Day: October 21, 2019

  Marijana Vasilj Juricic and her translator in the St. John Paul II Hall, Medjugorje!   October 22, 2019Feast of St. John Paul II, Pope   Dear Family of Mary! Today’s feast for St. John Paul II is very important for those of us who are responding to Our Lady’s call. Pope John Paul II loved Medjugorje! He believed that Our Lady was truly present there, and that she had come to renew the Church. Mary TV completed a Novena in honor of St. John Paul II today! For nine days pilgrims joined with a priest after English Mass to pray the Angelus and the novena prayers for St. John Paul. Mary TV filmed these prayers and they are aired throughout the day on Mary TV’s Channel!! It is a great addition to our prayers!! Thank you, St. John Paul II for hearing our prayers and interceding for us all! I know that St. John Paul is happy that we can share something beautiful today! On October 17, 2019, Marijana Vasilj Juricic gave a talk in the St. John Paul II Hall in Medjugorje. Marijana was a little girl when the apparitions began. She and Jelena Vasilj began receiving inner locutions in 1982. Our Lady spoke to them for several years, and through them, she led a prayer group for young people. It was an extraordinary grace! Marijana is not often in the public eye, but she shared so very beautifully about Our Lady that we hope she will speak more often. Our shipmate, Stephanie, transcribed this very long talk. And I want to share the transcript with you all, as I find it very helpful, comforting and powerful! I will share it in three parts because of its length. You can also listen to Marijana’s talk in “More from Medjugorje” on Mary TV’s home page! Part 1. MaryTVMore from MedjugorjeMarijana Vasilj Juricic October 17, 2019     At the beginning, I would like to greet you all. We will say the prayer all together for God’s blessing. And then, I will share with you the most important about my personal experience and gift I received. And in the end, if we have time, maybe we will be able to answer one or two questions, if there are some very interesting questions, because it’s many of you. Thank you.   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Our Father….Hail Mary….Glory be …. Our Lady, Queen of Peace, Pray for us!                   So, all of you probably have heard that in Medjugorje we have six visionaries who have been seeing Our Lady since 1981. Separate from the six of them who see Our Lady – who see her, who still see her every day – my friend, Jelena, and I received a little different gift. It is the gift of inner locution, which means that we were able to hear Our Lady in our heart, but we physically never saw Our Lady with our eyes.   Everything started with Jelena in December 1982. While she was in the classroom (she was a little girl going to the school) she heard a voice within her, which was the voice that introduced itself to her as the voice of her guardian angel. So, this voice of her guardian angel was speaking to Jelena, and it came for a few days, and was asking of Jelena to be preparing in prayer for an encounter with Our Lady.   Jelena was only 10 years old at that time, and up to that point, she really didn’t even know about the gift of inner locution. So, on December 15th, 1982, Jelena heard the voice of Our Lady for the first time.   The first message Our Lady gave to her was an invitation to prayer. But Our Lady did not invite only Jelena, she told her, you are welcome to invite all others who wish to pray with you.   So, Jelena first informed her family and she told us who were going to school with her about this experience she was having. And none of us, especially we children who were 10 years old, could understand what Jelena was talking to us about. This gift was unknown to us. But regardless of that, we simply, spontaneously started to pray with Jelena in the way that Our Lady was requesting from us.   Our Lady’s desire was that every day at 3 o’clock in the afternoon we would say the Rosary together. In the beginning, there were around 10 of us, and we prayed with Jelena every day. And eventually, with time, more and more people were coming to join us and to pray with us.   So, three months later I was praying every day with Jelena, and I was able to hear the voice of Our Lady. It started in March 1983. From that day on, for a long time, for many years, nearly every single day, both Jelena and I were able to hear the voice of Our Lady.   The hardest part for us to explain to people was the melody and the sound of Our Lady’s voice. What we can say is that this is a sort of the inner voice that does not have the characteristics of the human voice. It is a voice that we were never able to control. And it is a voice that we would only hear specifically during the time of the prayer. This is a voice that to some extent, we can compare to the voice of our consciousness. But at the same time, this is a voice that does not come from our thoughts, from our head, from our mind, it comes from our heart and from our soul, and it is filling our soul and our interior.   What gave us certainty and what gave us confidence that this was the voice that was coming from God, was this great, profound peace and joy we would feel in those moments. In those moments, Jelena and I were not in the state of ecstasy like the visionaries would be during the time of the apparition. We were always able to be aware of people around us, of the space around us, yet the peace we would feel in our hearts was something different.   We can say that the messages, the main messages that Our Lady gave us were similar to the messages of the visionaries. These are the main messages Our Lady gave us at the beginning of the apparitions: An invitation to Prayer, to Fasting, Conversion, Penance. Jelena and I never received any messages or secrets like other visionaries have received, and Our Lady never told us anything about the future of the world.   What Our Lady wanted from us was something different from her desire for the other visionaries. She expressed the desire that the two of us start a prayer group that would be formed of youth living in Medjugorje at that time. We were only 11 and 12 years old, and we were thinking, how are we going to do that? How are we going to realize that? But Our Lady said, please share this message with the priests in the parish, and they will help you.   So, when we gave this message to the priests, one of the priests responded, and he invited the rest of the youth to come and to join our prayer group if they wished. the prayer group that we established was the second prayer group that Our Lady asked for here in Medjugorje. A few months before Our Lady had requested this of us, she had asked for a prayer group from Ivan, the visionary. And she especially emphasized also to Ivan that she wanted youth to be the members of that prayer group.   Once, we asked Our Lady, why did she, in a special way, invite youth to be members of the prayer group? Our Lady’s response was that she was very worried for all the youth around the world. She told us that many young people live without God, without prayer. And many of them are lost on their life journey. So, Our Lady wanted to give us an example and show us the true way which we should take. First, to us who were in this chosen parish, and then to all others who would be coming here.   In those moments, when the message was first given, none of us could understand, why and how the messages of Our Lady would be spread all over the world in various prayer groups. But when the many pilgrims who arrived in Medjugorje, heard this invitation of Our Lady to form prayer groups similar to the one she started with us, they wanted the same thing, and they established prayer groups all over the world.   Today, we can say that there are thousands of similar prayer groups that are a fruit of Medjugorje, that pray all over the world. In one message, specifically Our Lady said that she’s very joyful because of all these people who are gathering in prayer groups, who pray together, who give their time, and she blesses them all and encourages them to continue doing so.   When it comes to our prayer group, 60 young people responded to Our Lady’s invitation; they started to pray with us. And we had this beautiful gift, a beautiful gift that was given to us, that the leader of our prayer group for many years was Our Lady. Because in the messages Our Lady was giving either to me or to Jelena, she was leading our prayer group all the time.   But, before joining the group, each one of us who agreed to be a member of the prayer group, was asked by Our Lady for a certain, you could say, condition from us. She wanted each one of us to remain for four years a member of the prayer group, to not choose in those four years their life vocation or calling, to not get married, and to all agree together to be prepared to do this for this long period. When the prayer group was first established, Our Lady asked for the prayer to be only once a week. Then she asked, prayer meetings twice a week, then she asked for prayer meetings three times a week. Our Lady was leading us in this prayer journey, step by step. But she also told us that it is not just enough to be praying as part of a prayer group. Our Lady was inviting us to our personal prayer. She was inviting us to our everyday personal encounter with God. She was inviting us to prayer in our families.   And here in Medjugorje, we can say that Our Lady invited us and our families on numerous occasions to the family prayer. Our Lady says that every family is the first and the most important prayer group. Our Lady recommends prayer of the Rosary as the most powerful prayer for our families. Many times, she invited families, and she would repeat this message of praying the Rosary together on many occasions.   In one message, she said to us, “The Rosary, dear children, is the strongest weapon in the fight, in the battle against evil and devil.” She said,” with Rosaries you can even stop wars. First wars within us, and then wars that are all over the world.”   In one of the messages, Our Lady even said, “Dear children, when you are tired, when you are lonely, when you do not see the purpose of your life anymore, in those moments, grasp the Rosary and pray the Rosary. Meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary.” And then, Our Lady said in one of the most recent messages here in Medjugorje to visionaries, that we in our lives, we go through both joyful and sorrowful mysteries, and at the end we have glorious mysteries at the end of our lives.   Our Lady said that every person who prays first in his family as a little prayer community, those people would be open more to be able to pray in the prayer groups. End of Part 1 In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!Cathy Nolan©Mary TV 2019