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Reflections
on the Year 2002 Messages |
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| January 2002 |
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Our Lady gave her message on the feast of Saint
Paul’s conversion and that may be a reason for renewing her basic call for
conversion, change and transformation of our whole life. Conversion for Saint Paul meant a
radical change from his previous way of life. The persecutor of the Church became the
great apostle and evangeliser to the pagans and to the world at large. This meant for him
an ongoing conversion, growing in holiness of life by knowing and loving Jesus Christ,
until he could say: ‘I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is
no longer I, but Christ living in me.’ (Galatians 2:20) This is the aim of Our Lady for us too, to mould us into the reflection of her Son Jesus and to become witnesses to the Light in the world around us which is walking in darkness (cf. Our Lady’s message of 5th June 1986). At the beginning of a new year it is usual to make a new year’s resolution, hoping that we shall do things better than in the previous one. Our Lady gives us a few ideas for making a good resolution. Instead of moaning about our disappointments in the previous year, she is urging us to look towards the future by becoming a better person according to her Immaculate Heart. Her first call to us is to look into our hearts and ask ourselves where we stand in our relationship to God and to the spiritual life in general. She sadly reminds us that we are still attached to earthly things, worrying too much about the affairs of this world. We must make God’s kingdom and his righteousness our priority in life as Jesus tells us in the Gospel: ‘Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God’s saving justice, and all these other things will be given to you as well.’ (Matthew 6:33) Looking into our hearts, we must ask ourselves how closer we are to God and to a life of prayer. Coming closer to God is possible only if we grow in the life of prayer, not by saying more prayers, but by praying with the heart, the unceasing prayer, the prayerful state of mind and heart. Through such prayer we are able to experience the relationship of a child to his loving Heavenly Father, in Jesus, through the working of the Holy Spirit, full of childlike trust and confidence. To be able to come to such experience, Our Lady renews her basic call and encourages us to daily conversion. Conversion is not just turning away from sin and earthly attachments which are a barrier in our life of prayer and love. True conversion is an ongoing conversion, a daily conversion as Our Lady said in an earlier message:
The central point of our daily conversion is growing in our love of God and neighbour, through a deeper life of prayer. Through such a life we become instruments in God’s plan for the salvation of the world. |
| February 2002 |
| In this message Our Lady continues with the theme
of her previous messages: conversion, personal conversion, expanding on its wider
implications. Once again, Our Lady is emphasising the principal means of obtaining personal conversion and peace in our hearts: prayer, deep prayer, prayer of the heart. Our Lady wants prayer to be the most important function in our spiritual life through which we open our hearts to receive many graces of God, including peace, joy, love, conversion and holiness of life. Again, Our Lady refers to the special time of grace in which we live, calling us to the most beautiful objective of her messages: to become the friends of Jesus. What is Our Lady’s ultimate objective through her messages? She wants us to become the reflection of Jesus and thus to become effective witnesses of peace and of Jesus’ love in the world: to become instruments in God’s plan for the salvation of the world. Our Lady’s recent messages are very much in tune with the Holy Father’s call to the Church for renewal and for a new evangelisation at the beginning of the Third Millennium. How to go about it, how to respond to Our Lady’s latest message, how to become friends of Jesus? I am sure Our Lady has the Eucharistic Mystery in mind when she calls us to become friends of Jesus in order to experience true conversion of our hearts and minds. Conversion, change of heart and transformation for us to become the ‘new creation in Christ’ (cf. 2 Cor 5:17) is a special grace, it is God’s gift and to obtain it we must turn to the very centre of change and transformation, the Eucharistic Mystery, to Jesus, rally present in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Our Lady explains becoming ‘friends of Jesus’ in a beautiful message give on 25th September 1995: ‘Dear Children, Today I am asking you to fall in love with the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Adore Him, my little ones, in your parishes, and in this way you will be united with the whole world. Jesus will become your fiend and you will not talk of Him as someone you hardly know. Union with Him will be a joy for you and you will become witnesses to Jesus’ love. My dear children, when you are adoring Jesus you are close to me.’ In the presence of the Eucharistic Lord we are moved to praise and thanksgiving, living the very meaning of the word ‘Eucharist’ (thanksgiving). Through adoration, repentance and intercession in the presence of Jesus we realise how much he loves us, living and dying for us, wanting to be in our midst to accompany us on our life’s journey, to nourish us, to inspire us by the example of his love, wanting to change us into his own likeness. Gradually we come so close to Him that we experience the love of a true Friend indeed. We learn to know Him more and more, and thus our life will radiate the presence of Jesus and His love in the world around us, helping others to learn to know and love Jesus. This is the desire of the Immaculate Heart of our Blessed Mother, expressed also by the Holy Father in his Encyclical letter ‘Redemptoris Mater’ referring to the Marian shrines: ‘Mary guides the faithful to the Eucharist (no.44). She is with us in this great undertaking as she has promised in one of her first Thursday messages: ‘Dear Children, I am particularly grateful to you for being here. Adore the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar continually! I am always present when the faithful are in adoration. At such times special graces are granted to them.’ (15th March 1984). The holy season of Lent can greatly help us to become the friends of Jesus. |
| March 2002 |
| Following Our Lady’s call in her last
month’s message to become friends of Jesus, the present message is given in the most
holy week of the liturgical year, calling us to express our intimate friendship with Jesus
by uniting ourselves through prayer with our suffering Redeemer, so that we may experience
the joy of the Risen Lord at Easter. Being united with Jesus in prayer has a special significance in Holy Week because the best way of uniting ourselves with Jesus in prayer is to join in the prayers of Jesus Himself as He prayed at the Last Supper and on the Cross. On Holy Thursday, or on any other day, we should find time to read the prayer of Jesus to His heavenly Father for His disciples and for all of us, as Saint John recorded it in his Gospel, chapter 17. It is a most beautiful prayer which can teach us how to pray with the heart and from the heart with the trust and confidence of a child. Jesus tells His Father that He wants to share His joys with all of us to the full and, being mindful of the difficult times ahead, Jesus is asking the Father to protect us from the Evil One and to give us the glory which the Father has given to His Son, Jesus. Jesus prays for unity among his followers so that they may be effective witnesses to Jesus whom the Father has sent into the world to save the world. On Good Friday we may reflect on Psalm 22 (21) which Jesus started to pray in His agony on the Cross when He said: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (cf. Matthew 27:46). The enemies of Jesus who heard Him should have realised that He is praying the dramatic prayer of the Old Testament which foretold the sufferings of the Messiah in detail, the jeering and sneering of the crowd, all of which is being fulfilled on Calvary. But this prayer expresses also the trust of Jesus in His heavenly Father who has not turned away his face, but listened to the cry for help. Even the last words of Jesus are a prayer, from Psalm 31 (30), Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (cf. Luke 23:46). This psalm is a beautiful prayer of trust in the faithful love of the heavenly Father towards all who put their hope in Him. Our Lady is asking us to open our hearts to Jesus, offering Him not only our devoted prayer but all our joys, sorrows, illnesses and pain, thus sharing in His redemptive work for the salvation of souls, sharing the reparation of Jesus for our sins and the sins of the whole world. Such a time is a time of grace indeed, as Our Lady says, and her words may be a great consolation to all of us. She is urging us to commit our whole life to Jesus so that every moment of our life may belong to Him. This is the heart of our friendship with Jesus, and our Blessed Mother is with us in this mystery of love and intercedes for us that our friendship with Jesus may never end. In the course of the past twenty-one years Our Lady has often asked us to pray and live the Passion of Jesus and I am quoting two of her messages which highlight and emphasise the importance of Our Lady’s present message:
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| April 2002 |
The analogy of nature and flowers often features
in Our Lady’s messages as, for instance, in an early message:
The way we open our hearts to God, the sun for our souls, is prayer, deep prayer, longing for change, to grow in holiness of life, to become the images of Jesus more and more (fragrance of Christ, Cf. 2 Corinthians 2:15) It is important to take to heart Our Lady’s assurance that she is always with us in this endeavour, desiring to bring us closer to her Son, to become the friends of Jesus, as she told us in the previous messages. Then Jesus is able to share with us His love for His heavenly Father and for all His creation. We come to the Father through Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit as Jesus said: I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. (John 14:6) Mentioning the longing of our hearts for change, Our Lady has in mind conversion, total transformation of our hearts and minds, the great gift of God we should seek and pray for. This is Our Lady’s basic desire for us, the gate to the renewal of the Church and of the world, expressed in many of her messages:
What is conversion in Our Lady’s way? She gives the answer in another beautiful message:
Such conversion involves us totally in the life of the Church, especially by living Jesus’ love in our relationship with God and everyone else. Such conversion of hearts and minds implies a total abandonment of ourselves to God who in His goodness and love will provide all our needs as Jesus promised:
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| May 2002 |
| During the past twenty-one years in nearly every
message Our Lady has urged us to pray, to pray with the heart, to pray with her. This
request of Our Lady alone is strong enough proof for the authenticity of her messages,
which are in fact the messages of the Gospel, expressed in the language of a mother. We
should, therefore, be more than willing to become joyful witnesses for her mission through
Medjugorje, joyful carriers of her messages. However, in order to become truly devoted
children of Mary and effective and joyful cooperators in her mission, we must do all we
can to become people of prayer, putting prayer in the first place in our lives. The surest
way to God is prayer, prayer of the heart, the unceasing prayer, as also St Paul teaches
us: Always be joyful; pray unceasingly; and for all things give thanks; this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:17; cf. Luke 18:1). The prayer of the heart opens our hearts to God’s gifts of peace, love and joy. I am quoting a few messages of Our Lady which convey to us the deep and loving desire of our heavenly Mother to teach us to pray and to guide us on the path of happiness and joy.
In our present world joy is very much lacking in our lives, although everyone is yearning for joy and happiness. This is what our Blessed Mother wants to achieve in us, so that by our example of joyful witnessing we may change the world around us, and slowly the peace and joy of Christ will touch the hearts of people and by spreading Our Lady’s messages we are communicating her love for all God’s children. All this endeavour on our part will bring us so close to our heavenly Mother that we may experience what she is hoping for, the joy of living with her. When ten years ago I established the Family of Nazareth Association here in London for those who wish to live by the messages of Our Lady by way of daily spiritual exercises as presented in my handbooks, Living the Gospel with Our Lady and Mary and Renewal, my main motivation was to be with Mary as Jesus lived with her during His hidden life in Nazareth. Through Medjugorje Our Lady has established a ‘spiritual Nazareth’ so that our life is with Mary, therefore close to Jesus. This is also my motivation in promoting the cause of Charlotte Boyd who restored the Slipper Chapel at Walsingham to Catholic ownership in 1896, with the intention to restore the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, England’s Nazareth (see The Catholic Herald, 24 May, 2002). |
| June 2002 |
On the 21st anniversary of her first
apparition at Medjugorje Our Lady gives us a most inspiring and challenging message which
should move our hearts to respond joyfully to her call. In Our Lady’s school of
prayer and love, faith is the most essential driving force in our striving for holiness of
life in order to become effective instruments of God’s peace in our world as she told
us in a monthly message:
What kind of faith does Our Lady have in mind? The faith which unites us with Jesus, transforming us into His likeness, faith that can move mountains. When the disciples of Jesus saw Him healing the sick He often said to them: Your faith has made you well. So the disciples asked Jesus: Increase our faith. The Lord replied: If you had faith like a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree: ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea’, and it would obey you (Luke 17:5-6). How can we have such a great faith? Through the working of the Holy Spirit. That is why Our Lady is praying for us and with us that the Holy Spirit may form us into the likeness of Jesus and then we will obtain the gift of great faith. That is how Our Lady has explained the working of the Holy Spirit in a Thursday message:
By our surrendering our lives to Jesus the Holy Spirit is able to operate in us and through us. Then great things may happen and the time for the New Pentecost will come nearer. The Holy Spirit, sent by the Father in the name of His Son, Jesus, is doing the work of our sanctification. That is why Our Lady is asking us so often to open our hearts to the Holy Spirit, like flowers in the spring yearning for the sun (cf. 31 January 1985), so that the Holy Spirit may give us the beauty, the warmth and the aroma of the spiritual life in Jesus, for the glory of the Father. Then we will realise that messages of Our Lady are the messages of the Gospel, words from heaven, and we will be more willing to live by her messages. Her messages are a precious gift for our holiness of life, especially in this time of grace, when Our Blessed Mother is with us in a special way, praying with us, protecting us and guiding us on the way of holiness. |
| July 2002 |
| Our Lady’s message on the Feast of St James,
patron of the parish of Medjugorje, has a special significance. St James, brother of the
Apostle and Evangelist St John, was the first Bishop of Jerusalem and was the first martyr
for his faith in Jesus through the hands of King Herod (A.D.42) who wished to please the
Jews and win their support. It must have been a terrible shock to the early Christians,
but at the same time it was a reminder about what it entails to follow Jesus. At this moment in time there is no such danger for Christians, with the exception of a few places around the world, but our Blessed Mother knows what we have to be prepared for. Witnessing for Jesus demands a very strong faith which is not of the cerebral kind (‘Even the devils believe in God and are terrified of Him’ cf. James 2:9). It is a faith based on love and works of charity, nourished by prayer, increased by the grace of Jesus and always orientated to do the holy will of God. Such faith is a very inspiring witness to Jesus Christ and it is bound to touch the hearts of people around us. Such faith becomes even stronger when our prayer becomes a joyful prayer, no matter whatever may happen to us from the world around us. Our Lady is asking us to turn with special trust and confidence to our patron saints to whom we are dedicated at our baptism, praying for their help to grow in love towards God, to become effective apostles of love. Then it will be sure that, as children of Mary, we shall join with all the children of God, with all the saints in Heaven, and we shall praise God forever. In a beautiful message, Our Lady has put before us what it means to conform to the will of God and to become apostles of love.
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| August 2002 |
| Our Lady gave her present message on the Sunday
(21st in Ordinary Time) when we heard in the Gospel how St Peter declared his
faith in Jesus: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ This faith was,
however, a gift from the Father in heaven as Jesus explained, and on such rock-like faith
Jesus wanted to build his Church (Matthew 16: 13-20). This ‘rock’, however, is
being shaken in our present world, and we may see the sign of the crisis of faith in the
Church. No wonder Our Lady is urging us again to pray and to work for the kind of faith
which can move mountains and can change the face of the earth. Our Lady is continuing the theme of the two previous monthly messages about the faith we should have, through which the faith of people around us might grow and we would be able to live by Our Lady’s messages more effectively, messages which are in fact the messages of the Gospel. However, Our Lady reminds us in her present message about how little faith we have, and that we are not even aware of our great need to pray for the gift of faith. At least we should follow the example of the Apostles when they realised how little faith they had and asked Jesus: ‘Lord, increase our faith.’ Jesus replied: ‘If you had faith like a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree, "be uprooted and planted in the sea", and it would obey you’ (Luke 17: 5-6). Our Lady renews her loving assurance that she is with us, praying with us and for us for the gift of faith, so that we may understand her messages more and more and live accordingly. In my reflection on Our Lady’s June message I asked the question: how can we have such a great faith as she has in mind for us? In that message Our Lady’s answer was: through the Holy Spirit, to whom we should open our hearts through prayer to receive the gift of faith. When Our Lady asks us to ‘pray, pray, pray’, that is to pray unceasingly, perhaps we should join her and the Apostles in spirit in the Upper Room where they were waiting with unceasing prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Another way of helping our faith to grow is to meditate on the Passion and Death of Jesus who died for us out of love, as Our Lady explained in another beautiful message:
By experiencing the love of Jesus we shall grow in faith, love and peace, helped by Our Lady through her School of Prayer and Love, so that we may become instruments in her plan for the world that people may discover the joy of being with God and in being his children. |
| September 2002 |
| Our Lady’s message reveals her great concern
for the world’s peace which is in grave danger at this moment in time. The urgency of
her message is clear to us all. The whole world is full of tension, living in fear, in
case the threat of war becomes a frightful reality. The experience of the past century,
full of wars, shows that wars do not bring lasting peace; they create only more hatred and
conflicts. That is why the Queen of Peace is turning to us in our times, and through us to
the whole world to work for peace and reconciliation, and not for war. Once again, as so many times in the past, Our Lady turns to her children to do something vitally important which could help to prevent war and to bring about peace, the peace of Christ which the world need so much. In order to achieve this sublime objective, Our Lady, as always, urges us to pray for peace, because true peace is a gift of God, a special fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf. Galatians 5:22-23). In our prayer for peace we bring all the people of the world before the Lord, that he may enkindle in their hearts the need and love for peace which comes from God. For this it is necessary that people make peace first with God through repentance and conversion, and then peace like a river will flow out into the world. However, all this process of peace for the world begins in individual souls, and that is why Our Lady is urging us, by living her messages of peace, to become instruments of and witnesses to peace, a peace which begins in our hearts, in the hearts of those around us, and then it will flow out into the world too. Our Lady often assured us that she is praying with us for peace, as she stated in a beautiful Christmas message:
When the war in former Yugoslavia started, Our Lady turned to her children with the same urgency as in her last message, emphasising the power of prayer with fasting:
Prayer with fasting can stop wars, as Our Lady stated in a very early message:
Our Lady’s whole mission through Medjugorje is to bring about peace in the whole world, the peace of Christ, so that Christ may reign in all hearts throughout the world, and we are called to help her by living her messages for peace as she asked us some years ago:
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| October 2002 |
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In her last monthly message Our Lady urged us to pray for peace, because there is no peace in the world. In fact, many dark clouds are looming over the world threatening more and great conflicts than ever. Only god’s merciful intervention can pave the way towards lasting peace which in the present situation would be like a miracle. This is exactly what Our Lady puts before us in her latest message, urging us to prayer with greater commitment than ever. It is significant that Our Lady gave this message in the very month which is the beginning of the Year of the Rosary, as the Holy Father proclaimed recently. He also announced a fourth set of mysteries to be added to the Mysteries of the Rosary, the Mysteries of Light, covering the public ministry of Christ: 1. his Baptism in the Jordan, 2. his self-manifestation at the wedding of Cana, 3. his proclamation of the Kingdom of God with his call to conversion, 4. his Transfiguration, 5. his Institution of the Eucharist, as the sacramental expression of the Paschal Mystery. Through the Holy Rosary many miraculous events happened in past centuries, and now, at the beginning of the Third Millennium, only a miracle can save mankind from self-destruction. Our Lady urges us to believe that by simple prayer miracles can be worked. The Holy Rosary is a very simple prayer, yet very profound, coming from the heart as we contemplate the life of Jesus in union with our Blessed Mother. The Rosary will unite us with Jesus more and more, so he can work miracles through us indeed. Our Lady speaks also of the fruits of such prayer: our hearts will be filled with joy and gratitude towards God for everything he is doing in our lives, and through us for others. During the past twenty-one hears Our Lady urged us many times to pray the Rosary because it has great power. She asks us to make the Rosary a living Rosary by praying it with faith, love, joy and with a total commitment, as she said on 12th June 1986:
We live in an age when death and destruction are threatening mankind by a new kind of warfare which is prepared to use any means of destroying innocent lives. At the beginning of the Gulf War Our Lady asked us to pray the Rosary to overcome such threats:
Our Lady talked about the miraculous power of the Rosary in another beautiful message, given on 25th April 2001:
We must make a serious commitment in responding to Our Lady’s message, believing her words with hope and joy. Let us open our hearts to the Holy Spirit to receive the gift of prayer, the unceasing prayer, pray of the heart, and then we will become instruments in God’s hand with Our Lady’s help, to bring about the reign of Christ, the Prince of Peace, in all hearts. |
| November 2002 |
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Our Lady's message is a true Advent message indeed, calling us to prepare 'the way for the Lord' (cf. Matthew 3:3), by conversion, change and transformation, so that He may come into our lives in a special way, 'born anew in your heart'. One of the most important steps we are asked to make during the Advent season is Sacramental Reconciliation, Holy Confession as Our Lady calls it, to prepare our hearts and souls for the Birthday of Jesus, to receive His Christmas gifts of peace and joy. Our Lady's mission through Medjugorje can be summed up in simple words: she is offering little Jesus to us, as she did at her first apparition to the visionaries of Medjugorje on 24th June 1981, that He may be born anew in us, that we may become His reflection (cf. message on 5 June 1986), and so become the witnesses and messengers of His peace and joy to the world which is without peace and joy. In fact, our world is full of hatred, conflicts and confrontation and even the Church is under attack. This sublime call of Our Lady is a call to holiness of life to which she has called us many times during the past twenty-one years, as she did in another Advent message four years ago:
It is very important to make a good confession, as a first step in our conversion and transformation, and Our Lady is very anxious to help us in this undertaking, as she told us in a Thursday message for Advent:
To be able to do what Our Lady is asking of us we must 'decide for prayer' indeed as she calls us to do in nearly every message. This means much more than just to say prayers. 'Prayer is something that God does' as Delia Smith puts it in her book, Journey into God. 'First and foremost', she writes, 'prayer is a relationship in which God is the initiator, constantly seeking to elicit a human response.... Prayer is life: living, growing, developing, but always in secret, like a tiny seed buried in the earth steadily yet imperceptibly thrusting itself upward to the light.' Our Lady often uses the analogy of the flower that yearns for the sun, and with the Holy Rosary in our hand we may feel like flowers open to the Holy Spirit, the 'Giver of Life', who, as we reflect on the lives of Jesus and Mary through the mysteries of the Rosary, especially through the recently proposed Mysteries of Light, will mould us, through Mary's hands, into the likeness of Jesus, for the salvation of souls and for the glory of our Father in Heaven. In spite of our weaknesses and shortcomings, Our Lady is assuring us that we are not alone, she is close to us and she intercedes before God for all of us. |
| December 2002 |
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During the year 2002, in view of the very turbulent times we live in, Our Lady has often urged us to pray with the heart, especially through the Rosary and with fasting, so that we may be open to God's gifts of peace, change and conversion, enabling us to be united with Jesus, to become effective witnesses to His peace in the world which is without peace. She wants us to become a sign to the world, as she told us in a previous Christmas message a year ago:
Our Lady has also often emphasised that this time is a time of grace. God wants to help us to overcome the forces of evil which threaten the peace of the world, and we have to open our hearts through deep prayer, the prayer of the heart, to receive God's gifts of peace, love and joy, to share them with those who have no peace, love and joy in their hearts. In her present message, however, Our Lady speaks of this time also as a time of great trials for all those who wnat to follow the way of peace. We can think not only of the threat of war in the Middle East which is looming over the horizon but also of the attack on the Church and on the Christian faith in many different ways, especially through television and the other media. It is important that we do not get swayed by fear and worry about the situation around us and in the world, but instead we should have a great trust and confidence in God's love, which is especially manifested in the presence of Our Lady with us through Medjugorje, encouraging and guiding us through these difficult times. she comes to us with little Jesus, the King of Peace, in her arms, offering Him to us as she did on the very first day of her apparitions in Medjugorje, on 24th June 1981. She is urging us to live by her messages because she wants to give us true peace, the peace of Christ, to carry it in our hearts and to share it with others, until God's peace begins to rule the world. We cannot fail to notice that godlessness is spreading in the world around us and this could provide for us the first practical undertaking of sharing God's peace with others by following Our Lady's example in praying for unbelievers as she does with Mirjana Dragicevic on the second of every month. It may be of interest to the devotees of Our Lady of Medjugorje to know that in her messages about Life Offering through the Hungarian mystic, Sr Dolores Krizsan (+ 28th May 1998), Our Lady gave a message about the importance of Medjugorje:
We must be confident in the ultimate victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary which will herald the reign of Christ's Sacred Heart in all hearts. May the New Year unite us with our Blessed Mother in her crusade for ther conversion of unbelievers. |