Our Lady's recent message to Mirjana seems very promising. She spoke about the healing of souls and other things.
July 25, 2019 message “Dear children! My call for you is prayer. May prayer be a joy for you and a wreath which binds you to God. Little children, trials will come and you will not be strong, and sin will reign but, if you are mine, you will win, because your refuge will be the Heart of my Son Jesus. Therefore, little children, return to prayer until prayer becomes life for you in the day and the night. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
Trials will come & sin will reign -- it will look like the triumph of evil But if we belong to our Lady we will triumph through her Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of her Son -- Let prayer become a wreath, which binds you to God - a wreath of flowers made up of many prayers - a wreath for eternity --
Has anyone noticed that there is more emphasis on the Sacred Heart of Jesus lately? I have been saying the Sacred Heart prayer more often and a friend of mine recently got a picture of the Sacred Heart. It is also connected in with Akita from what I have read. Also Akita seems to be coming more relevant. Just a thought.
Sanctus, I have had a very strong devotion to the Sacred Heart myself. Ever since last month (month of the Sacred Heart), it really hit me.
Agreed! I just recently purchased 3 small felt badges of the Sacred Heart and had the priest bless them.
I don't think this guideline is new. I have heard this a couple years ago from a friend who has led pilgrimages there annually for the past 25+ years.
Joan, Yes, you are right. Sam posted in #192 of this thread that In September 2015, Fr Leon Pereira OP, the new pastor co-ordinating english-speaking Masses at Medjugorje, informed pilgrims that the Mostar-Duvno bishop, Ratko Perić, had given orders for pilgrims to receive Holy Communion on the tongue only.
Father Livio Fanzaga's reflection on the July 25, 2019 message. Father Livio is associated with Radio Maria. Dear friends, the last message of the Queen of Peace is a heartfelt appeal to prayer: "My call to you is prayer." However, Madonna wants to immediately make clear what form of prayer she invites us to. It is the prayer that is the experience of God and that, therefore, it is a source of joy, wisdom, strength and courage. When prayer makes God present, then it becomes unceasing prayer, "day and night", becomes the breath of the soul, the beating heart of love. The mother yearns to have us pray in this noble form of prayer, looking towards the future, she sees approaching a time of trials, persecution and temptation in the first place, by which Satan, increasingly loose from the chains, try to make us his, with 'unbelief, falsehood and sin.' If we are not tied to God through prayer, we can not resist and could fall as did the apostles in the hour of darkness in Gethsemane. They were afraid, they have gone astray in the night of unbelief, they fled, they left the Master to his fate. One of them denied Jesus, another betrayed him. Our Lady does not want to scare but, as Jesus did with his apostles, she forewarns us because we go out from the tired sleep of our souls. She wants us to be hers and her Son, Jesus'. We can not minimize when Our Lady invites us to prepare ourselves for the future. In Medjugorje these are her last appearances on earth (in this way, to so many visionaries), they are those of the triumph of her Immaculate Heart, in a world where sin reigns and will try to overwhelm us all. We face the greatest battle ever fought by the Church. This is why Our Lady calls us to prayer day and night. -Father Livio Fanzaga
"That is why Our Lady calls us to prayer day and night." Very interesting. Seems like the pace is picking up.
Thank you for posting this Waiting by the window , the call to prayer day and night, the unceasing prayer, day and night is what first stuck me when reading the message. We face the greatest battle ever fought by the Church. This is why Our Lady calls us to prayer day and night. Amen! Time for me to get serious!
At Mass today in a different parish, an African priest spoke about this. He said we have to pray all the time, intercessory prayer for this “upside down world.” He said it was our responsibility as Catholics to “stand in the gap” by means of our prayer. He also said that people will sit for 4 hours at a baseball game and claim they are too busy to pray. He said it takes 20 minutes to say a rosary. I was so glad to hear this from the pulpit.
I appreciate this beautiful, complementary, day-night instruction from Fr. Fanzaga. For awhile, I have kept rosary beads under or by my pillow at night so that if I awake, I hope to pray myself back to sleep. Psalm 19 highlights how the silence of the heavens, whether by day or night, glorify God: 1 The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. 2 Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. 3 There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; 4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. And the fruit of our prayer will impact us personally more and more: 14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. In addition, Fr. Fanzaga's warning really struck me concerning the Apostles' failure to join in prayer on Holy Thursday night: If we are not tied to God through prayer, we can not resist and could fall as did the apostles in the hour of darkness in Gethsemane. They were afraid, they have gone astray in the night of unbelief, they fled, they left the Master to his fate. Safe in the Refuge of the Immaculate Heart!
A pilgrim who actually saw Our Lady herself when she appeared and is overwhelmed. Go to 2:16. Just an ordinary everyday pilgrim. I wonder if Our Lady is getting ready for mass appearances to thousands? This rather than just the visionaries themselves.
Yes, Padraig -- I too am convinced that before the chastisements the veil will grow thinner and perhaps there will be visible manifestations of our Lady. The first 3 secrets of Medjugorje are considered to be admonisments rather than chastisments thus giving people time to convert ---
The three day bread and water fast is coming up this week: August 1, 2, and 3. Please join if you are able, if not, substitution of a different fast is also blessed. The fast is in advancement of the day Our Lady told the visionaries was her birthday, August 5. Since there is no fasting on Sundays, the fast will be August 1, 2, and 3.
Our Lady of Medjugorje was once quoted as saying She would "appear in every living room if necessary." Something very close to that effect anyway.
Vatican dignitaries head to Medjugorje amid reports of imminent recognition by Jonathan Luxmoore 'Medjugorje is an international place of pilgrimage..but since its church status isn't regulated these people are often like sheep without a shepherd' A Vatican delegation is to visit Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina for the first time, three months after the Pope officially lifted the ban on official church pilgrimages to the Marian sanctuary. In a report, Vatican Radio said the delegation would be at the shrine for an early August youth festival, to be opened by Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, papal vicar of the Rome diocese, and closed by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation, and Archbishop Jose Carballo, secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for Orders. However, it added that its presence did not mean "tacit recognition" of alleged Marian apparitions at the site, which are currently undergoing separate examination and evaluation by the Catholic Church. Over 40,000 apparitions have been claimed over 38 years at Medjugorje, where six teenagers claim to have first seen the Virgin Mary on 24 June 1981 while herding sheep. Although the then Yugoslavia's Bishops Conference concluded in 1990 it could not be affirmed that supernatural events were occurring in the hilltop town, which was largely untouched by a 1992-5 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, some of the six visionaries say Mary still appears to them daily with messages. In May 2018, the Pope named Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser as his apostolic visitor, after recommendations by a Papal commission that Medjugorje should be designated a pontifical shrine with Vatican oversight, and this May the ban on Catholic pilgrimages was lifted under a Papal decree. Speaking last week to Italy's Avvenire daily, Archbishop Hoser said Medjugorje had experienced "an intense year, lived fully under the sign of God's Mother", and was generating "conversions, priestly and religious vocations and continuous confessions without any traces of heresy". Meanwhile, in a separate interview with Poland's Catholic information agency, KAI, he said the centre was now an "object of special Vatican care", and should be seen as "a living, dynamic reality, which is growing and needing accompaniment". With over 700 vocations so far recorded and at least 22 communities now functioning permanently at Medjugorje, the shrine's formal Church recognition was a matter of time, Archbishop Hoser added. "Medjugorje is an international place of pilgrimage, which attracts around three million people annually and where huge pastoral labours are undertaken - but since its church status isn't regulated, these people are often like sheep without a shepherd", the Polish apostolic visitor told KAI. "People come here from countries where confessional practices have vanished, and where the Church has flattened out and reduced its activities to the superficial. Once here, they encounter a deep faith and a totally different perspective of being". The Vatican's nuncio to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Archbishop Luigi Pezzuto, who will also form part of the official delegation, told Avvenire the Virgin Mary was at the centre of life at Medjugorje, "regardless of any supernatural facts", adding that Archbishop Hoser's presence had helped calm tensions between clergy at the shrine and the local diocesan bishop, Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno. https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/11...djugorje-amid-reports-of-imminent-recognition
online translated report about the opening Mass for Mladifest, the 30th annual gathering of young people to Medjugorje from http://www.medjugorje.hr/hr/novosti...pli-pozdrav-i-blagoslov-svetog-oca,10442.html With the consecration of 620 archbishops, bishops and priests, the Holy Mass was celebrated by the Pope's Vicar of the Diocese of Rome, Angelo De Donatis, in Medjugorje, the 30th Youth Festival began. With tens of thousands of young people in Medjugorje, the opening of the festival via a live stream was followed by a record 1,747,100 people worldwide. At the beginning of his sermon, Cardinal De Donatis said he was "grateful to God and to all of you for inviting me to preach the Holy Mass of the opening of the 30th Youth Festival. I bring to you all a warm greeting and blessing of the Holy Father, '' and he also referred to the motto of this year's Mladifest. - Of course, in order to listen to the call "Follow Me" that Master Jesus makes to us, it is necessary for the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and fill them with Divine wisdom. Today's Gospel brings us the scribe of the New Testament, the wise man of the Gospel. Among other things, we can draw three directions, said Cardinal De Donatis, and those three directions are: The Kingdom of Heaven, as we have heard, is similar to a net thrown into the sea that catches all kinds of fish. And after the net is pulled ashore, fishermen separate the fish good to eat from the bad; Second instruction. Jesus speaks of one judgment: we cannot deny this truth, which we profess every Sunday in the Creed: "to come to judge the living and the dead"; Third instruction. The proclaimed Gospel teaches us that the scribe, sent to the kingdom of heaven, is the Christian who "brings out from his treasury the old and the new." It is a beautiful expression that can be interpreted as follows: a true sage is one who lives old things that always give new joys and new things that taste the old. -Thanks, here are these three pearls drawn from the shell of today's Gospel: to purify the mind, to secure the Divine judgment upon us by living the truth; to become new people who take root in the tradition of the holy people of the Lord. Dear young people, let the Holy Spirit make you wise as the Mother of God who thought of every thing in her heart and as the great scholar St. Alfonso de'Liguori, who again in the 17th century wisely evangelized the fellow citizens of Naples. Send the Father of your Spirit and restore our hearts to the image of Your Son Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, said Cardinal De Donatis at the end of his sermon. On the eve of the evening Mass, presided by Cardinal De Donatis, all eight states whose representatives came to the Mladifest were presented with flags, and before that the Apostolic Visitor with a Special Role for the Parish of Medjugorje, Archbishop Henryk Hoser and Pastor of Medjugorje, Fr. Marinko Sakota, held a press conference. - We are certainly in a new dynamic of new evangelization. I am personally and intimately convinced that Medjugorje offers a new model of new evangelization. Medjugorje is not under the direct banner of the Council for New Evangelization, but under the care of the State Secretariat. In May, the Holy See announced that it was allowed to officially organize pilgrimages by parishes, dioceses, bishops, cardinals and that they could be present at festive celebrations, and these days we are witnessing this, which means that the Holy Father has opened a great door for entering Medjugorje, said Msgr. Hoser, and Fr. Marinko referred to this year's program, but also to the past three decades of the Mladifest. -The message of the Mladifest is expressed in the motto, "Follow Me." In every man there is a longing, a longing for peace, a longing for the truth. Jesus says, "Follow me." There are young people who find this longing for Jesus, the longing for peace there, said Fr. Marinko. At the end of the press conference, the commemorative stamps of Croatian Post Mostar, issued on the occasion of the Mladifest, were presented, and the sales director of HP Mostar, Josip Bulic, handed it (the stamps) over to Archbishop Henryk Hoser and Fr Marinko Šakota.
