Medjugorje is a successful syllogism that makes sense!
Eighteen years ago today the Mother of God chose a remote mountain village to establish the course for the rest of this millennium in preparation for the new millennium. Many call it the Third Millennium, the twenty-first century or the 2000 era, but we like to refer to it as the coming of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart which will usher in the Reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Second Pentecost, the Era of the Eucharistic Presence, the New Advent or the Age of Peace. The reason we say this is because Our Lord and Our Lady have imparted this. Fatima and Medjugorje are bookends to the tumultous, turbulent twentieth century - one that has seen more killed in wars than any other century, one that has sought peace globally but not found it, settling for what Our Lady has referred to time and again as the "false peace." It was peace the Blessed Mother brought when she first spoke to the six Croatian children in a pristine farming valley some thirty miles from Mostar in what was then the Republic of Yugoslavia under the shadow of the hammer and sickle of communism. There on the rocky hillside known as Podrbo Blessed Mary said, "I have come to tell you God exists, and that peace is necessary for the salvation of the world. In God is found true joy from which true peace flows."
Note, Our Lady didn't say peace comes from peace treaties or cease-fires, no it comes from and through God.
What God began at the Cova in Fatima He is finishing at the Podrbo and on Mt. Krizevac in Medjugorje. Our Lady said to the seers at Fatima, "In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph." We are closer to that time. All the Blessed Mother has imparted is being fulfilled and she has said that when her apparitions cease in her special Oasis of Peace her mission will have been completed. She will not appear anywhere else in the world. She affirmed this in her May 2, 1982 message when she said, "I have come to call the world to conversion for the last time. After that, I will not appear any more on this earth." Medjugorje is her last hurrah and ours! This final act began eighteen years ago today where on that hill now known as "Apparition Hill" she appeared to six visionaries who would become as well known as Saint Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes or Francisco. Jacinta and Lucia at Fatima. Their names are household names in Marian circles today: Ivanka Ivankovic who was 15 at the time, Mirjana Dragicevic who was 16, Marija Pavlovic who was 16, Ivan Dragicevic also 16, Vicka Ivankovic the oldest at 17, and the youngest being ten-year old Jakov Colo. Today all are, of course, adults and all are married save for Vicka who still lives in her original home in Medjugorje. Vicka, Ivan and Marija are all receiving daily apparitions and the latter receives the monthly message imparted on the 25th of each month for the world. To read the entire story on Medjugorje, we recommend going to The Medjugorje Story for four installments written last year detailing the spiritual phenomena that has been occurring steadily for an unprecedented eighteen years.
Though this editor doubted the apparitions at first, once we visited this Oasis of Peace I was converted like never before. This ministry of MIR-A-CALL Center and the communications apostolate of the DAILY CATHOLIC exist because we took seriously her request of August 16, 1984: "I beg of you...to live my messages and relate them to whomever you meet." One of the aspects we never took into account were the visionaries themselves. Consider that all but Jakov were in the prime of their teen years. Having two sons who are in that same age bracket presently, it emphasizes all the more the authenticity of the apparitions because what teen-ager wants to be ridiculed, wants to go against what the peers think, will stand strong in their conviction when waffling from one fad to the next? How many teens would value faith over the world no matter what? We would have to say only those who have the faith and believe. The visionaries have been blessed to have seen and to believe. Now they ask us to believe without seeing. Teens, on the whole, don't buy that logic. Consider the pressure brought to bear against the visionaries from authorities in the village from the communist government at the time to the parish priests and even parents, not to mention the village people or the bishop. Even one of the most staunchest backers of the visions and visionaries Father Jozo Zovko the Franciscan priest who was imprisoned and tortured did not believe the visionaries at the outset, but God has a way of getting through our thick skulls. The children knew this, and through all the ordeals and extensive scientific tests in which they were questioned, probed, stuck and constantly harassed, they remained true to God's Holy Will. One would think that after eighteen years if this was a hoax in any way one of the six would have slipped up and admitted such or contradicted one another. But through 6,570 days or 157,680 hours or nine million four hundred sixty thousand and eight hundred minutes all six visionaries have held true to their calling as messengers of Heaven. Now add to that the thousands, possibly millions of conversions that have occurred as a result of the Medjugorje messages and one has to ask: How can this not be supernatural?
But, as we have documented in these pages for years, there are those who are out to destroy Medjugorje and their argument holds no water - only half-truths and opinions with no proof of a hoax. Who else operates this way? We all know it is the master of lies - the prince of darkness who despises Our Lady, her Oasis of Peace and those who adhere to what God is asking of us. The Yugoslav Episcopal Commission has been reviewing this political-religious "hot potato" issue for well over a decade because of the resentment to the Franciscans that stems back centuries as we've also documented in the DAILY CATHOLIC over the years. The fued between the diocesan priests and the people who so passionately and, at times, radically back the Franciscans is a main reason why Rome has yet to fully approve Medjugorje. It is because peace has not fully come. Our Lady has laid out the blueprint for us, but yet so many want further proof. The Blessed Virgin has been warning us and still we are so slow to respond. They forget her words of her June 24th message in 1983 when she said, "You cannot imagine what is going to happen nor what the Eternal Father will send to earth. That is why you must be converted! Renounce everything. Do penance." There are those who are heeding her messages, but many are not. That is the bane of human nature. Yet there have been enough that much of the chastisement has been mitigated because of the faith of many of Mary's little ones. We have often said that there would be fewer conversions if Medjugorje were fully approved because many would go there because it was on the docket, so to speak, whereas the faithful go today and have been going there even during the Balkan conflict over this past decade out of faith. As Jesus says in John 20: 29, "Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed."
Probably another unsurmountable fact are the fruits of Medjugorje. We can personally attest to this. We also refer to Christ's words in Matthew 7: 17-20, "Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them." Therein lies the authenticity of Medjugorje: the test of time which have produced good fruits. Therefore, Our Lady's Oasis of Peace cannot bear bad fruit. Therefore after eighteen years the tree grows strong. The reason it has is because it is from God and no amount of opposition from the evil one can defeat it. That is the deduction of why Our Lady chose this remote mountain village and why she has been imparting Heaven's will from this Oasis of Peace in a desert of war and hatred. Try as he might, the devil is having a devil of a time destroying Medjugorje because Medjugorje is a syllogism that makes sense!
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