Day: July 28, 2022

A conversation between Marija Pavlovic Lunetti and Fr. Livio on the July 25, 2022 Message from Medjugorje! F.L. Dear friends, we have live Marjia from Medjugorje who is about to give us the July 25, 2022, message of the Queen of Peace! Hello Marjia! Hello Father Livio. A greeting to all the listeners of Radio Maria! Today I am going to read you the wonderful message that Our Lady gave us: “Dear children! I am with you to lead you on the way of conversion, because, little children, with your lives you can draw many souls closer to my Son. You be joyful witnesses of God’s word and love, and with hope in the heart which conquers every evil. Forgive those who inflict evil on you and go on the way of holiness. I am leading you to my Son, for Him to be the way, the truth, and the life for you. Thank you for having responded to my call. “ F.L. Marjia the first thing I wanted to ask you today is if Our Lady was serious or smiling. M. At a certain moment She gave a smile! And I must say that it’s always a great joy to see that Our Lady’s message contains much hope and much encouragement. I believe that this message is one of the most powerful, especially when She says: “I am with you to lead you on the way of conversion.” Our Lady has been with us for the past forty years and we are entering the forty-second year. She is not tired of us! She loves us as She has said in so many messages. God has allowed Her to be among us for which I thank the Good Lord every day, asking for forgiveness so that I can be an instrument in order to diffuse Her messages and at the same time live the conversion to which Our Lady is calling us. This is what She calls the Way of Holiness, the School of Prayer, because when we live together with Her, Paradise is close, and it is felt by so many people who come to Medjugorje. They are attracted by Her. This is exactly why we pray a lot here, because we feel Heaven is near, and we feel the joy of being children of God, of being baptized, of being invited to the path of conversion. Thanks to the Lord that I was not only baptized as a Christian, but also He is also guiding me! As She says in this message Jesus is “to be the way, the truth and the life for you.” But I would also dare to add that in this short but essential message we can find a bit of everything: “forgiveness, love of God, conversion…” Look at the world in this critical moment; the wars, not only those in progress but those being prepared with powerful armaments! And then listen to Our Lady say: “Forgive those who inflict evil on you and go on the way of holiness!” Certainly, She gives us much, much joy. I remember during Communism we were so often mistreated and threatened that they would put us in prison or in a mental institution. That was a “dark moment” for us children, much like the one we are living nowadays. But even so, Our Lady brings us hope. She brings us to her Son Jesus, “the Way, Truth and Life”. She brings us to a new life. Each of us is called to be a missionary – it is the same for me as Marjia, as a mother, as a spouse, in my humble way, I am called “on the way of conversion, because, little children, with your lives you can draw many souls closer to my Son.” How many souls do we see desperate, sick, hopeless? Too many times when people have approached me as Marjia (the visionary) I couldn’t give anything, whereas as a Christian I can give prayer, comfort, warmth, and love. A new world opens up, only if we begin to think about our Christian vocation. F.L. Marjia… M. Forgive me for talking so long Father Livio but this message is so powerful, sorry … F.L. No, I also wanted to fully share the beauty of this message which is a harmony. I just wanted to review some expressions. Also, I would like to point out that in the last six messages from January till now, Our Lady has mentioned five times Satan and war. But in this one instead there is a message about Heaven and Light! But I wanted to underline a fact Marjia that Our Lady was sent by God in order to guide us. In other words, God is highlighting the fact that She is obviously a maternal guide who does not replace the Pastors of the Church, but She comes to us who wander here and there aimlessly, that is, in a world without the goal of eternity, without purpose, without the way to Heaven. She points all this out in this moment of bewilderment with Her messages, She is truly a guide for millions and millions of souls. M. It is true and we see it through so many people (including Christians) who are coming to Medjugorje at a difficult time. What are they going to do? They come to this oasis, to this little piece of land touched by Heaven, where they are welcomed and well loved, understood. We have just made the retreat for the priests and they themselves were so happy to have had the chance to be together with their brothers. One day I passed by and I saw two elderly priests who, speaking in Latin, were communicating together very well even though they came from two opposite parts of the world and when I approached them and asked them what language they spoke they replied with joy that they were able to use their Latin as a language that united them at that moment. Today many young people speak English which is the prevailing language in the world. F.L. Marjia, I was very struck by the importance that our conversion has in order to convert others. That is, our conversion is never unnoticed and if we continue and persevere with it we draw many souls to us and this is something that we can all do even the simplest people, youngsters, elderly, we become apostles by converting ourselves. M. It is true, I remember very well when Saint John Paul II sent us to Russia and we all prayed the Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, this Orthodox Catholic family that also hosted me at their home. I was surprised when their children every evening, after dinner, went to street corners and with the guitar sang church songs, approaching not only other young people who joined them but also the population itself, thus fulfilling their mission. All this took place before the collapse of communism. Imagine that we in our parishes have only recently begun to take initiatives such as wanting to learn to sing, play a musical instrument, preach, read the passages of Sacred Scripture and the Psalms openly. I remember that in New York there were these conventual friars, dressed in gray who walked through the streets holding the Blessed Sacrament, preaching, and blessing, helped also by a group of young people who did missions on the beach, on the street, inviting people to go to their parishes and answering questions that people frequently asked them. Many young people who had lost their faith had questions to ask and took confession, were helped in this new way of evangelization. I honestly believe we can all do this starting from our homes and families, even in our own parishes with love and sweetness welcoming anyone who approaches us. F.L. Marjia, I wanted to ask you this. I see that Our Lady is raising up “apostles of Her love” as She calls them…convinced Christians who are converted, who walk the path of holiness, who become instruments for the conversion of many souls. Certain Our Lady has aroused a host of witnesses present all over the world during these forty years. On the one hand there are Christian people who are becoming more and more Christian and on the other hand, the world is moving further and further away and it seems that fewer and fewer are converted for the moment. M. But I truly believe that there is a forest that grows more and more as the saying goes: a falling tree makes more noise than a whole growing forest. I deeply believe that there is a whole great number of people who have fallen in love with God after coming to Medjugorje. When they return to their homes they are no longer the same. They change little by little, and testify with their words, with their life, with their example. When you fall in love with Our Lady you must necessarily fall in love with Jesus. She is the one who loves God the most, the one who is the most Eucharistic, the most adoring… Our Lady brings us to her Son. She is the tabernacle that held Jesus in her womb and we must become just like Her. We must imitate the way that She speaks of her Son! We must observe how in love she is with Jesus, so in love that every expression of her body speaks love. We must observe Her gratitude for the fact that God has allowed Her to remain among us, leading us to Heaven, guiding us by admonishing us that our life is short and telling us to get used to starting to live it. But what do we do? All the opposite. How nice it would be to love, to love your neighbor who can be your next door neighbor, your work colleague, your sister who, while living her own life, knows that she can count on you and your availability. I know many elderly people who are beginning to give less importance to material things, they are preparing themselves for Heaven, thinking more about the spiritual ones who are aware that their life is slipping away, praying every day is as if they were weaving a web that grows day by day. This is a beautiful thing. F.L. Marjia, can I ask you a particular question? M. Yes F.L. As you saw Our Lady tonight, you noticed Her eyes. Do you want to describe them? What feelings do they arouse in you? Tell me about the eyes of Our Lady. M.Paradise! We long for Heaven every time the apparition ends, we feel Heaven, remain astonished like a fish out of the water, Our Lady transmits that desire for Heaven to you; her eyes her, her face…. F.L. Do you know why I am asking you this? Because today I was working on an interview I did with Jakov when he was a boy here on Radio Maria; well, he went on for ten minutes describing the eyes of our Lady and I was surprised by the description he made and I said to myself: tonight, I’ll ask Marjia the same question. Don’t tell me they’re indescribable, tell me something more! M. They are sweet, they are beautiful, they are deep. Do you remember that Jakov once during an interview many years ago (I think he was eleven), well they asked him: “How do you feel when Our Lady looks at you?” He had replied. “I feel naked” because of such a deep gaze that I remain as “naked” before Her. Naked in our heart because Our Lady seems to read it, but above all Her eyes love us and this cannot be described as She has this expression of positivity, of the joy of Heaven, of sweetness, that tenderness that when she looks at you, you cannot remain indifferent. Many times, I have wondered if I will end up getting used to seeing Her as She appears to me every day. No. Many times I would like to cry for joy because Her eyes give me so much endearment. Deep down in my heart I would like to leave everything here on earth and go to Heaven not for three seconds, five minutes, but much, much longer. I would like to do as Martha and Mary did: where one dealt with material chores and the other one with the spiritual things she was learning from Her Lord. F.L. Is Her gaze sometimes severe? M. Her gaze is deep, beautiful and at the same time she can be sometimes rigorous because there are moments when Our Lady has that seriousness, but she doesn’t really mean that; She also has sweetness. F.L. When She talks about Satan, what kind of look does She have? M. She usually has a very stern look, very firm, even sad we can say, but at the same time She is the one who tells us: God is hope, God is love. I believe that during all these years She has delivered us Her positive nature. When people are worried about the coming secrets, the coming wars, I tell them: “Heaven is coming”, not wars, because She told us that with prayer and fasting even wars can be removed. She is calling us, she is inviting us to be prayer and fasting, and with that to believe everything is possible to God. F.L. Marjia, never forget that Father Slavko said that is the most important message of Our Lady Herself. So, I would also like to ask you something about Our Lady’s smile, does She always smile, when is She serious, has She laughed sometimes? M. After today’s apparition I said to myself: we did it, we got a smile out of Her and this is a joy for me, for me it is a triumph, because when She gives a message She gives it with dignity, with a royalty, with a sweetness, but at the same time even with a certain seriousness. As I see and read to all of you the written words of Her message it seems to me as if it is a different message because while she pronounces them there is such an expression of Her face, of Her eyes, of Her lips, the heavenly words give them as if they were music producing richness. Every time when I write down the message I go into crisis and I say to myself: “this is not Her message”; yet the message is the same as I recall Father Slavko said to me many times that even if the message is that with those words, love is missing, sweetness is missing, that gaze of our Lady is missing, that Celestial surrounding is missing. F.L. How is Her voice? M. Our Lady’s voice is beautiful, harmonious, sweet even deep and when she speaks to us she touches the deepest core of our soul. This is something for which I often close my eyes and begin to think and contemplate Heaven. F.L. Does this fill you with joy? M. Not just an external but internal joy, intimate, deep, delicate like falling in love, like when one person has madly fallen in love with the other, but much more and at the same time such a freshness. When She arrives, that “freshness” of Paradise we never lose, despite Her being with us for over forty years, that joy of being Her children! And when She says: “Dear children” we feel proud in our heart and we want to say: “I am the daughter of the Queen giving me that intimate confidence I feel fulfilled, joyful, satisfied, despite the awareness of my own defects which lose their importance. F.L. Marjia, sorry if I interrupted you, but have you ever heard Her singing? M. Yes, many times we sang together with her, especially in the early years. Imagine when She appeared on the Apparition Hill during the night when the only light there was the moon. We were all so out of tune, but happy, not worried about whose fault it was as long as we sang from the heart. We sang to Her, She is the Queen of our Croatian people for example, or in Italy in the Sanctuaries, each of us has our own song that we dedicate to Her. Lately we have also sung with Her “Christ in your name” which is an American song left in the origin of the music, but modified in the text, very good job done by a Croatian priest. When everybody sings it, your heart opens to the point that you feel that strength and power that make the mountains crumble and it is also a contribution to attracting numerous pilgrims every year. F.L. There has never been the opportunity to be sure of the fact that I had heard one day during the Feast of the Annunciation, Our Lady was so happy that she almost danced? M. She did not dance but on numerous occasions when we were children and later teenagers we lived our experiences so deeply that being with Jesus and Our Lady stayed indelibly in our hearts so that we never felt like we wanted to have fun by going to a disco as young people usually do. If you compare it with a sincere, unselfish friendship you encounter after so many years of separation, knowing that you have cultivated it in God, it binds you forever. It happened that many people met and married with a different spirit as it happened in the context of love for Our Lady and Heaven, highlighting it with Sacred Scripture and prayer in their homes. I am just remembering a boy who came from the United States, thinking he had received a priestly vocation and while he was entering the seminary he met a girl, whom he married and had a family with seven children. These days in particular there are many peaceful quiet families, with their children and when you see them playing and praying in the open altar area in the back of the church, they give you a wonderful feeling of family harmony, families who are not afraid of the future because yes they entrust completely in Jesus and in Our Lady. F.L. Marjia, can I ask you a personal question? M. Tonight it seems to me that you are doing it a little too many Father Livio … .. F.L. No, no sorry I have to make the radio listeners understand that you really see Our Lady: then I am asking you this personal question which is this: “in forty-one years of daily apparitions, has Our Lady ever maternally reprimanded you at least once?” M. Yes, yes Our Lady corrects us! F.L. To you personally? M. Yes, yes Father Slavko was my spiritual guide and I remember him saying: “the external disorder reflects how you are inside.” We must be the reflection of God and despite the small, yet big things that happen in our lives they always have a turn for the good. For example, we have many Ukrainian refugees who can’t wait to start rebuilding their destroyed houses and one of them, through a priest, let me know that she would love to have a statue of Our Lady. I promised to give it to her and to have it blessed directly by Our Lady, making her so happy and extraordinarily traumatized in a positive way that for her it was just a miracle! For me, the value of the statue was € 10 while for her this gesture was invaluable. However, many people are returning to fill their homes with many sacred ornaments including images of Our Lady. For example, around 3 pm we have the habit of interrupting any activity, taking a break, and reciting the chaplet of the Divine Mercy as an integral part of our life, we have prepared a corner in front of the fireplace where there is the image of Merciful Jesus and we meet there to pray. So slowly our life begins to take a different shape interspersed with small prayers from morning to evening that become a habit and a necessity. I remember when we were little and you took us riding in your car pretending that you were the taxi driver and we had to recite three “Ave Marias” to pay the fare. The boy who was with us confesses to me that since he got into that habit every time he gets into his car he can’t help but pray. F.L. Marjia, now we are going towards the end of this talk and I want to ask you the most important question: “Are you still sure that if we pray hard this war could end”? M. Of course, when the war broke out here, Our Lady told us: “the more you pray and the more you fast and the war will last less,” and we believe in this. Ukrainian pilgrims arrive every day and we continue to pray for peace deeply believing in it. F.L. So we must look with serenity, in short, Our Lady has everything in Her hands; in the end then the prayer performs miracles as well as that of making a war stop. We need to have more faith. M. We pray and we are aware of the fact that the devil does not sleep. He is the bringer of war, disorder, discord, we see him working hard through a thousand ways, even with this pandemic. He has set us against each other: you are vaccinated, you are not vaccinated; in this way they wage war between brothers instead of turning to God, they stop at nonsense and instead of appreciating the fact that they have had a brother or a sister as a gift from God to share love with, unity and understanding since we come from the same father and the same mother, instead they are in discord. Let us remember how Our Lady reminds us that life is fleeting and that we must keep our gaze and our heart towards Eternal Life. This war is not wanted by simple people, but by the powerful ones where there are many interests to share, many economic parts at stake and still many others that we do not understand, but God who knows everything sends Our Lady to encourage us not to be afraid. We are the ones who are not afraid because God is our hope, God is our “Way, Truth and Life”. F.L. And then we can also finish with the beautiful message that we understand that it is worth working as Our Lady says that “with our lives we can bring many souls to my Son” so only saving souls is what is most necessary and what it truly is decisive. M. Exactly because I believe that Our Lady really wants to help us in this by saying that we must focus on concrete things. She says that she “guides us on the path of conversion” and that we cannot say that we are until we are in Heaven. Now we are on the way to improve ourselves in our personal, spiritual, material life, with a conscience and generosity. Let’s take you Italians for example, especially in the early years I was amazed to discover your creativity, the Italian people are a favorite people as with this sensitivity of yours during the war I remember how many times people had risked their lives and died for wanting to help others. They brought humanitarian aid, even now in Ukraine many volunteers are putting their lives at risk and Italians are sensitive in these things. F.L. It is true and I thank you for these words Marjia because they are beautiful and above all true. M. They are true but what I mean is: we must not feel down because someone wants to make us like zombies and we must not allow it to happens; we are children of God, we must pray to Him that He will give us the strength to go forward to put Him at the center of our family, our work in our homelands. People of faith have created newsstands, built churches, our grandparents and great-grandparents have sweated to build a cultural wealth that they left us. The life that is taken away in wars is the greatest gift we receive and they are trying to erase and annihilate the cultures of peoples, churches, and monuments with the aim of globalizing us. Every human being is different and in diversity we are the richness that Our Lady! She has already said, she wants to offer to Her Son each one of us as a “bouquet” of the most varied flowers in colors and scents that recall Heaven. F.L. Okay Marjia I’ll ask you one last question for a minute then let’s conclude because I see it’s getting late. I ask you this question: in forty-two years, how many people have you met more or less, how many thousands, tens of hundreds of millions of people. What an impression it makes you to have met so many people and to have witnessed it to so many people. What do you feel inside of you? M. Wealth because every person who comes to Medjugorje is a wealth by becoming a brother and a sister, the world shrinks here as if it were a single family. A particular family with a son terminally ill with cancer came to Medjugorje and they reminded me of the wonderful moments spent together, as if we had experienced the early Paradise on earth. He had an inordinate desire to be close to Our Lady. We also prayed for healing and by the time the body left him as he no longer had the strength to climb Krizevac or Podbrdo, and he walked with difficulty, it was we who stayed hours praying in his room and talking about Heaven, telling him that we were jealous of him as he was close to Paradise. In suffering he was not desperate, indeed in the hope of receiving the grace of healing he received much more and that is faith. At that time, I was a little girl and it made me long to take his place in order to arrive early to Our Lady in Heaven, a desire that I then passed on to him too. This wonderful friendship of ours made us grow together in the desire to get to Heaven first and I jokingly told him that he would prepare the way for me by going ahead. How many souls we have met both through illness and old age have preceded us, so many children like us who, growing up, returned and became adults like us, grandparents, a life together with God and Our Lady. F.L. Sure, however, Marjia, wait a little longer before going… we still need you so much here in Italy, make sure  .. (laughter for both of them) M. I am here and I am praying as long as God wills it. F.L. Of course let’s conclude with the prayer. M. Now we are preparing for the youth festival and we rejuvenate with this commitment transmitting that joy and enthusiasm even to the 90-year-olds. When we are with God and Our Lady we are always young at heart, people of hope, of joy, of Jesus who died but also Risen for all of us. Here we walk with this joy and pass it on as She asks us. F.L. Thank you also for this reminder of the youth festival that begins on August 1st and it will also be a wonderful thing to follow through Radio Maria too. Well dear ones. Then Marjia thank you with all my heart and let’s conclude with a prayer….