A grace for the Church

Medjugorje has become a highly significant place of prayer, already a major shrine which, though unofficial, is perfectly in order according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The parish of St James was explicitly intended by Our Lady as a model in its spiritual and liturgical life. This emerged from her early messages, and is in fact one of the most commonly agreed impressions of pilgrims. They return from Medjugorje longing to find a similar quality of prayer, liturgical reverence, spiritual devotion and sacramental practice in their own home parishes. They have in particular sensed the call to be messengers of the messages (‘the responsibility of the messages is with you’). This task is seen by many as a challenge which gives a new meaning to their Christian lives, a sense of hope for the Church, and a conviction that God is faithful to his promises. There has been an obvious connection between Medjugorje and the Jubilee Year. Pope John Paul was the prophet of the Jubilee since the very beginning of his pontificate, calling for a return to the house of the Father, just as Our Lady has been doing in Medjugorje. He constantly preaches the love of Jesus for mankind, and has called on people to abandon fear and to turn to the Redeemer to seek peace and reconciliation, just as Our Lady has done, and just as we find the Gospels.

Medjugorje as hope

Hope is a theme of scripture, with faith giving rise to hope, and it is based upon God’s promises of eternal life that Mary ceaselessly places before us in her messages. Our contribution, for these promises to be realised, is to say ‘yes’, as Mary did. The opposite emotions of fear and despair stem from the devil and have no place in Christian life. We avoid deception by looking towards the light of Christ and keeping faithful to him. The spirituality of Medjugorje offers guidance and direction, but with a new sense of purpose. It may affect our profession, family or parish life, our use of time, money or leisure, or it may simply encourage us on our spiritual path in our inner life. However, we cannot ignore the signs of an unfolding pattern of world events, given the secrets and the state of spiritual need of contemporary society, and the frequent reminders in the messages that we are living in ‘a time of grace’.

A grace for the world

Medjugorje is totally contemporary, not modern, not spiritually fashionable, but in some deeper sense a prophecy for our time. To take a challenging example from the message received by Mirjana in 1982, there is an extraordinary account of how humanity is now living in a century that is under the dominion of Satan. Mary speaks to our age, and sums up its character: ‘the destruction of marriages, division among priests, obsessions and murder’. No one could deny that this is what we are witnessing, but she also promises that this power is being taken away from Satan and hints that we are in the final flurry of his evil works, and that this can end sooner through our prayers, fasting and sacramental practices. Some might say that this is old-fashioned, but that is because they look for fashions. Why should God bother with fashions, if he is himself unchanging? Rather we can see this message not as modern in fashion but as contemporary in its relevance, and there is a great difference between these two. We are not the arbiters of contemporary relevance when it comes to matters of the spirit.

We may be looking for social and political relevance of the Medjugorje messages, such as a special message for the West, or a solution to the problems of the Balkans, or to the fact of people resorting to abortion, drug addiction or New Age spiritualities, when this is not what Our Lady intends. Her remedies are both perennial and contemporary, since they are the constant remedies of the spiritual life: turning to God, loving and trusting him, and waiting for his mercy. In other words, the challenge of the messages is to take up the constant remedies of the Gospel, and apply them to the contemporary situation.

This said, the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York has been so cataclysmic in its effects and consequences that it is not surprising that it finds echoes in Our Lady’s messages. First of all, in August 2001 she said: ‘Be true to yourselves and do not bind yourselves to material things but to God, and do not forget that your life is passing as a flower.’ Then, following the events, she said: ‘I call you to prayer, especially today when Satan wants war and hatred.’ (25/9/01) And she returned to this theme the following month: ‘Through you and your prayer peace will begin to flow through the world.’ (25/10/01) There have been widely reported signs of renewed spiritual activity in the world since the terrorist attack. People have been going more to church, and have been buying more bibles. Everyone has felt far more uncertain about the likely future. Perhaps there is a genuine turning towards God, and perhaps it is only through extraordinary events that people will change.

This is exactly what has been happening for twenty years now through the Medjugorje apparitions. People have found renewal in the spirit, healing, reconciliation, a deeper faith in and love of the Gospel and a closer relationship to Jesus. In this sense the problems of the day have been shown to have a solution in the world of the spirit. Instead of spiritual innovation through new blends of paganism and Christianity, or turning to spiritualism, the occult and satanism, or rejecting God altogether through secular rationalism, it is possible to return to God, that is, to find reconciliation with him, to receive pardon, to enjoy again the simplicity of truth, goodness and beauty as ordained by God the Creator, not by humanity, the pretender, or Lucifer, the rebel.