"The Oasis of Peace" a community born on the messages of Our Lady of Medjugorje

After 25 years, Medjugorje has truly proved to be an oasis of peace for millions of pilgrims from all over the world. Medjugorje is an oasis and a source of grace: here the inspiration of the Marian Community - Oasis of Peace was born, here our experience was born historically, here we can continuously renew it by drawing on the source. We want to thank God who, for our love, sent Mary among us to show us the way of salvation, the way of peace. We want to thank Mary, the Queen of Peace, for these 25 years of love and maternal presence. We want to thank for the gift of the Marian Community-Oasis of Peace, fruit of the Heart of the Queen of Peace.

We wish to raise a hymn of thanks by presenting the spirituality of the Marian Community - Oasis of Peace and the history of our presence in this blessed land. A love story marked by the presence of Mary in a beautiful, too beautiful story that has been going on for 25 years!

The messages of Mary, Queen of Peace, began to reach me from the beginning, through my spiritual father who punctually communicated them to me. Through them I warned that Mary's presence in Medjugorje was not a joke or something to be underestimated. By letting myself be accompanied by these messages and the spirituality that emerged from them, I perceived the concern of a mother who watches over her children, attentive and attentive, eager to educate them to make them grow in the best way. Gradually I realized that Maria had entered my life in a decisive way. The awareness of a vocation call that was growing in me led me to seek, in the consecrated life, the place where to incarnate my vocation. What Mary had placed in my heart through her messages, I was looking for it as a concrete way to be able to live in an ecclesial reality that you would make me meet. Thus began the search for a concrete place, but after several attempts I realized that my spiritual needs did not find that place where they could be realized. The question arose: what Mary asks, is it possible to live it in the Church, in a reality of consecrated life? I met boys and girls who, like me, touched by the experience of Medjugorje, were looking for how to live in a stable way what Our Lady proposed, and I understood that I am not alone in this search. So I started to meet with them, to pray and dream and ask more and more light from Mary to guide us on this journey. With us there was also a Passionist priest, Fr. Gianni Sgreva, who in turn had accepted Mary's invitation to consecrate herself and help her, making herself available for her plans. What Mary asked in her messages, we felt it as a primary need, a concrete way in which to create a new style of consecrated life.

The message of August 7, 1986 gave us further light, finding in it well described what we had to be and also the name that this new reality would assume: Oasis of Peace. We must be an Oasis of Peace in the desert of the world, a place where there is water, where there is life and where, together with Maria, to offer an alternative to this world that has lost all value, through a simple and poor life abandoned to Divine Providence; abandonment to divine providence founded on the Gospel passage of Mt 6,24-34 ("First of all seek the Kingdom of God and his justice and all the rest will be given to you in addition"), which Mary asked us to meditate every Thursday (mess. 29.02.84). Providence was intended as an economic resource and also as a thermometer of our loyalty. When this adventure physically began in Priabona di Monte di Malo (VI) on May 18, 1987, our day was marked by prayer: liturgy of the Hours in a community way, Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, recitation of the Rosary, to pray from the Lord the gift of Peace and thus live the intercession task that we felt had been entrusted to us; from work, in a contemplative lifestyle lived in fraternity and open to welcoming those who were sincerely seeking peace. This reception consisted in offering the possibility of sharing our life of prayer, work, simplicity and joy. Furthermore, I especially welcome groups of people on Sunday who, returning from Medjugorje, wanted to continue the experience of prayer they met there. On Sunday, in fact, we re-proposed the same evening prayer program that is still taking place in Medjugorje.

With the experience of community life, the growing understanding of Mary's plan for us was also growing.

The formation that the Father offered us and the reflections that emerged from a careful reading of the signs of the times and the history in which we live are very important. The Father invited us to make our faith become culture. Our life was to be a sign, a prophecy.

Mary needs our lives, our hands, our intelligence, but above all our heart to bring to our brothers and sisters the joy of knowing God and His love. To offer the experience of how prayer opens the eyes and the heart to be able to read reality in a new way, from the point of view of God, and to become its witnesses. To make it clear that Mary wants to rebuild with the rubble and make of these rubble living stones for the Kingdom of God.

In fact, how many people come to Medjugorje from heavy life experiences, experiences of distance from God, of sin, people wounded and betrayed in the dearest affections, who most of the time have hit bottom ... and Mary is there, ready to bend over of them instilling new hope, making them understand that it is not all over, that there is a Father who loves and welcomes and gives a new opportunity. Mary is the new "Good Samaritan" who knows how to bend over taking care of her unfortunate children and, after having given them the first care, entrusts them to the new inns in which to recover, fortifying themselves in the faith. The Oasis of Peace must be this "therapeutic" place of rehabilitation and convalescence for the spirit. How many people have passed through our Oasis sharing a stretch of road with us, experiencing God in the Eucharistic Adoration, in prayer, in entrusting them to Mary, considered the Mother and Teacher, the true Responsible of the Oasis, She who he takes care of the wounds and heals them, which knows how to instil hope and new enthusiasm for life, in order to then resume the journey.

Mary is the Queen of Peace, with this title she presented herself in Medjugorje and as such she came to show us again the way of peace, calling us to conversion, asking us to put God first, to welcome her in our life, to put order in the hierarchy of values, and indicating prayer as a privileged place of encounter with God and of the joy he gives to those who seek it in him.

This program that Our Lady has offered us and whose extraordinary relevance we can experience after 19 years of community experience, pushes us to renew our "gratitude to her who with her motherly love and help met us in our life and brought together God, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, alive in his Church. " (cf. Rule of Life n.1) ”Starting from this Marian encounter, in fact, our life has changed. Mary asks for our collaboration to save many brothers and sisters in search of peace. By abandoning ourselves to her, we do not want to keep the gift received for us. With joy we declare our total availability, so that the Queen of Peace may use us as her instruments for the fulfillment of the Father's salvific plan, with the witness and sacrifice of our lives for the salvation of the world. "(Cf. RV nn. 2-3) Sr. Maria Fabrizia of the Immolated Lamb, cmop

Source: Testimony taken from "Medjugorje 25 years of Love" by the Marian Community Oasis of Peace in Medjugorje