“…those who say that the messages are always the same, those are the people who do not live the messages of Our Lady.”-Jakov speaks

Wednesday November 7, 2007

Jakov Colo
October 12, 2007, in Medjugorje

I am going to share with you the most important things about the apparitions of Our Lady. What is even more important, I am going to share with you the main messages of Our Lady.
 

“When the apparitions got started here in Medjugorje, I was ten. I am the youngest visionary amongst six of us. I had the same life, like every other child in the village. I was with my friends. I was playing with them. I lived a very simple faith, the faith of one child, and the faith which I was told about by my parents. I knew that God existed, that Our Lady existed, and I was always praying. Sometimes I had to pray, but you know, I had to pray but I didn’t really want to pray. I attended Holy Mass, and sometimes I couldn’t wait for Holy Mass to end. It was very hard for me to sit for one hour in the church. I had never thought about the apparitions. I hadn’t known that the apparitions were possible. This was my life before the apparitions – a simple life.
 

“Then my life changed completely. On the 25th of June, 1981, I received this great gift from God, and that gift was to see Our Lady. I can recall these first moments with Our Lady, when we found ourselves on Apparition Hill and when I saw the eyes of Our Lady for the first time. I saw this enormous love coming out of Her. Then I felt the same love in my heart and I felt so much love, protected. In that moment, there are not really any words that can describe that moment. When you see Our Lady, only your heart can talk. At that moment, my heart told me, “I hope this moment will never end” because that was the most beautiful moment in my life. I had never experienced anything like that in my life. In the same moment, I understood in my heart, that a new life had started for me. I always say that I received a great gift, and that gift is to see Our Lady. But at the same moment, I received an even greater gift. This is the gift that Our Lady desires to give us all, that through Her we get to know Jesus Christ. Our Lady wants to lead us all towards Jesus and that is why She comes over here and the apparitions have been going on for 26 years. I know that is strange for some people, and many people ask themselves, why so long, why so many messages. Many people say the messages are always the same. We always ask ourselves why, but we should say something else. We need to say thank you. We need to give thanks to God for the gift that He gave to us because we are not able to comprehend what a great grace we have received – that God has been sending Our Lady for 26 years. If each one of us today opens our hearts, then each one of us will be able to understand why He sends His Mother. And that is very simple. Our Lady is a mother. She loves Her children. She wants to bring Her children to peace and to joy, and that peace and joy can only be found through Jesus Christ. That is why Our Lady comes over here, that is why She gives us Her messages. Her messages are only the way to get to know Jesus Christ. And those who say that the messages are always the same, those are people who do not live the messages of Our Lady. If we accept all the messages She gives to us, if we live these messages, then we will be able to understand that Her messages are the strength for our lives. And at the same moment, they are the answer for everything that we ask.
 

“These are the messages of peace because Our Lady came as the Queen of Peace. The message of prayer, fasting, Holy Mass, and conversion. I know that there are many messages, like it was at the very beginning for me as well. I first asked myself whether I would be able to accept these messages because these messages were new messages for me as well. You see, I had never prayed before fifteen decades of the Rosary every day. I had never fasted twice a week. I hadn’t known what the word conversion meant, and why to pray for peace. But Our Lady says, and She teaches us, and She said here in Medjugorje, “Dear children! It is enough that you open your hearts and I will do everything else.” This is the first thing we must do in Medjugorje. And in a special way, you pilgrims who come here to Medjugorje, you need to start this pilgrimage. But how? With pure hearts and that means the sacrament of Confession, Reconciliation. If we do not have clean, pure hearts, how are we going to be able to accept these messages? We won’t be able to reach anything. So the first thing we must do is go to Confession, and then we have to surrender ourselves completely to God. I can recall pretty well from the beginning of the apparitions, I said so many times to God, I want to live Her messages. I want to feel these messages in my heart. I am ready to accept these messages, but You please help me. Then slowly I started understanding. I understood that prayer wasn’t difficult for me any more. On the contrary, I felt good. I felt joy. I started feeling peace in my heart. It wasn’t difficult for me to attend Holy Mass. I started understanding Holy Mass. Holy Mass became the center of my life. And this is what all of us can reach.
 

“Our Lady invites us to pray. Our Lady invites us to pray the Holy Rosary. She invites us to renew the prayer of the Holy Rosary. Our Lady always says, pray with your hearts. Feel peace and joy of the prayer. Make the prayer the peace and joy of your life. Nobody is able to pray if he feels that he must pray. All our hearts must feel a need for prayer. Prayer must become our food. Our Lady said also that prayer is the answer for everything you ask. In a special way, Our Lady invites us to pray in our families. She says to place God in the very first place in your lives and find the time for God in your families. If God lives and exists in our families, then we possess everything. We have peace in our families. We have love. We have joy. Then we will be able to talk to our children, and television is not going to bring up our children. Unfortunately this is what is happening all over the world. We have forgotten to talk to our children. Parents have great responsibility before their children. Let us recall what the late Fr. Slavko used to say. From the very beginning of the lives of our children, we need to place the rules of faith in their hearts. And even if they distance themselves from God one day, they are always going to come back. The little we gave them stays forever in their hearts.
 

“Our Lady says fast, Wednesdays and Fridays. Today is what day? (the crowd answered Friday) How many of you have started fasting? (Very few pilgrims raised their hands and Jakov responded) Unfortunate! Many people ask why fasting is so important. It is important because Our Lady says fast. But there is something greater. Our Lady says, “Dear children! With prayer and fasting, you can reach everything. You can even stop wars.” That is why fasting is important. I am bothered so many times because we always ask something from God. God give me this and that, and we always want this immediately, at that moment when we really ask for that – like we blackmail God. And then, if something we ask for doesn’t come. I am hearing people say that I have been praying for one year and nothing is happening. God’s time is not our time. We must pray always. We must have firm faith, not only to remember God when we need Him. God must always be in the first place in our lives. If God is really standing in the first place in our lives, then we will be able to understand. We mustn’t ask many questions. Who can know us better but God? Who can know better what we need in this moment but Him? The only thing we have to do is to pray and to believe in Him.
 

“In our lives, it happens that we get sick. We go and see the doctor. He gives us a prescription, then we go to the pharmacy, and then we heal ourselves with medication. You see Our Lady gives us prescriptions how to become better. Are we doing this? Are we healing ourselves with this medication She gives to all of us? On the contrary, many people do not do this. We go around and we ask, “What are we to do?” But we truly know what we are to do. God is everything in our lives. If we have God, then we have everything. Then we can say we have a life because the only life we really have is a life with God. And talking about fasting, when we fast, we do fasting out of love and in silence. All people shouldn’t know that we are fasting today. Maybe many of you did not raise your hands because you didn’t want other people to know that you are fasting. (laughter) When you come here to Medjugorje, why do you come here? I know that it is not to see us visionaries in the first place because we are human the same way you are. The greatest gift that you can receive here in Medjugorje is your conversion. We can change our lives here. We can start the new life, the new life with God. And what is even more important, we need to take this gift back to our homes. I believe your true pilgrimage starts when you go back to your homes. There you can see what you have received here. How do we tell somebody to fast if we haven’t started fasting ourselves? This is the place where we have to start living the messages of Our Lady. Our Lady says all of you should become my apostles. But how to become an apostle of Our Lady? It is very easy to talk, and when we talk we are very good. But we have to talk to other people with our example, with our lives – whether we accepted Her messages. That is the true example we give to others. Other people should recognize God within us and how God acts through us.
 

“Our Lady says pray for peace. The first thing She asks is to pray for peace in our hearts. If we do not have peace in our hearts, we cannot get to God. If we do not have God, how are we going to accept the messages and everything that is given to us here? So the first thing we should have is peace in our hearts. We know how much peace today’s world needs. If Our Lady says that with prayer and fasting, we can reach everything, we can even stop wars, the only thing that remains within us is to open our hearts and to start praying. God will do everything else. Thank you very much.
 

“Now if you have any questions:”
 

One woman stated that she wanted to say thank you to Our Lady.

“There is one thing – many people come and tell us, please give thanks to Our Lady on our behalf. Then they tell me, tell Our Lady that we love Her. Of course, I am going to say this to Our Lady, but there is one thing even more beautiful. You can say that to Our Lady yourselves.”
 

How do I fast? How many times a day do I eat bread and water, etc.?

“You see, we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We are not going to over eat. It really doesn’t matter if you eat one or two slices of bread, but it is important that we do fasting out of love. I am going to reduce the fasting a little bit for you. At this moment, in front of the church, the children from the Medjugorje parish have the days of bread. It is tradition of Croatian people. So I am inviting all of you to go and get some bread from the children who are by the church. My three children are over there as well, with the other kids from the village. (laughter) Mothers were making bread all night long. The children are selling the bread and they are raising money for one girl for medication who is sick from the parish. So this is something you can do and we can eat that bread. Believe me it is very good. So we start fasting from this moment.”
 

Could you describe for us Purgatory?

“Why Purgatory immediately? We should talk of something that is more beautiful. We have to talk about something that Our Lady is inviting us to get to that place – and that is Heaven. At the same moment, we must be aware that there is another site. Purgatory is darkness. This is what I saw with my eyes. It was the darkness where we couldn’t see any people, but we felt the physical movements from that darkness. And Our Lady said, “Pray for souls in Purgatory. They are in great need of your prayers.” And I think all of us truly should place in our daily prayers the prayers for the souls in Purgatory. But what is the most beautiful from everything is Heaven. You cannot really describe Heaven with words. Heaven is endless space, the special light and I always call this light the light of God. We saw many people. And this is what I can really describe with words, with human words. I believe that Heaven is not what you see with your eyes. Heaven is in our heart. And here on earth, if we accept God, if we place God in the very first place in our lives, then we already have Heaven in our hearts. We should ask ourselves, in every moment of our lives, are we ready to get into Heaven. Am I ready this very moment to stand before God? Because none of us is able to say I will be alive tomorrow when we do not know when God is going to invite us to come to Him. But we must be ready. And we have so many opportunities. And just look at this, for 26 years, Our Lady has been coming. There is another thing, when I had this apparition, when Our Lady took us to Heaven, I was very afraid. I was only eleven and when Our Lady told us that She was going to take us with Her, I didn’t want to go with Her. I was afraid. I thought I would die. And I said to Our Lady, there was me and Vicka, so I said to Our Lady, why don’t you take Vicka only. Her mother has eight children and I am the only child my mother has. And they always teach us that you have to give advance to ladies. (laughter) You see I tried. Of course, I am joking. People ask me some times, am I afraid to die. I always tell them, yes I am. They ask me, how come, how can you be afraid of death, to die but you have seen Our Lady. I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of where am I going. Am I ready to go to Heaven? It doesn’t mean because we have seen Our Lady that we are holy people immediately. We have to deserve holiness like all of you people here. Every morning when I wake up, I say to God one thing. ‘I give you thanks for the new day, for the new opportunity you give to me, so that I can become better, so that I can deserve Heaven.’ I am going to pray for all of you, for all your intentions. I am kindly asking all of you to pray for all of us here. And we are going to conclude this meeting with one Hail Mary.”

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