JPII... sign and witness to the Risen Christ

Three years ago Benedict XVI paid tribute to his predecessor and friend John Paul II, describing him as “a sign and witness of the Resurrection of Christ”.

On Sunday May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday, John Paul II will be beatified in Rome.

The Risen Saviour is very much a feature of Medjugorje. Countless are the resurrections witnessed there and the many lives that take on a new beginning.

The Risen Saviour sculpture at Medjugorje was familiar to the late pontiff. He first set eyes on the sculpture when he visited Slovenia in 1996 and a silver copy was presented to him as a gift by the church authorities. The Slovenian sculptor Andrej Ajdic was later told by a bishop and a member of the Vatican Council for Culture that many in the Vatican who saw the sculpture were fascinated by it and regarded it as very special.

In the light of Benedict’s beautiful tribute to JPII highlighted in the CNA report below, can we hope to expect JPII’s beatification commemorated in some way by a Risen Christ feature on Sunday? And if not then, possibly at a later date?

On April 30, 2000, John Paul II designated the Sunday after Easter as the Sunday of Divine Mercy. More recently, another prominent Church official and major promoter of Divine Mercy, cardinal Christoph Schönborn, said when he visited Medjugorje in December 2009: “When you look at a place like Medjugorje, you can see a superpower of mercy. Many merciful deeds were born here or they were supported here.”

• Vatican City, Apr 2, 2008 (CNA)
 
Recalling with emotion the passing of Pope John Paul II three years ago today, Pope Benedict said April 2 will remain imprinted on the mind of the Church as the day when the Servant of God departed from this world.

Thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for a memorial Mass in honor of the beloved pope, whose abiding memory continues to draw thousands of visitors every day to his tomb inside St. Peter's Basilica.

Pope Benedict said that the life and pontificate, was as a whole and in many specific moments, "a sign and witness of the Resurrection of Christ."

John Paul II died on the eve of the second Sunday of Easter, the fulfillment of the "day that the Lord has made."

The Holy Father said, "Like three years ago, today we are not far from Easter. The heart of the Church is still deeply immersed in the mystery of the Resurrection of the Lord. Indeed, we can read the entire life of my beloved predecessor, in particular his Petrine ministry, as a sign of the Risen Christ.”

Recalling how today is the day John Paul II died, Benedict XVI said, "His agony was beheld by all this "day," in this space-time that is the new ' "eighth day," desired by the Holy Trinity through the work of the Incarnate Word, dead and risen.

"In this spiritual dimension,” the Holy Father said that “Pope John Paul II repeatedly demonstrated that he was some way immersed in this mystery during his life, especially in carrying out the mission of the Supreme Pontiff."

Since childhood, Karol Wojtyla experienced the truth of St. Paul's words, 'if we die with him, we shall also live with him. If we persevere with him, we also reign with him" (2 Tim 2,11-12), the Pope said.

The Holy Father then walked through the life of Karol Wojtyla, narrating his way of the cross.

He encountered these words in facing his way of the cross, that of his family and his people. He soon decided carry his cross together with Jesus, following in his footsteps. He wanted to be his faithful servant, to accept the call to the priesthood, and to commit his entire life as a gift. He did all of this through the unique mediation of Mary, Mother of the Church, Mother of the Redeemer and effectively intimately associated with the saving mystery of his death and resurrection, Pope Benedict reflected.

Our Lady’s April message to Marija

Dear children! As nature gives the most beautiful colours of the year, I also call you to witness with your life and to help others to draw closer to my Immaculate Heart, so that the flame of love for the Most High may sprout in their hearts. I am with you and I unceasingly pray for you that your life may be a reflection of Heaven here on earth. Thank you for having responded to my call. April 25, 2011

I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already! Luke 12 : 49

He is Risen!

best listened to with headphones.

HE IS RISEN!

He is risen, he’s alive
as sure as two and three make five.
He is with us, he is seen,
Jesus Christ, the Nazarene!

Ring out bells, sound the chimes,
Tell the world it’s Good News time.
Witness for him, spread the Word.
Jesus is our Risen Lord!

He is risen, he’s alive
as sure as two and three make five.
He is with us, he is seen,
Jesus Christ, the Nazarene!

Journey with him, walk the miles,
Heal his wounds, share his smiles.
Sit at table, share his bread,
Show the world that he’s not dead.

He is risen, he’s alive
as sure as two and three make five.
He is with us, he is seen,
Jesus Christ, the Nazarene!

Open hearts and open hands,
Love is all that he commands.
Show him to the world today,
In everything we do and say.

He is risen, he’s alive
as sure as two and three make five.
He is with us, he is seen,
Jesus Christ, the Nazarene!

He is risen, he’s alive
as sure as two and three make five.
He is with us, he is seen,
Jesus Christ, the Nazarene!

• Lyrics and music by © Bernard Gallagher, May 1, 2009

Veneration of the Cross

A time for leaving...

Jesus said: “You have the poor with you always, you will not always have me” John 12 : 8

Dear little children, listen and live what I tell you because it is important for you when I shall not be with you any longer that you remember my words and all that I told you. part message, October 25, 1992

Signs and wonders...

One of many signs witnessed at Medjugorje... pilgrims in tears – and on their knees.

All these signs are designed to strengthen your faith until I leave you the visible and permanent sign. October 22, 1981

• Michael Brown has published an article on his website Spirit Daily about the numerous signs witnessed by pilgrims at Medjugorje.

My Son exists...

I tell you most solemnly, before Abraham ever was, I Am. John 8 : 58

Dear Children! Today I call you, together with me, to begin to build the Kingdom of Heaven in your hearts; that you may forget that what is personal and – led by the example of my Son - think of what is of God. What does he desire of you? Do not permit Satan to open the paths of of earthly happiness, the paths without my Son. My children, they are false and last a short while. My Son exists. I offer you eternal happiness and peace and unity with my Son, with God; I offer you the Kingdom of God. Thank you. Medjugorje message, August 2, 2010

Fire of faith, hope and love...

These images are of where Our Lady’s statue stands on Apparition Hill.
They were taken on the night of June 26, 2006, around 9.30pm local time.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar sprang to his feet in amazement. He said to his advisers, “Did we not have these three men thrown bound into the fire?” They relied, “Certainly, O king.” “But,” he went on “I can see four men walking about freely in the heart of the fire without coming to any harm. And the fourth looks like a son of the gods.” Daniel 3 : 24-26

Dear children! Today I call you, through prayer and sacrifice, to prepare yourselves for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Little children, this is a time of grace and so, again, I call you to decide for God the Creator. Allow him to transform and change you. May your heart be prepared to listen to, and live, everything which the Holy Spirit has in his plan for each of you. Little children, allow the Holy Spirit to lead you on the way of truth and salvation towards eternal life. Thank you for having responded to my call. Medjugorje message, May 25, 1998

Dear children! I rejoice with you and in this time of grace I call you to spiritual renewal. Pray, little children, that the Holy Spirit may come to dwell in you in fullness, so that you may be able to witness in joy to all those who are far from faith. Especially, little children, pray for the gifts of the Holy Spirit so that in the spirit of love, every day and in each situation, you may be closer to your fellow-man; and that in wisdom and love you may overcome every difficulty. I am with you and I intercede for each of you before Jesus. Thank you for having responded to my call. Medjugorje message, May 25, 2000

Hail Holy Queen...

The Voice of Peace

This music track “Medjugorje, the Voice of Peace” is sung by the late Jim Keohan who died in May 2010. He is supported by Italian soprano Giovanna Salvati.

Jim’s “little miracle” at Medjugorje

Pilgrimage group leader Jim Brown’s “little miracle” goes back to the year 2000. Having endured a life of alcoholism he was brought to Medjugorje under protest – but he experienced something that was to change his life forever. This is his testimony.

Well I thought I had made the biggest mistake in my life because I saw this crowd of people all hugging each other and delighted to be with each other — and this was 5 o’clock in the morning at Shannon airport. I thought these were lunatics, and they were all so happy and joyous and they were saying to me how my life would never be the same again. One woman came over to me and she was fiddlin’ with me hair and telling me how lovely I was going to be, and that I would look so different and feel so different, and I was saying to myself, “If you don’t leave me alone, missis, you’ll never be the same again!”

She was behind me on the plane and she was overpowering, and then when we got over here I got onto the bus and she was on to me, telling me about all her experiences and I found it very difficult. I couldn’t take it any more. She told me she had seen the sun spinning. I said, “Listen missis, I’m an alcoholic. I drank every day for 20 years. I saw every town in Ireland spinning. I saw every ceiling spinning in every hotel room I ever laid down in. I saw a car coming up the main street in Tralee, on its side. So forget about all this stuff that you saw, just leave me alone.”

They actually put me into a very small house with only three other people and I thought there must be some kind of God because he had kept me away from these lunatics! I noticed that out the back there was a lovely garden and I thought I would stay there for the week and pick up with the group again on the way home seven days later, and that nobody would know where I was or miss me. But they came looking for me. I was with one Irish guy and he was part of a Galway group, and they came in looking all around the house, looking for the lost sheep.  And they brought me over to Stanka’s house where there was a big group of about 40 of them. I didn’t want to be there. I certainly didn’t. I went down to Mass and it was packed. I thought, “What am I doing here? I don’t even go to Mass at home. I haven’t been at Mass for ten years and here I am in a packed church I can’t even sit down.” The idea of hiding for the rest of the week was the only thing in my mind at that stage.

But I went up Apparition Hill and I said to one man, a quiet guy who was on his own, “Do you know anything about this place?” “I do,” he said “I’ve been here ten times.” I said, “Will you just show me the spot where Our Lady appeared?” I was going to go up there, kneel down, say about three Hail Mary’s and see if I could make my own way back to Ireland.

But something happened when I got there. I just felt there was more to this than meets the eye. I just loved it. There was something inside me that changed. I was on a 12-step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous for seven years at that stage and I was told that it would fulfil all my spiritual needs but I always knew there was something missing and I had done an awful lot of therapy because I hadn’t cried for almost 30 years and I knew that there was a part in me that wasn’t right, and I saw the saddest situations and I saw the saddest things at graveyards and there wasn’t a tear out of me. It was like my head belonged to one man and my heart to somebody else. I just couldn’t seem to connect both.  I would feel sad, and hence I couldn‘t show the love I had for people either.

That changed the idea of going home and then two days later I was sitting outside the house and the guy I was talking to, Johnny McCarthy, he thought I had dropped an article because I’d bent down. But in actual fact my head was forced down. It was as if I had gone down to pick up something, and I asked Johnny, did he feel that what came over me, did he feel that. And he said, “That’s probably Herself!” And I thought he was talking about the woman at the house, and he said, “No, it’s Our Lady, look at the time. It’s twenty to seven.” I thought he was joking. I said, “Sure Our Lady hasn’t been here for years.” He says, “Not at all, she arrives here every night at twenty to seven.”

And I didn’t pay anymore attention to it until the following day at Mass when the priest asked us to give the sign of peace. And he said, “Before you give the sign of peace, just look inside your own heart and see is there somebody you need to forgive.”

Now there was Mass for my mother and father a month before that in Westport and my sister, who lives in  Meath, had booked it and she couldn’t get down, and she says to me, “Will you go to Mass for mamma and dad and I said, “No, I don’t want to go.” I was so angry and so bitter. I had grown up in an alcoholic house and I knew I was very angry with my father. I didn’t realise I was just so angry with my mother because I had asked her several times to protect me from what was going on and, even knowing that she couldn’t, at the same time it didn’t take away from the pain, and the abandonment I felt at the time.

So I didn’t realise that I was actually that angry with both of them, and that day at Mass when I went inside myself the tears started to come out of me, almost like rice. They were coming out in lumps. It wasn’t just like water, and I didn’t feel sad. All I felt was the greatest joy that I have ever felt in my life, the greatest forgiveness, and all I could think of was all the sacrifices that both parents had made because there was an alcoholic in the house and there was  very little money — me mother had to work. I could see all the sacrifices that both of them had made to make my birthday possible and to make Santa Claus possible, for many years. That was me in the year 2000. It has taken extreme pain from me and turned into joy and acceptance, and forgiveness and love. And I knew that that was too good to keep it a secret and I had this need to get other people to experience it as well.

Our Lady gives messages to the visionaries regularly but the message that she gave to me was : “Bring them over, don’t judge them. That’s not your job. The Trinity is complete, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jim Brown’s job is to bring whoever wants to go, to Medjugorje, to facilitate, to get them over here.” Then that’s my job done.

• adapted from a documentary presented by Ireland’s Midwest Radio

Leading the way...

The Lord spoke to Moses, “Go down now, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have apostasised. They have been quick to leave the way I marked out for them. Exodus 32 : 7-8

Dear children! God sent me among you out of love that I may lead you towards the way of salvation. Many of you opened your hearts and accepted my messages, but many have become lost on this way and have never come to know the God of love with the fullness of heart. Therefore, I call you to be love and light where there is darkness and sin. I am with you and bless you all. Thank you for having responded to my call.  Medjugorje message, October 25, 2007

I will never forget you...

Mother and Child seen at the Humac Franciscan Monastery Museum

Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you. Isaiah 49 : 15

Dear children, do not forget that I am with you and I am helping you with my prayer that God may give you the strength to love. I bless and love you with my motherly love. Thank you for having responded to my call. part Medjugorje message, April 25, 1993

Words from Heaven

The angel said: “Wherever the river flows, all living creatures teeming in it will live. Fish will be plentiful, for wherever the river goes it brings health, and life teems wherever the river flows. Along the river, on either bank, will grow every kind of fruit tree with leaves that never wither and fruit that never fails; they will bear new fruit every month, because the water comes from the sanctuary. And their fruit will be good to eat and the leaves medicinal.” Ezekiel 47 : 9, 12

Dear children! I desire to thank you for every response to the messages. Especially, dear children, thank you for all the sacrifices and prayers which you have presented to me. Dear children, I desire to keep on giving you still further messages, only not every Thursday, dear children, but on each 25th in the month. The time has come when what my Lord desired has been fulfilled. Now I will give you less messages, but I am still with you. Therefore, dear children, I beseech you, listen to my messages and live them, so I can guide you. Dear children, thank you for having responded to my call.
Medjugorje message, January 8, 1987

Dear children! Today I invite you to become missionaries of my messages, which I am giving here through this place that is dear to me. God has allowed me to stay this long with you and therefore, little children, I invite you to live with love the messages I give and to transmit them to the whole world, so that a river of love flows to people who are full of hatred and without peace. I invite you, little children, to become peace where there is no peace and light where there is darkness, so that each heart accepts the light and the way of salvation. Thank you for having responded to my call.
Medjugorje message, February 25, 1995

Medjugorje newsletter

• Not everyone has access to email or the internet, so I publish a monthly hard-copy newsletter which I post out free via Royal Mail to anyone living in the U.K. who wants to receive it. The 8-page colour newsletter is distributed free of charge.

If you live in the U.K. and would like to receive a copy or several copies to pass on to prayer groups, friends and family, then EMAIL me with your name, address and telephone number.

One thing I ask is that the newsletter is not left in churches. If you want to pass a copy on then please do so by hand or post.

I regret that I am only able to post out the newsletter to people living in the U.K.

Video of March 26 apparition to Marija

Video of April 2 apparition to Mirjana

Monthly apparition of our Lady to Mirjana Dragicevic-Soldo, April 2nd, 2011 from tunin tunin on Vimeo.

April message to visionary Mirjana

Dear children; with motherly love I desire to open the heart of each of you and to teach you personal unity with the Father. To accept this, you must comprehend that you are important to God and that he is calling you individually. You must comprehend that your prayer is a conversation of a child with the Father; that love is the way by which you must set out – love for God and for your neighbour. That is, my children, the love that has no boundaries, that is the love that emanates from truth and goes to the end. Follow me, my children, so that also others, in recognising the truth and love in you, may follow you. Thank you.
Medjugorje message, April 2, 2011

Let us set ourselves to know the Lord... Hosea 6 : 3

You must comprehend that your prayer is a conversation of a child with the Father; that love is the way by which you must set out – love for God and for your neighbour.

In today’s gospel (Luke 18 : 9-14), the parable of the pharisee and publican, Jesus says: “The pharisee stood there and said this prayer to HIMSELF...”

We see also that the pharisee stands a distance away from the publican, and this divide is expressed in his ‘prayer’ when he exalts himself above his ‘sinful’ neighbour.

But it is the publican who goes home at rights with God. It is the publican who, in his humilty in confessing his sinfulness, is united with the Father.

The pharisee has still to set himself to know the Lord, to set out on the way of love. The false ‘love’ he has for himself separates him from the truth and ‘the love that has no boundaries’. He can see the sins of others and chooses to place himself above the ‘sinners’, but in doing so also distances himself from God.

The pharisee may consider himself important in God’s eyes but by exalting himself in this way he also disassociates himself from the love of God in others. The pharisee’s ‘love’ is self-contained.

• Fr Neil Buchlein’s audio commentary

Great is the love of God...

I WILL LOVE THEM WITH ALL MY HEART... Hosea 14 : 5

Dear children! On this message, which I give you today through my servant, I desire for you to reflect a long time. My children, great is the love of God. Do not close your eyes, do not close your ears, while I repeat to you: Great is his love! Hear my call and my supplication, which I direct to you. Consecrate your heart and make in it the home of the Lord. May he dwell in it forever. My eyes and my heart will be here, even when I will no longer appear. Act in everything as I ask you and lead you to the Lord. Do not reject from yourself the name of God, that you may not be rejected. Accept my messages that you may be accepted. Decide, my children, it is the time of decision. Be of just and innocent heart that I may lead you to your Father, for this that I am here, is his great love. Thank you for being here! March 18, 1996

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Mark 12 : 30

Fifa suspends Bosnia & Hercegovina

It’s not an April Fool’s joke... Bosnia-Hercegovina has been suspended from world football after refusing to comply to governing body Fifa's regulations.

The Bosnian-Hercegovina Football Federation (NSBIH) had been ordered to change its three-man presidency into one single position by both Fifa and European body Uefa.

But the move was rejected at a NSBIH meeting on Wednesday, prompting Fifa to take immediate action.

The suspension means Bosnia-Hercegovina cannot play any international matches.

full report: BBC NEWS