages from the Church tradition, but we don’t live them. We all know that we have to go to Holy Mass, but we don’t go. We all know that we need to go to Holy Confession, but we don’t go to confession. Also we know that we have to pray in our families, but we don’t. We have to love each other, but we don’t love each other. We know that we have to forgive each other, but we don’t do that. There are many, many, other things we are supposed to do that we don’t do. In one message Our Lady said, “Dear children, My Son allowed me to stay this long with you,” because She has to teach you to instruct you, and Our Lady has been calling us in a very special way, to the Holy Eucharist. Holy Mass has to be the center focus of our life, and in one message Our Lady said, “Dear children, if you have a chance tomorrow to decide to come to see Me, or to go to Holy Mass,” this is a message Our Lady gave to the visionaries on one occasion, and She said, “don’t come to me, go to Holy Mass.” When you go to Holy Mass, that means you are going towards Jesus, towards God. We have to meet God through the Holy Mass, and we have to surrender ourselves to Him. We have to receive Him into our lives. Also, Our Lady has been inviting us to monthly confession, also She is asking us to come to adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Also, She is inviting priests, in a very special way, to organize adoration and holy hours in their parishes. Our Lady also invites us to pray the rosary in our families, and to read the Holy Scriptures in our families. She is asking us to love each other and to help each other, and to forgive each other.

 

Of course, our Mother, She carries all of us in Her heart, She brings us into Her heart, but in a very special way, Our Lady has been inviting us to the prayer with the heart. How many times has Our Lady said, how many times has She repeated, “Pray, pray, pray, dear children,” don’t pray with your lips, don’t pray mechanically, don’t pray out of tradition, don’t pray looking at your watch every five minutes thinking, “when are we going to finish.” Our Lady wants us to decide for prayer, so that we make time for God. To pray with the heart, means first of all to pray out of love and with love, to pray with all your being, so that our prayer becomes an encounter with Jesus, a conversation with Jesus. When we pray this way with the heart we have to come out of this prayer with joy and happiness, and Our Lady says, “Dear children, may prayer become a joy for you.” You have to be happy when you are praying, one who prays doesn’t need to be afraid of the future. Also Our Lady’s wish is that we pray everyday for three hours, not three hours at once, or not just three hours of the rosary; we are talking about, Holy Mass, reading of the Holy Scriptures, also, praying the rosary, family prayer, adoration, to do good deeds, to help each other, this is what Our Lady is asking from us. A few years ago a pilgrim lady that came to Medjugorje came to me, and she heard somewhere that Our Lady has been asking for three hours of prayer. She came to me and asked, “I can’t believe that Our Lady is asking for three hours of prayer a day?How can She ask for three hours?” I tried to explain to her but it was very difficult for her to understand. This same lady came back one year later and she came to Ivan and she asked him, “Is Our Lady still asking for three hours of prayer?” I told her, “She is not asking for three hours of prayer, noe She is asking for twenty-four hours of prayer.” She then said. “Okay that’s fine; I’m gonna stick with three hours!” You can see through these examples how selfish we are with prayer. Actually Our Lady never asked for something that we can’t fulfill. She is simply asking us to give as much as we can. “Dear children, if you want to attend this school of prayer, then you must be aware that this school of prayer has no vacations, no holidays, and no weekends. You have to know in this school of prayer is every single day, and my dear children if you want to pray better, then you always have to pray more, because if you pray more it is always a personal decision, and to pray better that is grace.” That is a grace which is given to those who pray more. There are so many situations in our daily lives that we are trying to find excuses why not to pray, we say, we don’t have time, it is impossible to get the family together, children are going to school, the father works and returns really late from work. I don’t have time for the family and my children, and when we come back home from work, we have to cook, we have to watch television, we have to go shopping. Actually time is always a problem, but Our Lady says, “Dear children, time is not a problem at all, the problem is love, because, dear children, if the person loves something he always finds time for it.” Of course if man doesn’t love something then he is not going to find time for it.

 

Love conquers, love is always victorious, whoever has love will find the time, and this is why Our Lady in these 28 years has been trying to wake us up from this spiritual coma that mankind has been in. She wants to straighten us up in faith and in prayer, and I do hope that we are going to respond to Our Lady’s call, that we are going to accept Her messages, and that we are going to be co-creators in the creation of a better world, a world which will be dignified of the children of God. When you go back home you have to continue with this spiritual renewal, in your families, with your children, you have to be a sign a light, because this time in which we live, this is the time of responsibility. We have to accept with great responsibility these things in which Mother is inviting us, we have to be responsible to be able to accept the word of Jesus and the word of Our Lady. In todays time in todays world we are talking very often, we listen, recession, for example, various recession, we can say that today recession is recession of the spirit, and all the recession in the world comes out of that recession that is happening in our spirit. We have to decide for peace, pray for peace, decide for God, because only God is our true peace, and may it be this way. Thank you, and God Bless you.
 
 

For more about Medjugorje visionary Ivan, see his pages in the Medjugorje Visionaries section on Medjugorje.com: Medjugorje Visionary Ivan