Dear friends, we already have Marija live from Medjugorje who is going to tell us the January 25, 2022 message of the Queen of Peace. Hi Marija! Hello Father Livio! A greeting to all Radio Maria listeners. Today, January 25th, as every 25th of the month, Our Lady gave us a message: (Marija reads the message in Italian and in Croatian as usual) “Dear children! Today I am calling you to return to personal prayer. Little children, do not forget that Satan is strong and that he wants to attract all the more souls to himself. That is why, you be vigilant in prayer and resolute in the good. I am with you and am blessing all of you with my motherly blessing. Thank you for having responded to my call.” L. Marija then you had the apparition tonight? M. Thanks to Heaven, as every evening, also tonight I had the apparition. Our Lady appeared and gave us a beautiful message in which she calls us to personal prayer. L. Listen, Marija, I wanted you to confirm to me about this matter because I went to check the message given to the parish which was given half an hour earlier today and I noticed that in the last four messages: October, November, December and January, Our Lady told us three times that we must return to prayer. Then today she added the word “personal” that we will thrash out. But if She invited us three times to return to prayer it means that we listen but we don’t do it. What should we do concretely? M. At the beginning of the apparitions, I remembered that at this time of the year Our Lady had called our group and invited us to go out into nature to feel and rediscover that breeze of personal prayer. Eventually and slowly we did it, with the help of Our Lady’s very concrete messages like tonight’s. She invited us to choose a person who was the most unpleasant and far away from our prayer group to join us. It was a very hard experience and I recall this girl who at the beginning seemed very unpleasant. But in fact though I didn’t know her, after having prayed together with her and having climbed Krizevac we started chatting. And I discovered that she was actually very nice and kind. We often judge others by not knowing them at all and so besides rediscovering personal prayer, we also rediscovered ourselves. The prayers we did not know we learned together with others who came from different countries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, England…We invited the foreigners to learn our language starting with the Pater, Ave and Gloria. Father Slavko also helped us to translate some expressions of the messages that could have different meanings and we were on the safe side by taking the biblical meaning. In fact, we realized that that was the most beautiful, fairest and most complete translation because Our Lady uses the same language. Now as an adult, even tonight, many precious memories have passed through my mind of when we began to rediscover personal prayer as the foundation of our life. For example when we went to Surmanci on foot praying the Rosary. I remember in particular the prayer of Saint Brigid or other novenas and devotions that must often be reviewed because they are forgotten. It was nice to walk together with the prayer group on these cold days when the Bura was blowing. The air that entered our enlarged lungs made us feel alive, feeling fit both physically and spiritually in the memories. L. Listen Marija, I believe that when Our Lady speaks of personal prayer it must be distinguished from spontaneous prayer. Now I’ll explain the concept. Personal prayer for me means that one speaks face to face with Jesus, with Mary, opens one’s heart, makes the prayer of request, of forgiveness; in short, as we talk we are aware of who is listening to us. You once told me that your mother didn’t pay as much attention to you as Our Lady did; that is personal prayer. But when I came to Medjugorje back in those days I discovered through your prayer group a type of prayer that I did not know – spontaneous prayer. Everyone prayed spontaneously for about three to four minutes while everyone else listened. So do you think that is personal prayer or is personal prayer is something different? M. This is personal prayer for sure when each of us is able to pray and ask God for things, before the others without being uneasy. It means that we have already made a big step forward. We are ready to read Sacred Scripture. These are all small procedures, steps, needed to be taken for our personal spiritual growth in faith. I recall an awesome experience that I have already mentioned but I’ll do it again. It was January and Our Lady sent us searching in the wilderness saying to us: go and bring something that reminds you of God. A boy brought a large branch, another boy collected the moss still green attached to the stone despite the cold weather, here the Bora blows! Someone else brought a small flower hidden near another stone. I remember when Our Lady came back she told us: “Each of you had something to say about it and you all found something good, you had a subject to discuss, what you brought back! How the things you collected hit you most”. This was a wonderful breakthrough for all of us realizing that even in the people we often judge as sinners we are able to find something good, in order to help them to grow on the path of holiness. L. Listen Marija we realize that in these present times that we are in it is a world where most of the people live as if God did not exist, but in your opinion is there a person who never has even the least desire of prayer; Is there a person who never prays at all? M. I don’t know because I think that in difficult moments like when we pass away, for example, we don’t have the knowledge of whether that person, deep down in his heart, has called on God for help, or if he has called “the one up above” to use a pagan expression. Thus it will be a secret forever, But I deeply believe yes, that a man needs the supernatural, when he is face to face within himself, I believe he speaks to God. We will find out when we are in Heaven. L. Yes also because anyway the Holy Spirit is the first missionary, it is He who goes in search of faraway hearts. M. As they say: the Holy Spirit blows where he wills, how he wants and when he wants, we are not supposed to know. For example, I remember so many people who told me that while they were searching for a channel on their radio station they came across Radio Maria, and they fell in love with it and then later became people of God and of prayer. This has been a powerful experience for many people. It teaches us that God speaks and invites us in a thousand ways also through Our Lady, the Saints, and us sinners. Sometimes to bring these people closer to God by wearing a small cross, or by holding a rosary in our hands, we can arouse some desire in their hearts simply by living our life. I experienced many people who are now priests and precisely through us visionaries have come closer to God who has performed not only healings of their soul but also of their bodies. FL. Listen Marija with no doubt the thing that has always struck me most for someone who goes to Medjugoije, is that beyond the parish, through the esplanade of Medjugorije and then the paths that lead to Krizevac and Podbordo, from morning to evening to night it is always an oasis of continuous prayer for pilgrims who go praying from one part to the other. It is a wonderful thing that has lasted for forty years and that is, it is a piece of Heaven, all the people who come to Medjugorije start praying. This is a special grace for me that I have not found in other shrines. M. It is true and something similar… I found it through the wild of nature in Fatima when I went to the Sanctuary where the Angel appeared. There is a bit of walking to do though. A short time ago a group of pilgrims arrived and it is immediately noticeable now that pilgrims are very few. I want to tell you about a nice thing that happened. An American priest was wearing a typical handmade sweater knit by grandmothers here in Medjugoije. I asked him where he had bought it and he replied that the same morning he was in the middle of the fields and there was this grandmother who was selling handmade sweaters. She didn’t have any for him right away, but told him she would bring it the next day. I have no idea how they understood each other while the grandmother does not speak English and him, being an American couldn’t speak any Croatian. However, they set for the following day and the grandmother took the sweater she had already at home with the right colors, namely white, gray and some patches on it. The priest wore it with so much joy because he considered it the most important item of clothing after his cassock of course. It’s impossible to remain quiet when the heart needs to witness and involve other people in this love of profound adoration that comes from the soul. L. Listen Marija can you tell us which prayers you prayed with Our Lady on the first weeks of apparitions, which prayers Our Lady asked you and if she prayed with you and how she prayed? M. In the beginning of the apparitions we only knew a few prayers and in dialect: while Our Lady sang with us, she encouraged us to recite the Our Father but during the Hail Mary she remained silent with an approving smile as for not wanting to pray her own prayer, she encouraged us through her intercession; then there was the Gloria, the Salve Regina, the Angelus. Then She asked for seven Our Fathers. L. So tell us about the pious devotion of the seven Pater, Ave, and Gloria Be that we have recently proposed here at Radio Maria. M. We began the seven Pater, Ave, and Glory Be when we were waiting for her arrival, and each time, often at the seventh prayer Our Lady appeared. Then she taught us many short prayers, many small resolutions, the same act of daily entrusting by putting us under Her Mantle. We still recite the seven Pater, Ave, Glory be and Creed even now in the evening, in church every day after Holy Mass led by the celebrating priest kneeling down as an act of entrustment in thanksgiving to Our Lady for her presence. We later learned that the number seven was related to the sorrows of Our Lady. In these days we are also making special prayers such as devotions and novenas to Saint Francis, to Saint Clare which are used for the preparation of lay people who want to become part of the Franciscan tertiaries. We also learned these prayers from our grandmothers devoted to St. Francis. I remember my own grandmother before going to church putting this white cord around her waist as a symbol of her belonging to the Franciscan tertiary order. The same thing we did when she died. As we live in total confusion I am receiving many requests for prayers for the Italian Country so that the Lord will send us a good President. We only need prayers with an act of faith for these intentions that redirect us to a well-defined clarification between good and evil. L. Of course I totally agree with you, since prayer works miracles I also join you Marija as I have already done in these days by asking Our Lady, since She knows our hearts, to give us a person who can do the good for Italy. But now I want to keep on talking about how Our Lady from the very beginning asked you to say the Creed as a prayer. M. Not only the Creed but also many short prayers and songs. I remember we felt inwardly a trembling of joy and emotion singing with the heart the songs we used to sing to Our Lady like (and she pronounces them in Croatian) when we, including my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, invoked Her as Queen of our people, Protector of our families and of the whole world. L. Therefore She stirred your faith through the traditional prayers, in order to get the best out of them and you could live them again. M. Not only living them again but singing this consecration song before Her is an inexplicable thing, such a strong emotion that even today it cannot be expressed because it is a straight line from heart to heart. L. However even with short prayers as she once recommended to fill our days with them. M. Yes, yes, because as they say it is by praying that you learn how to pray. L. Of course. M. And the short prayers come by doing them more and more. For example, waking up early in the morning, going up the hill, praying long or short novenas, but when you begin the prayer to the Holy Spirit, to St. Francis, to St. Anthony, or to St. Michael the Archangel, you need to lay down a program filling in your thoughts, your precious things that bring you back to when you were a child in need of doing all these things. L. It seems to me that Our Lady has also urged you to wear a small Cross or a medal because these things are a sign for Satan that: “you are mine”, right? M. Our Lady always, always invited us to bring something blessed with us and it was natural to carry the Sacred Scripture, the Rosary, a kneeler. I remember a mat or a rolled up towel that we carried so as not to dirty our clothes, for when we went up the hill placing it on the rough and cold stone, especially during the winter. Today you can find small mats in souvenir shops that they use as kneelers and other objects that refer to sacred writings. The first years with Father Slavko after the apparition and before Holy Mass we learned to sing the litanies which were more modern, not like those sung in the cemeteries during the blessings of the songs which were more repetitive. These were instead more expressive for a young person and gave us a lot of joy in learning them. A group of men from Poland has recently arrived. A movement was born led by a priest who during the apparition on the hill had a mystical experience and Our Lady invited him to form this prayer group where every member who consecrates himself to Her is welcomed by singing the Holy Rosary in a special and heartfelt way. When I heard it for the first time and by the view of only men, kneeling, singing the Rosary, it struck me a lot, so much so that here we learned this melody and adopted it for our rosary in Croatian; this initiative was taken by a girl who encouraged us to try it. The result is that it has become so awsome that people ask us what song it is. This experience has enriched us a lot and I now sing the Holy Rosary even when I am at home alone doing my house chores. It gives me an immense joy. (You can hear the testimony of these Polish men at this link: Fruit of Medjugorje 449 – Warriors of Mary, Fr. Dominik Chmielewski, SBD https://marytv.tv/fruit-of-medjugorje/?smid=iYCWwrs0GuO&slid=9PIw6LzMsiy L. Singing the Rosary is a wonderful thing that I had never heard of here, I suppose that it lasts at least an hour. M. Father Livio it is not like that, it is not like that and it is such an heart opening! It touches your heart. I will recorded it and send it to you. Do you remember how many songs we sang together on the apparition hill? The one that spoke about the conversion of Italy? L. Yes, of course I had made a musicassette of those songs and given it to Medju. M. Thank goodness these are all things that are born from a joyful heart that transmits emotions and as the Saints said “he who sings prays twice”. So I hope that there will be more and more people who are willing to sing and love God and Our Lady. L. That time will come, it will come. Listen Marija will you please tell me to satisfy my curiosity: how does Our Lady sing? M- Celestial. When She sings it is Heaven, often the first years of apparitions She sang with us, and we were singing with Her with great pleasure! She got us together during adoration time and we prayed an entrustment to God through our traditional songs that we learned, impossible to translate into other languages because they lose their meaning. L. Listen, Marija, sorry, I’m a bit curious, so you’ve seen Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. When you saw Heaven did you hear the Angels singing? M. No, this was Vicka, while we instead witnessed as if we were looking out the window, like watching a video or television. L. Because I asked Vicka: “Did Our Lady sing better than the Angels”? She replied that there is no comparison, much, much better Our Lady. M. It’s true, what can I say? It is true. L. She is the Queen of the Angels, our Lady is superior even to the Angels. M. I think that the Angels get conformed to Her since She is their Queen and ours. It depends on the sensitivity of the heart of each of us. I believe that if one loves Our Lady they must have this sensitivity. It cannot be understood by those who do not have all these attributes therefore I always say: “Pray, pray” because it is by praying that we learn how to pray and the need to be with God , with Our Lady and with the Saints becomes deeper and deeper. L. However Marija we can take the opportunity to make an appeal to the many Italian prayer groups to learn to sing the whole Rosary. Let’s do it, beautiful! L. If you send me let’s say a musical piece, I’ll play it on the radio so the others are to learn it. M. Perfect, okay, I’ll do it, I’ll send it to Roberta so she.. L. Yes and she is the director, she does everything. M. Yes, it is nice and it is not that difficult and now that we have to translate it from Croatian to Italian, we’ll find someone to help us doing it. L. Right so we’ll be able to spread it throughout Italy in this way. M. Yes let’s do it, how nice. L. Listen Marija before we finish can you say a few words about family prayer? M. In fact, I remember at the beginning of the apparitions, Our Lady asked to put Sacred Scripture in a visible place in our homes. We all started making an altar. I don’t know if you remember Father Livio that every Saturday morning our parents, usually the mothers went out blessing the house, the stable, the animals and all our properties. Then every time we children wanted to leave the house she made the sign of the cross on our foreheads. During the ceremony of a wedding the bride’s hand was put over the one of the bridegroom, both were tied to a crucifix with a stole that the priest blessed by pronouncing these following words: “What God binds, men do not separate”. That same crucifix, in Croatian Catholic homes was then hung on the wall of the bedroom above the headboard of the bed. Then we began to put in our homes some statues of our Lady, of St. Michael the Archangel, of St. Anthony to whom we are so much devoted, or in a small box we collected the money for the missionary priests that we distributed when they arrived to preach in the parish and during the Holy Masses. These traditions that Our Lady enriched with habits already rooted in our faith, in our people, after Her arrival took on an even more important meaning. And it was then that She asked us to begin praying the seven Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory bees, gradually a part of the Rosary, up to the complete Rosary. My mom was devoted to St. Anthony and having not been able to have children for the first three years of her marriage, after we were born, six of us, I remember my dad laughing and repeating these words: I had to go to St. Anthony and say: “Too much grace St. Anthony”! In other words it’s enough. We children made fun of him when he prayed prayers learned from his mother who had wanted us to learn too, handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Each family had their own traditions of prayers including those for our dead, for the souls in purgatory, for the sick and the needy. The first few days we asked Our Lady why Medjugoije and why us. She answered because She found that our faith was still alive. L. Yes, yes it is all a great wonderful epic Marija. Tonight we spoke about so many beautiful things, but now it is also time to conclude because by now you will have lost even a bit of voice with all this important testimony you have given us. So we recommend ourselves to you because you recommend us all to Our Lady and why don’t you remind her tomorrow during the apparition to pay special attention to Italy at this important moment in its history that there is the election of the Head of State? M. With all my heart, together in prayer, with all my heart. L. Very well then let’s conclude with our prayer. (which is always the Magnificat)
